TO It has likewife afforded great improvement to the lands thro' which it has been cut, by means of the fubterraneous drains which have been made to convey the waters under the canal; and it will in a fhort time effect great improvement in a large tract of mofs land, which yields no profit at prefent: Add to this, that it has proved very beneficial to the tenants of the adjacent lands, by means of the great quantity of marl, which has been dif covered and given to them. When the navigation fhall be extended to Liverpool, whither it is expected to be carried in about four or five years, the towns and neighbourhood of Liverpool and Manchester will have the benefit of boats paffing every day between the two places, and they will reap the farther advantage of having their goods carried for fix fhillings per ton, whereas they now pay ten or twelve fhillings per ton water carriage. Not to mention that from the dificulty and uncertainty of the paffage, great quantities of goods are fent by land, at the expence of about forty fhillings per ton. Such are the advantages already attending, and which are farther to be expected from this noble undertaking, and which has been thus expeditiously and fuccefsfully conducted, under the care of two ingenious gentlemen, whofe works fnfficiently evince their merit *. But it would be unpardonable to with-hold the praife fo justly due to the noble duke, who called their merit forth; and who, at an age too often fpent in riot, or perhaps at beft in futile diffipation, applied his attention to ufeful objects, and had the spirit to hazard fo great a part of his fortune, in an undertaking worthy the purfuit of a prince; and which is now likely to prove profitable to himself, as well as beneficial to his country. When the influence of exalted rank, and the power of large poffeffions, are Hamden. Jar. thus nobly and ufefully exerted, they confer additional luftre on the poffeffor: and fuch a laudable application of the gifts of fortune is fo rare, that it ought not tó país unnoticed. It is to be hoped, that his grace's noble example will be followed by others, in fuch parts of the kingdom, where inland navigations may be made for the improvement of trade and commerce and it is with pleature we hear that a fcheme is in agitation for opening a communication between the two ports of Liverpool and Hull, which will not only be of great immediate benefit to this and other tra ding towns in the adjacent counties, as well as to the public in general, but may hereafter be made the means of infinite local as well as national advantages, by branches which may be extended to feveral parts from the main truck. Birmingham. I am, fir, yours, &c. An Anecdote of Mr. Hamden, Grandjon of Mr. Hamden, who opposed the Med-fures of Charles I. HIS gentleman, by his intereft, vir virtue, and ability, it is well known, contributed greatly to the placing the crown of thefe realms on the head of our deliverer William the Third: but he never commenced courtier. The king could not but value fuch a man, even when difgutted with him. "The archbishop [Tillotfon, I fuppofe] was fent to tell him how well he was efteemed, but he growing into years might like his ease. If he would be lord or earl, he should be either, or have any penfion. To the first he anTwered, that he would die a country gentleman of an ancient family, as he was, and honour enough for him. For the fecond, he faid he would not take the king's money, and the king's fervants want bread. He always fpake against giving penfions to others, and at fuch a time as this it was oppreffion: While he had a role and a can of beer, he would not take the king's money."-Hift. of Massachufets Bay, by the prefent lieutenant governor, Mr. Hutchinson. I must not omit to obferve that, in digging the canal, a kind of fand, or gravel, was found, which, after repeated experiments, was discovered to be lime; and fo good a method of burning it was contrived, that it has been made to fupply all occaLions bitherto, which have been very great, and has faved mary thousand pounds, as lime must have been brought near thirty miles, if this difcovery had not been made To DR. Cook. Ivember last, I attentively read your N the London Magazine, for No letter to the author of it, and was fomewhat furprized that there fhould now be living a perfon capable of writing, and at the fame time of maintaining, opinions almost universally exploded, and of atempting to prove their truth from perfonal experience. Your affirmations, my good fir, are too folemn to admit a doubt what your faith may be, respecting the agency of aerial fpirits; you unquestionably believe to be tact what you affert as fuch, but furely your most zealous friend, he who molt implicitly confides in the fincerity of your declarations, ought before he subscribes his aflent to the doctrine they are made to fupport, at leaft to enquire how far you have been or may be imposed on, to difpute your judgment, if not your veracity, and carefully examine whether thofe effects or phænomena which to you appear fo marvellous, may not, in reality, proceed from caufes the moft ordinary, and prove the neceffary refult of nature's general laws. Superftition hath not yet been exiled fo long from this country, but that a score or two of pamphleteers, with principles fimilar to your own, might (notwithstanding