Yarmouth. This name denotes the mouth of the Yare, 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 diving 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 sta mark. 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

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 50,0co 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 50,0001 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 brought into the port of Yarmouth; and in the year 1593 the fishing-nets of that place were valued at 50,000l. steṛl. 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-yaids, 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 200 vessels were cast away on this coast, and more than a thousand persons lost their lives: something of the same kind hap pened in 1790. For the maintenance of the harbour, and cleansing it from sand and slime, the sum of about 2000k per ann. is allotted. The skill and dexterity of the sailors of Yarmouth are in high repute.

The Museum Boulerianum 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 seen. 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 Tychsen 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

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upwards

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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.

The Historical part begins with a report from MM. La Grange and Bossut, concerning a memoir by M. Caliet 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+ I-I &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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stop

stop (says he) at an even number of terms, the sum is o; if at an odd number, the sum is 1: but, as there is no more reason for taking an even than an odd number, consequently the sum is neither o nor 1, but a mean number, or

"In this kind

of reasoning, Leibnitz was nearly followed by Daniel Bernouilli, in volume xvi. of the new Commentaries of Petersburgh. He endeavoured to shew, by the doctrine of chances, that the sums of periodic series are equal to the sum of the different partial sums which can be formed by adding successive terms together, divided by the number of those partial sums; thus — = 1−x + (0.∞2)+x3+x++ (0.x3)—x &c. 1 + n + x2 Hence, putting x1, the series is 1-1+(0.1)+1 &c.; and the three partial sums are 1, 0, o; hence Sum = and so on for other series.

I

The above method, however, rather justifies the rule of Bernouilli in those cases in which it has been accused of being false, than exemplifies his mode of reasoning.

MM. La Grange and Bossut shew that the result, given by the method for finding the sum of a recurring series, verifies the principle of Bernouilli; and they conclude with commending the author of the memoir for having directed the attention of mathematicians to the paradoxes which periodical series present, and for having argued against the application of metaphysical reasonings to questions which, belonging solely to pure analysis, can be decided only by the first principles and fundamental rules of calculation.

Report on a Memoir of M. Biot, on the Integrals of Equations of finite Differences.-This report proceeds from MM. La Place and Prony, who not only commend the memoir, but aplaud its young author for his previous investigations, and for his zeal and application in the pursuit of abstract science. In the course of the report, are noted the errors and paradoxes into which the late M. Charles (of the Academy of Sciences) was betrayed when treating of a memoir (yer 1788) on the plurality of the integrals of which equations of finite differences are susceptible.

J

Mechanics. Report on a new Telegraph, the Invention ef MM. Breguet and Betancourt. By MM. La Grange, La Place, Borda, Prony, Coulomb, Charles, and Delambre. As we could not, without a long description, hope to convey an adequate notion of the construction and advantages of this new instrument, we must refrain from the attempt. The very learned men, who have made their report on it, state it to be

essentially