FAREHAM, a market-town of England in I Iampshire, is situated at the north-west extremity of Portsmouth har bour. The houses are tolerably well built. There are two meeting-houses and one church, which stands at the entrance to the town. The inhabitants are principally em ployed in the manufacture of sacking, and ropes for ship ping, of which they send great quantities to the dock-yard at Portsmouth. In the summer season, this town is much frequented as a bathing-place : a commodious bathing house has lately been erected. Vessels of considerable burden are built at the quay. There is here a good market on Wednesday, and an annual fair on the 29th of June, which is supplied with corn, cheese, hops, &c. The town also carries on a considerable coal-trade. The following is the statistical abstract for the town and parish, in 1811 : See Beauties of England and TVales,vol. vi. p. 308. (70 FAREY's EQUAL TEMPERAMENT OF THE MUSICAL SCALE. The apparent simplicity of the Iso-roxio Scale, wherein the octave is supposed to be divided into 12 ex actly equal semitones, and its agreement which the vul gar notions of our musical notation, have occasioned an unusual number of theoretical writers to give their opinions in favour of this system : The names of more than 20 such authors are before us, many of whose recommendations of it are most unqualified : yet few of them have been at the least pains to inquire as to the harmoniousness of its concords, or otherwise; leaving these to be inferred from its semitones, which are discords! the length of string calculated for sounding each note, having usually been thought fully sufficient information to the musical stu dent ;* at the same time it has been, and may fairly yet be questioned, whether this system has, in one single instance, been actually tuned on an instrument, with sufficient ac curacy for judging fairly of its practical effects in per formance.
It was for removing this defect of information, as to a scale so simple and elementary as the Isotonic, that the gentleman whose name appears at the head of this ar ticle was induced to pay considerable attention to a system, which he was convinced was at best but a most violent and unnatural simplification of a subjuect vastly more pro found and extended, as Mr Liston has since proved, in his admirable a Essay on Perfect Intonation ; and it was in the course of this investigation, that Mr Farey discovered a new regularly tempered system, having its fifth GEbi, less than each of its other eleven equal fifths, by what Mr Overend has denominated the most minute (m), the last interval that lie or any other person has yet discovered, and being insensible, perhaps, in the nicest experiments in har monics. None of its semitones differ from each other
more than this very small quantity m, and the whole of them have finite or determinate ratios, expressible by help of the primes 2, 3, and 5 ; and, lastly, each of its notes may actually be tuned (on an organ having a sufficient number of pipes, like the Enharmonic organ of Liston) by the means of unteinpered or perfect concords only. That is to say, if on C (on a spare range of pipes) the five suc cessive perfect fourths CI:, FBb, BF) E`b, E`b A$ and D$, be very correctly tuned upwards, and from the highest of these notes, descending again by two perfect fifths, D`b. G`b, and G`b• and a major third F.4 G. (which notes, in Farey's artificial commas, are, 0,254, 508, 762, 1016, 1270, 912, 554, and 357, respectively), the last of these sounds, G.t, or G according to the common no tation, is the proper fifth above C, in this system. After this, new G has been transferred to the range of pipes in tended to be tuned, a new beginning is to be made at this note, and 5-4ths up, and 2-Vths and a Hid down, are to be carefully tuned for obtaining D, a proper new fifth, (357 as before) to G. From this D, A is to be tuned in like manner, and likewise E, B, Fes, C and Gam, in suc cession. This process is then to be discontinued, and a new beginning made from C, by tuning upwards the three fifths CG, GD, and DA', and the major third and thence downwards, the four minor fourths D'A';;, and A' F*, which last note (being the same with Mr Liston's is the proper fourth of this system, i e. in Art. Coln. 358, 716, 1074, 1271, 1017, 763, 509, and 255. Upon F*, two other schisma-excessive fourths are to be tuned in succession, as above, for Bb and E ; and thus eleven fifths will be obtained, each equal —III, and a resulting one, Gi*,'.Eb, equal 29 V+11 Its fourth CF*, and complementary fifth F*C, being found ready tuned on Liston's organ; and whereon also there are 14 other pairs of notes, at the exact distance apart of this fourth, and 14 fifths (their complements), which agree exactly in their quantity therewith, but not with their places in the scale, as Mr Farey has observed in the Phil. Illag. vol. xxxix. p. 422, note.