are close, that when the bar acquires electricity it may not cscape or communicate itself to the body which supports the bar; as soon as a thunder-storm arises, and the clouds which contain the thunder come directly over the bar, you perceive in it a very strong electricity, generally far surpassing that which art produces, if you apply the hand to it, or any other body with open pores, you see bursting from it, not only a spark but a very bright flash, with a noise similar to thunder; the man, who applies his hand to it, receives a shock so violent that he is stunned. This surpasses curiosity, and there is good reason why we should be on our guard, and not approach the bar during a storm.

A professor at Petersburgh, named Richmann, has furnished a melancholy example. Having perceived a resemblance so striking between the phenomena of thunder and those of electricity, this unfortunate naturalist, the more clearly to ascertain it by experiment, raised a bar of iron on the roof of his house, cased below in a tube of glass, and supported by a mass of patch. To the bar he attached a wire, which he conducted into his chamber, that as soon as the bar should become electric, the electrcity might have a free communication with the wire, and so enable him to prove the effects in his apartment. And it may be proper to inform you, that this wire was conducted in such a manner as no where to be in contact but with bodies whose pores are close, such as glass, pitch, or silk, to prevent the escape of electricity.

Having made this arrangement, he expected a thunder-storm, which, unhappily for him, soon came. The thunder w as heard at a distance; Mr. Richm ann was all attention to his wire, to see if he could perceive any mark of electricity. As the storm approached, he judged it prudent to employ some precaution, and not keep too

near the wire; but happening carelessly to advance his chest a little, he received a terrible stroke, accompanied with a loud clap, which stretched him lifeless on the floor.

About the same time, the late Dr. Lieberkuhn and Dr. Ludolf were about making similar experiments, and in that view had fixed bars of iron on their houses; but being informed of the disaster which had befallen Mr. Richmann, they had the bars of iron immediately removed, and, in my opinion, they acted wisely.

From this you will readily judge, that the air or atmosphere must become very electric during a thunder-storm, or that the ether contained in it must then be carried to a very high degree of compression. This ether, with which the air is surcharged, will pass into the bar, because of its open pores, and it will become electric, as it would have been in the common method, but in a much higher degree." Mr. E. concludes his explanation of the phenomena of thunder and lightning with these observations in letter 38, and then proceeds to state the possibility of preventing and of averting the effects of thunder in letter 39.

Thunder then is nothing else but the effect of the electricity with which the colours are endowed; and as an electrified body, applied to another in its natural state, emits a spark with some noise, and discharges into it the superfluous ether, with prodigious impetuosity; the same thing takes place in a cloud that is electric, or surcharged with ether, but with a force incomparably greater, because of the terrible mass that is electrified, and in which, according to every appearance, the ether is reduced to a much higher degree of compression than we are capable of carrying it by our machinery.

When, therefore, such a cloud approaches bodies, prepared for the admission of its ether, this discharge must be made with in

credible violence: instead of a simple spark, the air will be penetrated with a prodigious flash, which, exciting a commotion in the ether contained in the whole adjoining region of the atmosphere, produces a most brilliant light: and in this lightning consists.

The air is, at the same time, put into a very violent motion of vibration, from which results the noise of thunder. This noise must, no doubt, be excited at the same instant with the lightning; but you - know that sound always requires a certain quantity of time, in order to its transmission to any distance, and that its progress is only at the rate of about a thousand feet in a second; whereas light travels with a velocity inconceivably greater. Hence we always hear the thunder later than we see the lightning: and from the number of seconds intervening between the flash and the report, we are enabled to determine the distance of the place where it is generated, allowing a thousand feet to a second.

The body itself, into which the electricity of the cloud is discharged, receives from it a most dreadful stroke; sometimes it is shivered to pieces; sometimes set on fire and consumed, if combustible; sometlmes melted, if it be of metal; and, in such cases, we say it is thunderstruck; the effects of which, however surprising and extroardinary they may appear, are in perfect consistency with the well-known phenomena of electricity.

