the Earl of Bute, at that time a favorite of little fame; but who has since merited a very uncommon reputation, and who is supposed to execute a most honourable office with great ability. He had been a lord of the bed-chamber to the late prince; has a good person, fine legs, and a theatrical air of the greatest importance. There is an extraordinary appearance of wisdom, both in his look and manner of speaking; for whether the subject be serious or trifling, he is equally pompous, slow, and sententious. Not contented with being wise, he would be thought a polite scholar, and a man of great erudition: but has the misfortune never to succeed, except with those who are exceeding ignorant: for his historical knowledge is chiefly taken from tragedies, wherein he is very deeply read; and his classical learning extends no further than a French translation.

The late Prince of Wales, who was not overnice in the choice of his ministers, used frequently to say, that Bute was a fine showy man, who would make an excellent ambassador in a court where there was no business. Such was his Royal Highness's opinion of the noble earl's political abilities; but the sagacity of the princess dowager has discovered other accomplishments, of which the prince her husband may not perhaps have been the most competent judge.'

The Princess is said to have been reputed a woman of excellent sense-by those who knew her very imperfectly. It is broadly hinted, that her chief talent lay in dissimulation; that her conduct was marked by weakness and obstinacy; and that the unbounded influence which she, in conjunction with Lord Bute, exercised over the Prince her son, was abused for the purposes of faction and intrigue. He was taught to believe, that, in the project set on foot for his marriage to the Princess of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel, it was designed to sacrifice him to the King's private interest in his Electorate; and from this time,' says Lord Waldegrave, all duty and obedience to the 'grandfather entirely ceased: for though it would have been difficult to persuade him to do that which he thought wrong, he was ready to think right whatever was prompted either by the mother or by her favorite.'

Lord Waldegrave was appointed governor to his Royal Highness towards the end of the year 1752. He found his royal pupil uncommonly full of princely prejudices, contracted in the nursery, and improved by the society of bed-chamber "women and pages of the back-stairs.'

As a rigid system of education seemed quite impracticable, the best which could be hoped for was, to give him true notions of common things; to instruct him by conversation, rather than by books; and sometimes, under the disguise of amusement, to entice him to the pursuit of more serious studies. The next point I laboured, was, to preserve harmony and union in the royal family......The princess and her son seemed fully satisfied with my zeal, diligence, and faithful services; and I was treated with so much civility, that I thought

myself almost a favorite. This continued three ree years. till the time that they changed their plan, and began by their actions, without directly avowing it, to set the King at defiance.'

* His Lordship's observation of his pupil's character, so far as developed at the age of twenty, led hiin to pronounce his talents respectable, though not excellent; his temper equable, but liable to fits of sullenness; his integrity strict; and his religion free from hypocrisy.

• He has spirit, but not of the active kind; and does not want resolution, but it is mixed with too much obstinacy. He has great command of his passions, and will seldom do wrong, except when he mistakes wrong for right; but as often as this shall happen, it will be difficult to undeceive him, because he is uncommonly indolent, and has strong prejudices.'

By indolence, his Lordship must have meant exclusively, indisposition to mental application, as the King was active in his habits, and passionately fond of violent exercise. His preference of conversation to books, is well known; and his pertinacity in respect to the American war, the Slave Trade, and the laws respecting the Catholics, affords a striking comment on the latter part of the representation. In the first two cases, he unquestionably mistook wrong for right, but he was at last undeceived: in the last, his prejudices and his integrity were invincible, and we are not quite sure that he was in the wrong.

For some of his late Majesty's prejudices, the present Memoir renders it very easy to account. One is almost led to wonder that his character should have exhibited no more prominently than it did, the marks of a neglected education and a perverting influence. The conduct of the Duke of Newcastle must have tended to disgust him most heartily with the Whigs, who subinitted to such a leader and representative; and with the example of his grandfather before him, we cannot blame the young monarch for the determination which he is said to have formed, in pursuance of the emphatic and reiterated advice of his mother, to be king; in other words, to assert his prerogative in the choice of his own ministers. There were those about him who would point out, if he failed himself to perceive it, that the overthrow of the Pelham faction, with which, unfortunately, the Whig in. terest had become too closely identified, was the first step towards the emancipation of the prerogative. He might learn it from that very minister who afterwards over-awed the throne, not by his intrigues, but by his eloquence and popular influence, aud in whose person, the monarch found himself involved in a less legitimate contention, not with the Aristocrasy, but with the nation. The present Memoir forms a good introduction to the history of those cabinet revolutions which so quickly succeeded each other in the beginning of the late reign. Far from being the effect of vacillation, it is very evident that they proceeded from a fixed resolution on the part of the King; and that if they indicated any deficiency of wisdom, they betrayed no want of firmness.

The reflections with which Lord Waldegrave closes his Memoir, are ingenuous and impressively instructive.

• I have now finished my relation of all the material transactions wherein I was immediately concerned; and though I can never forget my obligations to the kindest of masters, I have been too long behind the scenes, I have had too near a view of the machinery of a court, to envy any man either the power of a minister, or the favor of princes.

The constant anxiety, and frequent mortifications, which accompany ministerial employments, are tolerably well understood; but the world is totally unacquainted with the situation of those whom fortune has selected to be the constant attendants and companions of royalty, who partake of its domestic amusements and social happi

ness.

• But I must not lift up the veil; and shall only add, that no man can have a clear conception how great personages pass their leisure hours, who has not been a prince's governor, or a king's favorite."

