ON THE PRACTICE OF SMOKING.

ཞིབ་འ༠༠༠༠་༧ཚེ་ར༠་༠༠༠་

To the Editor of the Northern Star.

I ADDRESS you, Mr. Editor, to protest along with my sex in general against the prevailing practice of smoking tobacco: not that I condemn it indiscri minately, for to the father of a family, to the man advanced in years, I would most cheerfully accord this social companion of his evenings; nay, to go still further, Mr. Editor, I confess that I have a pleasing veneration for a pipe in the hand of such a person. It is the practice of it in the young men of the present age that I would complain of; men who in other respects have a claim to the character of gentlemen, but whom neither the presence of our sex, nor our general dislike to smoking, can restrain from the indulgence of such an odious habit.

I have been looking over the Spectator, the Tatler, the Guardian, &c. to see if such a practice existed in Addison's days, but I do not find it even noticed; and I infer from this very circumstance that it is of modern date, at least amongst young men; for I am persuaded that the Spectator, who was the champion of the female sex, would not have passed over such a vice without condemning it. I am the more confirmed in this opinion, because he so often censures the practice of snuff-taking; and, further, if smoking had been so general in his day, I was persuaded, after reading his 275th paper, on the dissection of a beau's head, where billets-doux, loveletters, vows, promises, oaths, imprecations, and a great quantity of "right Spanish," was found, he would also have discovered some of the cavities filled with soot. But I have been informed, sir, that this said practice of smoking is very common with the professors and tutors of some colleges; and that the students are generally initiated into it as a part of their regular acquirements. Pray, Mr. Editor, does it assist cogitation? does it help the student in his abstract quantities? do the fumes rap the soul in poetic vision, or send the poet's eye

"In a fine frenzy rolling?"

Or what are the uses of this most divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco? or, as Burton calls it," a good vomit I confess, a virtuous herb if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used, but as it is commonly abused by most men, who take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, healths," &c.

I really hope, Mr. Editor, that I have been misinformed, and that this useless, this disgusting propensity is not acquired at the seats of learning, of literature, and of science. Surely professors and tutors do not so far forget their responsibility as to give it their sanction. What would be the consequence ?—the present race of students would be a generation of smokers; and as men are ever fertile in argument when their vices or follies are attacked, we might expect to have learned treatises to prove that the patriarchs and apostles were smokers; or even that the gods of the heathens, when they quaffed nectar, exhaled the incense of tobacco.

If, Mr. Editor, this herb possesses such virtues, such properties, as render it beneficial to those of your sex who so liberally use it, I trust some of

your correspondents will point them out, not only that mankind may derive benefit from them, but in order to reconcile our sex to the too probable continuance of its use: if it has none, I hope they will join with me in condemning so useless, so offensive a practice; and I exhort you, Sir, as a guar dian of the morals of the age, as a friend to the fair sex, and as a gentleman, to exert your influence both in public and in private in order to counteract such a vice, and to restore the manners of the young men of the sent day to that degree of purity which we can look upon with pleasure. I do declare to you, Mr. Editor, that my choice in marriage would be govern ed in some measure by the presence or absence of such a vice, and that it is a native objection throughout my sex, however such a repugnance may sometimes have been overruled; for besides the inutility, the loathsomeness of it, we cannot forget the adage, that-smoking begets drinking.

pre

DR. CONYERS MIDDLETON was born in the year 1683, at Richmond, in Yorkshire, where his father, a clergyman, resided; and when quite a youth showed signs of abilities which afterwards obtained him so much reputation. The grammar-school of Richmond, which, under its present learned master, has such a name throughout England, and particu larly at the Universities, and which has always held a high rank among the many schools of the same description in the northern part of this country, was the place where young Middleton first distinguished himself as likely in after-life to realize the promise of excellence which he then gave. About the year 1700 he was entered of Trinity College, Cambridge, a college which ranks amongst its members some of the most eminent of our countrymen both in former times and at the present, and of which Dr. Middleton became a great ornament. In about two years Middleton was chosen a scholar on the foundation; and soon after taking his bachelor's degree, he was ordained to deacon's orders, and became curate at Trumpington, a village near Cambridge, to one of the senior fellows of his college. In 1707 he took his degree of Master of Arts, having the year before been elected fel low of his college; and shortly after, he entered most warmly into the dispute, which was then at its height, against Dr. Bentley, upon which we need not enlarge, after the account that has been given of it in the memoir of Dr. Bentley, inserted in our first volume. During this controversy he vacated his fellowship by marrying a lady of very considerable fortune, with whom he went to live in the Isle of Ely, on a living to which he was inducted shortly after his marriage. We are not surprised to find that the unhealthy damps of the fens of this district obliged him to quit the neighbourhood at

