petual langour, The pleasures of the table are extremely confined; nor do the Turks appear to enjoy them with the smallest portion of spirit, except in such portunity of adding a third volume to his intended two also, three maps and two plates. The whole forms, with the Description of Eastern Caucasus formerly published by the author, the most complete ac-parties as are made for excursions into the count of Caucasus, that exists. country, in which they are more than It contains a description of all the habi- usually animated by a private use of wine, table countries of Georgia; with the His-which they then indulge. But, in the intory of Georgia, translated from the origi-terior of Constantinople, there is no sympnal Chronicles of the country, with three tour of that gaiety which enlivens European Genealogical tables of the kings of Carthic, society; they are remarkable for nothing of Cactein, and of Imiretta: account of the but for traces which they still preserve, of sources of the Terek, of the course of the ancient bospitality, in the admission of the Kur, to the frontiers of Turkey; return by poor to the table of the great, who never the snowy mountains; by the snowy forgets that a sudden disgrace may one day mountains to the town of Oni, on the river cast him down to the level of the lowest Rioni (the Phasus of the ancients). Obser- who presents himself at his gate, and devations on the customs and manners of the sires charity and refreshment. people. Observations on the frontier country between Russia and China, collected during a journey in 1806. An account of the languages spoken, the written characters, &c. occupies a whole volume. | The arrangement of the festival, which is usually simple enough, is not of a nature to provoke a very animated conversation. Fear and respect interdict political discussions, from the Turks: during a long period they have had no religious dissentions which night supply fuel to general discourse; and in literary questions, which might break the monotony of conversation, Turkey is absolutely barren. Clumsy games, tricks of address, and of strength, the grimaces or wantonnesses of hired dancers, have but slight effect on their gravity. It may be gratifying to our readers to be informed that British Literature forms a very material part of the Report from the Continent: the proportion is, indeed, striking; and there can be no doubt, but what the Literati of the Continent have availed themselves of the first moment of information, to obtain and to publish, such accounts of the labours of the learned among us, as might impart to their readers some notion of British industry and know- | ledge. That this should be inferrupted, we exceedingly regret: but, we have thought it our duty to record the fact for future consideration, as well as for present gratificadeemed picturesque, and especially, on the tion. TURKEY. COFFEE HOUSE AT CONSTANTINOPLE. : In the public Coffee-houses the scene is not, indeed, much more animated; but, it is, at least, much more diversified, aud affords - frequent opportunities favourable to a spirit of observation. Generally, they are established in spots which may be sea coast. The Turkish ladies never enter them; and if a European lady--for such are admitted-makes her appearance, the Mussulmans rarely allow themselves to The continuation of the Voyage Pit-shew any sign of impression made on their toresque de Constantinople and the banks of languor. The Coffee-houscs, like the the Bosphorus, after the drawings of M. Mosques, the public baths, and the barMelling, has given occasion to the inge-ber's shops, are privileged places for freenious draughtsman to introduce the in- speaking, for those whom they call infidels, terior of a Coffee House, in the Square of who are never insulted. According to the Top-Hané this is preceded by observa-appearance of persons who enter a Coffee tions on the national disposition of the house, the pipes brought to them are Turks, which confirm whatever has been more or less ornamented. The attention reported on their inactivity and listlessness. of the company is usually directed to Our author describes their state of calm-story-tellers, who engage in the difficult ness and indolence, their state of reverie, task of furnishing amusement: they possess which resembles a continued drowsiness, a ready, abundant, and flowery elocution; as peculiar to themselves. It is scarcely they rival each other in attempts to narrate interrupted by the frequent revolutions at whatever is most laughable, wonderful, and Constantinople, and the violent and sudden surprizing. catastrophes which follow in their train. The most lively and interesting of Europeau spectacles would create no interest in a people which delight in their own per This emulation, not seldom provoked by defiance, often urges them beyond the bounds of decency, which they outrage still more in their action than in their ON THE DUTY OF MAKING words; all this while, whoever contem plates the immobility of the spectators would conclude that these relators were WILLS, DURING HEALTHI. discussing the most edifying and scrumus subjects. Formerly, after a due quantity We lately inserted a Paper by Dr. Badof the fames of tobacco and coffee ha deley of Chelmsford, respecting the duty mounted into the heads of the grave of making Wills, while the testator is in Mussulmans, political questions became objects of their enquiries, and at length, of health. To that paper, we have reason to their disputes; and the most violent revo- think, much publicity has been givenslutions were often prepared beforehand in too much cannot be given. The importhese tumultuous assemblies: since that tance of the subject justifies every eudeatime, severe laws and bloody executions vour to enforce it on the public, and to press have suppressed such dangerous amusements. The delights of the Cotlee-house it on the consciences of individuals. The are