A complete 45 page issue of "The Gentleman's Magazine" dated May, 1751. This monthly London magazine was published from 1731 until 1922, a period of almost 200 years - see history below. 

The magazine provides reports primarily from England but also from around the world on a wide variety of subjects and interests, usually including one or more engraved illustrations.(note that the map called for on the cover was incorrectly inserted by the book-binder into the issue for February - see Seller's Other Items). Wars, disasters, crimes, trials and punishments are widely reported. The monthly mortality report confirms that approximately 30% of all deaths are those of children under 2 years of age - child birth was a dangerous venture at that time - see scan

Of interest to astronomers is the detailed report that "Abbé de la Caille" has been sent to the Cape of Good Hope determine the Moon's Parallax - see scan and below. The major role of The Isle of Man in widespread smuggling and tax evasion is explained in an article entitled "Isle of Man detrimental to Great Britain" - see scan

London Theatre was obviously thriving at this time with different productions performed nightly at the prominent Drury Lane and Covent Garden facilities - see scan. In music, George Handel is reported to have played the organ for the performance of his "Messiah" at the Foundling Hospital - see scan and below

Good condition - see scans. After six or twelve months the monthly issues were usually taken by the wealthy subscriber to the bookbinder to ensure safe retention. In this case the issue has subsequently been dis-bound and some pages might be loose but attached. 

Page size 8 x 5 inches. A great and interesting resource for the historian 

The Gentleman's Magazine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Front page of The Gentleman's Magazine, May 1759

The Gentleman's Magazine was a monthly magazine[1] founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731.[2] It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term magazine (from the French magazine, meaning "storehouse") for a periodical.[3] Samuel Johnson's first regular employment as a writer was with The Gentleman's Magazine.

History

The original complete title was The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Trader's monthly intelligencer. Cave's innovation was to create a monthly digest of news and commentary on any topic the educated public might be interested in, from commodity prices to Latin poetry. It carried original content from a stable of regular contributors, as well as extensive quotations and extracts from other periodicals and books. Cave, who edited The Gentleman's Magazineunder the pen name "Sylvanus Urban", was the first to use the term magazine (meaning "storehouse") for a periodical. Contributions to the magazine frequently took the form of letters, addressed to "Mr. Urban". The iconic illustration of St. John's Gate on the front of each issue (occasionally updated over the years) depicted Cave's home, in effect, the magazine's "office".

Before the founding of The Gentleman's Magazine, there were specialised journals, but no such wide-ranging publications (although there had been attempts, such as The Gentleman's Journal, which was edited by Peter Motteux and ran from 1692 to 1694).

Samuel Johnson's first regular employment as a writer was with The Gentleman's Magazine. During a time when parliamentary reporting was banned, Johnson regularly contributed parliamentary reports as "Debates of the Senate of Magna Lilliputia". Though they reflected the positions of the participants, the words of the debates were mostly Johnson's own. The name "Columbia", a poetic name for America coined by Johnson, first appears in a 1738 weekly publication of the debates of the British Parliament in the magazine.[4][5]

The magazine's long-running motto, E pluribus unum, Latin for "Out of many, one", is thought to have inspired the use of the phrase as an unofficial motto of the United States. Motteux's The Gentleman's Journal had previously used the phrase.[6][7][8]

A skilled businessman, Edward Cave developed an extensive distribution system for The Gentleman's Magazine. It was read throughout the English-speaking world and continued to flourish through the 18th century and much of the 19th century under a series of different editors and publishers. It went into decline towards the end of the 19th century and finally ceased general publication in September 1907. However, issues consisting of four pages each were printed in very small editions between late 1907 and 1922 in order to keep the title formally "in print".

Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille
Born15 March 1713
Rumigny, France
Died21 March 1762 (aged 49)
Paris, France
CitizenshipFrench
Scientific career
FieldsAstronomy

Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille (French: [nikɔla lwi də lakaj]; 15 March 1713 – 21 March 1762),[3] formerly sometimes spelled de la Caille, was a French astronomer and geodesist who named 14 out of the 88 constellations. From 1750 to 1754, he studied the sky at the Cape of Good Hope in present-day South Africa. Lacaille observed over 10,000 stars using a refracting telescope.[4]

Biography

Born at Rumigny in the Ardennes in eastern France, he attended school in Mantes-sur-Seine (now Mantes-la-Jolie). Afterwards, he studied rhetoric and philosophy at the Collège de Lisieux and then theology at the Collège de Navarre. He was left destitute in 1731 by the death of his father, who had held a post in the household of the duchess of Vendôme. However, he was supported in his studies by the Duc de Bourbon, his father's former patron.[5]

