Read Ebook: The International Magazine Volume 2 No. 3 February 1851 by Various

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new and astounding facts, the idea at once occurred to me whether there were not other substances analogous in effect to the gas, and which might be employed with more convenience and with equal efficacy and safety. Knowing that the inhalation of sulphuric-ether vapor gave rise to precisely the same effects as those of the gas, from numerous former trials with both these substances, I suggested to Dr. Wells, the employment of the vapor of rectified sulphuric ether--at the same time detailing to him its ordinary effects upon the economy, and the method of preparing the articles for use. Our first impression was, that it possessed all the anaesthetic properties of the nitrous oxyd, was equally safe, and could be prepared with less trouble, thus affording an article which was not expensive, and could always be kept at hand. At the same time, I told Dr. Wells that I would prepare some ether, and furnish him some of it to administer, and also make a trial of it myself, in a surgical case which I expected to operate upon in a few days. Not long after this conversation I administered the vapor of rectified sulphuric ether, in my office, to the young man above alluded to, and after he had been rendered insensible to pain, cut from his head an encysted tumor of about the size of an English walnut. The operation was entirely unattended with pain, and demonstrated to Dr. Wells and myself, in the most conclusive manner, the anaesthetic properties of ether vapor.'

We have no room for testimony. Mr. Toucey concludes his statement in the following manner:--

"It is unnecessary to pursue the subject further. It would be one of the greatest marvels of this wonderful age, if the world, with these facts before it, did not confirm the decision which it has already pronounced, and award to Dr. Wells the merit of a discovery, which will be remembered and appreciated as long as mankind shall be exposed to suffering, or have occasion to apply an antidote."

FOOTNOTES:

POPULAR LECTURES.

Thus far this season, there has been even more than the usual amount of lecturing in our principal cities. The mania lasts longer than was thought possible. The "phenomenon" has really become a feature of the times. It absorbs a great share of the current literary enthusiasm--much of which it has created, and will, it is to be feared, entirely satisfy. Professor Pease, of the University of Vermont, in an essay upon the subject, seeks to determine its import and value; to trace the feeling which gives it birth to its source, and to determine as accurately as possible the grounds of promise or of fear which it affords. "These interpretations," he says, "vary between the widest extremes. On the one side is heard the exulting shout of those who whirl unresistingly in the vortex--'Does not wisdom cry and understanding put forth her voice?' behold the 'progress of the species' and the 'march of mind!' And, on the other side, the contemptuous murmur of those who will be overwhelmed rather than gyrate against their will, they know not whither--'What meaneth this bleating of the sheep in mine ears?'"

In these discourses he says: "The carpenter is the actual model; for like him the discourser cuts and fits his timber according to rules the grounds of which it concerns not him to understand, with little labor beyond that of hacking and hewing--materials being ever ready at his hand: for the world is full of books as the forest is of trees and the market of lumber. And this is done to instruct us; to build us up inwardly; to administer food to our intellect; to nourish our souls; to kindle the imagination and awaken to energetic action the living but slumbering world within. But, alas! this inner world cannot be kindled like a smouldering fire, by a basket of chips and a puff of wind! This inner world is a world of spirits, which feed on thoughts full of truth and living energy. And thought alone can kindle thought: and truth alone can waken truth: not veracity, not fact, but truth vital,

'Truth that wakes To perish never.'

This is the bread for which the soul is pining, and such are the husks with which its calls are answered."

Nevertheless, the author whom we have quoted sees in this fashion signs of promise, for it signifies the existence and the struggling toward the light, of the absolute want of the soul--which will soon rectify the public taste, and teach men that pleasure lies only in the life-giving and the true.

OLD TIMES IN NEW-YORK.

Governor William Livingston, of New Jersey, "poet, philosopher and sage," in a letter written November 17th, 1744, gives the following insight into life, as it then was, in New-York. He is describing a "party:"

"The feast as usual was preceded by cards, and the company so numerous that they filled two tables; after a few games, a magnificent supper appeared in grand order and decorum--the frolic was closed up by ten sunburnt virgins lately come from Columbus's Newfoundland, and sundry other female exercises; besides a play of my own invention, which I have not room enough to describe at present; however, kissing constitutes a great part of its entertainment."

