primary or original motions, the other of the fecondary or fympathetic. The different and even oppofite modes, in which one of these trains may affect the other, are considered in this fection; and fuppofed exemplifications of each are adduced. It may be eafily imagined that the fpeculations, in which the author indulges on this subject, are not among the least abstruse and fubtile.

S. 36. On the periods of difeafes. Intermiffion and recurrence in mufcular actions naturally proceed from the exhaustion and accumulation of fenforial power. Thefe changes, combined with the periods of our diurnal habits, or of heat and cold, or with the folar and lunar periods, are the causes of the periods of feverfits. A variety of inftances are given of the folar and lunar periods of diseases; and the doctrine of critical days is, by hypo thefis, connected with this influence.

Sect. 37. treats of digeftion, fecretion, and nutrition. The chemical laws of accretion and increase seem to our author inapplicable to animal bodies, whence he looks for them in the laws of animation. The lacteals abforb the chyle, and the glands and pores the nutritious particles belonging to them, by animal selection or appetency, put into action by ftimulus. The whole animal solids, having been originally formed of the extremities of nerves, require an appofition of particles of a fimilar kind for their nutrition, which are probably applied during the elongation of the filaments. Old age and decay proceed from the want of irritability.

Sect. 38. treats of the oxygenation of the blood in the lungs, and in the placenta. The author adopts the opinion of those who fuppofe that the blood in the lungs receives oxygene from the air; and also that the placenta is a fort of refpiratory organ, furnishing oxygene to the blood of the foetus. The arguments for this latter opinion are derived from the thefes of Dr. James Jeffray and Dr. Forefter French.

Generation is the fubject of fect. 39. So many ingenious men have already loft themselves and bewildered their readers in their conjectures refpecting this myfterious function, that it would be extraordinary if a new guefs fhould folve its difficulties. A very flight fketch of Dr. D.'s notions on the subject will probably fatisfy most of our readers. He imagines that the embryo is the produce of the male alone, and that the female only gives it lodgment and nutrition. He does not, however, fuppofe its first rudiments to be a miniature of the future animal, but merely a fimple living filament, which receives all its parts by accretion. This fibril, dropping among the nutritive particles prepared by the female, is ftimulated to action; and, bending into the form of a ring, embraces one of these particles,

and coalefces with it. This new organization acquires new irritabilities, chooses or rejects other particles offered to it, has fenfation fuperadded to it, and, in process of time, the powers of affociation and volition. The living filament, being a part of the father, has certain propenfities belonging to him, which give the bafis of a fimilarity of ftructure; and this is altered or modified by the nutritive particles derived from the mother. Other alterations proceed from the imagination of the father at the inftant of generation,-the extremities of the feminal glands imitating the motions of the organs of fenfe; and thus the fex of the embryo is produced, which is male or female, according as the image of the one or the other of these organs predominated in the father's imagination at the critical period. All augmentations are in confequence of an irritation or fenfation of a peculiar kind, which may be termed animal appetency, which feeks the particles that it wants; and this operates even after birth, and, in the innumerable feries of ages, has produced all the diverfities of forms in animals, accommodated to their different modes of life:-for the author fuppofes a perpetual progrefs toward perfection in all animated beings, and imagines that none of them are at prefent as they originally existed, but have gradually arrived at the ftate in which we now fee them, from that of a fimple and uniform living filament.

We fhall make no remarks on this fyftem; referring to the work itfelf fuch of our readers as are difpofed to take pleasure in viewing the progrefs of an ingenious fancy in working up a little fact with abundance of conjecture, into that product of mental generation called an hypothefts. What an acquifition would fuch a fyftem have been to Mr. Shandy!

Sect. 40. contains an effay on the ocular spectra of light and colours, by Dr. R. W. Darwin of Shrewsbury, reprinted from the Phil. Tranf. vol. lxxvi. p. 313*.

Had it been our purpose rather to amufe curfory readers, than to give a connected and scientific view of the whole of this performance, we should have found it an eafy task to fill our pages with much curious matter relative to natural, moral, and medical history, interfperfed through many of its fections. All who have read the very mifcellaneous notes of the author's Botanic Garden will be fufficiently acquainted with his happy art of enlivening philosophical reasonings and fpeculations with entertaining and sprightly narratives. The ftyle of writing in many parts of this work is perfectly fimilar, and cannot fail of giving pleasure to those who have been delighted with the

* See Review, vol. lxxvi. p. 197.

perufal

perufal of the former. This fource of gratification, however, we fhall leave untouched, to repay thofe who purchase it by studying the volume at large: but we cannot refrain from the temptation of making our dry article more palatable, by tranfcribing the complimentary verfes prefixed to the work; which are not only an object of curiofity as a perfect imitation of Dr. D.'s poetical ftyle in its very best manner, but are extremely beautiful in themselves, and illuftrative of the fyftem.

• TO ERASMUS DARWIN, on his Work entitled ZOONOMIA. By Dewhurst Bilfborrow.

HAIL TO THE BARD! who fung, from chaos hurl'd
How funs and planets form'd the whirling world;
How sphere on sphere Earth's hidden ftrata bend,
And caves of rock her central fires defend;
Where gems new-born their twinkling eyes unfold,
And young ores fhoot in arborescent gold.

How the fair flower, by Zephyr woo'd, unfurls
Its panting leaves, and waves its azure curls;
Or fpreads in gay undress its lucid form
To meet the fun, and fhuts it to the storm;
While in green veins impaffion'd eddies move,
And Beauty kindles into life and love.

