silence. But after having made the assertion without any evidence that he dared to produce, and repeated it times without number in spite of every denial, and every representation of the improbability of the thing, made on the part of the friends of the mission,-there was not much to lose, on the score of decency and sense, by one more repetition of it, in contradiction of the perfectly decisive evidence supplied by Lord T. The Major performs on the occasion after the following manner.

I am ready to admit on this writer's authority that no evidence was adduced before the commissioners appointed by the Madras Government to investigate the circumstances leading to the Vellore mutiny which expressed either fears or jealousies of Missionary exertions. But that such fears and jealousies were entertained can be proved beyond the possibility of a doubt, by unexceptionable evidence in England.' p. 78.

One of the finest manœuvres of logic is to turn the opponent's argument into the form of a question, and leave it to stand in naked self-evident absur lity. For instance, seven ral writers, and particularly Lord T., had argued that the attachment of the Hindoos to their laws and customs is not invincible, from the positive fact of their having yielded to have several of those laws and customs suppressed or forcibly interfered with, one of them being the custom of exposing infants. The Major adverts to this change in parts of the ( religion, laws, and customs, but instantly reduces the argument to ashes by saying,

To these salutary regulations they have submitted; are we therefore to argue, that they may be prevailed upon to change their religion, laws, and customs, which this respectable author knows are so interwoven one with the other, that they cannot be separated?' p. 65.

And this is the whole refutation.

Such samples of writing as these, with plenty more of the same quality, would have led no one to expect that anxiety about reputation, which comes out in one instance in a very amusing manner. The Major wished to have credit for having approved the object of Mr. Wilberforce's labours, now that his object has been carried, and now that, in the public opinion, disgrace attaches inseparably to all that are remembered to have been its opposers; he therefore takes occasion to compliment Mr. Wilberforce's 'good measure, and his perseverance in what is right' Unluckily, this pamphlet was published before the appearance of Mr. Clarkson's History of the Abolition, in which work there happens to appear, in the abridgement of parliamentary debates, a slender but truly characteristic speech of Major Scott, expressing that he believed the abolition would be injurious to our trade, and

that therefore he should oppose it! It was a very spiteful ca price of his perverse fate, that the very humility, which had concluded that his redoubtable exertions as a senator were entirely forgotten, should be rewarded by the recovery and republication of this speech, just a month or two after he had taken to himself the advantage with the public of appearing to have been a friend to the abolition.

It would be of no use to accumulate remarks on the pamphlet or on its unfortunate author, whose mental character is sufficiently illustrated in the preceding pages; in which, indeed, it has been much more the object to make a slight exhibition of his principles and capacity, in order to give our readers a right general estimate of the whole mass of productions on which his present fame is founded, than to enumerate the several dull often-exposed iterations, and clumsy essays at mischief, in this last performance. And conscious that we have occupied far too much space with the disgusting task,. we wish to conciliate our readers by an assurance, that we hope never to appropriate one more leaf to any re-appearance of such a deformed moral spectacle.

In taking final leave of this ill-fated person, we have a firm belief that the dispositions so amply displayed will remain unaltered, and every thing in the pile of pamphlets unretracted and unregretted by the writer. But if self-complacency should happen at any future time to give place to the mor tifying conviction, that it was but an unenviable notoriety, and opprobrious to its possessor, that was acquired by this voluntary exposure of dispositions and principles which might have been quietly carried to the dust in concealment, the consoling thought will suggest itself that this notoriety will probably be very transient. Religion has not the vanity of displaying her importance, by keeping a list to shew how many inconsiderable names have obtained, through opposition to her, a degree of distinction in their day which they could have attained by no other means. Only think what multitudes of hapless mortals have probably in past ages railed, and raged, and indited, against the Christian cause, who are now sunk in oblivion!

Or, if it were possible (there is one power to which the production of even this effect is possible-) that such persons as this writer and his few avowed coadjutors should ever become the subjects of a better sentiment, than merely the mortification inflicted by thinking of what nature their fame will be till it perishes, and should feel a regret truly penitential for having tried to frustrate one of the most beneficent undertakings of the age,-it will then be a sincere consolation

that their endeavours have been unavailing. While impiety is fretting itself away in imprecations and menacing predictions, the cause which has excited all this imbecile anger, and mocks it, is still going on, and with augmented force. Providence is sometimes too kind to a people, to visit its governors with that ominous infatuation, for which some of their subjects are venting angry prayers. By such a visitation, indeed, that Providence would not in effect suspend for an hour its process for the destruction of paganism and all the superstitions that governments or nations might sacrifice themselves to maintain; but it is gratifying to find, that the government in the east continues to give the fullest protection to the most important by far of the missionary operations, the translation and diffusion of the Bible. The very restrictions, imposed on some of the other labours of the missionaries, have but concentrated their efforts in this grand employment. They have been accomplishing entire versions, during the very time that their unfortunate calumniators have been wasting themselves away in feeble invectives. Their children are rising up zealously intent upon the same object, and some of them almost prodigies of early capacity and attainment. Thus the great cause is multiplying its agents, and every month consciously enlarging its powers and completing its formidable apparatus. Thus an infinite number of phials are charging with that electric element, that lightening of heaven, which will be directed to explode every idol and temple into atoms. The prophets and apostles are springing up within the dominion of each pagan god almost as suddenly as the armed host of Medea, and appointed, instead of assaulting one another, to challenge all the priests and all the demons of superstition to a last and mortal battle. Art. IV. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, for 1808, Part 1.