In 1759, Livingston's father died, and his funeral obsequies were performed in all the pomp and attended with all the expense customary in colonial times. These took place in New-York. The lower apartments of most of the stores in Broad-street, where he resided, were thrown open--a pipe of wine was spiced--there were eight pall-bearers, and to each was presented a pair of gloves, a mourning ring, scarf and handkerchief, and a spoon. These services were repeated at the manor, his country-seat, and a handkerchief and pair of black gloves presented to each of the tenants.

ROSSINI IN THE KITCHEN.

"The newspapers announce that Rossini has shut himself up at Bologna with the celebrated tenor Donzelli, and that they pass their days in rehearsing a new opera, of which Rossini is finishing the score. After the sea-serpent, I know of no story which returns more periodically than the announcement of a new opera by Rossini. It is now fifteen years since this pleasantry began to be invariably reproduced at the commencement of every winter, and always with the same success. One begins to meet in society a few Parisians who shrug their shoulders with an air of incredulity when you speak to them of the sea-serpent, but no one dares to evince the least skepticism touching the new opera of Rossini. We received this morning a letter from our correspondent at Bologna, and he furnishes us with details which explain the announcements in the newspapers.

"We cannot conclude without giving expression to an earnest hope, that the conferences established between Rossini and Pastafrollo may give birth to the sixty-third mode of dressing turbot."

THE FIRST PEACE SOCIETY.

The writer of this memoir of Saint Pierre presents the character of that remarkable person in a more favorable light than that in which we have been accustomed to regard it. The author of "Paul and Virginia" was very likely a far better man than has been supposed.

EGYPT UNDER THE PHARAOHS.

MR. KENRICK'S HISTORY.

"He commences with the land of Egypt. In the East great rivers are the parents of civilized nations. A great river, which by its deposit forms a long valley and a broad delta of rich alluvial soil in the midst of deserts, was the parent, the nourisher, and the god of the oldest civilized nation of the earth. The Nile is Egypt; the Egyptians were those who lived below the cataracts and drank of the Nile. Above the cataracts they pushed their arms into Ethiopia, and left there the monuments of their dominion. To the west they were at once defended and confined by a desert impassable to armies, but which the oasis rendered passable to the caravan. On the north was an almost harborless sea. On the east was another desert, through which roads led to the ports of the Red Sea and the mines of Sinai. On the north-east the Arabian desert formed an imperfect barrier. It was traversed by the hosts of Sesostris and Sheshonk, of Nebuchadnezzar and Cambyses, and across its sands Egypt communicated commercially and politically with the other seats of ancient civilization which, broken by the recurring desert, formed an irregular chain from Philistia to China.

"Of the singular productions of Egypt, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the ibis, the papyrus, we need not speak. There were few beasts of chase, and the Egyptian conquerors did not begin like those of central Asia by being mighty hunters. It was a land of corn, and of the vine, of fruit trees, and all herbs. The nations sought its granaries in famine; the Israelites in the wilderness thirsted for the cooling vegetables of its gardens. Fish abounded in the Nile, waterfowl in the marshes. Nature yielded freely, but perhaps for that very reason the mind of man was less exercised and less active. And the unvarying landscape, the unchanging sky, the small number and unpoetic or even grotesque forms of the plants and animals, may partly account for the lack of imagination evinced by the most formal and most stationary of nations, scarcely excepting the Chinese.

"Who and whence were the Egyptians? This question Mr. Kenrick has to ask, and, like others, to leave unanswered. This is the secret which the grave of the Pharaohs will not yield. Physiology supplies no clue. The mummy cases, the paintings and sculptures, depict a race short, slight, with low foreheads, high cheek bones, long eyes, hair now crisp now curled, and a complexion which the conventionality of the painter's art makes to differ in men and women, but which probably was brown with a tinge of red, dark compared with that of the Syrian, black compared with that of the Greek. Thick lips are frequently seen, but they are supposed to indicate intermarriage with Ethiopians. From the negro the Egyptians were far removed, nor can they be connected with any other known race. If we turn to language, a surer guide perhaps than physiology, we are again completely baffled. The Coptic has been identified through many etymologies with the old Egyptian; and of the Coptic, though it became a dead language in the twelfth century, much literature remains. It is an uncultivated and formal tongue, with monosyllabic roots and rude inflexions totally different from the neighboring languages of Syria and Arabia, totally opposite to the copious and polished Sanscrit. The last fact at once severs Egypt from India, and destroys every presumption of affinity that may arise from the presence in both countries of caste, of animal worship, and of a religion derivable from a primitive adoration of the powers of nature. The hypothesis of an Ethiopian origin sprang from the notion, natural but untrue, that population would follow the course of the descending river. And no tradition among the Egyptians themselves told of a parent stock or of another land.

