From Chambery our author retraced his steps towards Italy, through the province of Maurienne, which every traveller must cross on his way to Mont Cenis.

This work deserves to be better known, and would be a very useful companion to a tourist among that part of the Alps. In the Appendix we find an analysis of the various mineral springs with which Savoy abounds. We are glad to perceive that the Piedmontese Government is more awake than it used to be to the interests of this valuable and loyal portion of its dominions. The present King appears active; he visits in person his various provinces, has had roads and other public works finished; and even in the long-neglected island of Sardinia, it appears that civilization is fast spreading, communications are opening, and a better police introduced.

ART. XVIII.—Machines à Vapeur; Aperçu de leur Etat actuel, sous les points de vue de la Mécanique et de l'Industrie, pour conduire à la solution accomplie du Problémeque présentent ces Machines; avec un supplément donnant la Théorie Mathémati que rigoureuse des Machines à Vapeur, fondée sur la nouvelle Théorie Générale des Fluides. Par Hone Wronski. 4to. Paris. 1829.

Ir is by no means an uncommon remark, that the application of steam is yet but in its infancy; a proposition self-evident perhaps to those who maintain it, but one which we are disposed to regard with distrust. That steam is available for many purposes for which it is not used, is manifestly true, but then arises the question of expediency, and whether manual labour is not in the end cheaper. Some two or three years since an individual obtained a patent for an engine to chop up firewood and bind it into small faggots of given dimensions;-the cost of the engine and its moving power would have supplied all London with faggots for a year. Another gentleman, about the same time, contrived a machine, to be impelled by any adequate power, for splitting straws, (we do not mean an attorney,) but the price of the apparatus and the maintenance of it would have absorbed all the profits of the straw-plat trade. The employment of steam machinery in such cases is preposterous, and the adoption of it must always be regulated by the value of articles so manufactured, and such as are produced by hand. But further, the unerring results of experience have shown that theoretical improvements do not invariably answer in practice; there is a certain degree of perfection to which workmanship can be brought, but which it cannot exceed, and M. Wronski, after having talked of the véritable secret of steam engines, may excite a smile from an engineer by the following conditions, which must be fulfilled before a perfect engine can be constructed, and the positive assertion that a machine which he has invented fulfils them all; of the machine itself however, as it has not yet been protected by a patent, nothing of course is said.

"The véritable problème' of steam-engines consists in constructing a machine which shall completely fulfil the seven following conditions:

"1. It should be contained in the mathematical minimum of space, that is to say, it should occupy the least possible volume.

"2. In this least space it should contain the mathematical maximum of vacuum to be occupied by steam, and, consequently, it should have the least possible weight, yet fulfilling the essential condition of sufficient solidity to offer a complete guarantee against explosion.

"3. The construction of it should be independent of the place wherein it performs, so that it may act every where and even during the time of its removal.

"4. But further this construction should be the most simple, containing only parts of immediate action; that is to say, without having any intermediate part for the communication of the motion.

“5. The whole machine should be susceptible of common manufacture, that it might both be sold at a low price and be repaired every where by ordinary

mechanics.

"6. It should be able to apply its moving power immediately in every direction, without wheels, handles, or other parts for the transmission of motion, and, consequently, it should act vertically, horizontally, or in any way that may be required.

"7. Lastly, its moving force should be as far as possible continuous and regular, and it should thus afford the whole of the force contained in the vapour expended, losing the least possible quantity of this force to overcome the frictions inseparable from the essence of matter.

"Such..... in its determination à posteriori and à priori is the véritable problème of steam engines, to carry them to the extreme of perfection. Now, unless we deceive ourselves, and that when supported by rigorous mathematical calculations does not seem possible, we think we can offer a solution of this problem in the construction of a machine. . . . which we shall call dynamogène."-p. 245.

