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234 Annual Register

the whole space between them exactly as a musical chord is divided, in order to found the several notes and half notes of an octave. The mixture of all these differently coloured rays, in the proportion in which they cover the space, so divided, makes a white, and the absence of all light is blackness. 

The degree in which these differently-coloured rays are separated from one another, is not in proportion to the mean refractive power of the medium, but depends upon the peculiar constitution of the substance by which they are refracted. The dispersing power of glass, into the composition of which lead enters, is great in proportion to the mean refraction; and it is little in the proportion to it in that glass in the composition of which there is much alkaline salt. 

Not only have the different rays of light these different properties with respect to bodies, so as to be more or less refracted, or dispersed by them; but the different sides of the same ray have different properties; for they are differently affected according to the sides with which they are presented to island crystal. With the same degree of incidence, they are refracted in different angles.

Rays of light are not reflected or refracted by impinging on the solid parts of bodies, but by virtue of a power which extends to some distance from the surface. They are refracted by a power of attraction, and reflected by a power of repulsion. 

At the first surface of any body, rays of all kinds are promiscuously reflected or transmitted; but if the next surface be very near to it, so that their powers of attraction and repulsion interfere, the rays are affected in such a manner, that, in some particular places, those of one colour only are reflected, and those of another colour, chiefly, are transmitted; and those places occur alternatively for rays of each of the colours, in passing from thinnet to the thickest parts of the medium; so that several series, or orders of colours will be visible on the surface of the same thin transparent body. 

When the rays of light pass near to any body, so as to come within the sphere of its attraction or repulsion, an inflection, that is a partial refraction or reflection, of all the rays takes place; all the kinds being bent either towards, or from the body; and these powers affecting some rays more than others, within the same distance, they are, by this means, also, separated from one another: so that coloured streaks appear both within the shadow, and on the outside of it. The red is inflected at the greatest distance from all bodies. There are several distances at which the different rays are differently affected by the powers that are lodged at the surfaces of the bodies, to which they make a near approach, so that different orders of colours are made by rays which come within different distances from the bodies. Three of these orders have been observed. 

Part of the light which falls upon bodies is retained within them, and then proceeds no farther. This is more especially the case in respect to light falling with certain degrees of obliquity on the surfaces of bodies. Part of this light is retained so loosely by some kinds of bodies, that a very small degree of heat makes them emit it again; but the more heat is applied to them, the sooner is the light by have imbibed expelled.

Not only do bodies become luminous when they are heated to such a degree that their texture is entirely destroyed by it, and their near approach gives us the sensation of intense burning; but light is also emitted by bodies which are not in the least sensibly hot. This has been observed with respect to many substances tending to putrefaction, and also in phosphorus."

Lectures on the Feudal and English Laws. By the late Francis Stoughton Sullivan, L.L.D.

Until our own times, the science of our common law lay a vas and confused heap, from whence, with infinite labour and difficulty, the practitioner at the bar only, extracted a dry unpleasing knowledge, which, though it might enable hm to raise his fortune, tended but little to enlarge his mind; few others attempted a study, which, separated from the interests of a profession, promised so little rational, and so little liberal interment. 

Dr. Sullivan, though he has  not the hour of being the first who had led his countrymen though liberal and philosophic road to the study of the law of his country, which undoubtedly is his palm of Judge Blackstone, had the no small merit of seconding that idea, and as far as he has gone, of completing it.

The  historical method, which is agreeable even in treating abstract sciences, becomes almost necessary, in treating a science which belongs wholly to political society and civil life. The true reason of all laww, is best discovered where the principles of all human conduct are only found, in the interest and passions of mankind. 

We shall not pretend to decide which is preferable, Dr. Blackston's mode of beginning with the law of persons' or our authors with the law of things: it does not, in fact, seem to us material; neither the law of things can be comprehneded by one totally ignorant of the law of persons, nor that of persons, by one entirely ignorant in the law of things; some decisions and general ideas of both must be had, before either can be the just object of study; and those once had, we humbly conceive it to be very immaterial which of the two roads is travelled first. 

The nature of our work admits only of a general account, not of the particular criticism; we therefore simply present the reader with such works as we think worthy of his attention. The extraction we shall made from this work, shall be that lecture, which, treating of the parliaments of England and Ireland, naturally makes a discussion on Poyning's law; that link, be it of gold or iron, still that great link of English and Irish Government. 

"The house of commons growing daily in consequence, and the forage tenants having got the fame privilege of voting for the knights of the shire as the military ones, it naturally followed, that every free person was ambitious of tendering his vote, and thereby of claiming a share in the legislature of his country. The number of persons many of them indigent, reporting to such elections, introduced many incon-