"Very various and very extravagant notions have been formed of the population of ancient Egypt. That it was dense may well be inferred from the length of time through which it multiplied in a limited space, and from that evident parsimony of land which drove tombs and monuments to the rocks, and cities to the edge of the desert. Calculations based on the number of cities, and on the number of men of military age, have plausibly placed the sum at about five millions.

"When forced to serve on shipboard by the enterprise of their own Monarchs or by their Persian conquerors, the Egyptians appear not to have made bad sailors. They fought well at Salamis. But their natural tendency was to shun the sea, which they regarded as the element of the Destroyer Typhon. Their navigation was on the Nile, which formed the highway of their commerce, the path of their processions and their pilgrimages, and their passage to the tomb. The river being thus the universal road, and being moreover without bridges, must have swarmed with boats of all descriptions--the heavy bari of the merchant, the light papyrus or earthenware skiffs of the common people, and the sumptuous barge of Royalty, whose golden pavilion, masts, and rudder, fringed and embroidered sails, and sculptured prow, remind us of the galley of Cleopatra. The caravans of surrounding nations visited Egypt with their precious and fragrant merchandise to exchange for her corn and manufactures. But the Egyptian trader appears seldom to have visited other countries either by land or sea.

"The army was a warrior caste. Its might consisted in its chariots. No mounted cavalry appear in any of the monuments. With this exception they had every kind of force and every weapon known to ancient warfare. They used the long bow and drew the arrow, like the English archers, to the ear. Their armor was imperfect, and more often of quilting than of mail. They had regular divisions, with standards, and regular camps. Their sieges were unscientific, and their means of assault scaling ladders, sapping hatchets, and long pikes brought up to the walls under a sort of shed. Of their battles no definite notion can be formed. All is lost in the King, whose gigantic figure, drawn by gigantic horses, crushes, massacres, or grasps by the hair scores of his pigmy enemies, whose hands after the victory are laid in heaps before him and counted by attendant scribes. Thus it is that Rameses the Great and the other Pharaohs are seen warring against the Assyrian, and Chaldean against the Jew, the Edomite, the Ethiopian, and the 'nine bows' of Libya, and assailing the 'fenced cities' of strange races that have long passed away.

"In the lower parts of civilization and the mechanical arts, the Egyptians had attained high perfection. Their machinery and tools appear to have been defective, but the defect was supplied by skill of hand, traditional and acquired, as it is among the Chinese. They were cunning workmen in metals, in jewelry, in engravings, in enamel, in glass, in porcelain, and in pottery. Their fine linen and embroidery were famous. For their chariots Solomon gave 600 shekels of silver; and they fashioned into a hundred articles of luxury the ivory of Africa, the mahogany of India, and the cedar of Lebanon. As no specimens remain of their domestic architecture, it is supposed rather than ascertained that their houses were of a single story with a terraced roof. The rooms of great men at least were richly and elegantly painted, and furnished with tables, chairs, and couches, which have supplied models for the upholstery of modern times.

"Architecture is the most material of the arts. It was the art in which the Egyptians most excelled. They seem to have understood in some degree the grandeur which results from proportion and arrangement, as well as that which results from size. The profuse and elaborate sculpture with which their temples are covered, does not mar their majesty. Their heaviness is relieved by the glowing sun and the deep sky. But the impression produced must always have been that of cost and power rather than of art. Some changes of style are noticed. The golden age was that of the Pharaohs of the 19th dynasty, when the power and greatness of the nation were at the highest. More florid and less majestic forms mark the era of the Ptolemies. But in this respect, as in others, the Egyptians seem to have maintained their stationary character, and the remains of Meroe, which are now known to be among the latest, have been taken for the earliest of all the monuments.