the end of a year, when he returned to Cambridge, where he was residing when George the First paid a visit to the University. His name was on this occasion inserted in a royal mandate addressed to Dr. Bentley, as Regius professor, for the degree of doctor in divinity; and it was at this time, when the professor demanded his fees for admitting to the degree of D.D., that the angry discussions arose of which we have spoken in Dr. Bentley's life. We need only repeat here, that Dr. Bentley and Dr. Middleton were ever after most determined enemies.

When His Majesty augmented the University library by the donation of the books of Bishop More, it was resolved that a new Senate-House should be built; and amongst other purposes, that a suitable place should be appointed for the reception of the library. A new office was at the same time created, that of principal librarian, which was conferred on Dr. Middleton, probably from his taking the popular side in the Bentley dispute, but to which his talents alone might justly entitle him. Of this honour the Doctor was not a little proud, and experienced a proportionate mortification when in Italy, where, upon once announcing himself as principal librarian to the University of Cambridge, he was told that they had only heard of Oxford as the English University, and supposed Cambridge to be some college belonging to it. In the year 1723, soon after his appointment as librarian, he published a work containing his ideas of the management of a public University library, under the title "Bibliothecæ Cantabrigiensis ordinandæ Methodus quædam." In a short time after this work had appeared, he was obliged, on account of ill health, to apply for leave to quit his post for a time, and to recruit his strength by a journey on the continent. This permission he obtained; and by way of Paris, where he was so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of the celebrated Montfaucon, he reached Italy, where he resided during the year 1724, in which time he made a considerable collection of antique remains, of which he afterwards published

an account.

After his return to England, he engaged in controversy with Dr. Mead, who had publicly maintained that the condition of physicians in ancient Rome was very respectable, while Dr. Middleton showed that the art of medicine was confined to the slaves. The Doctor's book was answered by Professor Ward, a friend of Mead, but the ignoble condition of the ancient physicians is now well established. In 1729 Dr. Middleton produced his "Popery and Paganism compared," a work that passed through several editions, but which, added to the liberal manner in which religious opinions were always treated by Dr. M., brought upon him numberless enemies, who accused him of scepticism. Their attacks were redoubled on his publishing a refutation of the early popish miracles, a belief in which, though not a part of the doctrine of the English church, yet was at that time treated with respect by the high-church party. This was eertainly before the time of modern Ger

man Christianity.

Dr. Middleton, in 1735, wrote a dissertation on the origin of printing in England, which was followed by some other small pieces on antiquities and divinity, which were reprinted after his death in his miscellaneous

works.

An introduction to Lord Harvey was the cause of his publishing his most celebrated work, "The Life of Cicero." His Lordship very much promoted the subscription by which this work was published, and the gratitude of the author was warmly expressed by the dedication. This book is too well known to need a character, but it is perhaps worth observing that the blind partiality to his hero would probably have been moderated, had he lived to complete his plan for the life of Demosthenes, for which materials were found amongst his papers. He died in 1750, soon after his publication of his last work, "An Examination of the Bishop of London's Discourses on Prophecy."

MEMOIR OF MR. JOSEPH YOULE, LATE OF SHEFFIELD.

