is perceptible and distinct, upon bringing, in using the slip, the tongue to the palate or to the teeth. Sixthly, the voice is less perceptible on joining the teeth together, than on their standing asunder. Seventhly, though. the mouth be full of water, the hearing is not in the least diminished. Eighthly, when a brass or iron wire is held to the teeth, the deaf person hears nothing at all; but held between the teeth, a little. Ninthly, the deaf person may hear very well, on holding, by the lower rim, a beer-glass, to the upper teeth; or if, with the mouth shut, he presses it somewhat hard just under the nose, and another person directs his voice up the glass, close to it; all which answers not with a wineglass. Tenthly and lastly, the speaker must have good sound teeth, without any loose ones, at least in the upper jaw, as then the voice is very indistinct.

MELANGE.
No. VI.

Chacun à son gout.

MONSIEUR DE VIVONNE.-M. de V, who was general of the expedition against Messina, writing from that place to the king, closed his letter in these words: To finish the affair, we only want ten thousand men. He gave his letter to seal to Du Terron, commissioner for the army, who was bold enough to add, and a general.

ANECDOTE FOR THE FRENCH EMPEROR.-When Themistocles went to Andrus to demand a levy of morey, he said, I bring two Gods with me, FORCE and PERSUASION. He was answered, and we have two stronger, WANT and IMPOSSIBILITY,

་་

THE USE OF THE EYES. Such is the reputation of Democritus, that almost all the world is persuaded that he put his eyes out upon moral and honourable principles. Aulus Gellius assures us that he took this resolution, in order to concentrate his ideas, and to enable him more effectually to contemplate those mysteries of Nature, into which his eyes did not suffer him to pene

trate.

He quotes those verses of Laberius, wherein he says that Democritus lost his sight by looking too stedfastly on the sun. But, according to that philosopher, Democritus had a different view in parting with his sight: He suffered this, that he might not be mortified with looking on vicious men. Plutarch, who had mentioned this before Aulus Gellius, considers it as an imposture. The assertion, says he, that Democritus deprived himself of sight, by looking on a burning-glass, is certainly false; yet it is true that those who accustom themselves to mental labour, find the senses rather troublesoine than useful. For this reason the retreats of study, and the temples of the muses are generally in solitudes; and probably too, for the same reason it is that the Greeks call the night Euphrona, that is the good thinker. Because the time that is least subject to dissipation and variety is most favourable to thought.

Thus, Plutarch is persuaded that the man who cannot see, has a considerable advantage in point of meditation; and it was, undoubtedly, under this idea that Pythagoras shut himself up a whole winter in a subter

raneous cave.

Lactantius, on the other hand, says that the mind discerns the object through the medium of the eye, as through a window. It is so essentially there, that through the same medium you may read what passes in it. Lucretius has made use of a very trifling argument to refute this. If, says he, the soul looks through the eye, it would certainly see much better, were the eye taken away. Remove the gates, and surely more light will enter. Certainly, continues Lactantius, Lucretius and Epicurus must have lost their eyes, when they could not see that the removal of thein would destroy the passage of light.

JACOB TONSON.-There is a singular defect in the picture of King Charles the first, in whole length in armour, by Vandyke; both the gauntlets being drawn for the right hand.

When this picture was in the Wharton Collection, old Jacob Tonson, who had remarkably ugly legs, was finding fault with the two gauntlets. Lady Wharton said, Mr. Tonson, why might not one man have two right hands, as well as another two left legs!

Till I saw this anecdote, as related by the late Horace

Walpole, I was at a loss to comprehend what Pope in
tended by the two following lines in the Dunciad:
With arms extended Bernard rows his state,
And left-legged Jacob seems to emulate.
These lines were afterwards thus altered:

With legs expanded Bernard urged the race,
And seemed to emulate great Jacob's pace.

Dr. Warton has inserted the first couplet in his edition, and as he has no annotation upon it, probably was not acquainted with its meaning. [Beloe.]

PARLIAMENTARY ELOQUENCE.-Some years ago, a member of parliament having heard many speeches in the house, to the great applause of the speakers, grew ambitious of rising into rival glory by his oratory; and accordingly watched for a favourable opportunity to open. At length an occasion presented itself. A motion was made in the house for euforcing the execution of some statute; on which the orator in embryo rose solemnly up, and after giving three loud hems, spoke as follows: "Mr. Speaker-have we laws, or have we not laws? If we have laws, and they are not observed, to what end were those laws made?" so saying, he sat himself down, his chest heaving high with conscious consequence; when another rose up, and delivered his thoughts in these words: "Mr. speaker-did the honourable gentleman who spoke last, speak to the purpose, or not speak to the purpose; if he did not speak to the purpose, to what purpose did he speak?" This d-propos reply set the house in a roar of laughter, and the unfortunate orator, like Old Doiley in the farce, was content to be dummy ever after.

