first number of the Edinburgh Review; the spirit in which these remarks are written, and the dignity with which they are concluded, are, in our judgment, very creditable to the author. "I have endeavoured," says his lordship, "to wave the personal feelings which rise in despight of me, in touching upon any part of the Edinburgh Review; not from a wish to conciliate the favour of its writers, or to cancel the remembrance of a syllable I have formerly published, but simply from a sense of the impropriety of mixing up private resentments with a disquisition of the present kind, and more particularly at this distance of time and place." In the article alluded to, which was a review of the French translation of Strabo, some remarks were introduced on the modern Greeks and their literature, with a short account of Coray, the most celebrated of the living Greeks for his learning and attainments. Lord Byron points out what he considers as errors or inadvertences contained in that article. We shall not affect to decide the controversy. Solyman for Mahomet the Second, could only be a slip of the pen of the learned critic by whom that article was written; and Lord Byron having treated it as such in the text, should, in consistency, have spared the note in which he gives way to feelings a little too triumphant. Upon an observation made by the critic, "that the ladies of Constantinople spoke a dialect at that period, (meaning the period of the fall of Constantinople), which would not have disgraced the lips of an Athenian," his lordship remarks, that the ladies in general, and the Athenians in particular, are, since that time, much altered;" and, doubtless, they are so; but how is that inconsistent with what the Edinburgh Reviewer had remarked? After the fall of Constantinople, it was to be expected that the Greek being no longer a living language, would soon lose its vigour and purity. But up to that point of time, though Constantinople was beset on all sides by barbarians, the empire still maintained itself; still possessed a magnificent court, and was graced by a succession of learned persons. And though Lord Byron ridicules the praise, which has, perhaps, with some exaggeration, been bestowed upon the history by Anna Comnena of her father Alexius, as having used a language dxgibus altini govσav, he should be put in mind of the opinions of Vossius, Dufresne, See the testimony of Philelphus in favour of the preservation of the pure Greek idiom among persons of rank, and especially the noble women in Constantinople, a few years before the destruction of that city; while the same writer acknowlegdes the corrupt and barbarous state of the Greek tongue among the common inhabitants of the city. Apud Hodium de Græc. Illustr. p. 188. Idem in Epist. ann. 1451. Peter Possin, and others, who have spoken in very commendatory terms of her style and eloquence. The duration and unchanged condition of the Greek language for so many centuries, is truly surprising, and shew it to have possessed an extraordinary principle of vitality. From Homer's time, to the taking of Constantinople, a period of 2350 years, it seems to have subsisted without any great revolution in its structure or inflexions. That many new and unclassical words were added to the language during this period cannot be denied, and it would, indeed, be strange if it were otherwise, for new laws, arts, and sciences must necessarily bring with them new terms, which, if they are introduced without violating the analogy of the language, ought to be considered as enriching it; and no language was ever so flexible as the Greek to these extensions of its compass and variety. Many words were introduced from the Institutes by the Byzantine Lawyers; many from the Greek Scriptures; many from the new commercial relations, and most of all from the general improvements in civil life. But the Greek Syntax, and indeed the general grammatical synthesis and structure of the language remained without any considerable or essential alterations down to the time of Eustathius, who wrote in the twelfth century. There are various causes which contributed to preserve the language of the lower empire, through so many ages, from corruption; but there can be no doubt that it was principally owing to the intrinsic purity and consistency of its formation. Its vast extension, however, and universal use in the transactions of commerce, and the business of the world, if we may so express it, were among the principal sources of its stability and duration. Its triumph over the Latin, while the arms of the Romans were subjugating Greece itself, is a striking instance of its irresistible attractions. The vernacular tongue had probably suffered many corruptions before that last event; and on the dissolution of the ancient empire, many low and illiterate Greeks were probably dispersed over Europe, who by offering themselves as teachers of the language in the western and northern parts of Europe, occasioned some prejudice against its existing purity; but the learning and ability of the Byzantine scholars of that period have received the strongest testimony from the most qualified judges of France and Italy. It seems unjust and ungrateful to confound the language of those learned men with the patois of the modern Greeks; which, however useful for commercial purposes; however worthy to be studied, with a view to open the sources of learned intel ligence; however important, as serving to mark the stages by which a language degenerates from its standard purity, it is quite ridiculous to consider as a specimen of what was written or spoken at Constantinople in the middle of the fifteenth century. If Lord Byron is of opinion, as he declares himself to be, that too much of the docile period of our lives is devoted to the writings of the ancient classics, we cannot see any good reason for his strenuous recommendation of the study of the Romaic Greek. The passages produced by him, as well as other specimens of the modern Greek, prove very strikingly to the most superficial