A sword, it is known, has sometimes been by thunder melted in the scabbard, while the last sustained no injury; this is to be accounted for from the openness of the pores of the metal, which the ether very easily penetrates, and exercises over it all its powers, whereas the substance of the scabbard is more closely allied to the nature of bodies with close pores, which permit not to the ether so free a transmission.

It has likewise been found, that of several persons, on whom the thunder has fallen, some only have

been struck by it; and that those who were in the middle suffered no injury. The cause of this phenomenon likewise is manifest. In a group exposed to a thunder-storm, they are in the greatest danger who stand in the nearest vicinity to the air that is surcharged with ether; as soon as the ether is discharged upon one, all the adjoining air is brought back to its natural state, and consequently those who were nearest to the unfortunate victim feel no effect, while others, at a greater distance, where the air is still sufficiently surcharged with ether, are struck with the same thunder-clap.

In a word, all the strange circumstances, so frequently related, of the effects of thunder, contain nothing which may not be easily reconciled with the nature of electricity.

Some philosophers have maintained, that thunder did not come from the clouds, but from the earth, or bodies. However extravagant this sentiment may appear, it is not so absurd, as it is difficult to distinguish, in the phenomena of electricity, whether the spark issues from the body which is electrified, or from that which is not so, as it equally fills the space between the two bodies; and if the electricity is negative, the ether and the spark are in effect emitted from the natural or non-electrified body. But we are sufficiently assured that, in thunder, the clouds have a positive electricity, and that the lightning is emitted from the clouds.

You will by justifiable, however, in asking, if by every stroke of thunder some terrestrial body is affected? We see, in fact, that it very rarely strikes buildings, or the human body; but we know, at the same time, that trees are frequently affected by it, and that many thunder-strokes are discharged into the earth and into the water. I believe, however, it might be maintained, that a great many do not descend so low, and that the electricity of the clouds is very fre

quently discharged into the air or atmosphere.

The small opening of the pores of the air no longer opposes any obstruction to it, when vapours or rain have rendered it sufficiently humid; for then, we know, the pores open.

It may very possibly happen, in this case, that the superfluous ether of the clouds should be discharged simply into the air; and when this takes place, the strokes are neither so violent, nor accompanied with so great a noise, as when the thunder bursts on the earth, when a much greater extent of atmosphere is put in agitation.

CRITICISM ON KLOPSTOCK'S

MESSIAH.

A COMPLETE translation of Klopstock's Messiah into English is devoutly to be wished. It may probably be expected from the hand of SIR HEABERT CROFT. He projects a prose-translation line for line, and has enjoyed so much of the author's acquaintance as occasionally to have consulted him about the meaning of those obscurer passages, which even Germans interpret with faultering. Such a version would not however preclude the wish for a metrical, polished, and less anxiously verbal translation: but I cannot in recommending to the future translator, the adoption of five-foot couplets, or heroic verse, as our most customary metre is called. So much English poetry has been written, since Dryden, in this form, that all possible structures of line are familar, and all sources of variation exhausted; every cadence is an echo, every pause expected, every rhyme foreseen. It bestows therefore, even on novelty of thought, a flat featureless mein, an insipid treacly sameness, a terse quotidian triviality, very unfavourable to impression, and wholly impervious to peculiar and characteristic sallics of

genius and originality. The use of heroic verse, for rendering the work of a mannerist, is like adding to wine milk, which turns hock or sherris into the same undistinguishable posset. How much more of variety there is in the Homer of Cowper, or in the Tasso of Fairfax, than in the couplets of Pope, and Hoole. Had Macpherson versified all Ossian, like the specimen in his preface, would he have detained to the end our attention so delightfully? To a majestic simplicity of style, to the sublime of thought only, heroic verse seems peculiar→ ly fatal....consult the rhyme book of Job....it is more insufferable than the Alexandrines of a French tragedy.

