Here are many vacancies to fill up: but probably some Irish patriots could supply the date of birth, the profession, and the principal circumstances in the life of Mr. Bowles, which deserves to be more correctly and completely recorded in English.

From the sixth volume we will extract a new life:

CABARRUS, Francis, Count of, was born at Bayonne in 1752, and was intended for his father's counting-house. He passed his school-years at Toulouse; and, when a youth, he was placed in a commercial house at Zaragossa, under M. Galabert, where he acquired the Spanish language with great perfection: he also fell in love with the daughter of M. Galabert, and married her privately. This match displeased both the families: but the fatherin-law was disposed to make the best of it, and established young Cabarrus at Caravanchel, near Madrid, in a soap-manufactory of which he undertook the management. With the Abbé Guevara, who edited the gazette of Madrid, Cabarrus soon became much acquainted, and was introduced by him to literary circles, in which he was made known to Count Campomanes, and Olavides. These connections inspired Cabarrus with ambitious ideas, which circumstances favoured. The government of Spain, during the American war, incurred some financial embarrassment; the minister of finance was disposed to consult experienced accountants; and thus M. Cabarrus was presented to him. He suggested the creation of royal notes, as they were called, a sort of exchequer-bills bearing interest, to be renewed annually with the interests added, in case the whole issue could not be discharged during the year. These royal notes tempted the speculators, and were apparently successful. Cabarrus next proposed to found the bank of Saint Charles, which was created by letters-patent, 2d June, 1782, and was a joint-stock-company, advancing for its capital 15 millions of piastres in small shares of 2000 rials each. This bank was intended to take up the royal notes, and thus every thing changed hands without discredit: but the bank-shares sently became objects of speculation at Paris, where Mirabeau wrote against them. Cabarrus, however, had his Memoir prohibited at Madrid. He was then appointed minister of finance in Spain. In 1788, King Charles III. died; new interests succeeded; Count Florida Blanca became minister; and Cabarrus was disgraced, impeached, arrested, and imprisoned for nearly eighteen months, while the bank-shares vanished into nothing. At length, a hearing was obtained, the charges against Cabarrus were declared frivolous, indemnities were granted to him, and the title of Count was in atonement conferred on him. On the part of the Spanish court, he attended the congress of Rastadt in 1797; and he would have been deputed to France, if the French court would have received a native subject as the agent of a foreign prince. When the Prince of the Peace acquired ascendancy at Madrid, he wished to keep Cabarrus at a distance, and offered him an embassy in Holland: but this scheme did not take place, and after the Kk 2 18th

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18th March, 1808, Cabarrus was again minister of finance. He undertook a journey to Seville in April 1810, and died there of a sudden attack of gout. His published works are 1. Le Diseur de Rien, a sort of Tatler, which the Spanish government suppressed, but which was the original cause of his being remarked at Madrid. 2. Lettres de F. Cabarrus, écrites de sa Prison au Prince de la Paix. 3. Systême de Contributions le plus convenable à l'Espagne. 4. Eloge de Charles III. Roi d'Espagne. 5. Eloge de Dr. Musquez, Ministre des Finances.'

The seventh volume will furnish a notice of one of those men of letters who have adorned Malta: they are become as it were our countrymen, and ought to excite a national solicitude for their illustration.

'CAVALLINI, Philip, practised medicine at Malta about the close of the seventeenth century. He published in 1689, under the title Pugillus Meliteus, the first Flora of this interesting island. He mentions in it many curious plants, and among others the Fucus helminthocorton, or Corsican coralline, which was already known to him as an useful medicine in diseases caused by worms. Bruckman reprinted this scarce work in his Epistolæ Itineraria.

In the eighth volume we may select an oriental life by M. LANGLÈS.

"CHYR-SHAH. This usurper, of Afghan origin, was called Feryd while he inhabited Roh, a mountain situated between Persia and India. The tribe in which he originated was termed Sous, and passed for one of the noblest clans of the Afghans. Feryd, who was not liked by his father, quitted early his native country, and went into India; where he led an adventurous life, distinguishing himself in the service of several princes by his courage, his intelligence, and his ambition. Hunting with the sovereign of Behar, he attacked alone an enormous tiger, and cut off its head with a stroke of his sabre; the prince immediately. bestowed on him the name of Chyr-khan, or Lion-heart. This sovereign died shortly afterward; and Chyr-khan, without regard to the duties of hospitality and gratitude, seized on the throne, expelled the young heir, and thus obtained the means of attempting greater things. From Behar he entered Bengal, and defeated and killed the governor. The great Mogul Humayoon, the son and successor of Baboor, now determined to oppose this conqueror, and assembled, in order to crush him, an army 100,000 strong but Chyr-khan, with a force not exceeding 50,000 effective men, attacked the imperial army near the Ganges, on the 10 Moharrem, 947 of the Hedjira, (19th May, 1540,) defeated the Indian monarch completely, and obliged him to fly towards Agra. Harassed still by the conqueror, and betrayed by his kinsmen and ministers, Humayoon was at length compelled to take refuge at the court of Persia; and Chyr-khan assumed the title of shah, or king, coined money in his own name, and inserted

in

in the khotbath, or Mohammedan prayer, the appellation of Chyrshah. His reign lasted but five years, when he was killed by an explosion of gun-powder from the mine of a citadel which he was besieging, 24th August, 1545. He left many monuments of his magnificence; caravanserays, wells, mosques, and alleys of trees planted along the roads, &c. His tomb, situated at Sasseram, near Djyompoor, is one of the noblest architectural monuments of India.'

