impartial; and indeed he appears very clearly to have endeavoured, through the whole book, to tell truth, to render refpect only to wisdom and integrity, and to expofe villainy and folly wherever he has found them. Some judgment may be formed of his manner of writing from the following sketch of the state of the kingdom of Granada, fo cruelly, fo treacherously, and fo madly depopulated by the two fovereigns. In the time of Ferdinand and Ifabella, the Moors poffeffed in Spain only the province of Granada: but this fortunate country fupported a greater number of inhabitants than any other of the fame extent. Nature and industry had rendered it the most beautiful territory in Europe. In a space which was no more than 70 leagues in length, and 25 in breadth, food an hundred towns; most of which were enriched by a vast commerce. A multitude of villages were crowded with pa ants. The foil, naturally fertile, lavifhed into their induftrious hands larger crops than would have been neceffary to have supported a great nation. The Granadians drew from their plantations of mulberries, and from the fleeces of their fheep, materials for commerce both with Africa and with Europe. Encouraged by affluence, their number continually increased; whilft their neighbours, fubjected to all the diforders of feudal government, were victims to the quarrels of their lords, and to the rapacity of the Jews, to whom the haughty Spaniards had abandoned the advantages of trade, and the collection of taxes, as beneath a fighting race, who believed themselves to exift merely for the deftruction of mankind.' From this agreeable picture, let us turn our eyes to the horrible reverfe: the Author's account of the establishment of courts of inquifition in Caftile is this: It is now time to talk of the inquifition. Moft i fallibly it must have destroyed Christianity itself, if that work of God were not proof against the baseness and folly of men. The inquifition was invented to maintain that very truth it difgraces. It was introduced into Caftile in the very beginning of fabella's reign. For a long time the Popes had violated the morality of religion, to fupport its tenets. The chiefs of that church, which for bids her minifters to shed in any cafe the blood even of criminals, had enjoined punishments without number, to lead back ftraying members to the faith of their father, in Italy, in Germany, in Arragon, in fhort in all countries to which their fanguinary laws were extended. Abundance of fovereigns had obeyed, but hitherto Caftile had been exempted. The authority of this tribunal of blood had begun to decline in Arragon, when the priests reprefented to Ferdinand and Ifabella, that the church was in danger. They faid, and with truth, that the people Nn 4 from from defpifing the ministers of religion, were advancing gra dually to defpife religion itself; that the Spaniards were furftitious, and that fuperftition borders on error: that the Jvs and the Moors, either by the charms of the wealth, which r fons of their perfuafions might acquire, or by their less at manners, had perverted abundance of Chriftians. But y bloody priests did not fay that religion can dwell only in heart, and that perfuafion alone can infpire it: that viol which terrifies and exterminates has never made one conv and that perfecuting fire can produce only martyrs to error, hypocrites. The Cardinal of Spain, father Alphonfo Torqu mada, father Ferdinand of Talvera confeffor to Ifabella, and all the monks by whom fhe was furrounded, preffed her to introduce into her dominions this tribunal; which the unthinking fubjects beheld at firft with pleasure, because they believed it to be erected folely against the Moors, and the Jews, whom they detefted; but they fpeedily difcovered to what a grievous yoke they had fubmitted, and to what cruel extremities fanaticifm is capable of proceeding! Ifabella obtained from Pope Sixtus the fourth a bull, which feemed to wreft, and really did wreft" the power of judging of herefies from the bishops, to whom alone that power ought to be trufted; and which rendered the monks abfolute mafters of the lives, the liberties, and the honours of every individual of the whole community. Indeed the manner of proceeding in a court of inquifition is as oppofite to found reason, and to natural equity, as the establishment itfelf." The accufed are conftantly prefumed to be guilty. Two witneffes, however worthlefs, void of character, void of morals, void of religion, are fufficient to procure condemnation. They are not confronted with the perfon against whom