The very metre employed in the original Messiah is no less adaptable to the other Gothic dialacts than the German. In all of them stress makes quantity. An emphatic syllable is long; an unemphatic syllable, short. The scanher has to consider neither the articulation of the vowels, nor the position of the consonants; two accented syllables form his spondees; one accented and two unaccented, his dactyls. With such feet Klopstock composes Hexame ters, carefully putting a dactyl in the fifth place, unless a peculiar heaviness of cadence is requisite; and indulging frequently in the licentious substitution of trochees to spondees, not only the sixth place, as was common among the ancients, but in any other. This form of line is usually fluent to rapidity: it invites and favours a frequent use of compound words, which abound in Klopstock, and which, like every peculiarity of a great master of song, ought in a version carefully to be retained. Such compounds, especially when they consist of two monosyllables, would read harsh in English, is rhymed, or even in blank verse; and would appear to clog the iambic step with spondaic ponderosity. Hexameter is therefere better adapted than the metres in use to transfer with faithfulness

the manner of this writer. Take the passage already produced in rhyme, as a specimen.

So at the midnight hour draws nigh to the slumbering city Pestilence. Couch'd on his broadspread wings lurks under the rampart Death, bale-breathing. As yet unalarmed are the peaceable dwellers; Close to his nghtly-lamp the sage yet watches; and high friends Over wine not unhallow'd, in shelter of odorous bowers,

Talk of the soul and of friendship, and weigh their immortal duration. But too soon shall frightful Death, in a day of affliction, Pouncing, over them spread; in a day of moaning and anguish.... When with wringing of hands the bride for the bridegroom loud wails; When, now of all her chlidren bereft, the desperate mother

Furious curses the day on which she bore, and was born....when

Weary with hollower eye, amid the

carcases totter

Even the buriers....till the sent Death

angel, descending, Thoughtful, on thunder-clouds, beholds all lonesome and silent, Gazes the wide desolation, and long broods over the graves, fixt.

Perhaps some other writer will throw this fine picture into blank verse so well, as to convince the public, that the beauties of Klopstock can be naturalized without strangeness, and his peculiarities retained without affectation; that quaintness, the unavoidable companion of neologism, is as needless to genius, as hostile to grace; the hexameter, until it is familiar, must repel, and, when it is familiar, may annoy; that it wants a musical orderliness of sound; and that its cantering capricious movement opposes the grave march of solemn majesty, and better suits the ordinary scenery of Theocritus than the empyreal visions of Klopstock.

Yet these considerations can all be enfeebled. The unusual in metre, as in style, must appear strange,

VOL. I....NO. VI.

affected or quaint at first, but with each successive act of attention this impression by its very nature diminishes; it arising solely from want of habit. When the latent utility and adequate purpose of innovation comes at length to be discerned, the peculiarity commonly affords an additional zest. The employment of hexameters would obey this general law. Use would render their cadence soothing. All supposed association between metre and matter is in a great degree arbitrary, and is commonly accidental. The first classical and popular work produced in a given measure decides the reputedly appropriate expression of that measure. Double rhymes, which are thought to have a ludicrous effect in English, are in every other modern language essential for sublime composition. sed for elegiac, if Shenstone, BeatAnapastic metre would have pasnot been interrupted in the use of it tie, and the plaintive poets, had by the author of the election-ball. Il Penseroso and Hudibras scan alike: and hexameters may again, as of old, serve both for an Iliad and a Margites. In short, the matter not the form, constitutes the essence of a work of literary art; and where the matter is fine, the form will soon be supposed to have contributed to its spirit, and to its beauty. The adoption of hexameter would afford that sort of delight which arises from the contemplation of difficulty overcome. would necessarily introduce many novelties of style; and variety is the grand recipe of gratification. It would banish, from metrical reasons, half the established phrases and hacknied combinations of the rhymer's dictionary. It would arouse the industry of the composers, who, not finding a ready made acquaintance of substantives and epithets well paired and rythmically drilled, would have to contrive fresh unions, and would often accomplish happier matches. While some withering words would drop from the foliaceous tree of our lan

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