of the prison; they brought out every slave from the houses, and from on board the ships in the harbour,' and murdered them in the most barbarous manner. We shudder to add, that upwards of two hundred victims were thus immolated to the spirit of revenge! Had the Hydriots not been unchristianised by the long oppression of the Turks, we could hardly wish them ever to enjoy independence. Self-controul is nevertheless their best preceptor; and ignominious as their conduct has been on this occasion, it will only tend to stimulate all minds rightly formed, to exert themselves still more for the establishment of a better social order among men actuated by ages of suffering to perpetrate such atrocities.

We have mentioned the secession of Ulysses from the cause of the Greeks; and as his fate was intimately connected with that of one of our countrymen, Mr. Trelawney, we shall here resume this singular episode. Mr. Trelawney, from his first acquaintance with that enterprising chieftain, became a great favourite of his, and married his sister. After Ulysses withdrew his quota of soldiers from the government, his proceedings were closely watched by Goura, one of his former most intimate and confidential friends. He was so closely pressed that he retreated from his own province, leaving his impregnable cave with his family and his riches to the care of Mr. Trelawney, and at length he surrendered, upon condition that he should have a fair trial, with a view to which he was confined in the Acropolis of Athens. While he was a prisoner, his cave was closely besieged by Goura, but all hope of taking it being out of the question, recourse was had to treachery. A Scotchman, calling himself Captain Fenton, had obtained permission, under the mask of friendship, to become an inmate of the cave, where, besides Mr. Trelawney, he found a young Englishman of very respectable connexions. Upon this youth Fenton prevailed to second him in his designs, and one day, when the three were amusing themselves firing at a target, Fenton and his accomplice suddenly levelled their pistols at Trelawney. Two balls took effect in his neck: in the mean time, his domestics, alarmed by the sound of the pistols, ran to the spot, and seeing their master apparently dead, they fell upon Fenton first, and poniarded him instantly. The young Englishman they disarmed, and bound in chains. Intelligence of Trelawney's situation soon reached one of our ships of war which was at Napoli, and by skilful management he was rescued, together with his wife, from his perilous situation. In the mean time, Ulysses was assassinated in the Acropolis of Athens, where he was committed to take his trial. Thus closes another tragedy, springing out of the Greek revolution.

In order to justify in some degree the interest which we take in this sanguinary contest, and to recall amidst such barbarous scenes the exalted sources of those associations, which inspire the civilised world with such unfading admiration for the name of Greece, we shall briefly refer to the third publication on our list; and we gladly turn to it from the horrors of war. Mr. Williams is already

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favourably known to the public by his travels through Italy and Greece, and for the assiduity and success with which, as an amateur, he has cultivated the arts. Four parts of his Views,' ' consisting of five plates each, have already appeared; and they experienced so popular a reception, that he has been induced to enlarge his original scale, in order to give greater effect to scenes and monuments which he appears to have contemplated with the ardour of an enthusiast. These four parts, together with some of the proofs of the fifth and sixth parts, are now before us; and whether we regard the accuracy and beauty of the designs, or the style in which they have been engraved, we cannot but consider them as among the most splendid displays of art which have yet been produced. They are peculiarly distinguished for the bril liancy of light, the depth of perspective, the architectural correctness, and the massive breadth of shade, which they combine within a small compass. Each View' is in itself a model for a student; to the man of classical knowledge and taste it is a volume of delightful associations. Mr. Williams has made no other use of his fancy in drawing these scenes than that of representing rather their poetical effect on the mind, than the exact measure of dilapidation which has been brought upon them by barbarism or by natural decay. Yet no pictures can be more faithful to the originals, than those which he has given us of the fallen temples, citadels, and monuments of ancient Greece. To these remains that consecrate the soil on which they linger, the modern Roumeliots and Moreots are indebted for the sympathy which the civilised world feels in their fortunes, and for the ready oblivion which it lends to their atroci ties. In this respect few publications can be more useful to their cause than the one before us; for it cannot fail of inspiring every person who examines it, with a desire that the true descendants, however degenerate, of those who raised such glorious piles, should be the sole guardians of their ruins, and if the Parthenon cannot be restored, that at least the spirit of freedom which gave birth to it, may again preside over the Acropolis of Athens, and the kindred mountains and islands which surround it.