our feeming propenfity at prefent to fcepticifm and infidelity) encourage the leaft inftructed part of it, to refume that credulity and infatuation, it has fo prudently rejected. But principus obfta is a found maxim and as proper to be adopted for the prevention of confirmed error as of confirmed difeafe; I fhall not therefore think that time wholly loft, which is employed in framing this reply, if it fhall be compenfated by the prefervation of any one weak conftitution from that maignity of miftake, to which he may be expofed by the infectious letter, which occafioned these remarks. Your humanity and virtue were fo confpituous in fome of your former publications, as to excite an earnest wish for the power to fpeak as honourably of your intellects as of your integrity, but metaphyfical fubtilties are traitors to the understanding of man, his waxen wings deceive him when attempting to foar, beyond the confines of this nether world; for thus fublimely raised Jan. 1766. 17 he difcovers enough only to be pofitive, but too little to be affured. But when we quit the plain path of common fenfe, refign our reafon as infufficient for our direction in the general concerns of life, and think to supply its defects by pretended recourse to, and immediate communications with, beings of fuperior nature and intelligence, however amufed we may seem to be by fuch a fictitious exchange, we are in fact fubjected to the tyrannical powers of a delufive imagination. In the beginning of your letter you aver, that ever fince you have been twenty-three years of age, you have had an invisible being or beings attend you at times, both at home and abroad, that has, by fome gentle token or other, given you warning and notice that you fhould certainly lofe a particular patient or friend. Unless my good doctor, you had informed us what these gentle tokens were, how can we be affured that they proceeded from any other invisible being than your own fpirit; tokens which could not with certainty be diftinguished from external accident or internal emotion, according to my apprehenfion, could not be very gentle. Befides, you have the lefs reafon to be pofitive concerning these token-givers because you know not the number of them who attended, and adminiftered to you the notices you mention; if you allow that there might be a hundred, or ten, or but one, a fober enquirer will be inclined, amidst this uncertainty, to conclude you might be attended by none, and he will be induced the more readily to form this reasonable conclufion, from the apparent infignificance of that bufinefs they are supposed to be commiffioned to execute. We might have given fome little credit to the existence of your divine compa nions, could you have declared them fubfervient to the completion of fome great or good defign, though only that of faving your own foul; could you have allotted them a province adapted to their nature; could you have defcribed them as frequently giving you gentle admonitions of approaching temptation, as warning you to thun the impending danger to your morals, as feasonably refcuing you from folly, vanity and vice, as folliciting you to acts of devotion and beneficence, and D 18 INVISIBLE TOKEN-GIVERS as confirming your laudable refolutions to do juftice and love mercy; we might have reverenced your fpiritual affiftants. But is it probable, that you should extraordinarily intereft either fuperos or acheronta in the maladies of your patients, that either angels or devils fhould directly concern themselves with your medical practice? Is their life or death, think you doctor, a circumstance tanto vindice dignus? We cannot properly confider thefe beings furrounding your perfon, from the employments affigned to them, as honoured with any elevation of rank in that clafs of fpirits to which they belong, they cannot be commiffioned ofhcers of the etherial hoft, but abfenting privates only, who, intoxicated with too copious a draught of dew or ambrofia, are difpofed to be frolickfome with Dr. Cook. But, feriously, how can you be fo candid as to infer much benignity of difpofition in your celestial acquaintance, from the information they give you of the evil to come? To view future misfortune is to anticipate the pain of it, and I cannot imagine, doctor, how you can derive much confolation as a phyfician from foreseeing with certainty the lofs of your friends and your fees. You proceed to relate how troublesome it (one invisible guest) was during your wife's illness, and that after her death they came feldom, and in fuch a gentle civil and familiar a manner as to please you with their company, and, in your estimation, to improve the value of your houfe. Truly, doctor, your houfe is the more valuable to any one who, like you, is fond of the fociety of fpirits; but how could you aflure any fpectre-loving purchafer of their continuance in the house he might buy? Spirits, like rats in a house, cannot be conveyed to a fucceeding tenant, the abode of both, with him, however willing you may be to transfer your property in them to him, muft finally depend on the quantity of his credulity and of his cheese. As a proof that you are no vifionary nor deceived by others, you add that we all, meaning I prefume yourfelf, wife and family, have had various impreflions from invifible agents, and I myself by no fewer than three of