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She revives the sated kiss,
And th' attractions dying;
And, presenting ev'ry bliss,
Hides its power of flying.
In the heav'ns her magic skill
Places forms divine,
And on the Olympian hill
Collects the Sisters Nine:
She on Fancy's towering rocks
Mem'ry's temple raises,
And in her prismatic box
Tints the hero's praises.

Life assumes, from her effect,
A grace entirely new ;

My friends are all without defect,
My girl is strictly true;
Such are her deceptive powers,
Her visions do so gull us,
I fancy, in my rhyming hours,
I'm equal to Tibullus.'

A political work by M. SEGUR was introduced to the notice of our readers, in p. 234. of this volume of the M. R.

ART. XIII. Beschreibung einer im Sommer 1799, &c. i. e. Travels from Hamburgh to England, and through that Kingdom, in the Summer of the Year 1799. By P. A. NEMNICH, B. R. Licentiate. Small 8vo. pp. 523. Tubingen. 18co.

IN

N his journey to England, M. NEMNICH informs us, he had no intention of seeking materials for a book: but, within a few days before his departure, he received a letter from M. COTTA, requesting him to make use of this favourable opportunity for collecting some matter for his Allgemeine Zeitung, or General Newspaper. Having no leisure for reading former travels, he resolved on trusting entirely to himself; and, indeed, he deemed it better to use his own eyes than to borrow those of other men.

We shall pass over this traveller's remarks on the places through which he proceeds till he arrives on board the packetboat; as well as his description (which is not without humour) of his voyage from Hamburgh, and the several characters of his fellow-passengers. At length, he lands at Yarmouth; and, as it may be agreeable to see a foreigner's account of our country and the manners of its inhabitants, we shall make a few extracts from his work; which we shall do the more readily, because he is certainly a man of perspicacity, and judges freely from his own discernment.

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Yarmouth. This name denotes the mouth of the Yarc, on which river this sea-port, long famed for its harbour and its fishery, is situated, at the east end of the county of Norfolk. The Yare is navigable to Norwich, and somewhat farther, for vessels of forty or fifty tons. The town has four principal streets, and above a hundred and fifty lanes, or rows, which are extremely narrow. The first object that strikes a visitor is the particular kind of low carriage, which is constructed purposely for driving in these narrow passes, and is not to be seen anywhere else in England. It is therefore peculiarly known by the name of a Yarmouth Car.-Of the public buildings, the most remarkable is the church, which is dedicated to St. Nicholas, as the patron of fishermen: it is nearly 700 years old, and has three wings contiguous to each other, with a steeple 186 feet in height, which at the same time serves the mariners as a seamark. The organ in this church is much celebrated, and, next to that of Haarlem, is said to be the best in the world. Formerly, in this church, hung a chronological table of remarkable occurrences in Yarmouth; containing, among others, the following: "There never was in Yarmouth an ecclesiastic publicly convicted of the crime of carnality!"-The profits of the inhabitants arise principally from the fishery, and from the export and import trade. The fish here caught, and which form a considerable branch of livelihood, are herrings and mackerel. Vessels go out from Yarmouth to the northern coasts for the purpose of catching kabliau, or north-sca cods, which are then carried for sale to the Sound, to Norway, to Holland, and to France. Besides these, ships also sail to Greenland.

The mackerel appear towards the latter end of April, or at the beginning of May, and remain about six weeks. They are chiefly sent to the markets of London and Norwich; and it is well known that 30,000 mackerel alone have been sent at once to the latter city, where they found an immediate sale. The largest mackerel were taken in the year 1792; they weighed 25 ounces, were 17 inches long, and in the thickest part measured 84 inches.

The herring-fishery begins on the 20th of September, and lasts till the 22d of November. Any vessel, coming from any part of England, is at liberty to catch, import, and sell herrings, free of all tolls and tributes whatever. The vessels belonging to Yarmouth, nearly 150 in number, are decked, of about 20 tons burthen, and are called cobbles. About 50,000 barrels (or 50 millions of herrings) are annually brought into Yarmouth alone. When they are salted, they are generally smoaked, and in that state are called redherrings. Fifteen barrels are annually consumed in this country; and the value of the rest, which the merchants of Yarmouth and London ship off to the southern states, and particularly to Italy, is, in good seasons, estimated at 50,000 sterl. per ann. The smoaked herrings are here ludicrously called Yarmouth-capons. The arms of Yarmouth are three demi-lions with herring-tails. Desinit in piscem.

In the year 1580, at one time, 20 millions of herrings were rought into the port of Yarmouth; and in the year 1593 the fishing-nets of that place were valued at 50,000l. sterl. In 1788, a her

ring is reported to have been caught by the fishermen near Donmouth, weighing 5 ounces.

The Dutch fishing-smacks appear here annually on the 21st of September, and in the year 1788 were 87 in number. The fishermen of Yarmouth seldom go out before the 26th of September.

Besides these articles, the exports principally consist of corn, malt, and Norwich manufactures. Coals are brought hither in great quantities from the North of England, in order to be sent farther. Deals, pitch, tar, and other materials for the dock-yards, come from Norway, Denmark, and Holland.

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'No part of the coast of England is more dangerous to mariners than that of Norfolk. Off this place are what are called the Yarmouth Roads, where the sand-banks are perpetually changing their situation but a vessel is always stationed here to give the proper signals to ships coming in or going out. In the year 1692, upwards of 2co vessels were cast away on this coast, and more than a thousand persons lost their lives: something of the same kind happened in 1790. For the maintenance of the harbour, and cleansing it from sand and slime, the sum of about 2000l. per ann. is allotted. The skill and dexterity of the sailors of Yarmouth are in high repute.