ART. III. Considerations on Volcanos, the probable Causes of their Phenomena, the Laws which determine their March, the Disposition of their Products, and their Connexion with the present State and past History of the Globe; leading to the Establishment of a New Theory of the Earth. By G. Poulett Scrope, Esq. Sec, Geol. Soc. 8vo. W. Phillips. London. 1825.

IN

noticing this volume by Mr. Scrope, we shall at once acknowledge, at the outset, that we are disposed to receive with distrust and suspicion any new attempt to establish a Theory of the Earth.' The attention of the scientific world has been too long distracted by crude and presumptuous speculations upon a subject on which it must ever be impossible for human sagacity to arrive

at satisfactory and rational conclusions; and while, in the rash: effort to scan the secrets of creation, theory has been vainly and gratuitously piled upon hypothesis, and hypothesis upon theory, the legitimate objects of enquiry, in a most useful and interesting department of natural philosophy, have been too often forgotten, or have been remembered only to be mingled with the pursuit of some visionary and ideal system.

It were much to be desired that all writers on geology would severely restrict their labours to the careful and assiduous observation of FACTS, and that they would be content to adopt, in a branch of science which is moreover confessedly in its infancy, that safe, cautious, and modest course of induction, which has, in another department of philosophy, been so successfully followed by Reid, and Dugald Stewart, and their disciples. The external elements of matter lie before us for observation and study, like the active elements of mind: these are equally the proper subjects of our investigation. But over the origin of both it has pleased the great and mysterious First Cause to draw an impenetrable veil against the scrutiny of our impotent faculties.

A few years since a little book on geology was composed in the spirit which we should thus desire to see universal. It was from the pen of Mr. W. Phillips, the publisher of Mr. Scrope's present volume; and we remember that there was more of the real philosophy of the science in that minute manual, an humble duodecimo, than in all the ponderous tomes of geognostic and geological dissertation. We have it not before us; but the common sense of the axiom, with which the unassuming and philosophical author opened his treatise, is fresh in our recollection, as well as the simple and familiar illustration which conveyed his idea. Mr. Phillips set out with exposing the monstrous absurdity of dogmatising upon the internal composition and structure of the mass of a globe, on which the thickest crust that we can possibly examine lies no deeper than the rind lies on the orange.

Until, however, we can induce other geological writers to follow Mr. Phillips's example, we must leave the fruit of discord in their sagacious hands, and be satisfied with noting only whatever their observation has agreed in determining upon the qualities and structure of the rind. It is in this temper that we shall proceed to direct the attention of our readers to those parts of the work before us, which offer the results of Mr. Scrope's enquiries into volcanic phenomena. Here this gentleman's extensive philosophical knowledge of his subject, and his acute and laborious observation, certainly appear to great advantage, and entitle him fully to respectful attention. Here his volume also is a really valuable present to science: but when he goes farther, when he proceeds to announce to us that he has an exquisitely grand and original system of his own, wherewith to astonish the world, so transcendently surprising, that the idea in its nascent state provoked even his own incredulity, we also are shaken in our belief. We learn to receive with doubt even the

soundest fruits of his practical investigations, when we see that the positive facts which he elicits are all inevitably to be strained to as favourite hypothetical conclusion: his mere theory we give to the winds.

But to our business of analysis. The volume opens judiciously, with a highly interesting descriptive account of the Volcanic Phenomena; and Mr. Scrope's distinction of the different cases, or phases, of volcanic activity, appear to us extremely well adapted to the farther consideration of his subject. He has divided them into three general classes, as follows:

1. In which the volcano exists incessantly in outward eruptionPhase of permanent eruption.

2. In which eruptions, rarely of any excessive violence, and which continue in a comparatively tranquil manner for a considerable time, alternate frequently with brief intervals of repose-Phase of moderate activity.

3. In which eruptive paroxysms, generally of intense energy, alternate with lengthened periods of complete external inertness - Phase of prolonged intermittences.'-p. 6.