After he graduated, he did not accept ordination as a priest but took deacon's orders, becoming an Abbé. He concentrated thereafter on science, and, through the patronage of Jacques Cassini, obtained employment, first in surveying the coast from Nantes to Bayonne, then, in 1739, in remeasuring the French meridian arc, for which he is honoured with a pyramid at Juvisy-sur-Orge. The success of this difficult operation, which occupied two years, and achieved the correction of the anomalous result published by Jacques Cassini in 1718, was mainly due to Lacaille's industry and skill. He was rewarded by admission to the Royal Academy of Sciences and appointment as Professor of mathematics in the Mazarin college of the University of Paris, where he constructed a small observatory fitted for his own use. He was the author of a number of influential textbooks and a firm advocate of Newtonian gravitational theory. His students included Antoine Lavoisier and Jean Sylvain Bailly, both of whom were later guillotined during the French Revolution.

Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope

A memorial to the Abbé de Lacaille and Thomas Maclear, at Aurora in the Western Cape of South Africa. The English portion of the inscription reads: "This is the site of the Maclear Beacon positioned in 1838 near the original North Terminal of the Arc of Meridian positioned by Abbé de Lacaille, the first surveyor to introduce Geodetic Surveying into South Africa." Open the image to see the Afrikaans portion.

His desire to determine the distances of the planets trigonometrically, using the longest possible baseline, led him to propose, in 1750, an expedition to the Cape of Good Hope. This was officially sanctioned by Roland-Michel Barrin de La Galissonière. There, he constructed an observatory on the shore of Table Bay with the support of the Dutch Governor Ryk Tulbagh. The primary result of his two-year stay was the observations of nearly 10,000 southern stars, the production of which required observing every night for over a year. In the course of his survey he took note of 42 nebulous objects. He also achieved his aim of determining the lunar and solar parallaxes (Mars serving as an intermediary). This work required near-simultaneous observations from Europe which were carried out by Jérôme Lalande.

His southern catalogue, called Coelum Australe Stelliferum, was published posthumously in 1763. He found it necessary to introduce 14 new constellations which have since become standard.[6] One of these was Mons Mensae, the only constellation named after a terrestrial feature (the Table Mountain). An 1890 study of this catalogue by B. A. Gould found a considerable number of errors.[7]

While at the Cape, Lacaille performed an arc measurement to determine the radius of the Earth in the southern hemisphere. He set out a baseline in the Swartland plain north of present-day Darling. Using triangulation he then measured a 137 km arc of meridian between Cape Town and Aurora, determining the astronomical latitudes of the end points by means of astronomical-geodetic observations. There is a memorial to his work at a location near Aurora, pictured here. His result suggested that the Earth was more flattened towards the south pole than towards the north. George Everest,[8] of the Indian Survey, while recuperating from an illness at the Cape nearly seventy years later, suggested that Lacaille's latitude observations had been affected by the deflection of the vertical, caused by gravitational attraction of Table Mountain at the southern end and by the Piketberg Mountain at the northern.[9] In 1838, Thomas Maclear, who was Astronomer Royal at the Cape, repeated the measurements over a longer baseline (Maclear's arc measurement) and ultimately confirmed Everest's conjecture.[10]  Maclear's Beacon was erected on the Table Mountain in Cape Town to help with the verification.[11]


Handel's "Messiah"

The 1749 revival at Covent Garden, under the proper title of Messiah, saw the appearance of two female soloists who were henceforth closely associated with Handel's music: Giulia Frasi and Caterina Galli. In the following year these were joined by the male alto Gaetano Guadagni, for whom Handel composed new versions of "But who may abide" and "Thou art gone up on high". The year 1750 also saw the institution of the annual charity performances of Messiah at London's Foundling Hospital, which continued until Handel's death and beyond.[59]The 1754 performance at the hospital is the first for which full details of the orchestral and vocal forces survive. The orchestra included fifteen violins, five violas, three cellos, two double basses, four bassoons, four oboes, two trumpets, two horns and drums. In the chorus of nineteen were six trebles from the Chapel Royal; the remainder, all men, were altos, tenors and basses. Frasi, Galli and Beard led the five soloists, who were required to assist the chorus.[60][n 5] For this performance the transposed Guadagni arias were restored to the soprano voice.[62] By 1754 Handel was severely afflicted by the onset of blindness, and in 1755 he turned over the direction of the Messiah hospital performance to his pupil, J. C. Smith.[63] He apparently resumed his duties in 1757 and may have continued thereafter.[64] The final performance of the work at which Handel was present was at Covent Garden on 6 April 1759, eight days before his death.[63]