The Museum Boulterianum is highly worth seeing, containing a collection of natural curiosities, coins, antiquities, utensils from Otaheite, paintings, works of art, &c. The catalogue, of considerable bulk, has appeared from the press. In the church of St. Nicholas is a collection of about 170 books; all old common-place theology, with nothing extraordinary among them. Here is a circulating library also, but extremely poor; and there is no other bookseller's shop.

The Saxon name of Yarmouth was Iermud. The Yare was called Garienis: but whether the town was the Garienum of the Romans, is doubtful.

In Yarmouth Roads, five Russian line of battle ships were lying at the time of my arrival. The officers hearing from a friend of mine that the immortal Catharine had sent me a reward for the industry which I had manifested in the pursuit of useful knowlege, I received a polite invitation to come on board the admiral's ship, where I was very elegantly entertained. She carried upwards of sixty guns, and, as most of the Russian men of war are, was built in Sweden. The crew consisted of between six and seven hundred men; who, mixed with some from the Asiatic nations, were more wretched, stupid, and dirty, than any that I had ever before scen. The officers, however, were genteel, intelligent, and extremely complaisant. From this day I became one of their company, and we participated in the pleasures of Yarmouth with mutual satisfaction.'

*Here, we believe, is a slight mistake. The Russian men of war are built either at Petersburg or Archangel. This ship might perhaps have been the Gustavus Adolphus, which was taken from the Swedes in the last war: they have no other that was built in Sweden.

Few

Few travellers, whose accounts have come under our review, have bestowed more attention on the progress of arts and civilization in the countries through which they passed, than is displayed by this German author. Indeed, he inquires more minutely into the manufactures of Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, &c. than many of our own tourists; and he seems to have obtained more knowlege concerning them than numbers of Englishmen, who yet are persons of general information. His accounts of these places are extremely interesting; and, could we find room to extract those of Birmingham and Soho, we doubt not that many of our readers would discern various particulars with which they were not acquainted. Hinckley and Leicester, with their stocking-looms and peculiarities, are also well described. The following little anecdote is worth quotation :

In Throsby's History of Leicester, the town library is highly praised, and is said to contain a thousand volumes. Concerning one manuscript, which Throsby erroneously pronounces to be Syriac, he informs us that it is vulgarly believed to be the hand-writing of our Saviour, or of one of his apostles. I therefore ran with great eagerness to see this library. A mean dirty looking woman, who acts as librarian, conducted me to an old dark room, where there might be about a thousand books, but which nobody ever reads. I asked the woman to shew me the hand writing of our Saviour; and she fetched out of her closet an old quarto volume, to which was fixed a thick clumsy chain. The leaves were almost all torn out; and on my inquiring how this had happened, she told me that it was done by people who wished to possess a piece of this sacred relic: but that now she took care that none should appropriate to themselves any morsel of it. However, this female Argus was not so quick-sighted but that I contrived to carry off a small fragment; which, on my return to Hamburgh, I sent to the celebrated bofrath Tyebsen at Rostock, and received from him the following answer:

"The scrap which you sent to me, of a poem neatly written in the Persian character called tealik [the leaning], with a Turkish translation annexed on the opposite page, may probably have been written about the beginning of the present century. From the few lines comprised in this piece, it appears to be part of a love song; in which the lover, tormented with jealousy, bitterly complains of a rival, and wishes to find some balsam for his lacerated soul, some relief from his intolerable anguish, if he may not be allowed access to the garden of roses."

Such, then, being the state of the case with the pretended hand-writing of our Saviour, my scrap will no longer be preserved as a sacred relic, but merely as an instance of the superstitious turn which prevails at Leicester.'

From this town the traveller proceeded to Nottingham, which, he says, appears to be one of the oldest towns in England; and indeed John Rowse supposes it to have existed

upwards

upwards of 1000 years before the birth of Christ.-Here we have an account of the stocking-manufacture, delivered with the writer's usual precision. In his description of the town, he tells his readers that there is no public library, but several circulating libraries, as in most of the country towns of England. By means of these institutions, (he observes,) a great variety of books get into general circulation, which the bookseller sends without discrimination to his subscribers. Thus I saw at a tradesman's house, whose mind was by no means cultivated, a translation of the Lusiad, Harris's Hermes, and an Anatomical Manual, together with the whole Art of Horse-Dealing! The worthy man complained to me that, in these days, there were no good books to be had.'

M. NEMNICH presents his countrymen with such an account of Leeds, as cannot fail to excite their admiration of the industry and ingenuity displayed by the people of England, and of the state of excellence to which our manufactures are brought.

It is not without reluctance that we now abruptly take leave of this intelligent and amusing traveller; to whose performance we have no hesitation in assigning a very considerable degree of praise.

ART. XIV. Mémoires de l'Institut National, &c.; i. e. Memoirs of the National Institute of Arts and Sciences at Paris. Vol. III. 4to. In three Parts. Paris. 1801. Imported by De Boffe, • London.

THUS speedily are we again called to attend the labours of

this active Society; and we shall endeavour to make our readers acquainted with the contents of these three new volumes, or parts of one volume, as concisely and quickly as opportunity will admit: commencing with that which is devoted to the

MATHEMATICAL and PHYSICAL SCIENCES.
4to. pp. 520.

Tooke.

The Historical part begins with a report from MM. La Grange and Bossut, concerning a memoir by M. Callet on the Summation of certain periodical Series. The first mention of these series is to be found in the third volume of Leibnitz's work; where, in a letter to Volf, he examines the opinion of Guido Grandi, relative to the sum of the periodic series 1-1+ J-1 &c. and finally assigns this curious reason, drawn from the source of faulty metaphysics, why the sum is: "If we

*See App. to Rev. vol. xxxv. N. S.

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