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indifferent or doubtful.

The number of good novels, that is to say, novels that may be read with benefit and pleasure by persons of good mor ls and good taste, is very considerable. It is not true that the rest are particularly deficient in morality. The herd of romancewriters, are, for the most part, goaded by necessity into authorship. They seldom bring to the trade more than a good education, and good in tentions; and the deficiency is not in the moral purpose of the work, but in the taste and genius displayed in the execution. If there are many insipid novels, it is because the whole number is very great. The man of taste easily discerns their defects, and lays them aside at the bottom of the first page. Boys and girls, and men and woman whose judg. ments are no better than those of boys and girls, read and relish them. The food is suited to the palate, and they derive a pleasure from it which at least is innocent.

The number of good novels, I repeat, is very large. It is not a task of such mighty difficulty, to distinguish them from the still greater number which are trivial or insipid. A list is easily formed, and those who want a guide in the selection may easily find one: and even the trivial and injudicious are not without their use, since there are vast numbers whose judgment and education raise them just high enough to relish these meagre tales, and to whom sublimer fictions and austere studies are totally unfit.

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They who prate about the influence of novels to unfit us for solid and useful reading, are guilty of a double error: for in the first place, a just and powerful picture of human life in which the connection between vice and misery, and between felicity and virtue is vividly pourtrayed, is the most solid and useful reading that a moral and social being (exclusive of particular cases and professional engagements) can read; and in the second place, the most trivial and trite of these performances are, to readers of cer

VOL. I. NO. VI.

tain ages and intellects, the only books which they will read. If they were not thus employed, they would be employed in a way still more trivial or pernicious. Pray, Crito, what do you think of the matter?

Why, my fair critic, you are a warm and zealous advocate; and, perhaps, defend your cause with a little more eloquence than truth. I cannot but say, however, that my fancy has received more delight, my heart more humanity, and my understanding more instruction from a few novels I could name, than from any other works; and that the merit of a score or two of these is, in my apprehension, so great, that they are the first and principal objects to which I would direct the curiosity of a child or pupil of mine.

I think, however, you assert a little rashly, when you say that a profligate novel is an extreme novelty. I could name half a dozon, French and English, in a trice, that deserves this character; but all that your cause requires is, that there are a great many specimens of fiction where merit is liable to no exception; that there are the most popular and current works of the kind, and, consequently most likely to fall into the hand of readers who take up books at random: and that guides to a right choice are always to be found.

WOODEN BUILDINGS.

I have heard very disastrous news to-day. A large part of the town of Norfolk has been destroyed by fire, and property to the value of near two millions has been consumed. The whole subsistence of some thousands has been swallowed up in a moment. They have been turned forth from their dwellings at an instant's notice, in a winter night. Their very cloaths, in many instances, denied them: their furniture, their moveables involved in destruction, or lost, or stolen, or shattered in removal; and even the source of future subsistence cut off to many in the destruction of goods 2

on the sale, or of houses on the rents, of which they live.

In the long and diversified history of human folly, there are few things more remarkable and more egregious than the custom of building houses of wood. It is almost impossible to count up the various evils which flow from this practice. It branches into such endless and innumerable channels that the most rigorous understanding would be overtasked in reckoning or tracing them.

The most obvious evils are those which arise from the sudden distruction of property, and the reduction to abject poverty of numbers thrifty or affluent; but these, the direct consequences, are by no means the only ones. The fear of death, according to the proverb, is worse than death itself; and the calamity of fire is little, compared with the terror of it, by which so many minds are incessantly haunted. Let us, likewise, reflect upon the injury which men incur in their health, in being summoned at unseasonable hours to a fire; perhaps at the hours dedicated to repose, in the depth of winter. How many lives have been shortened, and how many have been incommoded while they lasted, by unseasonable exposure to wet and cold.

And what a troublesome and expensive apparatus does the dread of fire give birth to. Here is a complicated engine to build and preserve: a house erected to cover it: officers appointed to drag it to the scene of destruction, and to manage it when there: eight or ten thousand leather-buckets: long hocks, and enormous ladders; one to pull down a roof, and the other to scale it.

If all this devastation was indured, all this danger and terror in curred, without any fault of our own, and all this cumbrous apparatus provided, to obviate a natural evil: an evil which the nature of things renders inseparable from human society, they would excite no admiration; but the truth is, that all these are the consequences of our own mad

ness and infatuation. We build our houses of materials which a spark will consume, instead of such as fire can take no hold off. Instead of brick, stone, tiles, and slate, which are so much more stable and durable; which contribute so infinitely more to quiet, comfort, and warmth, and which not only give us absolute security from fire, but supersede every troublesome precaution, and lays to rest every tremor and inquietude; instead of these, we surround our beds with pine, oak, and cedar; and commit our property and our existence to the mercy of a random spark.

