Let not the great land-owners deceive themselves; they may be Whigs, and they may have found that the church opposed them, though we believe that by far the majority of the clergy, and those the most influential, took no active part in the late elections, and it is well known that the dissenters, as a body, gave them their support. Had they been radicals, these latter would have served them still better; but let them be assured of this, that sooner or later, their cause and that of the establishment must be the same; that in breaking that establishment up, they may gain a short-lived, a very short-lived, triumph; and that when they awake from their paroxysm they will discover the staff of their strength to be gone; that whilst they remember they are Whigs, they forget, what circumstances will soon restore to their memory, that they are lords and squires too. Would that the class to whom we have been offering these remarks were as much alive to the support they derive from the establishment as are those who wish them worst! Imperfections it may have; what earthly thing is without them?-It is not, however, its imperfections but its virtues that now mark it out for the spoiler, whatever he may pretend. It maintains order; this is its offence, not to be forgiven-and it must fall-delenda est Carthago. Let the friends of order only learn their lesson from its foes; conclude, that what is worth an assault so furious, is worth a defence as obstinate— and the church is safe.

We cannot close this paper without expressing a hope that our observations will not be misconstrued. We should not come forward to recommend the Established Church to the care and protection of influential persons amongst us, merely on the score of its services to rank and property, if that were all. Its claims are of a far higher nature than this. It has succeeded in spreading abroad much genuine, but unobtrusive piety. It has stimulated the discharge of those numberless duties of imperfect obligation, which, though beyond the reach of the law, are to the social system as the very breath of its nostrils. It has upheld both against false philosophy and wild fanaticism, for these many ages, the faith as it was delivered unto the saints. It has combined sound learning with pastoral activity. It has gathered what was good from Papist and from Puritan, and cast away what was bad in both. It has secured for religion an effectual hearing in the palace as well as in the peasant's hut. It has been a fountain of alms to the people-of light to the colonies. And it has furnished a multitude of saints, after whose blessed example we may safely live and die. But still it is true, that whilst it has directly ministered to these high and holy purposes, it has promoted other ends, subordinate indeed,-yet considerable.

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ART. XI.-1. Reports on the Navigation of the Euphrates. Submitted to Government by Captain Chesney, of the Royal Artillery. London. 1833.

2. An Account of Steam-Vessels, and of Proceedings connected with Steam-Navigation in British India. Compiled by G. A. Prinsep. Calcutta.

1830.

3. Eastern and Egyptian Scenery, Ruins, &c., illustrative of a Journey from India to Europe; with Remarks on the Advantages and Practicability of Steam-Navigation from England to India. By Captain C. F. Head.

A

LTHOUGH the steam-engine be now perhaps as perfect as it ever can be, the management and application of steam to mechanical purposes are still capable of very great improvement. The whole machinery of a steam-vessel, for instance, is as yet rude, cumbersome, and expensive, liable to constant derangement and frequent accidents, both within the ship and without-that is to say, in the engines and boilers, and in the paddle-wheels. Nor is there much hope that, while steam is employed as the moving power, any very considerable improvement in these respects will be effected-any important diminution of space, or of coals, or of expenses for wear and tear.

The late Sir Humphry Davy, and, since his time, Mr. Faraday, and still more recently Mr. Brunel, made several experiments with the view of applying carbonic acid gas as a mechanical agent, in place of steam, by the alternate condensation of the gaseous into the liquid state, and vice versâ. Mr. Brunel contrived a very beautiful apparatus, so constructed as to prevent the danger which was always dreaded from experiments with this gas; but after a laborious investigation of some years, the sanguine hopes he had entertained of success ended in disappointment. The transmutation was easily effected, but he had the mortification to discover that this gas assumed an intermediate form between the liquid and the gaseous state, in which all its energy seemed to be neutralized. Had it succeeded, the application of its power would have been one of the most important discoveries of the age. In propelling steam-vessels, it would have been invaluable, by effecting a saving of more than two-thirds of the space at present occupied in the vessel, two-thirds of the expense of the steam-engine, and nearly the whole of the fuel.*

We

* The Americans, in their river-navigation, have far surpassed us, at least in speed, having, by their own statements, gone sixteen to eighteen miles an hour fairly through the water, and certainly not less than thirteen on the Hudson; but their machinery is infinitely inferior to ours, and the loss of life, resulting from its imperfect workmanship and the employment of the high-pressure engines, has been enormous. But the Americans are not satisfied with superiority in point of speed, to which they are

We may here notice an incidental discovery, of very recent date, and of great importance to canal navigation. Desirable as it was to obtain speed, it was soon found that steam was inapplicable for that purpose on canals, as the paddle-wheels, however fitted to work above or below the surface, raised a wave which destroyed the banks the same injurious effect, though in a less degree, took place if the speed of the tracking-horse was accelerated to five miles an hour; the pace is therefore usually kept down to four miles, or under, and even then a wave accumulates at the bow of the vessel, to the height of from one to two feet, and the resistance thereby occasioned is found to distress the horses in their endeavours to overcome it. The undulation occasioned by this wave is stated to be perceptible at a mile's distance a-head of a slow-going coal barge. A gentleman of the name of Houstoun, neither theorist nor engineer, discovered, by mere accident, a complete remedy, not only for this obstruction to the speed of the canal-boats, but against the injury done to the banks. He happened to whip his horse, attached to a gig-built boat on the Paisley canal, to a speed of eight or ten miles an hour, at first starting, and observed that the animal was able to sustain that speed without difficulty; that the water continued smooth; that no wave rose up at the bowno ripple on the banks.

