together. Fortunately, rather providentially, (and Dr. Hawkesworth, if alive again, would not dispute this correction) a draw-back, needless to repeat now, checked the headlong career of pleasures. This circumstance contributed much to damp a wish and an attempt, which followed but too fatally some years after in the Bounty. Your Readers, those of the Navy at least, will rejoice at our escape from the same slippery precipice, towards which every conducting path teemed with unusual delights. Others, less favoured of Heaven, fell: we suffered in time, in a way most unexpected: that tribulation opportune proved an antidote, our deliverance-it broke the spell of female witchery.

Imagine the ship returned to Batavia Road.

You

(To be continued.)

W. P.

June 23.

Mr. URBAN, YOU have lately, with your usual prompt and laudable attention to the circumstances of the existing moment, called upon the publick to notice the amazing increase of Sectaries in this country. The augmentation of their number is truly alarming, and the causes of it should be investigated with care and diligence.

Places of Divine Worship, after the manner of West-street Chapel, for the lower orders of society, should be immediately erected in various parts of the suburbs of the Metropolis.

Mary-le-bone, Pancras, and a multitude of other parishes, have little or no accomodation for the Poor in their Churches and Chapels. The unfortunate consequence is, that they are either driven into the pale of Methodism, or lose all sense of Religious duty. This is an evil, which a regard for the salvation of men's souls, and the preservation of public tranquillity, should urge the Legislature, without delay or evasion, to take into most serious consideration.

A pamphlet has, within this month, appeared, intituled, "Free and impartial thoughts on the increase of Sectaries, and the want of Places of Worship for the inferior ranks of the community;" from which I have derived a great deal of useful information, and which may be read with

A

advantage by every one who feels interested in the subjects on which it treats. The Nation wants rousing. It will be too late to oppose baneful doctrines when they have become universally or generally prevalent. Let then every man of rational piety combat the visionary and rhapsodical tenets of our Methodistical Non-conformists, before they have established themselves to our confusion! Our Regular Clergy, who are in general men of learning and exemplary lives, by sound argument, a fair appeal to the Holy Scriptures, and earnest zeal in the defence of our admirable Liturgy, may produce wonderful effects in checking the further dissemination of pions delusions; though little im pression can be made on persons already infected with the malady of Fanaticism.

You, Mr. Urban, and many of your ingenious Correspondents, are advocates, and powerful ones too, for our venerable Church. May you and they exert redoubled efforts to maintain the Faith once delivered to the Saints, and suppress those novel and enthusiastical notions, which are as remote from Scripture, reason, and truth, as from utility, or tendency to promote a reformation of life and mauners!

Yours, &c.

Mr. URBAN,

A

A. Z.

July 2. CONTROVERSY arriving at that point when an absolute contradiction is flatly given on both sides, it is surely high time the dis pute should end. I stated that the Scholars at Westminster sat before the late conflagration on a line with the stalls. This your "Old Correspondent," p. 415, denies. I once more maintain my first assertion. My opponent is perfectly at liberty to divert himself at my expence, both about a "fabrick of my construction," and about my "ignorance" of the nature of a "rubble wall." As for the other parts of his critique (he going over again his old ground), I presume sufficient answers and expla nations have already been given: therefore no more need be advanced; that is, Mr. Urban, with regard to the first portion, printed in p 415.

In his continuation of the critique, p. 482,

p. 482, my opponent says his friend the Mason is ready to assert "upon oath," that the Turrets of Henry's Chapel (which he has dwindled into insignificant cappings *) did threaten ruin. I again repeat, they were in no dangerous state; and I am ready to come forward on this occasion to give my oath also. Yes, I do remember the Mason was taking sketches of the Turrets when I was aloft at my employment. But in what way? Why, as a man who in tends to caricature his foe takes a likeness of his person, in order that he may turn him into scorn and ridicule! How can this Mason restore certain decorations once belonging to these Turrets, and other particulars of the fabrick, of which there have been no remaining documents for many years past? Again, will this Mason (whose integrity must not be called in question, while my credit and honesty are bandied about without mercy) be able to produce the two beautiful perfect Capitals at the finish of the Staircases to each Turret, which he suffered to be thrown down on the stairs, whereby they became muti lated, and left among the rubbish ? Let me put this question likewise. What emolument can I possibly seek in return for my papers of the "Architectural Proceedings" at the Abbey Church and Henry's Chapel? I look not to be Director, Mason, or Paymaster, in the projected improvements. Nothing but the simple wish that our Antiquities may be protected, urges me forward; while, on the other hand, both my Opponent, the Mason, and others concerned, expect much gratification, much remuneration for "labour, stuff, and time," and much of that indescribable something always appertaining to undertakings of this sort! However, Mr. Urban, as the controversy stands, I certainly rest on an even balance with these good, disinterested people; and the publick will, no doubt, turn the scale in the proper way

even

as has been so lately done in an Honourable Assembly upon an affair of the same nature as the one under discussion.