WHEN we see a man of superior intellectual faculties struggling through a variety of difficulties to gain improvement, the view is interesting; when he conquers, we participate in the pleasures of his success, and when he dies, we acutely feel his loss. By contemplating the man, we trace the develope. ment of genius; by studying his character, we lecture our own minds; and by viewing his attainments we add to our own energies in the same pursuits. Though the lives of men who act a conspicuous part in the world are replete with interest to all on account of the identity between their actions and the causes of public calamity or happiness, yet the silent path of the man of science is not without its flowers, and those too of an alluring kind to thinking minds. We may often derive more pleasure from tracing the progress of a man of learning through the most discouraging circumstances towards im provement, than from unravelling the little arts of political chicanery by which ambitious men gain a place in the page of civil or military history. His glory is not bought with nations' misery, but his honour is as permanent as his virtue, and the public esteem as extensive as his services to society. We were led to make the preceding remarks from a conviction of their be ing characteristic of the subject of the following short memoir.

Joseph Youle was a native of the town of Sheffield, where he was born in 1756. His father was a cutlery manufacturer and in respectable circumstances; but as he was not prepossessed in favour of a liberal education, he gave his son nothing more than the common rudiments, embracing writing, arithmetic, and English grammar. When about 14, he was taken from school and placed in his father's warehouse, where he was so closely engaged as to have very little time for any other pursuit. However the ardency of his desire for knowledge was not to be conquered by confinement nor even by prohibition to study. He would often steal up into a garret over the warehouse, in the absence of his father, and employ himself in the solution of difficult arithmetical questions. The early expansion of his mind, and the fitness of his constitution for mathematical investigations, will appear the following circumstance, which occurred when in his 15th year:-Having met with some curious questions in position, he substituted a dot instead of guessing at a number, and worked it out according to the rules with which

from

he was acquainted for the reduction of vulgar fractions, succeeded in finding the value of the dot in the particular cases under consideration. Afterwards he met with questions which involved two unknown quantities, but in which he could not deduce the value of one from the other; here he hit upon the expedient of finding the relation between them, supposing one a dot and the other a cross; and, taking the value of the one in terms of the other, proceeded to reduce this last equation and found the value of the other. This was a considerable step in Algebra for a boy of that age and under his circumstances; for it must be recollected that he had never seen any treatise on Algebra, nor had even heard of such a science being in existence. Three unknown quantities presented insurmountable difficulties; and one day he found his equation run into a quadratic form, for which he could not tell how to account. Whilst considering the novelty of the appearance, he was so fortunate as to meet with that excellent old work, Ward's Young Mathematician's Guide," in an old book-shop; he bought it; and soon learned all the Algebra which it contained. He next undertook the geometrical part, and found it very easy; but when he came to the "Arithmetic of Infinites," he found the metaphysical ideas of an infinitely great number of infinitely small parts making any given quautity, to wear too paradoxical an appearance to be called demonstration. Though very much dissatisfied with the basis, he understood the operations, and saw that if the principles upon which they were built had been indubitable, that the conclusions must of neeessity be true: this prepared him to receive the doctrine of Fluxions, which presented no embarrassment in the metaphysical idea of a continued motion,—— a doctrine, which at the same time that it was equally easy in its operations, was far more comprehensive in its applications than the arithmetic of infinites could possibly be. The first book which he had an opportunity of seeing on the Fluxional Analysis was that of the celebrated Mr. Thomas Simpson. During the perusal of this work, he found new ideas crowding in so fast, that he sometimes for a moment imagined that he was in a new world, or that he himself was a different being from what he was before. When arrived at his 18th year, he had improved so much that he was capable of undertaking the mathematical department in the Rev. Peacock's academy, at Warsop in Nottinghamshire. This is a proof of the respectability of his acquirements, as Mr. P. was a good mathematician himself, and consequently capable of determining upon the merits of his assistant. Mr. Youle's principal design was to have an opportunity of studying the Greek and Latin classics; but in this he was disappointed, as Mr. Peacock died about a year afterwards. Mr. Youle then took the school himself, which, together with a little farm, occupied his attention very closely; but this, however, did not prevent him from cultivating the sciences in general, and ticularly the mathematical.

parThough Mr. Youle was naturally of a pacific disposition, yet the love of independence glowed in his bosom; he could treat the indignities of haughty ignorance with proper contempt, and his conduct always bespoke the philosopher and the man. About 13 or 14 years ago, on the induction of a new curate, who was disposed to exert his tyranny over the minds of his parishioners, Mr. Y. determined to use his own reason rather than trust to that of anothere, He remonstrated, but in vain, which rendered it a very 3 M