How the firft embryon-fibre, sphere, or cube,
Lives in new forms,-a line,-a ring,—a tube;
Clos'd in the womb with limbs unfinish'd laves,
Sips with rude mouth the falutary waves;
Seeks round its cell the fanguine ftreams, that pafs,
And drinks with crimfon gills the vital gas;
Weaves with foft threads the blue meand'ring vein,
The heart's red concave, and the filver brain;
Leads the long nerve, expands th' impatient fenfe,
And clothes in filken fkin the nafcent ens.

'Erewhile, emerging from its liquid bed,
It lifts in gelid air its nodding head;

The light's first dawn with trembling eye-lid hails,
With lungs untaught arrests the balmy gales;
Tries its new tongue in tones unknown, and hears
The strange vibrations with unpractic'd ears.
Seeks with spread hands the bofom's velvet orbs,
With clofing lips the milky fount absorbs;
And, as comprefs'd the dulcet ftreams diftill,
Drinks warmth and fragrance from the living rill;
Eyes with mute rapture every waving line,
Prints with adoring kiss the Paphian shrine,
And learns, 'ere long, the perfect form confeft,
Ideal Beauty from its mother's breast.

Now in ftrong lines, with bolder tints defign'd,
You sketch ideas, and pourtray the mind;
Teach how fine atoms of impinging light
To ceafelefs change the visual sense excite;

While the bright lens collects the rays that swerve,
And bends their focus on the moving nerve.

How thoughts to thoughts are link'd with viewless chains
Tribes leading tribes, and trains pursuing trains;
With fhadowy trident how volition guides,
Surge after furge, his intellectual tides;
Or, Queen of Sleep, Imagination roves
With frantic forrows, or delirious loves.

• Go on, O FRIEND! explore with eagle eye;
Where wrapp'd in night retiring caufes lie;
Trace their flight bands, their fecret haunts betray,
And give new wonders to the beam of day,
Till, link by link with ftep afpiring trod,
You climb from nature to the throne of God.
-So faw the patriarch, with admiring eyes,
From earth to heav'n a golden ladder rife;
Involv'd' in clouds, the mystic scale ascends,
And brutes and angels crowd the distant ends."
Trinity Coll. Cambridge, Jan. 1, 1794.'

ART. II. Letters to a Young Man, Part II*. Occafioned by Mr: Evanson's Treatife on the Diffonance of the Four generally received Evangelifts. By Jofeph Priestley, LL.D. F.R.S. 8vo. pp. 172. 2s. 6d. fewed. Johnfon. 1793

T may be regarded as a presumptive proof that Mr. Evanson's late attack on the authenticity of three of the gospels is not generally esteemed formidable, that, of the whole body of the clergy appointed by the ftate as guardians of the faith, no one has thought it neceflary to ftep forward in defence of these facred writings; and that this task has been suffered to be first undertaken by a writer who has been repeatedly complimented with the appellation of the Herefiarch of the present age. This is the more furprifing, as it must be well known that Dr. Priestley, though unquestionably a fincere and zealous Christian, would undertake the vindication of the Evangelifts on principles which the orthodox churches have never admitted. A reply to Mr. Evanfon, which gives up the infpiration of the Evangelifts, and rejects the narrative of the miraculous conception, will hardly fatisfy thofe divines who have made the articles of the English church the ftandard of their belief. However, till a more fatisfactory anfwer, on higher grounds, is given to Mr. Evanfon's objections, the whole Chriftian world muft acknowlege itself under obligations to Dr. Priestley, for having maintained, with fo much ability and fuccefs, the credit of those writings, which are the first and only authentic records of our holy religion.

For the First Part, fee Review, July 1792, P. 357.

At

At the fame time that Dr. P. expreffes much furprise at finding the authenticity of any of the gofpels called in queftion, after every reasonable doub tconcerning them had been removed by fuch able writers as Mr. Jones, Dr. Lardner, and others, he candidly confiders Mr. Evanfon's noble refolution to refign a valuable church preferment rather than to recite the liturgy, after he had rejected the doctrines, of the eftablished church, as, in concurrence with his declarations, an abundant proof of his firm belief of Christianity; and he endeavours to account for the particular train of thought which led him, confiftently with that belief, to entertain the doubts exprefled in his work. The only circumftance at which Dr. Priestley expreffes difpleasure is the levity and contempt with which Mr. Evanfon treats those books of the New Teftament which he thinks he has reason to reject. He had no occafion, as the Doctor very juftly remarks, in this manner to hurt the feelings of many of his readers, who must be fhocked to fee the writings, which they had been long accuftomed to read with reverence, made the fubject of ridicule and unfparing farcasm, and especially by a profeffed Chriftian.

Dr. Priestley has given to his reply the form of Letters to a Young Man, because he apprehends that young perfons are in the greatest danger of being caught with fuperficial reasonings, and may be too apt to conclude that, if the gofpels of Matthew, Mark, and John, and fo many of the epiftles of Paul, be fpurious, that of Luke, and all the other books of the New Testament, may be fo too. The learned reader will regret that Dr. Priestley has been obliged to write this reply without having recourse to the original authorities, and will at the fame time lament that he has fo valid an excufe for the omiffion :

In my references to the Chriftian Fathers I have generally contented myself with quoting Dr. Lardner and Michaelis. My collection of the Fathers, which had occupied me more than twenty years, was demolished in the riot at Birmingham, and it is too late in life for me to restore it. In the prefent cafe I am satisfied that my readers will have no more diftrust than I have of the care, or fidelity, with which the writers above-mentioned have made their quotations.'

Dr. P. introduces his general vindication of the authenticity of the gospels with a remark which he judges to be of fundamental importance in the general queftion concerning the truth of the Chriftian religion; which is that, though our knowlege of the miracles of Chrift and his Apoftles is derived from the gofpels, our faith does not reft on the teftimony of the writers of those books, but on that of those who first received thefe books, and who tranfmitted them to us as authentic; which

they