In a city that could not take, or could not diffuse fire the tolling larum or the midnight outcry, would never be heard. No associations would be formed to extinguish fires, or indemnify the sufferers: no engines would thunder along the streets: and no sleep would be disquieted by apprehensions. Neither negligence, nor ignorance, nor villainy would have it in their power to do this species of mischief: the easiest, most obvious, and most practicable mischief that can be committed.

When the benefits of one sort, and the disadvantages of the other sort of buildings, are so enormous and so manifest, what has induced mankind, in all ages, to build with wood? The superior cheapness of timber will not solve the riddle, because all mankind are not obliged to consult frugality, and small indeed is that number who abstain from luxuries because necessaries are cheaper. Man must have a roof to shelter him, and if he cannot build a stonchouse, he must have a wooden one; but I repeat the number is very large, of those who can afford to consuit not only safety, comfort, and convenience, but even elegance in their habitations, who yet cling as obstinately to wooden walls, wooden floors, and wooden roofs, as if dif ferent materials were impossible to be obtained.

But is timber in whole, or in part, cheaper than stone and brick? This question will depend on local cir

eumstances for its answer. In this city (Philadelphia) for instance how is this question to be answered? It is surely worth while to form some estimate of this nature; and let it be taken into the account, that a bowl which costs sixpence, and lasts only a year, is twice as dear as one that costs a shilling and lasts four years.

EDDYSTONE.

I have been reading Smeaton's history of his light-house at Eddiston. There is a good deal in the book to instruct the architect; but not a little likewise to amuse and inspire the imagination. The situation of this tower rising directly from the waves, and far distant from any land; in the midst of a sea remarkably tempestuous, and beaten almost constantly by billows so enormous as to throw their foam far above the summit of the edifice, which, nevertheless, is a very lofty one, is such as to fire the fancy. The solitude of this mansion, ascending amidst the waste of waters, the seeming frailty, yet real stability of its foundation, the drearty uniformity of the surrounding scene,

Dark, illimitable, wastful, wild, all conspire to feed and harmonize with melancholy and ferocious passions. The gloomily sublime, and the awfully magnificent are no where so amply and terribly unfolded as in the appearance of Eddyston in a

storm.

I am the more interested by this description, because it has been my fortune to view this beakon by day and by night. I had a view of it in the morning on my voyage out, and at midnight, in a gloomy sky, on my return. The danger of too near an approach to the rocks on which it stands; the recollection that this tower was erected not to invite the wanderer to its shelter, but to warn him to keep off; the star-like brilliancy of the light at a distance, and its splendour and seemingly rapid motion when near, altogether con

spired to fill me with a mixed emo-
tion of terror, confidence, and won-
der, which I can never forget. In
the midst of an half pleasing tremor,
and while I grasped a rope to keep
my feet steady on the shifting deck,
I found myself involuntarily mut-
tering....

Let my lamp at midnight hour,
Be seen in some high lonely tower,
Hewn out of peaked rock that laves
His foot with all the world of waves.

Smeaton anticipates the curiosity of the reader as to the means of persuading people to reside on this stormy and comfortless spot. A salary of about one hundred and twenty dollars a year, is, however, an adequate inducement, and there are some light men who have passed thirty years on this rock, without suffering their wishes or persons to stray from it more than a few weeks in the twelve months. As their contract is from month to month, they may be justly deemed their own masters, and their stay here must be accounted voluntary. Little can, indeed, be inferred from men's willingness to stay here as to the pleasures of the residence, since our motive to stay in one place is generally no other than the impossibility of changing it for a better; and we may, according to the mood we are in, indulge either our wonder at that pliability of temper, and that force of habit which enable men to find charms in a dwelling of this kind, or our compassion for that wretched lot, which cannot be improved by a change of abode.

DUELLING.

I have been reading a very amusing controversy in the public papers, which originated in a duel. I took it into my head to read it to the cynical Lysander, forgetting, for a moment, his inveterate animosity to duelling.

Lysander is neither tall nor strong; but he is agile and vigorous in proportion to his size; and can handle

a stick with a dexterity to which few are equal. He has always resorted to this weapon in resenting insults, and conscious of his ability to defend himself, he laughs at challenges. Duelling is a subject of perpetual declamation to him, and on which his eloquence is never tired, and his indignation never exhausted. On this occasion he, as usual, broke out into a philippic against honour, and ran volubly over ail the usual topics against it, drawn from the impiety and immorality of revenge and from the folly of seeking vengeance in this way, supposing vengeance to be a reasonable or Christian passion.

Lysander has declaimed all his life on this subject without making a single convert. All the moral and religious writers of the age have taken up arms in the same cause, and employed in the warfare all manner of weapons. They have attacked duelling with argument and with jest, they have endeavoured to convince the judgment by Sylogisms, to seduce the passions by tales of terror and pity, and to gain over pride itself by loading honour and revenge with scorn and ridicule, and yet this universal conspiracy and strenuous combination against custom, has produced no effect. Custom, the god of this world, has still as many votaries as ever, and will slacken and disappear, merely through the caprice and instability of human nature. In no case is the tyranny of custom more conspicuous than in this. Nobody pretends publicly to justify; yet every body practices the rules of honour.