diversified occasionally by tabulists, following paper is by Dr. Lettsom; it not dancers, and bands of musicians. only confines the principles of the former, The Coffee-house of the Square of Top-but states additional facts and arguments, Hané is one of the handsomest in Constantinople. It is situated opposite the Point of the Seraglio, and part of the Imperial Palace and Gardens is seen from the windows; also, the Port of Constantinople, the coast of Asia, the islands of the Princes, and down the canal to the opening of the Hellespont In this Coffeehouse are usually assembled individuals of different professions, manners, and nations, ranged on the sophias, Dervises, Effeudis, Bostaugis, Agas, Turks, Armenians, &c. well deserving serious consideration. We assure ourselves, that in circulating this advice, we are really doing good; though, it is likely, that, from the private nature of the duty, we may never know the extent of the benefit. HINTS RESPECTIN WILLS AND TESTAMENTS, It ought not to be forgot, that admoThe instinct of other animals for the pronitions of the severest nature are often tection of their young, is equailte, if hot given to the magistrates, the men of the exceeded, by the affection of min for his law, the officers of state, and even the offspring. The wants of the one are few, government, by means of the story tellers and the power of gratifying them is soon in these Coffee-houses: not always, indeed, acquired; but those connected with humain direct terms, but by implication, byuity are continually varying and augments application of the sentiments, of the chaing, hence the superintending care of age racters introduced; by variation of incidents, &c. which the auditors well under stand, though much of it is mere gesticulation or pantomime. and experience scarcely terminates with life itself. Man, who with labour and solicitude acquires a property, naturally de sires to perpetuate it to his family and reiatives. aud labour with which property is acquired, and the total uncertanity of hunian life, it is to me a subject of wonder, that any man should suffer one hour to clapse of uncertain time, without this security to bis wishes. Sometimes indeed various enbarrassments, and the unsettled state of family concerns, may induce individuals to postpone making a Will; but no state can be so unsettled, as to anord a just plea against making that, which when once What he thus creates, he pos.. Another of these plates represents a view of the Bosphoros, taken from Kandily. sesses a right, and feels a propensity, to The scène includes handsome houses, cle- dispose of among them; and this the law gant Kiosks, the sea flowing beneath them, empowers him to do, under cert in regne gardens, groups of trees, cultivated hills,lations, by Will. Considering the anxiety' &c. But, amidst this laughing senery, the sea presents something terrible to the spectator, and more still to those not used to it,-if wind rises. The Bosphorus hereabouts dividing into two currents which run in contrary directions, the frail serpentboats, appear to be in great danger. The passengers cry out, terrified: the rowers, however, continue their course; and after great exertions enter a smali bay, which affords shelter to a multitude of fishes, borne away by the stream. Here the inha-made, throws, as it were, a clearer light bitants in great numbers, enjoy the amusement of fishing: aud the Grand Seignor himself, sometimes resorts for the same purpose, on the aspect of affairs, and enables the individual to alter or modify many circumstances conducive to future peace of mind. There are some so inconsiderate as to imagine, that by making a Will they really shorten their own lives. Happily, however, common reflection must render this opinion not very general. Indeed, I am persuaded, from long and repeated ob ́servation, that so far from shortening, the satisfaction of having made a Will, prolongs life. a person on a bed of sickness, with doubts Under these views, deduced from long observation, I sincerely wish that every person who regards his individual health and happiness, and the succour and comfort of survivors, would not protract the settlement of his affairs by Will, a single day of an uncertain existence. Many diseases of the human body depend greatly upon mental solicitude, and few things contribute more forcibly to alleviate solicitude, than this security in the disposal of property. This is particularly verified, when persons are attacked with sickness, without having made a Will. It tends to aggravate disease, and renders them much more difficult to cure, insomuch that the uneasiness and perplexity of mind occasioned thereby, frequently bring on delirium early in the disease, or that agitation of intellect, as scarcely admits of a capacity to make a Will at all. How often have I seen a weeping wife, and many an quable daughter plunged into the deepest distress by this neglect of an affectionate husband and father, who has inconsiderately put off the making of a Will day af ter day, till, alas! the bewildered faculties render it too late to perform this act of jus-terror, as if they were signing their own tice to his family; and which often occasiens subsequent legal and expensive decisions, that ruin at least many an amiable daughter; for the laws of primogeniture are calculated to entail misery on the help less female sex. I would here have suggested, that it should be one of the earliest inquiries of the attendant medical practitioner, "if the patient have made a Will," but unfortunately any question proposed by a physician on the subject, alarms the patient, who is apt hastily to rejoin, "What, Doctor, do you think I am going to die?" and afterwards, too often, gives himself up to despair of recovery. In some instances, when health has been restored, the patients have told me, that signing their Wills, conveyed a death warrants. The same alarm will not be