Abbey, who cannot choose but smile, on hearing that the said Mason, some five or six years back, told me without reservein mystudy, his bill for thatyear for the several repairs, &c. &c. about the whole assemblage of buildings, with the Deanery, Prebendal-houses, and all, amounted to the very enor mous sum of sixty pounds! And further, what are we to conclude, when my Opponent talks about the desire to maintain the fabrick, which con sists in occasionally painting ironrailing and doors belonging to the several arrangements; thus preserv ing insignificant appendages, while the inestimable decorations of the Church and Cloisters are wholly disregarded, particularly the latter place, which is left to the sacrilegious despoil of school-boys, and other irreligious loungers.

My Opponent may rest assured that I am confident not one of our Cathedrals, or other great Churches, will be shut against me, but where the Guardians apprehend the force of just and necessary censure for any late Architectural Innovations made therein. No careful Steward of his Lord's treasure dreads the investigation of the world's eye, if he is conscious the trust confided in him is preserved pure, entire, and undimainished.

I am preparing another paper of the Proceedings;" when my Opponent will have fresh scope for the exertion of his abilities, so forcibly and so laudably, and, we may add, so effectually displayed, in defending that side of the question under the banners of which he has enlisted himself; and, between friends, I think it will be to his future credit, and give much more weight to his replies, if he adds his real signature, as he has brought me out to view, with all my FAULTS upon my head, in propria personů. Yours, &c.

JOHN CARTER.

Mr. URBAN, Carlisle, May 10: YOUR VOUR Magazine was the periodical publication which first produced papers in favour of my theory of Chemistry; a theory, which, I believe, is now admitted by all liberal and sensible Chemists to be a true one; though the Combination is exerting every nerve to keep up the declining French theory. Mr. Davy's experiments are now puffed with all the art and extra

vagance

vagance their mistaken zeal can invents and which I shall cursorily

examine.

-Mr. Davy's first experiment is principally directed to shew, that there is no fixed alkali produced by the Gal vanic process as in pure distilled water. But if he takes the purest distilled water, he will find an alkali deposited in it, provided an alkaline solution is placed between the plates of the pile. I think Mr. Davy is not candid in these experiments, as they seem evidently made to prop the falling theory. He says, that when he found by these experiments no alkali in the distilled water, he added the sulphuric acid to the solution of alum in the disks. Now the alkali which the alum is well known to possess, would not be taken up by the Galvanic fluid in these experiments, but only the unsaturated acid. That an alkali both fixed and volatile, and acids, &c. cau circulate through the metals of the pile, I have, in my publications, incontrovertibly proved: and indeed it has lately been proved by the French Chemists. For when the marine acid was found in the water betwixt the wires, there was the marine acid between the plates. The French Chemists also found the cancer of ulcers and other bodies circulate through the pile.

But that the experiments may more directly favour the French Theory, or its extraordinary principles, it is endeavoured to be proved, that the nitric acid is formed of oxygen and azote, and water of oxygen and hy drogen. This we shall now examine. Mr. Davy, in his experiments, always found the nitrous acid, and also the volatile alkali. Now I have satisfactorily proved that the Galvanic fluid contains the nitrous acid, and that the volatile alkali is directly similar to hydrogen, both being phlogiston; and that this phlogiston they get from the metals; and these bodies, hydrogen gas and ammoniacal gas, Dr. Priestleyproved by experiments, would reduce the calces of metals into their metallic state. And I shewed by experiments, that the wires in the Galvanic processes came more to the state of a calx, and both hydrogen and ammoniac were in consequence found produced in the wafer, or between the wires in the process. Mr. Davy says, he found only the ammoniac produced GENT. MAG. July, 1805,

in the first five minutes: but this is very easily accounted for, by the great heat and evaporation produced be tween the wires by his very powerful apparatus. For if he will even add the volatile alkali to the water, he will find it evaporated.

