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your letter. The account in the
paper corresponds exactly with what
I have been able to collect, con-
cerning the papers both here and in
France. I had lost all hopes of
finding the Scotch College papers
before I went to that country, and
the chief object of my journey was
to consult the archives of the Sec-
retary of State's office for Barillon's
and D'Avaux's correspondence. In
this I succeeded, and found much
very useful and curious matter.
There were not in the National Li-
brary any papers that either had, or
were pretended to have, belonged to
the Scotch College. I can have no
doubt but Carpentier's account is
true; for if he had them in his pos-
Bession, he would certainly either
have restored them to the right
owners, or have disposed of them to
his own advantage, which he might
easily have done.

I hear there are in Scotland, at present, some manuscripts which are, or pretend to be, compilations from the Scotch College papers, and I am now actually engaged in an enquiry concerning them. This is all the intelligence I can give you upon this subject. The story you heard of the offer to me was grounded only upon a very loose conversation, but I am sorry to say, that I am not near enough to a conclusion to attend to this part of the business. I am, Sir,

Your most obedient servant,
C. J. Fox.

St. Anne's Hill, Sunday.

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I RECEIVED, on the 22d ult. your favour of May 20, with the medals accompanying it, through the channel of my friend and ancient class mate, Mr. Maury, of Liverpool. That our own nation should entertain sentiments of gratitude and reverence for the great character who is the subject of your medallion is a matter of duty; his disinterested and valuable services to them have rendered it so, but such a monument to his memory by the members of another community, proves a zeal for virtue in the abstract, honourable to him who inscribes it, as to him whom it commemmorates. In returning you my individual thanks for the one destined for myself, I should perform but a part of my duty, were I not to add an assurance, that this testimonial in favour of the first worthy of our country, will be grateful to the feelings of our citizens generally.

I immediately forwarded the twe other medals, and the letters to Judge Washington, with a request that he would hand on one of them to Chief Justice Marshall.

Mr. Raymond will shortly pub-
lish The Passions, written by Will-
iam Collins, embellished with six-
teen superb engravings, by Antho-
ny Cardon, from desigus by Robert
Ker Porter; with notes, and a
comparative review, by the editor, Daniel Eccleston, Esq. London.

I salute you with great respect,
TH. JEFFERSON.

BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER'S PLAYS.

A new edition of the Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, is preparing for publication. The tasks of collation and criticism will be executed with the editor's greatest industry and best judgment, and ample recourse will be had to the manuscript notes of the late Dr. Farmer, written in the folio edition of that author, of which the editor is in possession. Whilst elaborate editions of Massinger, Jonson, and even Shirley, are announcing, the publick will surely attend to any attempt to retrieve from the trifling comments of Theobald, Sympson, and Seward, or the more careless ones of Colman, authors, who, in the opinion of some criticks deserve to rank next to Shakespeare.

Dr. Carpenter, of Exeter, will, in a few days, publish a small work, entitled, The Plan, Rules, and Catalogue of a Library for young persons, with observations on some of the principal branches of science and literature, and occasional remarks on the books selected intended to assist in the formation of literary institutions, and to aid young persons in the choice of objects of mental pursuit

A new translation of the Georgicks of Virgil, in blank verse, is in the press, and may shortly be expected to be published.

The first folio edition of the plays of Shakespeare, published in 1623, being considered by the commentators on that great dramatick poet, as by far more authentick and valuable than the succeeding ones, but from its scarcity and consequent high price, only being accessible to few, it has been thought proper to reprint it; and accordingly a copy of this edition has been a considerable time in the press, and is now early ready for publication. The

The

greatest care has been taken to ensure its fidelity, and during the time it has been in hand, three separate copies of the original edition have been constantly consulted. new edition is printed in the common roman type, but in arrangement, orthography and punctuation, is literally and scrupulously page for page, throughout, an exact copy of the edition of 1623, with all its peculiarities, not a word being added, altered, or omitted.