"In sculpture the summit of manual skill was reached. But religion, the mistress and tyrant of Egyptian art, prescribed for the images of the gods her unalterable and often hideous forms, and the rules of an hereditary craft, which fixed certain proportions for each part of the statue, and gave the execution of the several parts to several workmen, laid another chain on the genius of the artist. Painting seems not to have advanced beyond the barbarous excellence of brilliant colors. Drawing and design were monstrous, and the laws of perspective and even of vision unknown or disregarded. Of music, we learn from Plato that it was restricted to certain established tunes of approved moral tendency, and the wayward Athenian thought all restraint wholesome as he saw that some license was pernicious.

"The religion of the Egyptians must be gathered chiefly from the sculptures and paintings. The religious inscriptions and funeral papyri remain undeciphered. The account of Herodotus is rendered suspicious by his solicitude to force the Pantheon of Egypt into a conformity with that of Greece. The accounts of the later Greeks are tainted by their philosophizing and mysticizing spirit. That the Egyptian theology embodied no profound physical or metaphysical system is evident from the fact that it was not formed at once, but by gradual addition and development, and that it was to the last partly local. It appears to have been, like the other religions of the Pagan world--of Greece and Italy, of Phoenicia and India--a worship of the powers of nature represented by great natural objects, such as the sun and moon, or by forms bestial or human, which were selected as symbolical of their attributes.

"The most degrading part of the religion of the Egyptians was their animal worship, which they carried to a higher pitch than any other people, not excepting the Hindoos. Almost the whole animal and some part of the vegetable kingdom enjoyed either a national or a local sanctity. Gods it was said grew in the gardens. The most cogent reasons of policy and the terrible name of Rome failed to save from death the Roman who had killed a cat. Fancy had first assigned to each god his favorites or symbols among beasts or plants. Then the beasts and plants themselves were reverenced, and at last worshipped. Stately avenues of colossal statues, magnificent porticoes and columned courts ushered the awe-stricken devotee into the sacred presence of an ibis or an ape. The highest object of this superstition, the bull Apis, was regarded as an actual incarnation of Osiris. No rational account of such a system can be given. The serpent cannot have been respected for its utility. The ibis cannot have been honored as the destroyer of the sacred serpent. Nothing divine can have been perceived in the beetle or the ape. The connection between the god and the beast was originally the offspring of a grotesque imagination, and priestcraft and the superstitious tendency of the people did the rest.

"The political constitution of Egypt was based on caste. The privileged castes were those of the warriors and the priests, who, with the Pharaoh, held in fee all the land of Egypt. The Government was an hereditary monarchy. When election was necessary the two privileged castes chose from among their own numbers; the people enjoyed only the right of acclamation. If the choice fell on a warrior, he was at once received into the order and initiated into the wisdom of the priests. Legislation was the prerogative of the King; but he was bound to rule and judge according to the law. He was much in the hands of the priests, who imposed strict rules upon his life, and by a daily homily made the duties and virtues of sovereignty familiar, perhaps too familiar, to the royal ear. The priests, in fact, were the lords of Egypt. Exclusively possessed of science, and even of letters, numerous, wealthy, united, in a single polity, a confined territory and an isolated people, unchecked by any literary, philosophical, or foreign influence, they must have exercised a dominion unrivalled by any priesthood in the history of the world. The result was a land of temples, of deified apes and consecrated onions, a literature of religious inscriptions and funeral scrolls, a Government apparently mild and humane, an enduring polity and long internal peace, and intense and stubborn nationality, a civilization wonderful but low, which in every department, from the act of government to the art of writing, appears to have remained as nearly as possible at a fixed point for about two thousand years. The mummy, as it is the characteristic product, is the fit emblem of ancient Egypt. Yet material happiness appears to have been enjoyed. From sports, from caricatures, from the fanciful decorations of their houses, from their use of music as a daily recreation, we should judge that the Egyptians were not a gloomy people; and that their social and political system aimed, though imperfectly, at a high standard, may be inferred from the reverence, however exaggerated, which was entertained for it by the Greeks.

