wood had a perfume peculiarly agreeable to their deities.

According to Sir Ifaac Newton's theory, the rainbow is formed by the rays of the fun being refracted by the drops of falling rain or mist, and thence reflected to the fpectator's eye.

All the colours of the rainbow may be produced by making the rays of the fun pass through a prifm.

Rainbows fometimes appear by night in the moonshine. The lunar rainbow is formed exactly in the fame manner as the folar, by the bright beams of the moon ftriking upon the bofom of a

shower.

A lucid ring, called an halo, is sometimes feen diffused round the moon. As this always appears in a rimy or frofty feason, we may suppose it occafioned by the refraction of light on the frozen particles of the air.

С НА Р.

CHA P. CX.

OF THE KING, AND BRITISH CONSTITUTION.

HE fupreme executive power of Great Bri

THE

tain and Ireland, is vefted by our conftitution in a fingle perfon, king or queen; for it is indifferent to which fex the crown defcends. The perfon intitled to it, whether male or female, is immediately intrufted with all the enfigns, rights, and prerogatives of fovereign power.

The grand fundamental maxim, upon which the right of fucceffion to the throne of these kingdoms depends, is; "That the crown, by common law and conftitutional cuftom, is hereditary; and this in a manner peculiar to itself; but that the right of inheritance may from time to time be changed, or limited by act of parliament:" under which limitations, the crown ftill continues hereditary.

That the young reader may enter more clearly into the deduction of the royal fucceffion, by its being transferred from the houfe of Tudor to that of Stuart, it may be proper to inform him, that on the death of queen Elizabeth, without iffue, it be came neceffary to recur to the other iffue of her grandfather Henry VII. by Elizabeth of York his

queen;

queen; whofe eldest daughter Margaret, having married James IV. king of Scotland, king James the Sixth of Scotland, and of England the First, was the lineal defcendant from that alliance. So that in his perfon, as clearly as in Henry VIII. centred all the claims of the different competitors, from the Norman invasion downward; he being indifputably the lineal heir of William I. And, what is ftill more remarkable, in his perfon alfo centred the right of the Saxon monarchs, which had been fufpended from the Norman invafion till his acceffion. For Margaret, the fifter of Edgar Atheling, daughter of Edward the Outlaw, and granddaughter of king Edmund Ironfide, was the perfon in whom the hereditary right of the Saxon kings, fuppofing it not abolished by the conqueft, refided. She married Malcolm III. king of Scotland; and Henry II. by a descent from Matilda their daughter, is generally called the reftorer of the Saxon line. But it must be remembered, that Malcolm, by his Saxon queen, had fons as well as daughters; and that the royal family of Scotland, from that time downward, were the offspring of Malcolm and Margaret. Of this royal family king James I. was the direct and lineal defcendant; and therefore united in his perfon every poffible claim by hereditary right to the English as well as Scottish throne,

being the heir both of Egbert and William the Norman.

At the revolution in 1688, the convention of eftates, or reprefentative body of the nation, declared that the mifconduct of king James II. amounted to an abdication of the government, and that the throne was thereby vacant.

In confequence of this vacancy, and from a regard to the ancient line, the convention appointed the next protestant heirs of the blood royal of king Charles I. to fill the vacant throne, in the old order of fucceffion; with a temporary exception, or preference, to the person of William III.

On the impending failure of the protestant line of king Charles I. (whereby the throne might again have become vacant) the king and parliament extended the fettlement of the crown to the protestant line of king James I. viz. to the princess Sophia of Hanover, and the heirs of her body, being proteftants; and she is now the common ftock, from whom the heirs of the crown must descend.

The true ground and principle, upon which the revolution proceeded, was entirely a new cafe in politics, which had never before happened in our history; the abdication of the reigning monarch, and the vacancy of the throne thereupon. It was not a new limitation of the crown, by the king N and

and both houfes of parliament. It was the act of the nation alone, upon a conviction that there was no king in being. For in a full affembly of the Fords and commons, met in convention, upon the fuppofition of this vacancy, both houses came to this refolution; "That king James II. having endeavoured to fubvert the constitution of the kingdom, by breaking the original contract between king and people; and by the advice of Jefuits, and other wicked perfons, having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of this kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby vacant." Thus ended at once, by this fudden and unexpected revolution, the old line of fucceffion, which from the Norman invasion had lasted above 600 years, and from the union of the Saxon heptarchy in king Egbert, almoft 900.

Though in fome points the revolution was not fo perfect as might have been wifhed, yet from thence a new æra commenced, in which the bounds of prerogative and liberty have been better defined, the principles of government more thoroughly examined and understood, and the rights of the subject more explicitly guarded by legal provifions, than in any other period of the English hiftory. In particular, it is worthy obfervation, that the con

vention,