General Chronicle ld for the Proprietors, by Edmund Lloyd Harleys Cavendish Sq& Gale & Curtis Paternoster Row. PREFACE ΤΟ THE THIRD VOLUME. Is pursuit of the design adopted for this Magazine, of illustrating, by popular descriptions and elegant and accurate engravings, the Greek and Roman Marbles, other contents of the collection in the British Yum; there have been published, in the course of the present volume, not only the Illustrations of the Fourth Room, but a set of finished engravings, representing the PORTLAND VASE, which the generosity of its noble owner has very recently placed in the Gallery of Antiquities, for public inspection. Along with the engravings, havé also been given an account of some of the proposed explications of the basso-relievos, and particularly the ingenious and beautiful one by Dr. Darwin. In our succeeding volume, some addenda to the description will close our account of this exquisite production of art, which, as is justly observed by a late eminent artist, has engaged the attention, and exercised the ingenuity, of the greatest antiquaries in Europe; more, perhaps, than any other monument of late discovery.' Gen. Chron. Vol. 3. α İn In the natural world, the autumn and winter of the year 1811 have been distinguished by the successive apparition of no less than two Comets. Of these, the first and largest has been long and conspicuously visible; and on this occasion, beside collecting such contemporary observations as have been offered, we have been induced to re-print a tract of the year 1619, written by Dr. Bainbridge, on the subject of the preceding year. This tract has an interest, as having been written before the time of NEWTON, and may recommend itself to some readers by its old spelling and old conceits: we are also of opinion, that to those who are not intimate with astronomical studies, it is capable of affording more information than such readers can receive from many modern writings. In this view, we particularly recommend attention to the author's infallible demon stration by parallax.'. In the moral world, and in our domestic history, a very important feature, within the same period, has been the success of the efforts of a few most meritorious individuals, who have roused the country to a sense of the danger with which it is threatened by a system of education put into practice for the infant poor, such as is, of all other engines, the most capable of overthrowing that ecclesiastical establishment which forms |