my fenfes. How are we to reconcile the feeming contradiction of this paffage ? Jan. Invisible agents imprefs three of your fenfes! you furely could not fee them, did you then smell thefe volatile fpirits, my fagacious doctor, with olfactories excelling even Virgil's dogs in their vis odora? Indeed, without fuppofing any refinement of the fenfe of fmelling, I fhould have imagined you had inhaled the fulphureous effluvia of thefe beings, had you not informed us in one part of your letter that they could not be devils. But foon after you affirm the notices they give you to be by seeing, feeling, or hearing, without any attempt to explain how aerial beings may be rendered vifible or fpirit tangible; if you neither faw nor felt the beings themselves, how does what you did fee and feel prove their existence? On the contrary, if you affirm that thefe pure inhabitants of air have been fubjected to your fight and touch (the poffibility of which fubjection must be doubted) how could you fo ungenerously refufe to fatisfy the curiofity of thousands, who with profound attention would have read your determination whether your spirits are organized like man or not, whether they are transparent or opaque, elaftic or non-elaftic, luminous or dark, &c? Mere infpection must have enabled you to folve these doubts. More important decifions refpecting their origin, means of fupport, ufe in the creation, their end or immortality, could not be expected from you, as they never condefcended to reply to any one of your questions. Once, indeed, you heard the fpiritual agent form an articulate voice, and utter these words "I am gone," which you say were fulfilled by the fudden death of your coufin's daughter, three days after. Now either thefe words, fuppofed to be fpoken, were not predictive of your coufin's daughter's death; and if not, then probably not the articulate voice of a fpirit; but if they must be deemed prophetical, they must at least be allowed to have been as improperly used to communicate the furety of fuch an event, as any the spirit could have pronounced; a vain mortal fhould not prefume to dictate expreflion to a nobler being; but certainly his meaning had been lefs ambiguous, lefs mifteriously oracular, had he plainly faid, "your coufin's daughter is going," no good reason can I think be given why 1766. EXPLODE why fpirits, if they use our language, fhould not be as much confined as men, in the articles of grammar and good fenfe, if they hope for any refpect in this world. Notwithstanding the pretended words of the fpirit are a violation of both the above, and bordering on the Hibernian dialect, though you had more reafon to conclude that the fpiritwas leaving and confequently lowering the value of your houfe, than that his declaration had the leaft profpective connection with your relation's death, yet, on this circumftance, you feem principally to establish your opinion that many events have been confequences conformable to the previous notice you have received; whereas their information has fometimes, you allow, been fo imperfect, that, like refponfes of old from the pagan temples, they could not be clearly understood till fulfilled, or as you fay till the iffue determined the cafe. You are obliged, my good doctor, to be the more cautious how you interpret the hints you receive, as præmonitions of any parti cular perfon's death, fince you have made the conceffion that the time intervening between thofe hints, and the inftance of mortality hinted \at, is not determined with any exactnefs, a month or more, you fay, poffibly a year or more, may elapfe previous to the lofs pretended to be forefeen, and if fo, what will become of your tokens; for in the space of a year or two, it is more than probable, if your practice is at all extensive, that you will lofe more than one or two friends or patients, whether you have been favoured with any tokens or not? I fhall make no other comments on your fpiritual day book, than just to fignify my two-fold aftonishment that you fhould ever be fatigued with recording the fuggeftions of an infallible director, and that fuch director fhould be fo far unacquainted with the duties of human life, as to require more attention than was confiftent with the obfervance of thofe duties. By recurring to, and relying on, the opinions of the ancients (if you mean the idolatrous ancients) you rather expose than support your argument; the fame authority, if fubmitted to, would lead yon into the wilderness of Polytheism, and conftrain your belief of five or fix hundred deities, the exiftence of all which will admit of as eafy proof, as of that particular order of beings, for which you fo earnestly contend, although I do not recollect that these ancients credited any atmosphereal exiftences, which, if admitted, would fuit your particular hypothefis; their genii alone bear any refemblance to your civil gentle beings. But how little to be venerated muft the notions of the ancients, in matters purely problematical, appear, when their firm incontrovertible maxims, the immoveable rocks, as they thought, of their belief have been liquified by the radiance of advancing truth? In the morning of the world, the fun of fcience was not arrived at its meridian. The ancients could perceive but in proportion to their intellectual light; darkness natural or moral produces