For the reason already assigned no description of this engine and no clue to its construction is afforded, but the analytical expression of its power, and the dynamogenous factor, facteur dynamogénique, offering a véritable GENERATION INDEFINIE DE FORCE, a GENERATION Arbitraire ET ILLIMITEE de force, upon which its superiority depends, is most mystically set forth, and to save our readers the trouble which we ourselves encountered, we shall explain this mystification. An expression consisting of several terms is found for the power of his engine; one of of these terms, the dynamogenous factor, in proportion to which the value of this expression increases, is always an improper fraction, the numerator being the tension of the steam in the cylinder into which it is first admitted; the denominator, the tension of the steam in another cylinder into which it is discharged from the first. So that the whole thing resolves itself into Woolf's engine, in which, from the mention made of Mr. Perkins, steam of the tension, occasionally used by that gentleman, is to be employed.

The history of the pamphlet before us we conceive to be this; the arrival in Paris of Mr. Perkins, and the experiments he performed there some short time since, set Mr. Wronski's busy head to work; so, picking up what he could of that able engineer's proceedings, and with M. Arago's summary of the history of the steam-engine in last year's Annuaire for a text book, he sat down to write a history and invent a machine of his own. The historical part of the treatise professes to

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have been composed three years since; but the continued references to the Annuaire, the arrangement, tone, and spirit of the whole are not in harmony with such an assertion, while the quiet intimation of the coincidence between his own theoretical results and what Mr. Perkins has determined experimentally, point out, in the case of M. Wronski, from what quarter his knowledge was derived. We are no more inclined to deny M. Wronski's general talents and ability, because we have hazarded the above statement, than we should be to question his propensity to mystification, because an instance might possibly be adduced in which he had acted with good faith. But while we think that he has been in some cases hardly dealt with, we consider it an insult to the science of Europe, that what he does know should be propounded in enigmas, which, when solved, not unfrequently turn out, as in the present case, an ass in a lion's skin.

Postscript to the Article on the " Present State of the Netherlands." See p. 400.

Whilst these sheets are in the press, the Philosophical College of Louvain has been abolished, and the organization of the episcopal seminaries will therefore meet with no obstacle. Events have, in truth, within the last two months, been multiplying at a rate too rapid for us to keep pace with. The dismissal of a numerous body of public functionaries for voting against the government, and the collection of large subscriptions from the people for their indemnity, are among the matters which would otherwise have been noticed.

NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS.

In the review of Professor Heeren's work on the Polity and Commerce of the Great Nations of Antiquity in our last Number, we mentioned incidentally that the English translation published in America by Mr. Bancroft of Professor Heeren's Manual of Ancient History had been reprinted here for the benefit of ourselves. We find we were misinformed as to this point, and that the translation published by Mr. Talboys, of Oxford, is an entirely new one. The same publisher has also printed a translation of Heeren's Sketch of the History of Ancient Greece, in which Mr. Bancroft's translation was used, but much altered and corrected throughout.

very

MISCELLANEOUS LITERARY NOTICES.

No. X.

FRANCE.

A VOLUME of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the celebrated Diderot, by his daughter, Madame de Vandeul, will shortly make its appearance. The manuscript had been in the hands of Baron Grimm, who had sent it to a German prince, whose correspondent he was. A copy of it was recently allowed to be taken, which has fallen into the hands of a Paris bookseller, who is about to publish it. Some piquant extracts from it have already appeared in the Gazette Littéraire, a clever weekly periodical, which has been recently started in Paris on the plan of our own Literary Gazette. We copy the following description of this encyclopedist and philosopher's habits:

"In this manner my father employed his time. He wrote epistolary dedications for the musicians, of which I possess several; he sketched the plot of a comedy for a dramatist who could only write, and wrote for the one whose forte lay in plots; he made prefaces and introductory discourses to suit the wants of those who applied to him. One day a man came to him to beg him to write an advertisement of some pomatum which was to make the hair grow; he laughed heartily, but did what was requested. He did not always labour, however, for the mere sake of obliging. He had given up to his wife the whole of his little income, and very rarely asked her for money, and then only for trifling sums. He spent a great deal however; he was fond of cards, played very ill, and always lost; he liked riding in hackney coaches, often forgot them at the doors of houses where he stopped, and had a whole day's fare to pay. The females to whom he was attached cost him considerable sums, which he was anxious my mother should know nothing of. He never denied himself a book: he had a taste for prints, gems, and miniatures, of which he made presents within a day or two after he had bought them; but he required money to meet all these expences. He laboured, therefore, for public bodies, for magistrates and others who could recompense him liberally for his work. He composed discourses for advocates-general, addresses to the king, parliamentary remonstrances, and various other things, which, he said, were paid three times their value. It was with the little sums he received in this manner that he satisfied his taste for making presents, and the little luxuries of life." Here is the account of his death:

"He went to occupy a splendid suite of apartments, which had been hired for him by the Empress of Russia in the Rue Richelieu. He enjoyed them but twelve days; he was enchanted with them; having always lodged in a garret, he thought himself in a palace. But his body became weaker every day; although his head was not at all affected, he was firmly persuaded that his end was approaching; but he said not a word about it, from a wish to spare the feelings of the persons about him, whom he saw plunged in sorrow; he occupied himself in everything that could divert and deceive them; every day he was arranging something new, putting his prints in order, &c. The night before his death a more convenient bed was brought for him; the workmen took a great

deal of trouble in placing it properly. My friends,' said he to them, you are taking infinite pains there for a piece of furniture which will not be wanted for more than four days.' In the evening he saw his friends. The conversation turned upon philosophy, and the various roads for arriving at that science. The first step towards philosophy,' said he,' is incredulity.' This remark is the last which he pronounced in my presence. As it was late, I left him, in the hope of seeing him once more.

"He got up on Saturday, the 30th of July, 1784; he conversed all the morning with his son-in-law and his physician; he had his blistering plaster removed, as it gave him pain; he set down to table, took some soup, some boiled mutton and succory; he then took an apricot, which my mother wished to dissuade him from eating. But what possible harm do you think that can do me?' He did eat it; then rested his elbow on the table in order to eat some preserved cherries, and coughed slightly. My mother asked him a question, and receiving no answer, she raised her eyes and looked at him-he was no more!"

A new drama by M. Victor Hugo, entitled Hernani, is now in rehearsal at the Theatre Français. The representation of this is looked forward to as an event which is to decide the great literary question, which has been so long in discussion, between the classical and romantic schools.

The Memoirs of Levasseur, an ex-conventionalist, recently published, have been seized by order of the government.

At the sitting of the French Academy of Sciences on the 14th of December, M. Charles Dupin read the first part of an elaborate Essay on the comparative progress of the Private and Public Revenues in France and Great Britain, from the commencement of the sixteenth century to the present time. In this Essay M. Dupin justified, by calculations, the principle of the legislation on corn. He defended the law relative to the importation and exportation of corn, against the opinion of the advocates for the free circulation of the agricultural product. He concluded by drawing a parallel between the measures adopted in France and Great Britain, which, though different in their views, are founded on the same principles, and productive of results equally advantageous to both nations.

We understand that there is to be a grand Musical Festival held at Strasburg on the 12th of April next. All the artists and amateurs of Alsace, and several of the departments of the interior, are to be present on the occasion; and several distinguished musicians of the grand-duchy of Baden have accepted the invitation given them to attend.

M. Serullas was elected on the 28th of December a member of the Academy of Sciences in the room of M. Vauquelin, deceased. M. Chevreul has been elected the successor of the same gentleman as Professor of Chemistry at the Museum of Natural History. General Rogniat has been elected an academicien libre in the room of Count Daru.

M. Thiers, author of the History of the French Revolution, has undertaken the principal editorship of a new daily political journal, which commenced on the 1st of January under the title of Le National. The tone of it appears more moderate than that of the Constitutionel, to which M. Thiers has been for some years attached as one of the principal collaborateurs. A duel has already taken place, however, between one of the collaborateurs of the National and another of the Drapeau Blanc, in which the latter was wounded.