excited, by the cautious and prudent interference of an intimate acquaintance' whose inquiries may be received, rather as the result of friendly solicitude, than of suspicion of danger, whilst those of the physician, who is supposed to foresee the event, must impress the mind of a debilitated frame, with a dread of the most imminent hazard of life. ' In some instances I have known, that the disease has been so moderate, and the understanding so clear, as to admit of the making a Will on a sick-bed; but when the patient has recovered, I have scarcely This is a further argument in favour of known an instance, wherein he has not making a Will in the season of health, and condemned the disposition of a Will made so it appeared to the Society of Quakers, in the hurry of agitated spirits, with a who, a few years ago, expressly formed a mind weakened by disease, and influenced minute of recommendation to each indiviby the urgency of the occasion, and the dual of the Society, capable of it, not to pressure of surrounding objects. At the postpone making a Will, whilst in health best, what a scene of melancholy reflec-of body and soundness of mind. tion is presented! At an awful period wheu the mind ought to detach itself as much as May I presume here to recommend it, as a subject worthy of being occasionally possible from pecuniary calculations!— How many instances daily occur of sudden introduced from the pulpit, throughout the deaths, from disease and from accidents, kingdom; for it cannot be indecorons to and from which none are exempt;-in-inculcate, iu places destined to the worship stances in which there is scarcely a monat between existence and non-existence, between life and death! In civilized society, where relations and connexions are multiplied, it requires much composure and calm reflection to dispose of property by Will, to the perfect satis faction of the individual, even in health; but how impracticable then must it be for of a supremely just Being, an act of moral justice to every family in civilized society. We heartily concur in this recommendation of the Doctor: among the Homilies of the Church this subject is treated with great seriousness and propriety. number of Cascades is there not, on all BATHS OF THE ANCIENTS. sides? In short, we are arrived at that degree of luxury, that we now will condescend to Sir HUMPHREY DAVEY has lately pub-walk only on costly stones, &c. &c. lished in the Philosophical Transactions, his remarks on Colours found in the orna sur &c. &c. in the ruins of these buildings: as in the following article. Some Experiments and Observations on the Colours used in Painting, by the Ancients. By Sir HUMPHREY DAVY. LL.D. F.R.S. [From the Philosophical Transactions for 1815. Part ¡.] This description will moderate the ments of the Baths constructed by the An-made by Sir H. Davey, of costly colours, prise of our Readers, at the discoveries cients. To us it appears somewhat strange that edifices destined to that purpose should be decorated with such costly materials, and such exquisite skill: baths, amoug ourselves, being usually plain enough. But we onght to reflect that these edifices were almost a kind of palaces; that they were seats of luxury and enjoyment, to the great, I. INTRODUCTION. fuil as much as modern villas: that some Emperors (as Commodus) dined in their pictures, the estimation in which their great The importance the Greeks attached to Baths; and spent much of the day there; painters were held, the high prices paid as most of the Empresses did, and many the emulation existing between diferent for their most celebrated productions, and other females. These structures, therefore, states with regard to the possession of were not only rendered extremely conve- them, prove that painting was one of the nient, but were embellished in every way, arts most cultivated in ancient Greece: the with the most capital masterpieces of sculp-mutilated remains of the Greek statues, ture, with paintings, gildings, &c. in the most costly style of Architecture. They, were originally simple and ordinary; but even, those for the populace, became at length luxurious in a high degree; as may be easily understood from the following passage in one of Seneca's Epistles. ... But, who dares to bathe himself now, at so small an expence? every one thinks himself poverty struck, and wretchedly sordid, unless he frequents baths, the walls of which are ornamented with large round windows, furnished with transparent and costly stones; if the marble of Alexandria is not intermixed with that of Numidia; if it be not stuccoed with great skill, and varied as well with painting; if the height of the vault is not fitted with glass; if the marble of the Isle of Thasus, which formerly was not seen but in some temple, as a rarity, is not employed to veneer the rim of our basons, into which we descend after our bodies are exhausted by excessive perspiration; in a word, if the water does not run through silver cocks: -and all this I say, is destined only to the baths appropriated to the populace. What might I not add, if I were treating on the baths of Freedmen, and persons of better rank? How many statues do we not see? how many columns, which sustain no edifice, but serve only as ornament, or to display the expensive taste of the owner? What a notwithstanding the efforts of modern tion, are still contemplated as the models of artists during three centuries of civilizaperfection in sculpture; and we have no reason for supposing an inferior degree of ple to whom genius and taste were a kind excellence in the sister art, amongst a peoof birthright, and who possessed a percep tion, which seemed almost instinctive, of the dignified, the beautiful, and the sublime, The works of the great masters of Greece are unfortunately entirely lost. They disappeared from their native country during the wars waged by the Romans with the successors of Alexander, and the later