incident, that an author now-a-days ran only give new form, not matter, to his argument; a new turn, not thought, to his epigram; new attitudes, not object, to his picture; new language, not situation, to his story.

However true this complaint may be in the main, there is one class of writers to whom the charge of triteness does, I apprehend, very little apply. They are generally of the first species mentioned above, who publish useful information to mankind; yet in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, their information is often as new as if they had written in the infancy of art and of science, when every field was open to the researches of industry, and the invention of genius. The writers I allude to, are the authors of those little essays which appear in the learned world under the title of " Advertisements."

The necessary and ornamental arts of life are equally the objects of the class of authors whom I describe. In both, I will venture to assert, that the novelty of their productions is equal to their usefulness.

It was formerly imagined, that disease was an evil which mankind had inherited as a punishment for the lapse of their progenitor. Milton has given, in his Para-. dise Lost, a catalogue of some of those tormenting maladies which were to be felt by the race of fallen Adam. So has Dr Dominiceti in an advertisement, which is now lying before me; but, with the most extraordinary force of original discovery, has informed us, that, in his treatment of those disorders, there is no evil, no pain, but, on the contrary, much pleasure, and even luxury. "I engage," says the doctor," with pleasure, and even luxury, to the patient, to increase or diminish the vital heat, and the circulatory, secretory, and excretory functions; to soften

and relax the too hard and dry muscular and nervous fibres, and contracted ligaments; and to harden and make compact, and give the proper tone and elasticity to the too moist and flabby muscular and nervous fibres and relaxed sinews, and provide and establish an equilibrium between the fluids and vessels; to sweeten acrid, corrosive, and saline humours; and to cure the dropsy, asthma, consumptions, colic, gravel, rheumatism, palsy, pleurisy, and fevers, stone and gout, scurvy, and leprosy; to mollify and destroy inveterate ca1losities, to deterge and cure obstinate ulcers, &c.

"These are not the representations of a quack's bill; I detest the arts of quackery as much as any man living. I deal not in nostrums or mysteries, or magic or expedient, to captivate:

"Non sibi, sed toto genitum se credere mundo."

If he who invented one new pleasure

was formerly thought entitled to imperial munificence, what reward does the doctor deserve, who has added as many luxuries o the list, as there are diseases in the catalogues of nosology?

Scotland, though not remarkable in this department of literature, has the honour of producing an author, who, in an advertisement published not long ago, has added to the stores of natural history the following very curious facts with regard to the properties of air and heat. Mr Fair, mason, opposite to the White Hart Inn, Grass-market, Edinburgh, thus delivers himself on the subject of pneumatics: "Air and smoke," says he, "are two elastic fluids, capable of being condensed and expanded. Heat, or the fire in the grate, expands the air. panded, it becomes lighter. is in nature for light matter to swim to the top of heavier, it rises up the vent, carrying the smoke along with it. This

Being ex

And, as it

's the principle by which fire burns, and smoke ascends. Now, that the particles of air may be brought above the fire, that they may be heated to expand and carry off the smoke, should be the chief care of a mason in finishing of the fire-places. On the contrary, it is the cause of smoke.

"The other cause of smoke is the wind. Wind is a current of air always rushing into voids. At the same time it goes forward, by the law of gravity, it has a tendency to press downwards. Now, when it blows over any one object higher than the chimney-top, gravity brings it downward, pressing the smoke before it."

It will be observed, that, like many other great theorists, Mr Fair uses a language in some places a little obscure; and that in others, as where he mentions the tendency of wind to press downwards, his expression borders on the jocular; a liberty in which some of the greatest philosophers have frequently indulged.