The Rev. T. F. Dibdin, is about to publish a new variorum edition of Sir Thomas More's Utopia. The text is from the first English edition of 1551; a book of considerable rarity, and scarcely known to bibliographers and lexicographers. Beneath the text, will be copious notes, and various readings from the Latin, French, and English edi. tions, including the whole of Dr. Warner's. The Utopia will be preceded by a biographical and Literary Introduction; comprehending, among other subjects, a complete Catalogue Raisonne of the va rious editions of the Utopia, hitherto published. The work will be ornamented with some fac-simile wood cuts.

A copy of Opie's well known painting of Belisarius, executed by Mr. Wm. Cantrill, the Marquis of Stafford's porter, was lately disposed of. It is an accurate representation of the fine original, and does infinite credit to this self-taught artist. The head of the neglected veteran, and the boy who holds the helmet for the donations of the passengers, are peculiarly well painted, and exhibits touches of a very superiour kind. It is impossible to view the picture, and at the same time to consider the circumstances and situation of the artist, without much interest and admiration.

THE MONTHLY ANTHOLOGY.

FOR

JUNE, 1808.

For the Anthology.

THE BOTANIST, No. 15.

(The same subject continued from the Anthology for April.)

"The bright consummate Flower

"Spirits odorous breathes."

FLOWERS, says the most learned of poets, spirits odorous breathe. On what does this odour depend? The chemists give us this vague answer, that it depends on the oil of the plant. But a vegetable distils two kinds of oil, differing very much from each other; the one is fixed, the other volatile. The fixed oil is combined with mucilage; the volatile with the aroma, or spiritus reetor of the plant. The fixed oil is found only in the seeds; and is confined almost entirely to those, which have two cotyledons, as flax-seed, almonds, and rape-seed; but the volatile oil is found in every part of a plant, except the cotyledons of the seeds, where it never occurs, and is distinguished pre-eminently in the

flower.

When we say, that the fine odour of a flower depends on its volatile oil, or that its aromatick virtue is contained in it, and is therefore called its essential oil, we go not quite Vol. V. No. VI. 2 M

MILTON.

far enough. This essential oil contains something more subtile and active than itself, viz. an exceedingly minute, volatile and scarcely ponderable spirit, which, when separated, leaves nothing peculiar in the remaining oil. This is the spiritus rector of the old chemists, the predominant, prevailing, paramount or ruling spirit of the plant. This spirit, which is inimitable by art, imparts that smell, taste, and medicinal virtue to that particular species of plant, and is found in no other. The fixed oil is innate; but the es

"We are so far from being admitted into the secrets of nature, that we scarcely approach the first entrance. We overlook the operations of those invisible

fluids, which encompass them, upon whose motions and operations depend those qualities, for which they are most remarkable. "LOCKE on Human Understanding. Vol. II. p. 207.

+ What Locke calls QUALITIES, some of the ancients called forms.

sential oil is the vegetable economy, operating in perfect health, and in full perfection, while drawing its sustentation from the earth, and from the air. The essential oils of plants have their respective characteristicks from these aroma, or spirits alone; the volatile oil, serves, in some degree, for enveloping, arresting and preventing a too sudden and copious expenditure of them; while the fixed oil serves only for connecting the solid parts together, like the oil or fat in animals. The difference therefore of these two oils is very wide.

Should any one object, that, by fixing our eyes too intently on the poetical phrase of Milton, we have strayed from the enlightened path of modern chemistry into a thicket of fragrant flowers, and are there stupified and bewildered,* we answer, that it may be so, notwithstanding the limits which we assign to the meaning of the term spirit. We mean by it the finest and most subtle parts of bodies; the most active part of matter, with regard to its facility of motion, in comparison with the grosser parts; that which is discoverable by the smartness to the smell, and which rises first in distillation. The name of "spirit" was formerly given to any subtle volatile substance, that exhaled from bodies in a given degree of heat; and by a sort of imaginary analogy, was transferred to the human system; hence the term animal spirits, which was ingeniously supposed to reside in the nervous fluid, as the spiritus rector resides in the essential oil of plants.