Greek republics; and were destroyed either by accident, by time, or by barbarian conquerors at the period of the decline'and fall of the Roman Empire. The subjects of many of these pictures are described in ancient authors, and some idea of the manner and style of the Greek artists may be gained from the designs on the vases, improperly called Etruscan, which were executed by artists of Magna Græcia, and many of which are probably copies from celebrated works: and some faint notion of their execution and colouring may be gained from the paintings in fresco found at Rome, Herculaneum, and Pompeii. These paintings, it is true, are not properly Greek; yet, whatever may be said of the early existence of painting in Italy as a native art, we are certain that at the, be applied, that of making us acquainted period when Rome was the metropolis of with the nature and chemical composition the world, the fine arts were cultivated in of the colours used by the Greek and that city exclusively by Greek artists, Roman artists. The works of Theophras or by artists of the Gig schools. By com- tus, Dioscorides, Vitruvius, and Pliny, conparing the descriptions of Vitruvius* and tain descriptions of the substances used by Pliny with those of Theophrastus,† we learn the ancients as pigments; but hitherto, I that the same materials for colouring were believe, no experimental attempt has been employed at Rome and at Athicus; and made to identify them, or to imitate such of of thirty great painters that Pliny mentions them as are peculiar.* In the following whose works were known to the Romans, pages I shall have the honour of offering two only are expressly mentioned as born to the Society an investigation of this subin Italy, and the rest were Greeks. Orna-ject. My experiments have been made mental fresco painting was indeed generally exercised by inferior artists; and the designs on the walls of the houses of Herculaneum and Pompeii, towns of the third or fourth order, can hardly be supposed to offer fair specimens of excellence, even in this department of the art: but in Rome, in the time of her full glory, aud in the ornaments of the imperial palace of the first Cæsars, all the resources of the distinguished aritsts of that age were probably employed. Phny names Cornelius Piuus and Accius Priscus as the two artists of the greatest merit in his own time, and states that they painted the Temple of Honour and Virtue, Imperatori Vespasiano Augusto restituenti;" and it is not improbable that these artists had a share in executing, or directing the execution of, the paintings and ornaments in the baths of Titus; and at this period the works of Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Timanthes, Apelles, and Protagoras, were exhibited in Rome, and must have guided the taste of the artists. The decorations of the baths were intended to be seen by torch-light, and many of them at a consi- | derable elevation so that the colours were brilliant, and the contrast strong; yet still these works are regarded by connoisseurs as performances of considerable excellence the minor ornaments of them have led to the foundation of a style in printing which might with much more propriety be called Romanesque than Arabesque : and no greater eulogy can be bestowed upon them than the use to which they have been ap plied by the greatest painter of modern times, in the exquisite performances in the Vatican. In these and in other works of the same age, the effect of the aucieut models is obvious; and the various copies and imitations that have been mace of these remains of antiquity have transferred their spirit into modern art, and left little to be desi s to those results which the skill of the painter can command. There remains, however, another use to which they my * De Architectura, ib. vi. c. p. 5. † De Lapidibus. Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. xxxv. cap. 37. upon colours found in the baths of Titus, and the ruins called the baths of Livia, and in the remains of other palaces and bathis of ancient Rome, and in the ruins of Pompeit. By the kindness of my friend, the celebrated Canova, who is charged with the care of the works connected with ancient art in Rome, I have been enabled to select, with my own hands, specimens of the different pigments that have been found in vases discovered in the excavations lately made beneath the ruins of the palace of Titus, and to compare them with the colours fixed on the walls or detached in fragments of sturco: and Signor Nelli, the proprietor of the Nozze Aldobrandine, with great liberality permitted une to make such experiments upon the colours of this celebrated picture, as were necessary to determine their nature. When the preservation of a work of art was concerned, I made my researches upon mere atonis of the colour, taken from a place where the loss was imperceptible: and without having injured any of the precious remains of antiquity, I Barter myself, I shall be able to give some information not without interest to scientific men as well as to artists, and not wholly devoid of practical application. II. Of the Red Colours of the Ancients. Amongst the substances found in a large earthen vase filled with mixtures of differ ent colours with clay or chalk, found about In the 70th volume of the Annaies de Chinuc, page 22, M. Chaptal has published a paper on seven colours found in a colourshop at Pompeii. Four of these he found to be natural colours, ochres, a specimen of Verona green, and one of pumice stone. Two of them were blues, which he considers as compounds of alumine and lime with oxide of copper, and the last a pale rose colour, which he regards as analagous to the lake formed by fixing the colouring natter of madder upon alumine, I shalf again refer to the observations of M. Chaptal in the the course of this paper. It will be found on perusal, that they do not st persede the inquiry mentioned in the text. |