I have shewn clearly, that there is a combustion produced between the wires, when the troughs are made large, the charcoal burning with the utmost brillianey, and the oxygen gas is rapidly consumed in the process. And Messrs. Biot and Caviot have shown that the pile is an excellent eudiometer; for when atmospheric air was exposed to the action of the wires, its oxygen was consumed, leaving its azote gas entire; and if pure oxygen gas is employed, the combustion will be so much the more brilliant, it being necessary to the combustion: and the combustion clearly burns, or consumes, the phlogiston that the Galvanic acid had received from the bodies in the pile : for the larger you make your plates,"" and the purer the oxygen gas is, in the same proportion you will produce the nitrous acid, it being deposited from the Galvanic fluid. Therefore Mr. Davy, by excluding oxygen gas from his apparatus, and substituting and introducing hydrogen gas in its stead, would necessarily stop the combustion of the Galvanic fluid; and consequently it would hot deposit its acid. in proof of this, charcoal will not burn in the Galvanic process, in hydrogen gas, and also the acid of the Galvanic fluid, meeting with hydrogen gas, will unite to it, and neutralize i, forming with it, either nitrous, nitrous oxide, or azote gases, all of which I have found. But to prove this; if Mr. Davy will make a pure vacuum, or use pure carbonic air, he will find an acid in the Galvanic fluid; or using the purest oxygen gas in the purest distilled water, he will find the greatest proportion of the nitrous acid. To prove his extraordinary supposition, that the nitric acid is formed of the azote and oxygen gas in the distilled water, he is obliged to bring one of Dr. Priestley's experi ments, that hydrogen will expel azote from water. But by referring to the Doctor's experiment, I find, he exposed inflammable air from iron and and over water; and he expressly

says,

says, that the inflammable air from zine was not at all altered, but the air from iron was. But then he was not quite certain, that the iron inflammable air was pure; yet he expresses no doubt upon the air from the zinc being pure. Then this is, Mr. Davy, making a distinction between the hydrogen of iron and zinc. Besides, this exposure was from May to December, while in your processes it was done in 18 hours. Besides, Dr. Priestley made use of common water, whereas yours was the purest water; and his water was exposed to the atmosphere, but yours was not. But, sir, I will give you the first and greatest of authorities; the great and accurate Scheele proved, that pure distilled water would attract only the oxygen gas of the atmosphere, it acting as an excellent eudiometer. To what puerile shifts are they forced to have recourse!

I shall now consider the experiments that are supposed to prove the decomposition of various compounds by the action of negative and positive electricity. I had, upon my first Galvanic experiments, shewn that common salt, and other bodies, were decompounded in these processes; the Galvanic electric fluid, having such a strong attraction for acids, would attract them, aud carry them in its circuit. This I proved so early as the year 1798; (see my Letter to Cavendish.) But the idea was then sneered at. Mr. Davy's first experiment was upon the sulphate of lime, connected by a fibrous sulphate of lime, moistened by pure water. And he says, he found in five minutes an acid in the positive cup, and lime in the negative cup. His next experiment was upon the sulphate of strontites; but it required 30 hours before the same effect was produced. Then it certainly implies some great difference in the experi, ments; and this difference was in the connecting the two cups; the one was by the fibrous sulphate of lime, and the other by the close pores of crys tallized sulphate of strontites.

This, Mr. Urban, is the whole deception of these boasted experiments. The moistened asbestos and fibrous sulphate of lime, produce capillary attraction; for the great heat induced by the powerful apparatus evaporates the moisture, principally in the copper cup and its vicinity, so as to

produce a strong capillary circulation from the zinc cup to the copper cup. Here then is all the mystery of these supposed wonderful discoveries; this electric-chemico theory being like Count Rumford's theory of water being a non-conductor of heat, Mr. Davy not knowing the simple principle of capillary attraction.