they give evidence, they are not even named to him. The unfortunate man is not informed of the crime laid to his charge: he is obliged to impeach himself, and confequently to reveal all the faults he may ever have committed, although they may have been profound fecrets until that moment; otherwife he is fentenced to the most horrible tortures. The judges of the inquifition alone aflume a right of lying to extort truth from thofe they' try. If, notwithstanding both ftratagems and torments, the wretch fhould acknowlege no crime, he is nevertheless condemned to be burnt, on no better evidence than depofitions of two men, whom he neither knows nor can know, and without any enquiry whether hatred or intereft produced their teftimony, Even a confeffion of a fecond lapfe into herefy will not fecure a prifoner from the flames. Al confeffion of one only does in'deed preferve his life, but fubjects him to perpetual imprifonment, and to the confifcation of his whole fortune. This is a སྨན།།་ནས faint faint sketch of the means + which Ifabella thought proper to oppose to impiety, to herefy, and to apoftacy; and thus did the Spanish priests impofe the yoke of the Lord, which the gofpel fays fhould be fo eafy and light! In the first years, fays Mariana, 20,000 returned into the pale of the church, and 2,000 were burnt alive for their herefy-What diabelifm! Hiftoire de l'Academie Royal de Sciences. Année 1763. The Hiftory of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris; with their Memoirs, Mathematical and Phyfical, for the Year 1763. Extracted from the Regifters of the Academy. 4to. : Paris, 1766. IN N the appendix to the 30th volume of our Review*, we gave an account of the Memoirs of this Royal Academy, for the Years 1757 and 1758; and we then informed our Readers of the regulations which had been made, for the future publication of thefe truly refpectable collections. Inf confequence of those measures, the fucceffive publications have.... been kept up with more spirit and punctuality than heretofore; fo that great part of the large arrear then due to the public, is already paid off, the memoirs for the year 1763 (as the reader a has feen above, in the title) being now before us and of thefe we fhall proceed to take a concife view. 8 The first memoir in the clafs of phyfics contained in this volume, treats of the inflammable matters which are met with in coal-mines, and of the means of preventing their bad effects; and is the joint product of Meffis. du Hamel, Hellot, and de Montigny, to whom the academy had referred the confideration of this fubject, in confequence of orders from the Duke de Choifeul. A coal-mine near Briançon, which had been opened for the ufe of the king's troops, and long worked without any accident, fuddenly took fire on the entrance of a lighted candle into it; fo that the undertakers were obliged at laft to abandon it. The nature of these inflammable vapours feems to have been fo little known in Dauphiné, that the intendant of the province took measures to difcover whether this fire was not the work of ill-intentioned, perfons. The Sieur Finant, furgeon at Brian con, and many others, were fo fully poffeffed of this idea, that in the profecution of it they expofed themselves fo much as to I be grievously fcorched and bruifed by the action of the inflamed vapour particularly the Sieur Finantz who is in danger of £ being a cripple all his life, on account of his ignorance of this For the first half year of 1764. 1.. anch branch of fubterranean philofophy. This may with propriety be added to the many examples which M. du Hamel gave us in the memoirs for 1757, of natural and fpontaneous conflagrations attributed to defign. In this ifland, where thefe mineral damps are too well known, they have long been diftinguished into two kinds. The firft is called the Fulminating Damp, to which clafs, the inflammable vapour which forms the subject of the prefent article is to be referred. This, when kindled by the accefs of a lighted candle, or as fometimes happens, fpontaneoufly, explodes with the greatest violence, and generally kills the workmen, if they have not time to throw themselves flat on the ground, and thereby elude the force of the blast, which would otherwife dafh them against the fides or top of the pit. The spontaneous accenfion is fuppofed by fome to be effected by the heat generated on the decompofition of Pyrites, which abounds in coal-mines, and is certainly known to furnish an inflammable air. The other, which may be called the Suffocating Damp, and which is equally dangerous with the