"adamas" denoted "steel," there is little matter of novelty, and this, though not generally known, has been stated by several writers. Milton seems to use adamant and steel as synonymes, unless we are to consider the armour of Satan as formed from the diamond:

"On the rough edge of battle, ere it join'd,

Satan, with vast and haughty strides advanc'd,

Came tow'ring armed in adamant and gold." (P. L. vi. 108.) Johnson, however, did not understand this passage in the sense we apply it, since he refers to it from the head, "a stone imagined by writers of impenetrable hardness." We think the great lexicographer somewhat out in this interpretation, and that Milton approached to the meaning we allege in other passages; as for example:

"This huge convex of fire,

Outrageous to devour, immures us round

Ninefold; and gates of burning adamant,

Barr'd over us, prohibit all egress." (P. L. ii. 434.)

Beckman describes the tempering by the water, but not by the air process. The Javanese method of burying the iron in the earth is fully justified by the result, if the blades produced by some persons were so formed. They are trenchant blades, to which few, if any, are superior. Some valuable observations are appended on the steel manufacture by the editors.

An article, with some curious remarks on kitchen vegetables, is followed by one on knitting nets and stockings. The following observations indicate the existing state of the hosiery trade, and are valuable :

"In 1838, stocking-frames with a rotatory action, and worked by steam, were successfully brought into use in Nottingham. Of the present extent and value of the hosiery manufacture, perhaps the best estimate is that made a few years ago by Mr. Felkin, of Nottingham. This gentleman calculates the value of cotton hosiery annually made at £880,000; that of worsted at £870,000; and that of silk at £241,000. He estimates the number of stockings annually manufactured at 3,510,000 dozens; and in the production of these there are used 4,584,000 lbs. of raw cotton, value £153,000; 140,000 lbs. of raw silk, value £91,000; and 6,318,000 lbs. of English wool, value £316,000; making the total value of the materials £560,000, which are ultimately converted into the exchangeable value of £1,991,000. The total number of persons employed is 73,000." (vol. ii. p. 375.)

A paper of considerable ingenuity on plumbago, or black lead, with references to the manufacture of this material, one of great

VOL. VIII.-NO. II.

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scarcity in the high quality of it, will be read with great pleasure by the curious in mineralogy. The details of the Borrowdale black-lead mine, the finest in the world we believe, are full of interest; and the reference to the discovery of Mr. Brockedon, by which the same firmness and equality is given to the powder which is possessed by the solid material, is well timed. This highly talented artist effected this by subjecting the cleansed materials to a solidifying force by the percussion of a power estimated at 1000 tons.

And here we close our observations on this interesting work, which we regret does not partake of a more symmetrical arrangement; but a copious index remedies this partially. It is such a work as we should be glad to see introduced into our public schools and colleges, since it is one of rare and curious value in some parts; and though many highly important modern discoveries, such as the Daguerreotype, are omitted by its authors, it still supplies lacunæ difficult to fill up from any other existing source. With regard to this latter art, we are pleased to see that Mr. Beard succeeds in giving colour to his plates, which is certainly an improvement; but the entire transference of the hue of each individual complexion, will secure that gentleman the present reluctantly-acknowledged merit of producing a severe likeness on the part of our fair countrywomen,-this stereotyping of every phase of their charms, of each Daphne in the light of her own Sol,-will, we doubt not, ere long give the crowning success to this wondrous art. That the complexion should be given is not so improbable now, as the original difficulty was of ever drawing by sun-beams—a fairy deed in the fullest sense of the term. Daguerre has fixed the fleeting shadow, and, like Peter Schlemihl, sold his shadow tenfold over, and is, unlike our friend, the happier and the richer. He has given to the earth a process that affords incessant study to the artist, for nothing can exceed the exquisite beauty with which drapery is given by this operation. Our painters would do well to see how nature draws, and to follow Daguerreotype delineations in the practice of their art.

We perceive that our engravers are copying largely from this process a plate of the Duke of Richmond, by the highly-talented artist Mr. J. Hinchliff, who has furnished the engravings also from this process for this series of Mr. Bohn's works. We should be doing great injustice to this artist did we not recommend to our readers his plate of Watt from Sir W. Beechey's portrait of the first of engravers and philosophers. We have seen but few stronger likenesses or better engravings.

403

ART. IX.-American Biography and Biographers.

THERE is no class of reading which affords more amusement to the mere literary idler, or which is at the same time more attractive to the student of history, than the genuine biographies of men who were observant actors in the political and social convulsions of their country, when those individuals were sufficiently gifted by nature as well as station to comment unprejudicedly on the events by which they were surrounded, and on the causes by which particular effects were induced. The American press has recently produced two volumes eminently qualified to bear out this assertion; and we the more willingly call the attention of our readers to these works, as they contain sketches of our own country at once graphic, judicious, and, we are bound to add, untinctured by that narrow-hearted spirit of jealousy and misrepresentation, which has of late disfigured some of the best works of our transatlantic neighbours.

Messrs. Curwen and Trumbull were both conspicuous during the American revolution alike as soldiers and as citizens; and both found a refuge in England from the political troubles that distracted the emancipated States. Men of education and of energy, they had taken an early share in the struggle between the colony and the mother-country, and amid every vicissitude kept an unbroken record of passing events, to which we are indebted for the present volumes.