I

That the Electric and Galvanic fluids will unite to earthis, alkalies, calces of metals, and particularly to acids, and carry them with it in its circuit, is what I have clearly proved in my former works. Therefore these electric fluids, passing through bodies, will carry with them these bodies; but these fluids circulate from the copper wires to the zinc wires, and there is no electric fluid that passes from the zinc wire to the copper wire. To prove this, I placed a solution of neutral salts in the copper cup, and distilled water in the zinc cup. connected the cups with bodies that would not admit of any capillary attraction; and there was an acid deposited in the distilled water, and the neutral sait became alkaline; but when I placed the distilled water in the copper cup, and the solution of neutral salts in the zinc cup, there was no alkali in the distilled water. An acid solution of metals and earths had the same effect. To prove clearly that it was owing to the water's capiliary circulation, if I stopped that by oiling the middle of the asbestos, and watering the two ends, the same effect was produced; that is, there was no transfer. If Mr. Davy will place an acid solution in the zinc cup, and distilled water in the copper cup, and use his watery asbestos, he will find the acid circulate to the distilled water. Indeed the most common sagacity might have discovered that to him; for in his own experiments, in which the bodies were not soluble in water, barytes, &c. there was no transfer. But the barytes ought to have circulated more freely, if its decomposition was owing to the action of the positive and negative wires; for if their influence acted so forcibly as to separate the strong attraction be tween the acid and it, it ought certainly to have circulated more freely when it was not restrained by its attraction for water, being insoluble in that fluid. Also in the solution of

silver.

silver, the moistened asbestos was gradually silvered over, directly implying the capillary attraction.

This wonderful theory of Mr. Davy's is to supersede all our doctrines of Chemistry; the electric attractions are to be accounted for upon its principles, just the same as Count Kumford's theory of the non-conducting power of water was to account for the electric attractions. Risum teneatis? So the well-known fact of the Galvanic fluid turning paper tinged with turmeric red at the zinc, and brown at the copper wires, is now, ac-cording to this sublime theory, owing to the decomposition of the vegetable paper. But, Mr. Davy, it will do the same, provided the solution is exposed to the wires, upon neither ve getable nor, animal bodies. But Mr. Davy is a perfect ignoramus with respect to the action of the Galvanic fluid; at least he appears so by his writings. But I can scarcely think it is all to be imputed to his ignorance. No! it is to keep up the absurd theory of the supposed coinposition of water and the nitric acid. As to what is deposited in the water between the wires, it greatly depends upon the bodies in the disks, that is, between the plates, and also the cups that the electric fluid passes through, it taking from them acids, alkalies, and earths, &c.; so that without a proper attention to these points, the results will vary. But, according to his driveling theory, water is decompounded by the attraction of the two wires being negative and positive, which act so forcibly as to decompound the water; the oxygen going to the positive wire, and the hydrogen to the negative wire; and these strong attractions are to, take place within the body of a man. Supposing you, Mr. Davy, make a part of the circuit, your two arms receiving the fluid, your head then would be the central point, so that this particle of water which is acted upon must be in your brain. But theu how to get its component parts to the two wires? Why as nothing is impossible to our modern theorists, he supposes that "by a succession of decompositions and recompositions throughout the fluid," that is, throughout his brains, bones, muscles, nerves, ligaments, blood, &c. But at the consusion of this puérile rhapsody, he is obliged to say, "On the

general principle, oxygen and hydrogen ought to possess, with regard to the metals respectively, the negative and positive energy. This I have not been able to prove by direct experiments of contact." Good heavens! that I should have such absurdities to combat! When will this farce end?

He is perfectly ignorant of electricity. Oxygen, he says, is positive, and hydrogen is negative: also acids and alkalies are positive; yet he makes the positive metallic wire attract the positive bodies, and the negative metallic wire the negative bodies. But attend to the common experiment of two balls electrified positively repelling one another, and the two negative balls also repelling each other you may also change the metallic ends of the Galvanic pile; a pile formed of iron and zinc. Iron is the negative, and zinc is the positive. With iron and gold, or silver,&c. the gold and silver are negative, and the iron the positive. He says, silver is negative, and zinc positive; and the acids are positive; and that it is the positive and negative states of bodies, which are the causes of electric affinity.

But here we are equally contradicted by facts: the positive sulphuric acid dissolves the positive zinc, and will not touch the negative silver. Mr. Urban, I am tired with shewing the gross puerilities of these wonderful discoveries!

;

Ĥe says, that the affinity acids and alkalies have for each other, is owing to the former being positive, and the latter negative. But then the negative alkalies dissolve the negative minetals, and also their negative calces: and mercury amalgamates both with positive and negative metals, as well as the alkalies do. In short, Mr. Urban, their absurdities are endless. Bodies, he says, unite to each other by being of contrary electricities thus acids and alkalies; and that their union produces light and heat, which he supposes is from the union of positive and negative electricity, the salts becoming neutral. But there are many chemical unions of salts attended with cold; and according to this theory, as the acids and alkalics unite from being of different electricities, and the different electricities, upon their union, shewed themselves by light and heat, being now perfectly neutral. Therefore the acid and alka

lies