"Egyptian history is the 'dynasties' of Manetho partly filled up and illustrated, and in time it is to be hoped to be filled up and illustrated still more from the monuments, paintings, and inscriptions. For this, with its thirty dynasties, its twenty centuries, and its chronological difficulties, still formidable though much reduced, we must refer the reader entirely to Mr. Kenrick's second volume, of which it occupies nearly the whole. The slight sketch above given indicates the contents of what will be to the general reader the more interesting part of the work. In conclusion, we once more cordially commend the book. It displays not only the ordinary merits of a good synopsis, such as clearness of style and of arrangement, but also a high power of combination, and, where the author treats of philosophical questions, a sound and sensible philosophy. On some points, perhaps, Mr. Kenrick might have spoken with more authority had he personally visited Egypt, and the imagination of his reader would be assisted by a well selected volume of plates. We are glad to see that Syria and Phoenicia are to form the subject of another publication by the same hand."

FOOTNOTES:

CAMILLE DESMOULINS.

How different the aspect of these fiends, as they are presented to us "sicklied o'er" with the sentiment of a Lamartine!

THE BATTLE OF THE CHURCHES IN ENGLAND.

"A true British Protestant, whose notions of "Popery" are limited to what he hears from an evangelical curate or has seen at the opening of a Jesuit church, looks on the whole system as an obsolete mummery; and no more believes that men of sense can seriously adopt it, than that they will be converted to the practice of eating their dinner with a Chinaman's chop-sticks instead of the knife and fork. He pictures to himself a number of celibate gentlemen, who glide through a sort of minuet by candle-light around the altar, and worship the creature instead of the Creator, and keep the Bible out of every body's way, and make people easy about their sins: and he is positive that no one above a "poor Irishman," can fail to see through such nonsense. Few even of educated Englishmen have any suspicion of the depth and solidity of the Catholic dogma, its wide and various adaptation to wants ineffaceable from the human heart, its wonderful fusion of the supernatural into the natural life, its vast resources for a powerful hold upon the conscience. We doubt whether any single reformed church can present a theory of religion comparable with it in comprehensiveness, in logical coherence, in the well-guarded disposition of its parts. Into this interior view, however, the popular polemics neither give nor have the slightest insight: and hence it is a common error both to underrate the natural power of the Romish scheme, and to mistake the quarter in which it is most likely to be felt. It is not among the ignorant and vulgar, but among the intellectual and imaginative--not by appeals to the senses in worship, but by consistency and subtlety of thought--that in our days converts will be made to the ancient church. We have receded far from the Reformation by length of time; the management of the controversy has degenerated: it has been debased by political passions, and turned upon the grossest external features of the case; and when a thoughtful man, accustomed to defer to historical authority, and competent to estimate moral theories as a whole, is led to penetrate beneath the surface, he is unprepared for the sight of so much speculative grandeur, and, if he have been a mere Anglican or Lutheran, is perhaps astonished into the conclusion, that the elder system has the advantage in philosophy and antiquity alike. From this, among other causes, we incline to think that the Roman Catholic reaction may proceed considerably further in this country ere it receives any effectual check. The academical training and the clerical teaching of the upper classes have not qualified them to resist it. At the other end of society there are large masses who cannot be considered inaccessible to any missionary influence, affectionately and perseveringly applied. Not all men, in a crowded community, are capable of the independence, the self-subsistence, without which Protestantism sinks into personal anarchy. The class of weak, dependent characters, that cannot stand alone in the struggle of life, are unprovided for in the modern system of the world. The co?perative theorist tries to take them up. But somehow or other he is usually a man with whom, by a strange fatality, co?peration is impossible; intent on uniting all men, yet himself not agreeing with any; with individuality so intense and exclusive, that it produces all the effect of intolerant self-will; and thus the very plans which by his hypothesis are inevitable, are by his temper made impracticable. He appeals, however, and successfully, to the uneasiness felt by the feeble in the strife and pressure of the world; he fills the imagination with visions of repose and sympathy; he awakens the craving for unity and incorporation in some vast and sustaining society. And whence is this desire, disappointed of its first promise, to obtain its satisfaction? Is it impossible that it may accept proposals from the most ancient, the most august, the most gigantic organization which the world has ever seen?--that it may take refuge in a body which invests indigence with sanctity--which cares for its members one by one--which has a real past instead of a fancied future, and warms the mind with the coloring of rich traditions--which, in providing for the poorest want of the moment, enrolls the disciple in a commonwealth spread through all ages and both worlds! Whatever socialistic tendency may be diffused through the English mind is not unlikely, in spite of a promise diametrically opposite, to turn to the advantage of the Catholic cause."