KOTZEBUE FURTHER DETECTED.

MR. CONDUCTOR,

YOUR correspondent "Detector," in No. IV. of the Cabinet, exposes Kotzebue's plagiarism in having borrowed, the story of "The Little Lie" from the Adventurer; but he has omitted noticing that the story entitled "Shun the Appearance of Vice" is equally pil fered from the same source; being a literal copy (vari ation of names excepted,) of the story of Desdemona, Vol. IV. Nos. 117. 118.

A CONSTANT READER.

AN ESSAY ON BRUCE'S TRAVELS,

AND

THE SOURCE OF THE NILE.

Resumed from page 15.

AMONG the thousand improbabilities attending the supposition that the great river of Abyssinia, ever was or could be considered as the Astapus, it will not escape notice, that this branch is always treated as one infinitely inferior in consequence to the Astaberas, though in point of magnitude and importance, it bears the same proportion to the Mareb, Tacazze and Dender, as London to Dublin, or a Patagonian to a Laplander.

The accounts of Herodotus are entirely irrelevant. He was told, it seems, by the Secretary of the Temple of Minerva, that the sacred river issued out of vast lakes to the southward, which he placed near Syene, the modern Assouan in Upper Egypt.-Granting even that he had, or rather Herodotus had, mistaken the name of the place, nothing is thence proved in favour of the Bahar el Abiad, which has no connection with any lake. The description can only suit the Blue River, or perhaps the Maleg. The information he details as given by the inhabitants of interior Africa with whom he conversed, has already been shewn to apply to the river called the Niger.

It is almost unnecessary to mention more modern accounts, since they are all more or less copied from Ptolemy. The river mentioned by Juba, (as quoted by Pliny) is clearly the Niger, and no other river which runs eastward. It may not be improper to remark, that Esduri, the Arabian geographer, servilely copies Ptolemy in his account of the Nile, joining much romantic nonsense of his own. He admits however what is abundantly sufficient for our purpose. He asserts that the natives of Africa declared the "Blue River," (which he conceives to be the Astapus) to be the true Nile, which he pretends to deny, not from his own knowledge, but from his own mistaken notion of the authority of Ptolemy. That the Bahar el Azergue was generally considered by the natives of those countries to be the

river of Egypt, is a matter of fact which he positively attests; his own opinions, founded on a groundless theory, merit no attention.

In truth the whole information Ptolemy or any of his age could give, seems little more than an amplification of that communicated by Eratosthenes, as quoted by Strabo. He mentions the Astaberas, and Astapus, which some call the Astosabas as falling into the Nile, and adds "but they say there is another running from the south out of certain lakes, and that this nearly makes up the straight body of the Nile, and that the summer rains occasion its overflowing." These two latter circumstances, clearly point out the great river of Abyssinia, as they are applicable to no other of the streams which join the Nile.

No

But it may still be objected, that however at variance with one another, and with the truth, all accounts agree that the source of the Nile is in the Mountains of the Moon, which are not in Abyssinia. (By the way I know not that these mountains are mentioned previous to Ptolemy.) But where are these Mountains of the Moon? If by that name be meant the range of hills intersecting Africa from east to west a few degrees north of the equator, or even the highest part of them, I assert that the appellation is just as well suited to those of Abyssinia, as of any to the westward. doubt we see in the modern maps the Mountains of the Moon, but these are merely the dreams of Arabian geographers following Ptolemy. There is not the vestige of a proof that any part of these ranges of mountains ever bore that name in any part of Africa. Abyssinian mountains are probably the highest of that extensive range; at least very near the sources of the rivers falling into the Abay, streams take their rise and flow into the Indian Ocean. It will not avail the supporters of the argument deduced from the "Lunar Mountains," that their name might have been acquired from the worship of that luminary by the inhabitants, seeing this will apply to all the Pagan inhabitants of Nubia, whether on the mountains or the plains, whether on the banks of the Blue or White Rivers, the Maleg or the Dender, in fact to all the Polytheists of Africa, and perhaps every where else. A late Reviewer very neatly and truly observes (vide Eclectic Review) that

The