This experiment, contrary as it was to the theory of the resistance which bodies floating in fluids meet with, and which every engineer believed to be in the ratio of the square of the velocity, was not lost on the proprietors of the Paisley canal. Their long and narrow boats, with spoon-shaped bottoms, and light draught of water, capable each of carrying a hundred passengers, with their baggage and other small parcels, have for the last two years passed several times a day between Glasgow and Paisley, a distance of twelve miles, in one hour and a quarter, with ease to the horses, the passengers paying a fare at the rate of three farthings a mile, just half the rate of travelling in the Liverpool rail-road coaches. The proprietors of English canals have at length, somewhat tardily, taken it up, and we understand it either is, or will

fairly entitled; they have the modesty to stretch their pretensions even to the invention of the steam-boat. Their Fulton, of whom they so much boast, received his notions on the subject from Lord Stanhope in England, and Miller and Symington in Scotland. The merit, however, of the discovery is due to none of them, but to an humble individual of the name of Jonathan Hulls. The late Mr. John Rennie said- Don't talk of Fulton, or Miller of Dalswinton, or Lord Stanhope, as the inventors of the steam-vessel: Jonathan Hulls, and he only, was the inventor. Look at the print in his little book, published in 1737, entitled " Description and Draught of a new-invented Machine for carrying Vessels or Ships out of or into any Harbour, Port, or River, against Wind and Tide, or in a Calm," and in it recognise at once the steam-boat, by its paddle-wheels, its smoking chimney, and the tow-rope from her stern, to the two-decker she is dragging.'

soon

soon be, in full operation on the Grand Junction Canal, to the great dismay of the projectors of the London and Birmingham rail-road.

But to our present purpose-the communication with our Indian establishments by means of steam-navigation. It is a subject which, like many others hastily taken up, and without due investigation, is calculated to raise sanguine and unreasonable expectations, especially among those who are interested in its success, and who hope to reap the benefit without contributing to its expense. It appears indeed, from the newspapers, that a considerable clamour has been raised against the directors of the East India Company, the Board of Control, and the Admiralty, by certain merchants of London and Liverpool, for their tardiness or unwillingness to establish at once a regular steam-conveyance to and from our possessions in India. What the Admiralty has to do with it, we have yet to be informed; and this vituperation, under the present uncertain circumstances of the East India Company, is, at all events, premature.

But the truth is, that neither the India Board nor the Company have been unwilling or tardy to take into consideration, and to direct the necessary inquiries into, the practicability of establishing the communication in question: the latter have been in correspondence on the subject with the Indian authorities since the year 1829, and encouraged experiments in India, as appears from Mr. Prinsep's book, so far back as the year 1824. The estimates, however, which they have received from India, of the expense required for opening and keeping up a communication of this kind, are alarming.

We are not insensible,' they say in a letter to the Governor at Bombay, to the advantages of a rapid communication with India, and of the importance of encouraging the application of steam to that purpose. We are also disposed to believe that a steam-communication by the Red Sea-and still more, if it should be found practicable, by the Persian Gulf and the River Euphrates-would open the way to other improvements, and would ultimately redound to the benefit of this country, as well as of India; and if our finances were in a flourishing state, we might possibly feel it a duty to incur even the enormous outlay specified. But in the present condition of our resources, we cannot think the probable difference of time, in the mere transmission of letters, a sufficient justification of this. At the same time, we deem the subject too important to be lost sight of or hastily dismissed; we shall therefore not fail to carry on inquiries into the practicability of effecting the end in view, at a reasonable expense. We desire that you will also do so, &c.'

We too have directed our attention to this important subject, and hope to be able to give to the Directors some more correct

information

information than they appear as yet to possess, with regard to the comparative facilities and expenses of the two routes they here allude to; and we shall begin with that by the Euphrates, as being the least known, and because we have now before us everything necessary for our purpose, detailed in the able and minute survey of that river by Captain Chesney, who, at a considerable hazard of life, persevered in accomplishing his object, and has happily returned home to communicate the result of his labours in a report.

Captain Chesney sets out by observing that 'the great river' of Scripture, linked as it is with the earliest times and the greatest events in the history of the world, and the ancient channel of extensive commercial intercourse, 'is not likely to disappoint any moderate expectations which may have been formed of its importance and utility.' In the upper part of its course, it struggles in a tortuous channel through high hills, forcing its way over a pebbly or rocky bed, at the rate of two to four and a half miles an hour, according to the season of the year and the different localities, carrying with it a considerable body of water, but without any cataracts, though the stream meets with frequent obstructions (above and a little below Anna) by a rocky bottom, and is shallow enough in places to allow camels to pass in the autumn, the water then rising to their bellies, or about four feet and a half. This portion of the river is compared with the scenery on the Rhine below Schaffhausen; its bank is covered thickly with high brushwood, interspersed with timber of moderate size. It is here studded with a succession of long narrow islands, some of them thickly wooded, and others cultivated; and on several of these are moderate-sized towns or villages. The banks of the river are well peopled, not only with Bedouin Arabs in tents, of whom there are many thousands, but also with permanent residents in houses of brick, mud, stone, and reeds. The following passage carries us back to a remote antiquity, when a civilized society crowded the banks of the Euphrates.

'The scenery above Hit (in itself very picturesque) is greatly heightened, as one is carried along the current, by the frequent recurrence at very short intervals of ancient irrigating aqueducts, which, owing to the windings, appear in every variety of position, from the foreground to the distant part of the landscape; these beautiful specimens of art and durability are attributed by the Arabs to the times of the ignorant, meaning the Persians when fire-worshippers. They literally cover both banks, and prove that the borders. of the Euphrates were once thickly inhabited by a people far advanced in the application of hydraulics. These speaking monuments have, as may be supposed, suffered in various degrees, and the greater portion are now in ruins; but some have been repaired, and kept

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