Samuel Curwen was a volunteer in the perilous expedition against Louisberg, where he acquitted himself with considerable credit. He had previously been engaged in commerce, and had attained a high character for probity and honour; to which was superadded a success commensurate with his merit, until his business was interrupted by the depredations of the French cruisers fitted out in Cape Breton; and this circumstance it was which decided him on taking a prominent part in what was supposed to be the hopeless, or at best, Quixotic attempt of the little army of New England militia under General Pepperell, whose success in this hazardous enterprise was rewarded by a baronetcy. The family of Mr. Curwen was highly respectable; his ancestors having been connected with the Corwins or Curwins of Workington Hall in Cumberland: a circumstance always important to an American. The first of the name who emigrated to the New World established himself at Salem, in the rising colony of Mas

sachusett's Bay, as early as the year 1638, where he represented his adopted town in the legislative assembly, and died at the age of seventy-four, leaving a large estate. From father to son the family had always maintained a high reputation and considerable influence; and soon after the reduction of Louisberg, Mr. Curwen resumed his mercantile pursuits, although with less unvarying fortune than before. Commerce did not, however, engross all his attention, for it appears that he was in the commission of the peace during thirty years, and was also appointed an Admiralty judge, while his literary avocations were zealous and unremitting. He was a member of a philosophical and literary club in his native town, which was the germ whence sprang the "Social Library" in 1760, and the "Philosophical Library," which were afterwards united, and became the foundation of the Athenæum in 1810. In the spring of 1774, Mr. Curwen incurred the popular displeasure, by signing an approbatory address to General Hutchinson on his departing for England, in company with about two hundred more of the principal inhabitants of Boston and other cities; the disaffected portion of the community stigmatizing all those whose names were affixed to the papers as "Addressers," a term of which it is difficult to discover the odium, but which nevertheless had the effect of making them "marked men." Some of the number, alarmed at the popular displeasure, were base enough to make recantations in the public prints; but this Mr. Curwen refused to do, although he became sufficiently impressed by the power of "the people" to deem a voyage to Europe, if not actually imperative, at least expedient; and he accordingly embarked at Philadelphia in April 1775, and thence to London on the 30th of the following month.

And here at once commences the extraordinary contrast between man and man. In a transcript from his own private journal, just as he had quitted his family and arrived at Philadelphia, he says as follows:

Having in vain endeavoured to persuade my wife to accompany me, her apprehensions of danger from an incensed soldiery, a people licentious and enthusiastically mad, and broken loose from all the restraints of law or religion, being less terrible to her than a short passage on the ocean; and being moreover encouraged by her, I left my late peaceful home (in my sixtieth year) in search of personal security and those rights, which by the laws of God I ought to have enjoyed undisturbed there, and embarked at Beverley on board the schooner Lively, Captain Johnson, bound hither, on Sunday the 23rd ultimo, and have just arrived here." (p. 25.)

And this, with one exception, where in a letter to the Hon.

Chambers Russell, her brother, he declares that were she no longer in existence he should never seek to return to the New World, is the only mention which is made of his wife throughout the whole work.

We can understand that this volume will probably become very popular in America, for the express reason which will totally prevent its success here,-that of its being, from the hour of Mr. Curwen's advent in England, nothing more than an elaborate guide-book, interspersed with occasional letters on political and financial subjects: while, to the English reader, the very title-page will convey disappointment,* the "prominent men with whom he came into contact being disposed of after this fashion:

"Passed the evening at Joseph Reed's, in company with Colonel Washington; a fine figure, and of a most easy and agreeable address." (p. 27.) "Saw their majesties returning from the drawing-room, the king in a sedan chair, surmounted by a crown, dressed in very light cloth with silver buttons: the queen carried by two porters in a chair, dressed in lemon-coloured flowered silk, on a light cream-coloured ground. They passed between two lines; observed, smiled, and bowed as they passed." (p. 34.) "Passing through Westminster Hall, I stopped for a small space at the courts of Common Pleas and King's Bench; at the former were sitting the chief justice De Grey and his associates, one of whom was the famous Sir William Blackstone, author of the well-known Commentaries on the Laws of England; but no cause of importance, or lawyer of note speaking, I proceeded to the latter, where was sitting that excellent useful judge, but mischievous politician, Lord Mansfield." (p. 45.) "Passing through Leicester-square, I called in at Mr. Copley's to see Mr. Clarke and the family, who kindly pressed my staying to tea; and in the mean time amused myself by seeing his performances in painting. He was then at work on a family piece, containing himself, Mr. Clarke, his wife and four children, of all of whom I observed a very striking likeness. At tea was present Mr. West, a Philadelphian, a most masterly hand in historic painting; author of the well-known and applauded piece, now in print, called West's Death of Wolfe, and taken from his painting. He is now at work on a piece called the Death of Stephen, for the king, and for which he is to have £1000. Mr. West is the king's history-painter, and was kind enough to put me into a way of obtaining a sight of the queen's palace, which he tells me contains, except Houghton Hall, the finest collection of capital paintings of any house in England." (p. 51.) "The house resounded with ' Burke, Burke! Hereupon the Irish orator rose, and in a loud and manly voice, with

*Journal and Letters of the late Samuel Curwen, Judge of Admiralty, &c., an American refugee in England, from 1775 to 1784; comprising remarks on the prominent Men and Measures of that period.