From the ninth volume, we take the life of a German theologian:

CORRODI, Henry, was born at Zurich in 1752, and died there in 1793. The weakness of his constitution, his disagreeable exterior, and the secluded education which he received from an austere and vigilant father, were adapted to subdue common talents: but Corrodi, encouraged by the friendship of Gesner, struggled against these obstacles, and became at Leipzig and Halle the pupil of Platner and Semler. His vast knowlege and philosophic spirit formed a singular contrast with his personal insignificance and timidity of manner. After his return to Zurich in 1786, he obtained a professorial chair in the gymnasium of that city, but did not assume the ecclesiastical profession, which had been intended for him by his parents, on account of conscientious doubts. Still he chose to display his acquirements in theological literature. In 1781 appeared his Critical History of Millenarianism; next, a History of the Jewish Canon; and then a collection of Philosophic Investigations, dated 1786. In 1781, he undertook the superintendance of a magazine for Scripture-criticism, which examined boldly the history of religion and of fanaticism but the great work, which he had announced, and of which fragments were progressively inserted in that journal, he did not live to finish. His probity and beneficence endeared him to all his acquaintance.'

The life of Cicero, which occurs in this volume, deserves notice, not so much for the biography as for the critical and bibliographical remarks on the different editions of this most influential of writers.

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Volume X. concludes with the life of the poet Delille, but it is too long for our pages. Lives connected with the French revolution are related with a noble frankness, but much in the spirit which actuated the subjects of them while in existence; as if to royalists had been assigned the writing of royalist-lives, and to friends of liberty the memoirs of liberalists.

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These volumes contain so vast a mass of wholly new materials, and afford so considerable an accession of biographical information concerning all nations, that the work must become an essential book of reference in the libraries of public institutions. It is the most comprehensive, the most cosmopolite, biographicon that is extant.

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ART.

ART. VII. Mémoire sur la Marine, &c. i.e.; A Memoir respecting the Navy, the Bridges, and the Roads of France and England. By CHARLES DUPIN, Captain of Naval Engineers, &c. &c. 8vo. pp. 470. Paris. 1818. Imported by Treuttel and Würtz. Price IIS.

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Iris, we believe, generally known that M. DUPIN has been for some years engaged in writing a very extensive work on naval architecture, and its state of progressive improvement during the 18th and 19th centuries; under which term are proposed to be included, not simply that department of the science which relates to the construction of vessels, but all other subjects in any way connected with it, as the formation of docks, sluices, jetties, navigable canals, roads, bridges, &c. &c. With the view of giving all possible completeness to a treatise embracing so many important objects, he obtained, through the intercession of the French ambassador in London, permission to visit our several dock-yards; and to inform himself on the spot respecting the processes adopted in our naval constructions, the state of our works, the nature of the various machinery employed, and every other object that was calculated to forward his views with reference to the important design which he had conceived. In his capacity of Captain in the engineer-department of the French navy, he had already visited and been actively employed in various ports of Italy, France, and Holland; and, by an union of great scientific knowlege with much practical skill, he was doubtless eminently qualified for the task which he had assigned to himself, and which very few other men would have been able to perform.

The volume before us, however, must be considered only as the precursor of the great work to which we have alluded; being nothing more than a very brief abstract of its contents, principally as they have been at different times presented by the author to the French Institute, of which he is a corresponding member. We have here, therefore, a very miscellaneous composition; containing a sketch of M. DUPIN'S first and second journies in Great Britain, with descriptions of the Break-water constructing at Plymouth, and of the Caledonian canal: a sketch relative to the museum in the arsenal of Toulon a paper on the re-establishment of the French Académie de Marine; on various machines employed in the dock-yard at Rochefort; abstracts from the author's memoirs on the flexibility of wood; on the stability of vessels, &c. &c.

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Scarcely any object can be conceived, that is more calculated to excite the interest of men of science than such an

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undertaking as that which is here projected; which promises a complete developement of the state of the mechanic arts, and of the great public works of England and France, those two nations which of all others have doubtless carried them to the highest degree of perfection: - but, to examine these with due discrimination, to estimate their merits and defects with candour and judgment, and to give an opinion unbiassed by national feelings, all this requires not only a well informed but a peculiarly constituted mind. Perhaps no man can so far become a citizen of the world, as to be able to divest himself of all national attachments; nor, if this were possible, should we envy him the stoical indifference which it would be calculated to produce. Nature has laid down the course of our affection;

"Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace, His country next, and next all human race."

Since, therefore, we cannot but consider any violation of this principle as an interruption of the law of nature, we should rather be inclined to pity than to envy the human being who should be so unfortunate as to be divested of this powerful natural feeling. We shall not, consequently, quarrel with M. DUPIN for the high encomiums which he bestows on the talents and genius of his countrymen: - we are even ready to acknowlege that he appears, in most cases, to have endeavoured to do ample justice to Englishmen and English works: -but in others, we must observe, he seems to have been acting under the feeling to which we have above alluded, and thus to have been betrayed into assertions and expressions not strictly consistent with his declarations of candour and impartiality. In the dedication of his book to M. Prony, he says, obviously alluding to the English; ..

That people, even, whose national egotism leads them to wish to possess exclusively every means of happiness, and all kinds of renown, are obliged to acknowlege that the invention and perfection of the most sublime theories constitute at this time one of the most noble titles which honour the genius of France. But, leaving us with regret this incontestible glory, they appropriate to themselves all its benefits, by carrying into their own country the consequences of our fertile discoveries. The useful arts, elementary and productive knowlege, and all the vehicles of public fortune, acting in concert in their favour, are advancing with giant-steps among our happy rivals: while, with us, inventions ever new appear to be doomed to a perpetual infancy, checked by the obstacles of institutions, of men, and of things.'

Let us, before we enter on an analysis of M. DUPIN's performance, briefly examine the justice of the above remarks; Kk 4

and