fuperftition; fuperftition, fear; and fear is ever diligent in magnifying or multiplying its objects; men in that dim dawn could difcover imperfect knowledge and unripened arts, which could only be fully disclosed and matured by the light and warmth of fucceeding feafons. What a poor system of natural and experimental philofophy could be compiled from all their writings. Now, if you refuse to credit their opinions of what was continually fubjected to their inquiries, the figure of the world they lived in, the revolutions of planets, and the conftruction of their own bodies; if you cannot acquiefce with their notions of geography, aftronomy, or anatomy, why will you fuffer them to form your creed, for fubftances invisible, fubjects of mere fpeculation only, about which there may be endless conjecture without any conviction? Milton is quaintly enough introduced as the defender of your faith; but you may as juftly fuppofe he believed in the Urauia he invoked, or in the perfonity of his fin and death as in aerial fpirits; whatever chimerical beings he might employ in his Comus or Paradife Loft as machinery neceflary to the embellishment, or conduct of his poetic plan, they are by no means to be considered as representations of the objects of his belief; the poffibility of their actual existence is enough for the poet. But alas! how ineffectually would your opinion of fpirits be maintained, could you together with Milton's vote, obtain D 2 the 20 REMARKS ON the concurring fuffrage of all the ancients and moderns of chriftian faith, who have written on the fubject; the fenfe and common experience of mankind muft at last give their opinions any validity; though they may be reafonable and philofophical, they may neverthelefs be totally fallacious, unless you could prove their conformity to perfect reafon and perfect philofophy which is inherent in him alone who paffeth all understanding; how prefuming in man, illuminated with a single ray of reason, to declare what must be a part of the almighty's univerfal fcheme of creation, before it is manifefted to be fuch! I fhould be equally exposed to rebuke, was I to affirm the non-entity of fpirits; I am not folicitous for proofs that they do not exift. This is a negative incapable of demonftration; your aerial familiars may or may not he: all I would contend for is that, if they are, you have not feen, cannot fee them, and that if you could, and their intercourse with mankind was permitted, that the end of that permiffion could not be accomplished by their communications on very uninteresting occafious with three or four perfons in a large kingdom, while all the other inhabitants of it were not fuffered either to be fpectators of their being, or fenfible of their agency. If we admit the reality of your fpirits, and inveft them with the character of fagacious guardians of mankind, why fhould we limit our ideas of their number and locality, what claim has Leigh to fuch a fhare of their vigilance, or your houfe to the peculiar privilege of being their office of intelligence? Men as moral agents are every where, I prefume, in the fame defenceless state, and equally require and are entitled to the fame ipiritual correfpondence and protection. Was the favour of these gracious beings at all vifibly or palpably experienced, it would not be circumfcribed, nor partially diftributed, nor difpenfed but to a few in the world in the hours of folitude and darkness, but, like every other display of divine providence,would be general, conftant, and indifputable: all would occafionally partake and be sensible of the bleffing, and the immediate authors of it would be as univerfally acknowledged as the existence of their and our fupreme creator. But, my Jan. TH HE coma fomnolentum, or fomnolency, is constantly attended with a præternatural propensity to fleep. Infomuch that thofe who labour under it, are fometimes overcome with an invincible drowsinefs, when in converfation with their friends, and even in the midst of bufinefs. This disease chiefly attacks those who are advanced beyond the prime of life, and particularly the corpulent, and thofe who live luxuriously, neglecting proper exercife or evacuations. The cause of this disease may be referred to whatever compreffes the brain, or by any means prevents the nerves, fubfervient to voluntary motion, from performing their office. Thus Wepfer and Peyerus have taught us how to procure fleep in dogs by art, merely by a greater or lefs compreffion of the brain, when deprived of the cranium. And the fame was found to hold good in that remarkable inftance of the beggar at Paris, who, by fome accident, had loft part of his fkull, fo that the brain was laid bare. Further, a ftupor and fleepinefs is occafioned (as is well known) by extravafated blood, in confequence of a fracture of the cranium, but ceafes as foon as the extravafated blood is removed by a fuccefsful application of the trepan. From hence it may be concluded, that the material cause of fomnolency is primarily and originally contained within the fubftance of the brain. And this conclufion is abundantly confirmed by the diffection of a variety of bodies who have died of foporofe affections. Bonetus, Du Verney, and the celebrated Morgagni have almoft conftantly found the finus's, or blood-vellels of the brain, turgid, and, in a manner, varicofe, |