And he then proceeds to devote the remainder of his first chapter to give examples of each of these phases of activity.

In commencing the Theory of Volcanic Phenomena, in his second chapter, the author considers that their principal agent must be some elastic fluid struggling to make its escape; and he at length concludes that this fluid is STEAM. He avails himself of the fact that water can be heated red-hot, and, for any thing we know to the contrary, much hotter, under such an immense pressure as it must sustain below the vast superincumbent mass of the earth's exterior crust; and this supposition certainly explains satisfactorily the phenomena of an eruption, as he has particularly detailed them. The recapitulation in p. 25. is therefore just, when we read the qualification which follows in the same page. It may, however, be worth mentioning, that late experiments have proved that water, under a very great pressure, does not expand so much as formerly supposed, until, by removing part of the pressure, room is made for the steam instantly formed, the immediate expansion of which is immense.

But it is when (p. 29.) Mr. Scrope speaks of a general accession of caloric from the interior of the globe, which is essential to the developement of his future system, that we first begin to suspect that his theory stands upon an insecure foundation; for, although mines increase in temperature as they increase in depth, there may be, and probably are, other reasons for that circumstance than heat constantly emanating from the centre of the earth. Nor can Mr. Scrope be ignorant of one of the oldest and strongest objections against the Huttonian theory, which applies equally to his; that the temperature of the sea diminishes in proportion to the depth at which it is examined. This Peron found by repeated experiments in various latitudes; and the result, which may be read in the French Journal Phys. vol. ix. p. 82., is at least as conclusive against

the existence of a vast living furnace in the centre of the globe as Mr. Scrope's argument from mines is favourable to his theory.

If we have recourse to the very old notion of the central nucleus being a body of fire or heat, and which is not warrantable, yet we must show by what means it is continually replenished, in order that it may have suffered so great an expenditure for at least 6000 years, and still retain sufficient energy to feed above 200 known volcanic vents with different degrees of activity. Nor could a continual supply of caloric pass off, without replenishment or regeneration, even in an ordinary way, through the conducting powers of the earth's cortex, without having recourse to volcanos or earthquakes. Besides, there must also be a vast quantity of water supplied for the formation of steam, necessary for the production of these stupendous phenomena. If we suppose the waters of the ocean, or any others, to percolate, and finally to arrive at points where they may engender caloric, or meet with as much as will form abundance of steam, and this may indeed reasonably be expected in the continually disturbed ocean, - then occasional developement of steam in abundance may cause earthquakes and volcanic explosions exactly upon Mr. Scrope's principles. If this difficulty can be got over, the acute reasoning and great geological research which he has displayed will have its full weight with us.

In a following part of the work, however, (p. 218.) the author concludes that there has been a decay of activity, upon the whole, since the earliest ages. This rather rebuts the assertion of a fresh access of caloric from the centre, with which he sets out.

The idea of volcanic vents being safety-valves to the globe (p. 50.) is a good one, if we suppose, with the author, that in the beginning so vast a quantity of caloric was in intimate admixture with the other ingredients of which our planet is composed, that these vents were necessary to carry off the excess, especially as this caloric had otherwise the power of heaving up whole continents, to which his new theory tends. But how can the accession of caloric from the interior of the globe' be central and uniform,' if it is gradually decaying by passing off (p. 52.) through the volcanic vents?

Thus also, by another contradiction, Mr. Scrope continually speaks of the fluidity of lava, although, at the commencement, he distinctly defines it to be a very different mass from any fluid.

But whatever difficulties may exist respecting the origin of volcanic action at profound depths, the whole of the author's explanation of its exterior operations is highly satisfactory, except his supposition that the weight of the atmosphere (p. 59.) exerts any great influence upon the repressive force; for although the developement of volcanic energy is undoubtedly connected with the condition of the atmosphere, we should rather derive the latter from the former than vice versa. The variation of volcanic phenomena in the winter may proceed from other causes than atmospheric pressure.

In p. 64. Mr. Scrope speaks of two classes of earthquakes proceeding from foci at different depths. This would require, upon