470 
the geography of the world. It may be 
- hoped that moral as well as intellectual 
justness, that cosmopolitical equity, would 
be promoted by this change; that we 
should view with less of envy, of irrita- 
tion, and of hostility, the freaks of an Eu- 
_ropean conqueror, if his acquisitions were 
reduced to their true scale; and that we 
should sympathize more with the sufferers 
from East or West Indian oppression, if 
we beheld the full extent of-the calamity. 
SCHOOL OF SAXONS. 
Anastasius, in his Life of pope Leo ITI. 
mentions that there was already, in the 
year 800, a schola Saxonum at Rome. 
Young Englishmen were probably sent for 
from Italy to be there brought up.as mis- 
sionaries. 
‘The Saxon seems earlier to have been 
a literary language than the Frankish; 
for Alcwin,in his grammar, makes the 
Saxon. the teacher, and the Frank the 
learner. 
But where was this Saxon tongue ver- 
nacuiar? Our missionaries, and travelled 
scholars, wrote it with an Italian alpha- 
bet, as taught at Rome: but no English 
province retains a trace of the dialect. 
SUMMER COOKERY. 
A gentleman who-was lately at Paris, 
Mentions that some experiments had 
been tried at Marseilles, to ascertain the 
practicability of applying the sun’s rays for 
culinary purposes. A number of mirrors 
were so placed in a frame, shaped like 
the section of a concave sphere, as to fling 
intense reflected light on the bottom and 
side of a black kettle. The water within 
Original Poetry. 
| [Déc. 1, 
was raised to the boiling point, and, with @ 
little attention to shift the situation of 
the circle of mirrors, was kept hot for a 
long time. Coffee and soup were thus 
boiled sufficiently. It is hoped that inthe 
summer season this instrument will su- 
persede the use of fuel enough to indem-~ 
nify the expence of purchase. This. is, 
in fact, the machine on a reduced scale 
with which Archimedes burnt the fleet of 
Marcellus. 
OTHER. 
Your correspondent, Scrutator,enquires 
(vol. xxi., p. 112,) why the adverb than 
follows the adjective other. Other is a 
comparative, of which the proper positive 
form is obsolete: but in Otfried odo, in 
Swedish eda, in Anglo-Saxon othe, and in 
Ulphilas aitha, are stillfound. This word 
oth is used in composition by the Anglo- 
Saxon writers, where we now use the pres 
position out; so that other is a different 
form of writing outer: the mer and the 
outer part, the inner and the other part, 
would be equivalent phrases. 
jects, that which engages less attention, is 
by a natural metaphor, called the outmost, 
or the other. Grammarians should term 
this word an adjective, and should record 
its comparison thus: 
Positive, \ «eee 
Comparative,’ . » Other. 
Superlative, . . . .Outmost 
The real anomaly in the use of this 
word.consists, as Johnson has observed, in 
giving it a plural form, the others, instead 
of the other. 
ORIGINAL POETRY. 
= ; 
TO THE COMET, 
Now so beauti ully conspicuous. 
jLLUSTRIOUS Visitant!'—And art theu 
come . 
From paths where faintly gleams our polar 
ray ; . 
Some image of those glories to convey 
Awaiting man in his eternal home? 
Where neither storms approach, nor clouds, 
nor gloom 5 
But smiles, invested with unfading day, 
The expanse of purest ether; bright as 
play _ . 
The spleadors woven in Heaven's radiant 
loom. 
Of thy soft-beaming train! we think not 
now, 
As Superstition erst, with troubled brow ; 
4 
Nor view thee, with trariscendant beauty 
endued, ; 
Pestilence portending, famine, blood: 
Bout rather deem an orb so fair as thou 
To us, and other worlds, dispenses vitat 
good.* 
Oct.. 23, 1807. C. Lorrr. 
ee 
* Agreeably to the sublime suggestion of 
Newton : that comets returning in their orbits, 
recruit the atmosphere of our earth, and of 
other planets near which they pass. That 
they are regularly xeturning planets, wonder- 
fully adjusted in their orbits, seems not only 
proved by the comet of 1682 returning in 
1759, as predicted by Halley; but a compa- 
rison of that of 1607 with that of 1797, a 
period of one hundred and ninety years, will 
support, it is apprehended, by farther con- 
firmation, this bedgeiful theory. 
Of two ob- . 
‘To% 
—- 