Here is another valuable contribution to the philosophy of this controversy. There are few positions more relied on by Roman Catholics, or more thoroughly unsound and fallacious, than the assertion that there are no essential differences between the position of Roman Catholics and of Protestants as regards the state and the English established church.

"Now, with the spiritual aspects of this theory we are not here concerned. Reason has no jurisdiction over the inspiration that transcends it. But there is a humbler task to which the common intellect is not incompetent. We may plant this system in a political community, set it down beside the state, imagine it surrounded by families, and schools, and municipalities, and parliaments, by the prison and the court of justice; within the shadow of law and in the presence of sovereignty; and we may ask how it will work amid these august symbols of a nation's life, and how adjust itself in relation to them? Will it leave them to their free development? Can it tranquilly coexist with them, and be content to see them occupy the scope which English traditions and English usage have secured for them? We are convinced it cannot; that every step it may make is an encroachment upon wholesome liberty; that it is innocent only where it is insignificant, and where it is ascendant will neither part with power, nor use it well; and that it must needs raise to the highest pitch the common vice of tyrannies and of democracies--the relentless crushing of minorities."

The above are only two paragraphs out of a dozen we had marked, but they will suffice to show the value of this very able and impartial essay.

FOOTNOTES:

Adequate authority for these statements will be found in Dr. Mochler's Symbolism, part i. chap. v., and in Newman's Lectures, iii. p. 66, and Lecture ix. passim.

KILLING OF SIR ALEXANDER BOSWELL.

"Of all the trials contained in these volumes none have a more melancholy interest, perhaps, than that of Mr. Stuart, who was tried on the tenth of June, 1822, before the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh, for killing Sir Alexander Boswell in a duel. Mr. Stuart was, of course, acquitted. He had been the aggrieved party; he had found it necessary to the vindication of his honor to call his unfortunate antagonist to account; he had been forced, by the cruel exaction of public opinion, to expose his life to the weapon of a man he had never offended, and who, indeed, in his heart, bore his involuntary murderer no malice; and public opinion, expressed in the verdict of a jury, knew better than to sentence to death the wretched victim of its own brutal and unwarrantable edicts. Fortunately for the interests of humanity, we have at length reached a period when it becomes unnecessary to protest vehemently against the iron rule of an authority more despotic than that of absolute kings, and far more cruel and oppressive than the laws which but a few years ago attached the penalty of death to the commission of almost pardonable offences. Society, with the acquirement of other useful knowledge, has learned to appreciate the iniquitous folly of murder perpetrated in cold blood, without the slightest excuse. The nation which above all the countries of the world takes credit for adapting its laws to the requirements of a rapidly advancing civilization, has had courage to inquire why the savage vestige of an exploded system should still dishonor its history and interfere with its social progress. Duelling, as part and parcel of the national manners, has ceased in England. No doubt random shots will yet from time to time be heard, and weakness in its despair will occasionally seek refuge in cowardice, which it mistakes for valor; but the mind of the majority is made up. Duelling henceforth must be the exception, not the rule. Public opinion will harmonize with the law, and honor it. It will protect the injured, and hand over the offenders to the legitimate consequences of their own misdeeds. It will not call upon a man first to endure wrong, and then to lay bare his breast to the bullet of his aggressors.

"Our fathers were less fortunate than ourselves in this respect. Their dilemma was fearful. The law took no account of those delicate injuries under which sensitive honor pines, though no bruise or wound appears to indicate the mischief; and, in self-defence, refinement set up the bloodiest code brutality under the guise of chivalry could imagine or invent. A quiet gentleman, sitting from morning till night in his library, interfering with the pleasures and pursuits of none, amiable in every relation of life, a stanch friend, a fond husband, a devoted father, as useful a member of society as you might find in a day's journey, and obnoxious only to political opponents, who fear him more than he dislikes them, is called a 'liar,' a 'coward,' and a 'heartless ruffian.' He is nothing of the kind; he is proudly conscious of this fact; his accusers do not even believe it; the world--that portion of it in which he moves--is satisfied that he is a remarkable instance of truth, of courage, and extreme tenderness of spirit. The revilers have made a great mistake or committed a disgraceful outrage. In either case, since they are not amenable to law, you would think they might safely be left to acquire better information and improve their manners. Not a bit of it. The quiet gentleman's enemies have aimed a blow at his reputation. They are good shots--which unfortunately he is not--and now they must aim another at his life; society 'allows it,' and society 'awards it.' The quiet gentleman makes his will, kisses his children, shuts up his books, sighs, and 'goes out.' The quiet gentleman is killed; a million men could not restore the life one man has taken. Society is distressed beyond expression; so is the murderer, who is all sorrow and tenderness for the departed. There is general weeping, and great unavailing regret, and much commiseration for the widow: and then a mock trial, and no end of speechifying, beautiful remorse on the part of the survivor, lovelier tributes to the memory of deceased, a verdict of not guilty, and a dismissal of the murderer and his accomplices into the world, which is worthy of them as they are worthy of it. The picture represents a common event of the time of George the Third. Let us confess that, degenerate as we are, we have changed, in some respects, for the better since those 'good old days!'"