former, is a fpecies of factitious ftagnating air, but is not, like it, inflammable on the contrary, it extinguishes flame, and instantly kills those who are exposed to it. Our academicians mention on this occafion the practice of the pit-men in the coal-pits in Lancashire, who deftroy the fulminating damp, before it gets to a height by the acceffion of new inflammable matter, by fending one of their body to fet fire to it, which he does with fafety to himself, by lying flat on the ground but the best method of clearing the pits from both the kinds of damps is, they obferve, to fink air paffages at the extremities of each drift; and in order ftill further to promote the free circulation of air, to fufpend in them,' near that part where they communicate with the drift, grates with coals conftantly burning in them; or where the digging of many fuch air fhafts would be too expenfive, or on account of the hilly nature of the ground, impracticable, they recommend a ventilator, (which acts on the fame principles with that proposed by Sutton) defcribed above a century ago by Sir Robert Murray in the Philofophical Tranfaétions, as ufed with fuccefs in the coal-mines of Liege; by which a continual current of air is brought from the moft diftant parts of the pit, by means of tubes extending from thence to a fire properly inclofed near the mouth of it; the external air at the fame time continually defcending, to replace that which comes from below to feed the fire, and which muft neceffarily bring along with it, if the tubes are air-tight, the mephitic exhalations as well as the inflammable and other noxious vapours, as fast as they are generated. The The fecond memoir of this clafs treats of a method of converting open chimneys into ftoves, without lofing any of the advantages annexed to their former conftruction, and is the production of the Marquis de Montalembert. Neceffity, the mother of the useful arts, has long taught the inhabitants of the northern parts of Europe the most efficacious means of counteracting the difagreeable effects of the most intense cold by a proper difpofition even of a moderate quantity of fuel. The Marquis, who has travelled much in Sweden and Ruffia, and made feveral campaigns in the northern parts of Germany, describes the ftoves, at Petersburg particularly, as adapted to overcome the greatest cold ever felt there; fo that in the most violent. frofts a person may walk through a fuite of rooms, whose doors are all open, or fit in any part of the largest apartments, clothed in the thinneft drefs, without being incommoded; except fometimes by too much heat. The ftoves which produce these notable effects are placed at one or both ends of the room, and are large hollow ftructures of brick, 10 or 12 feet high, and projecting 5 or 6 feet into the apartment, into which however they do not open; the fuel being applied from without. Nor is this great heat kept up by frequent fupplies of fuel: on the contrary, in the ordinary degrees of cold, which vary at Peterf burg between the 25th and 30th degree of Reaumur's thermometer (and which we believe answers to about 30 degrees below o in Fahrenheit's) the ftoyes are heated only once in 24 hours. In a more moderate degree of cold, but which is reprefented as equal to that felt in France in the fevere winter of 1709, in which Reaumur's thermometer fell to 16 degrees (equal to o in Fahrenheit's fcale) fresh fuel is applied only twice in 3 days. Even during the fevere cold in which the remarkable experiment of the freezing of mercury was firit made, at the time when Reaumur's thermometer fell down to 40 degrees (equal to 55 degrees below o in Fahrenheit's) it was only neceffary to heat the ftoves a second time 12 hours after the firft.-But notwithstanding these advantages, the Ruffian ftoves are not likely to be naturalized in France, without undergoing very great alterations. Those enormous mafles of masonry muft offend an eye of any delicacy, which, befides, requires to be gratified with the fight of the fire, and other agremens. The Marquis has accordingly attended to these circumftances. Inftead of the comfortlets and aukward appearance of the Ruffian ftove, which is certainly not of a figure to be admitted into a grand faloon, or a lady's ruelle, in France, we are prefented with a construction which feems poffeffed of its effential advantages, and even exceeds it in point of univerfality, and the diftribution of the heat into feveral apartments from a fingle fire; at the fame time that it is fet off with the neceflary embellishments to accommodate |