scholar, the confused state into which the use of the prepositions and particles, letters and diphthongs, as well as of the characteristic terminations and inflexions of the verbs, has fallen; and upon the whole, it really appears to us, that, instead of troubling ourselves about a grammar to this barbarous dialect, which reminds us of Mr. Burke's expression of "arrangements for general confusion;" the better way would be to multiply, as much as possible, copies of the works of the ancient authors among the modern Greeks; and to encourage among them, as far as the present miserable and oppressive policy of the Turks will allow it, the cultivation of the genuine language. Having now brought this long article to a close, and discharged rather a difficult duty, we take leave of Lord Byron, with a sincere declaration of our respect for his genius and his talents; not doubting that we shall derive advantage from the direction of those talents, and shall continue to receive entertainment and instruction from his pen. We are the more impressed with anxiety on this subject, because a race of young nobility is just starting into the political scene with parts much more difficult to act than those which their ancestors have been called upon to sustain, and before severer judges of their performances. The dignity of the peerage can now only be maintained by nobility of conduct; and to preserve it in its true elevation, the age of chivalry must partially return; without its ceremonies and its superstitions, indeed, but with that pure honour, that religious sentiment, and those high thoughts, which render an aristocracy the living rampart of the state, the throne, and the church. ART. XVII. A New System of Chemical Philosophy. Part II. By John Dalton. Manchester. 1810. THE laws of chemical combination have hitherto been involved in much obscurity; but we may found a rational expectation of success in our investigation of these laws, on the large accessions which have been lately made to our knowledge of particular facts. In the work before us we have an ingenious attempt to solve this important problem, and we the more readily introduce it to our readers, as it will enable us to direct their attention to some of the most important of the late discoveries in this science. We have thought it expedient, at the same time, to notice some recent papers in a periodical publication of philosophical celebrity, as containing some objections of Dr. Bostock to the atomic hypothesis, and Mr. Dalton's defence of his doctrine, which he states himself to have " thought unnecessary to the class of readers which he expected." We must confess that we were at first somewhat startled at the design of the work, as stated by the author in the following passage. "It is one great object of this work to shew the importance and advantage of ascertaining the relative weights of the ultimate particles, both of simple and compound bodies, the number of simple elementary particles which constitute one compound particle, and the number of less compound particles which enter into the composition of one more compound particle." But if our astonishment was great at the grandeur of the conception, how much greater has it become at finding the conception actually attempted to be carried into execution by the promulgation of a system of practical rules, if not for investigating the point of ultimate indivisibility, at least for comparing, measuring, and compounding indivisibilities. Lucretius was content with reasoning against the doctrine of infinite indivisibility ex absurdo. "Præterea nisi erit minimum parvissima quæque Ergo rerum inter summam minimamque quid escit; Credere posse animum, victus fateare necesse 'st "To airy nothing a local habitation and a name," he has at least abstained from attempting to give form and figure to an abstract idea. Turning to the plates at the end of the volume, we found that we should have no difficulty at least in understanding our author's atoms. We must confess that we read over with some haste the first chapter, which treats of the nature of heat or caloric, its effects upon different bodies, and the means of measuring those effects. Agreeing with Mr. Dalton, as we fully do, that "before applying the weights of the atoms of bodies for the ascertainment of their specific heat, it would be necessary to determine those weights, and being promised moreover that these should be actually proved to us hereafter, we could not help feeling ourselves in the condition of a person invited to take possession of a very showy mansion, which he finds on a nearer approach to be without doors or staircases. It was necessary to convince a plain man, and one who requires to have things proved in their order, first of all to satisfy him, that if the weight of an atom of hydrogen be taken, as 1, that of oxygen would be 7, azote 5, &c. &c. This chapter however contains much valuable information, some novel experiments, and much acute reasoning. The second chapter of this volume, which treats of the constitution of bodies, commences by distributing them into three classes, viz. elastic fluids, liquids, and solids; and adduces water, as an instance to shew that the same body is capable of assuming all the three states. Mr. Dalton's hypothesis supposes bodies, whether liquids, or solids, to be constituted of a vast number of extremely small atoms, or particles of matter, bound together by a force of attraction which is more or less powerful according to circumstances; and that besides this force, which belongs universally to ponderable bodies, there is another power which is likewise universal, viz. a power of repulsion. This power he believes to be properly ascribed to the agency of heat. It is to the adjustment of these two great antagonist energies that the varieties in matter above pointed out are owing. A pure elastic fluid is constituted of particles possessing very diffuse atmospheres of heat, and it is owing to the excess of this repulsive energy that the atoms have a tendency to |