not permitting me to read
any thing which requires a long and undisturbed attention, I am not able
to give you the character of this work from my own examination. It has
been received with great approbation in Europe. In Italy, the works of
Spallanzani on Digestion and Generation are valuable. Though, perhaps,
too minute, and therefore tedious, he has developed some useful truths,
and his book is well worth attention; it is in four volumes, octavo.
Clavigero, an Italian also, who has resided thirty-six years in Mexico,
has given us a History of that country, which certainly merits more
respect than any other work on the same subject. He corrects many errors
of Dr. Robertson; and though sound philosophy will disapprove many of
his ideas, we must still consider it as an useful work, and assuredly
the best we possess on the same subject. It is in four thin volumes,
small quarto. De la Lande has not yet published a fifth volume.

The chemical dispute about the conversion and reconversion of air and
water, continues still undecided. Arguments and authorities are so
balanced, that we may still safely believe, as our fathers did before
us, that these principles are distinct. A schism of another kind has
taken place among the chemists. A particular set of them here have
undertaken to remodel all the terms of the science, and to give to every
substance a new name, the composition, and especially the termination of
which, shall define the relation in which it stands to other substances
of the same family. But the science seems too much in its infancy as
yet, for this reformation; because, in fact, the reformation of this
year must be reformed again the next year, and so on, changing the names
of substances as often as new experiments develope properties in them
undiscovered before. The new nomenclature has, accordingly, been already
proved to need numerous and important reformations. Probably it will
not prevail. It is espoused by the minority only here, and by very few,
indeed, of the foreign chemists. It is particularly rejected in England.

In the arts, I think two of our countrymen have presented the most
important inventions. Mr. Paine, the author of 'Common Sense,' has
invented an iron bridge, which promises to be cheaper by a great deal
than stone, and to admit of a much greater arch. He supposes it may be
ventured for an arch of five hundred feet. He has obtained a patent for
it in England, and is now executing the first