I have met with a couple of quartoes, one upon duelling, and the other upon suicide. We are generally so fully convinced by our own reasonings, that no doubt the writer of these bully volumes fondly imagined that after their publication, duel ling and suicide would never more be heard of; and yet, how small a part even of the reading world ever heard of these books; and those who have prevailed upon themselves to travel through them, are not very

likely to recollect their contents in the hour of revenge or despair.

The legislature has come in aid of the moralist, and denounced heavy penalties against duelling. He that kills his antagonist in a duel, is guilty of homicide; and the exchange of challenges is punishable with heavy fines; and yet challanges are bandied to and fro, without ceremony or reserve, and men continually shed each other's blood in phantastic quarrels with absolute impunity. The very makers and distributers of law, are the first to enter the lists; and the most violent and unquestionable breach of the duty of men, as moral, reasonable, and sociable beings, are daily observed with indifference or approbation.

Experience has, by this time, sufficiently proved, that duelling is proof against argument and jest, against religion and law; and those who employ their time in framing laws and declamations against it, had better turn their attention to subjects on which men are capable of acting up to their convictions.

For the Literary Magazine.

AGRICULTURAL ESSAYS. NO. II.

EVERY Farmer who had a mind in the least degree inquisitive, must be gratified by knowing something of the general nature of plants, and the history of vegetation: for such the following explanation is intended, for which I acknowledge myself to be chiefly indebted to the Georgical Essays of the ingenious and learned doctor Hunter, of York, in England.

The seed of a plant, after it has dropt from its receptacle, may be considered as an impregnated egg, within which the embryo plant is securely ledged. In a few days after it is committed to the earth, we may discern the rudiments of the future plant. Every part appears to exist in minature. The nutritive juices

of the soil insinuate themselves between the original particles of the plant, and bring about an extension of its parts. This is what is called the growth of the vegetable body.

Seeds have two coverings and two lobes, or distinct parts. These lobes constitute the body of the grain, and in the farinaceous kind, such as wheat, rye, oats, &c. they are the flour of the grain. Innumerable small vessels run through the substance of the lobes, which, uniting as they approach the seminal plant, from a small chord to be inserted into the body of the germe or sprout. Through it the nutriment supplied by the lobes is conveyed for the preservation and increase of the embryo plant.

To illustrate the subject, let us, with Dr. Hunter, take a view of what happens to a bean after it has been committed to the earth.

In a few days generally the external coverings open at one end, and disclose to the naked eye part of the body of the grain. This substance consists of two lobes, between which the seminal plant is securely lodged. Soon after the opening of the membrances, a sharp pointed body appears. This is the root. By a kind of principle which seems to carry with it some appearance of instinct, it seeks a passage downwards and fixes itself into the soil. At this period the root is a smooth and polished body, and perhaps has but little power to absorb any thing from the earth for the nutriment of the germe.

The two lobes now began to separate, and the germe, or sprout, with its leaves may plainly be discovered. As the germe increases in size, the lobes are further separated; and the tender leaves being closely joined push themselves forward in the form of a wedge.

like form, and spread themselves in a horizontal direction, as being the best adapted to receive the rains and dews.

The radicle, or small root, every hour increasing in size and vigour, pushes itself deeper into the earth, from which it now draws some nutritive particles. At the same time the leaves of the germe being of a succulent nature, assist the plant by attracting from the atmosphere such particles as their tender vessels are fit to convey. These particles, however, have not in their cwn nature a sufficiency of nutriment for the increasing plant.

The young animal enjoys the milky humour of its parent. The vegetable lives upon a similar fluid, though diffirently supplied. For its use the farinaceous lobes are melted down into a milky juice, which, as long as it lasts, is conveyed to the tender plant by means of innumerable small vessels, which are spread through the substance of the lobes; and these vessels uniting into one common trunk, enter the body of the germe. Without this supply of balmy liquor, the plant must inevi tably have perished; its roots being then too small to absorb a sufficiency of food, and its body too weak to assimilate it into nourishment.

A grain of wheat contains within two capsules, a considerable share of flour, which, when melted down into a liquor by the watery juices of the earth, constitute the nourishment of the tender plant, until its roots are grown sufficiently large to absorb their own food. Here is evidently a storehouse of nutriment. And from that idea it is plain that the plumpest grains are the most eligible for seed.

For a more full illustration of this interesting subject, I must recommend the work from which this is *extracted to those who can procure it.

The leaves take a contrary direction to the root. Influenced by the same miraculous instinct, if we may be allowed the expression, they seek a passage upward, which having obtained, they lay aside their wedge of this essay.

RURICOLA.

Mentioned in the commencement

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