"Sir Alexander was the eldest son of Dr. Johnson's Boswell. The inimitable biographer was fortunate in his offspring. His sons inherited all the virtues of their father, and none of his foibles. The social good humor, the cleverness, the appreciation of learning, the joviality,--every good quality, in fact, of Bozzy was reflected in his children, who had the sense to discern and avoid the frailties that had rendered the sire ridiculous in his own day, and illustrious for all time. James Boswell, the youngest son of the biographer, an accomplished scholar, superintended several editions of his father's great work, and was held in high esteem by his contemporaries. He was a Commissioner of Bankrupts when he suddenly died in London, in the prime of life, on the 24th day of February, 1822. Sir Alexander, who had been created a baronet in 1821, attended his brother's funeral in London, and returned to Scotland to meet his own death immediately afterwards. Sir Walter Scott, warmly attached to both, was, we are informed, much affected by the unexpected death of the baronet, who had dined with the novelist only two or three days before the catastrophe, and, as usual, had been the life and soul of the party assembled. 'That evening,' writes Mr. Lockhart, 'was, I think, the gayest I ever spent in Castle-street; and though Charles Matthews was present and in his best force, poor Boswell's songs, jokes and anecdotes had exhibited no symptom of eclipse.' Four years afterwards Sir Walter dined in company with Charles Matthews again. The event is commemorated by a singular and characteristic entry in Scott's Diary. 'There have been odd associations,' he writes, 'attending my two last meetings with Matthews. The last time I saw him before yesterday evening, he dined with me in company with poor Sir Alexander Boswell, who was killed within a week. I never saw Sir Alexander more. The time before was in 1815, when John Scott, of Gala, and I, were returning from France, and passed through London, when we brought Matthews down as far as Leamington. Poor Byron lunched, or rather made an early dinner with us at Long's, and a most brilliant day we had of it. I never saw Byron so full of fun, frolic, wit, and whim; he was as playful as a kitten. Well, I never saw him again. So this man of mirth has brought me no luck.'

THE LATE DR. TROOST.

We recently noticed the death of the excentric German professor, Dr. Troost, of Tennessee. His passion for all animals of the serpent kind was well known, and we find it illustrated in this anecdote, related by Sir Charles Lyell:

"Every thing of the serpent kind he has a particular fancy for, and has always a number of them--that he has tamed--in his pockets or under his waistcoat. To loll back in his rocking-chair, to talk about geology, and pat the head of a large snake, when twining itself about his neck, is to him supreme felicity. Every year in the vacation he makes an excursion to the hills, and I was told that, upon one of these occasions, being taken up by the stage-coach, which had several members of Congress in it going to Washington, the learned Doctor took his seat on the top with a large basket, the lid of which was not over and above well secured. Near to this basket sat a Baptist preacher on his way to a great public immersion. His reverence, awakening from a reverie he had fallen into, beheld to his unutterable horror two rattlesnakes raise their fearful heads out of the basket, and immediately precipitated himself upon the driver, who, almost knocked off his seat, no sooner became apprised of the character of his ophidian outside passengers, than he jumped upon the ground with the reins in his hands, and was followed instanter by the preacher. The 'insides,' as soon as they learned what was going on, immediately became outsides, and nobody was left but the Doctor and his rattlesnakes on the top. But the Doctor, not entering into the general alarm, quietly placed his greatcoat over the basket, and tied it down with his handkerchief, which, when he had done, he said, 'Gendlemen, only don't let dese poor dings pite you, and day won't hoort you.'"

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