If the term spirit, or spiritus rector, should displease the fastidious cri

See the effects of flowers on the human system, when in a confined place,

in our thirteenth number.

an

tick, we would remind him, that spirit, in the German language, is geist, or as Jucker has it gascht, whence is derived the English word ghost, or spirit; and hence our fashionable chemical word gas, or gaz, by which we are to understand “ exceedingly rare, highly elastick, and invisible fluid, not condensible by cold." Should the critick persist in refusing his imprimatur to the term spirit, we will compound with him, by giving him, in its stead, the word quintessence, by which we mean the specifick essence, the active principle, by the power of which medicines operate. 'Tis the distinguishing part of medicinal simples, which can be separated, in imagination, from the tangible body, leaving its organization entire. To be still more particular. The ancient philosophers and the old chemists conceived that fire, air, water and earth, contributed to the composition of all vegetables; to all which was added, a fifth thing, or ens, which enriched and distinguished the whole, by its own particular efficacy; and on which the odour, taste and virtue of each plant depended: they, therefore, asserted, that each species of plants was made up of the four common elements; but to these was added a fifth, which, though small in quantity, was the most powcrful, efficacious, and predominant of its ingredients: this, therefore, they called the fifth essence, or, as expressed in Latin, the quinta essentia. The knowledge of quintessences was considered, two hundred years ago, as the utmost bounds of chemical perfection. Is not this precisely the case, at present, with the knowledge of gasses, or spirits?

We have said, that all aromatick plants contain a volatile oil; but this aromatick oil does not reside in the same part in every kind of plant,

Sometimes we find it distributed through the whole plant, as in the Bohemian angelica; sometimes it exists only in the bark, as in cinnamon. Balm, mint, rosemary, and wormwood, contain their essential oil in their leaves and stems; while the Elecampane and Florentine iris depo sit it in their roots. All the terebinthenate, or resin-bearing trees, have it in their young branches, while the chamomile and the rose have it in their petals. Many fruits contain it throughout their whole substance, as pepper and juniper. Oranges and lemons contain it in their rind or peel.* The nutmeg tree bears its essential oil in the nut, and its immediate envelopement. The seeds of the umbelliferous plants, such as fennel, cummin, and anise, have the vesicles of essential oil along the projecting lines upon their skin.

the Botanist to speak slightly of the pleasure derived from the sight of an elegant plant. Amidst "e insatiable variety of nature," * few are its productions that can be placed in competition with a beautiful and fragrant flower. The most brilliant gem but dazzles the eye with its splendour; while the blind man is regaled with the fragrance of the rose, the lily, and the jessamine.

may

The attempt to describe by words what, in truth, requires the faithful pencil of a Flemish painter, may well be deemed a futile task. Who would attempt to describe "the gay carnation?" Even throw his pencil by, in despair of imitating the violet or the apple blossom. What colours on the painter's pallet can express the richness of the Amaryllis foramsissima or the Superbia gloriosa, or the Dodecatheon of LinThe taste of volatile, or essential næus? Who could hope to sucoils, is hot; but it is remarkable, ceed in the description of the Strethat the taste of the plant does not litzia Regina, adorned, as it is, always influence that of its essential "with purple, azure, and specked oil; for the oil of pepper has no ex- with gold?" or the Ixora coccitraordinary acrimony; and that nea, the cluster of whose flowers which is obtained from wormwood are so brilliant, that they resemis not bitter and so of colour, the ble burning coals? If the painter oil of red roses is white; the oil of la- can give but a faint resemblance of vender yellow; of chamomile a fine the violet, or the passion-flower, blue; that of parsley a bright green; or the Chalcedonian lily, what would that of millefoil a sea-green. This he say, if requested to express, with is the valuable part of Botany; his colours, the CACTUS GRANDIwhich, if diligently pursued in this FLORUS, or night-blowing Ceres! country, will shew the subordinate This stately flower is a native of rank of the nomenclatureship of the Vera Cruz. Vera Cruz. It expands a most science, and the knowledge of the beautiful corol of nearly a foot in diaexternal forms of plants merely. meter; and has twenty stamina surClassifiers have almost led the world rounding one pistillum. The inside to forget the great use and end of of the calyx is a splendid yellow, the Botany. Far be it, however, from

If a lump of sugar be rubbed against the oil-containing-vesicles of the orange, or lemon, it imbibes the volatile oil, and forms a pleasant oles-sacharum, soluble in

water.

* Cicero.

+ So called by Sir Joseph Banks, in honour of the Queen of England. This plant is curiously formed, as well as preeminently splendid,

Milton.

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