(Concluded from Page 353.)

WE consider the two following papers together, as the experiments related in both tend to the elucidation of the same subject.

II. On the Structure and Uses of the Spleen. Read Nov. 26,

1807.

XI. Further Experiments on the Spleen. Read Feb. 25, 1808. By Everard Home, Esq. F. R. S.

This truly ingenious and most persevering anatomist here details a variety of experiments to establish a fact of so much importance, as a communication between the cardiac portion of the stomach and the circulation of the blood, through the medium of the spleen. The dog was the animal on which

the experiments described in the first paper were made: those mentioned in the second were made principally upon the ass, an animal which appears on many accounts to be the best that could be selected for the purpose. The chief facts and inferences resulting from these experiments are as below':

That the spleen is met with in two very different states, one which may be termed the distended, the other the contracted, and that in the one its size is double what it is in the other. In the distended state there is a distinct appearance of cells containing a limpid fluid, distinguishable by the naked eye; in the contracted, these only become distinct when seen through a magnifying glass. The distended state takes place when the stomach has received unusual quantities of liquids before the animal's death; and the contracted state, when the animal has been kept several days without any drink before the spleen is examined..

That the trunk of the splenic vein (of the hog) is more than five times the size of the trun of the splenic artery.

That when the pylorus is secured, coloured liquids pass from the cardiac portion of the stomach into the circulation of the blood, and go off by the urine; and while this is going on, the spleen is in its most distended state, and the colouring matter is found in its juices, although it is not to be detected in those of the liver. The colouring matter cannot therefore be conveyed to the spleen through the common absorbents of the stomach, which lead to the thoracic duct.

That when the pylorus is open, the colouring matter under the; circumstances abovementioned is equally detected in the spleen.

That when the spleen is in this state, the blood in the splenic vein has its serum more strongly impregnated with the colouring matter, than that of the blood in the other veins of the body; and when the stomach is kept without liquids, although colouring matter is carried into the system from the intestinal canal by the ordinary channels, no particular evidence of it is met with in the spleen or its veins.

That the cæcum and the portion of the colon immediately beyond it, is found (in the ass to be at all times filled with liquids, even when none has been received into the stomach for several days, and there is a greater number of absorbent vessels for carrying liquids from the colon into the thoracic duct, than from any other part of the body. The colon is therefore a reservoir, from which the blood vessels are occasionally supplied with liquids.

Mr. SEWELL informs me, that the same observation applies in a still greater degree to the horse.

• That coloured liquids taken into the human stomach, under some circumstances, begin to pass off by urine in seventeen minutes, continue to do so for some hours, and then disappear; they are again met with in the urine, after the colouring matter is known to have arrived at the great intestines, by its passing off by the bowels.

From the above facts, the following conclusions may be drawn.

That the liquids received into the stomach beyond what are employed for digestion, are not wholly carried out of it by the common absorbents

of the stomach, or the canal of the intestines, but are partly conveyed through the medium of the spleen into the circulation of the liver.

• The vessels which communicate between the stomach and the spleen have not been discovered; but if it is proved that the colouring matter of the contents of the stomach, is met with in greater quantity in the ●pleen and in the vein which goes from that organ to the liver, than in the other veins of the body, there appears to be no other mode in which it can arrive there, but by means of such vessels; and the two different states of the spleen, which correspond with the quantities of liquids that pass from the stomach, are strongly in favour of the existence of such a channel,

This communication between the cardiac portion of the stomach, and the spleen, will explain the circumstance of those who are in the habit of drinking spirituous liquors having the spleen and liver so frequently discased, and the diseases of both organs being of the same kind.

This organ is not essential to life, its office being of a secondary kind; but when it is materially diseased, or entirely removed, digestion must be disturbed.'. p, 140-142,

III, On the Composition of the Compound Sulphuret from Fuel Boys, and an account of its Crystals. By James Smithson, Esq. F. R. S. Read Jan. 28, 1808.

The chief object of the author of this memoir is to illustrate the combination of the elements of bodies, We have no real knowledge of a compound substance, until we are acquainted with its proximate or true elements; for bodies, widely different from each other, are often composed of the same elements, which are sometimes even arranged in the same mutual relations. It is not probable that the compound sulphuret is a direct quadruple composed of lead, antimony, and copper, joined to sulphur; it is more likely to be a combination of the 3 sulphurets of these metals. There is good reason however to think, with Mr. Smithson, that all combinations are binary only; no substance whatever has more than 2 proximate or true principles, and hence Mr. Smithson considers this triple sulphuret as a compound of equal portions by weight of sulphuret of lead and Fahlertz; the sulphuret of lead being composed of I part of sulphur and 5 of lead, and the fahlertz of 3 of sulphuret of antimony and 2 of sulphuret of copper the sulphuret of antimony, of I of sulphur and 5 of antimony; and the sulphuret of copper, of I of sulphur and 2 of copper. The ultimate elements of the ore are therefore sulphur 20; lead 413=3; antimony 25=== 8, , and copper 13. There is therefore evidently a ratio, in which the elements of compound bodies are united together. After having illustrated this hypothesis by several interesting facts with regard to the formation of