Art. III. A Geological Classification of Rocks, with descriptive Synopses of the Species and Varieties, comprising the Elements of Practical Geology. By John Macculloch, M.D. F.R.S. F.L.S. Vice President of the Geological Society, &c. 8vo. pp. 655. London. 1821.

DR. Macculloch is not a closet philosopher. He is not contented with a cabinet of trim specimens, punctiliously classed and prettily labelled. Such dressed up miniatures of Nature's grandeur, he leaves to those who move in the by-paths of philosophy, and spin out their little day on the reputation of having amassed a fine collection, or coined a few trivial names for specimens of small value. Collectors and cabinet mineralogists can know but little of the great mineral kingdom as it exists in rocks and mountains; and they care as little for any thing connected with it, except pretty chips and rare fragments, fitted for a handsome glass-case or the neat partitions of a cabinet drawer. Dr. Macculloch has little relish for such things, but goes abroad among the sublimities of nature, and makes the mountain and the cave his home, wandering wherever he can find a rock laid bare by the elements, while he bends his mind to the study of this extensive portion of the works of God.

Geology is indeed a most delightful study. If we characterise Astronomy as the sublime, and Botany as the beautiful, it is the picturesque and the romantic of Philosophy. For the scene

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of Geological pursuit must always lie among mountains and valleys, where the tempest, the avalanche, and the volcano have bared and shattered the hardest masses; and where alternate rains and frosts crumble the solid materials of rocks, and springs and rivers wash away the fragments to deposit them again in the various stages of their course.

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In calling Geology romantic, we refer not to the tissues of wild conjecture and descriptions of unreal events, which Burnet and Buffon dignified with the name of " Theories of the Earth." Such were not science, but an exercise of fancy, an embodying of waking dreams into a beautiful, perhaps, but an improbable systein of world-making. We say that Geology is a romantic science independently of its fabulous historians, whether they relate, with Buffon, the descent of our globe from a comet, or, with some living visionaries, talk of it as a condensation of gasses, or a product of ignited calcium, barium, potassium, and other new or unknown metals.

In order to become adepts in the science, we must discard all these visions of fancy, and make, as Dr. Macculloch has done, Jaborious, extensive, and rigidly accurate comparisons between the appearances exhibited in similar and dissimilar rocks, in every country accessible to our researches, and from these infer the primary state of the infant globe itself. The study thus pursued, is, as Cuvier well remarks, a new and interesting branch of Antiquities; and, from the discussions to which it leads, respecting the original chaos, the genealogy of individual rocks, the effects of the Deluge, and the continual action of the elements in wearing down and in melting rocks, we are fully authorized, we think, to call Geology a romantic

science.

These, however, are not the points which Dr. Macculloch has here undertaken to discuss. He has limited himself to the not less laborious task of stating the preliminary facts in a systematic order; reserving for another work the inferences which may be derived from these facts, respecting the primary state of the globe, the manner of its formation, and its subsequent changes. It is, consequently, as an arrangement of Rocks, rather than as a treatise of Geology, that the work must be considered. We think, however, that with a little management, could he have spared time to curtail his descriptions and condense his style, he might, at the same expense of paper and printing, have accomplished both objects within the limits of this bulky volume. A complete treatise on Geology was, indeed, he inforins us, the original plan, but that part of his undertaking was given up, in consequence of the magnitude to which it extended. This was unfortunate both, perhaps, for the Author's reputation and for the accommodation of the purchaser;

for the two subjects have so close an affinity, and afford mutual illustrations so interesting, that it is, to say the least, injudicious to separate them. The mere study of rocks, as it is bere brought before us, is dry and revolting, apart from the inferences and discussions which belong to Geology. It is somewhat like the study of Anatomy separated from Physiology; or rather, like the conning over of a dry catalogue of bones, muscles, nerves, and blood vessels, separated from a knowledge of their functions and use. The anatomical catalogue must, indeed, be Jearned, as the catalogue of rocks must be learned; but there are few persons, we imagine, who would sit down with pleasure to such a catalogue as is here given of rocks, when it is made the ultimatum. Were there any geological work to which this might serve as an introduction, our objection would fall to the ground; but, as there is, confessedly, no work of this kind, it may not be unfair to ask, What are we to do with the elementary knowledge derived from Dr. Macculloch? Does he intend, that we should commit to memory his descriptions, and his divisions, and subdivisions, and then rest in quiet suspense till he may find leisure to publish the remainder of his ponderous book? This is certainly too much for the patience of ordinary inquirers.

We are ready to grant every indulgence to so active a philosopher as Dr. Macculloch, who cannot be supposed to have leisure both to traverse wild and extensive countries, exposed to every sort of hardship and discomfort, and to devote himself to uninterrupted study for the purpose of manufacturing a system of Geology, and a manual of its elements. But, if he had not leisure himself to condense and correct it, he ought either not to have published it at all, or to have entrusted it to some geological friend to revise.

But it is time that we should come to the arrangement itself : the defects in the execution of the work will come sufficiently often in our way as we proceed. The following is a tabular view of his system.

Gneiss.
Micaceous Schist,
Chlorite Schist.
Talcose Schist.

Hornblende Schist.

PRIMARY CLASS.

Unstratified.

Granite.

Stratified.

Actinolite Schist,
Quartz rock.
Red Sandstone.
Argillaceous Schist.
Diallage rock

Limestone.
Serpentine.

Compact Felspar.