The sources from which, by careful and judicious research, a history of the Hindoos, previous to their subjection by the Mahomedans, may be elicited, may easily be enumerated :-the works in the Sanscrit and Pracrit dialects preserved in the Brahminical colleges; the ancient monuments of Hindoo art scattered throughout We have only to add, that equal, if not indeed superior, sacred language; the few incidental notices of India with India, particularly those which have inscriptions in the to any passage we have quoted, is that in which O'Do- which we meet in some Greek authors; the accounts of noghue, having got tipsy, attempts to be rude, but is the literature and civil institutions of the Hindoos conawed into sobriety by Rinda's quiet dignity; and that intained in the Ayeen Akberry, and perhaps in other works which, his attendants having been lured away by the sound of the passing chase, he is left to finish his break-of early Mahomedan authors; and the remnants of ancient fast alone, and tie his shoes himself.

we are to look for any thing like accurate accounts of and endless involutions which we find in the music of its domestic polity. The Sanscrit literature is found to most early nations. Their poetry evinces a quick (we contain moral and religious systems, works on jurispru- had almost said morbid) sensitiveness to the beauties of dence, narrative and dramatic poems, and treatises on the colour, form, and sound. It is full of intense and delimathematical sciences. From these, from the character cate passion. We know of nothing more beautiful and of their language and reasoning, from their tone of moral truly felt in the whole range of poetry, than the courtfeeling, we may derive a pretty accurate notion of the ship scenes between Dushmanta and Sacontala. A vein stage of civilization which the nation had attained. As of broad humour, too, occasionally laughs out upon us. no histories (in our European sense of the word) have There is, however, a want of that manly sense, which yet been discovered in the Sanscrit, it may be impossible can flourish only in those countries where the whole poto learn the actual statistical arrangements of any indi-pulation take an interest and share in public businessvidual Hindoo kingdom; but the general system of polity adopted by the different tribes belonging to the race, may be inferred pretty correctly from the works of their lawgivers. The wrecks of Hindoo institutions, which are still to be traced in the villages, will throw light upon much that is obscure in these works. Nay, we are not without hopes that, from the number of monuments with inscriptions relative to public events in India, and from the number of grants of land by the native princes, engraven on metallic plates, which are occasionally discovered, materials may, in course of time, be collected for a history of the different Hindoo states which occupied the valleys of the Ganges and Indus.

Respecting the origin of the Hindoos, nothing can be affirmed with certainty. They seem to have spread from the foot of the Himalaya mountains, where the Ganges enters the plain, downwards to the Bay of Bengal, across the mountains of Ajmere, to the valley of the Indus, and from the mouths of that river eastward to the Nerbudda.

How far they penetrated into the southern mountains of India, is uncertain. Their language has a strong affinity to the Zend and Pehlwi dialects, preserved in the sacred books of the Parsees, who fled from Persia on account of Mahomedan persecution. A late traveller professes to have found inscriptions, in the Zend character, on the rocks near Persepolis. There is also this striking analogy between the books of the Parsees and the Brahmins, that both inculcate reverence for the fire, and both subdivide mankind into four great classes,-the priest, the warrior, the tiller of the land, and the menial. This seems to have been the classification of the Hindoo nation at the time when, in virtue of its superior knowledge and military skill, it began to extend the limits of its sway. The other castes seem to have originated at later periods, from the occasional intermixture of the original ones; probably also, at times, from the incorporation of stranger tribes into the family union. In the monuments of ancient Hindostan, we cannot trace any thing like one great dominant monarchy; and as little can we trace, among the many petty tribes which composed it, any organized permanent form of government. Some powerful chief of the warrior caste executed the internal police, or gave direction to the external enterprises of his tribe. His will was law, except in so far as he was himself influenced by a superstitious veneration of the priestly caste. The laws relating to property were simple as the state of society, and did not appear to ambitious leaders susceptible of change, or deserving of attention. The extent of a chief's territory was fluctuating, according as the power of his arms, or confidence in his justice, brought different tribes to incorporate with his own. In this state of society, agriculture, and even manufactures and the arts, had made considerable progress. The art of weaving, the smelting of metals, and a rude method of polishing gems, had been invented. Allusions occur in poems, as well as law-books, to foreign merchants who visited India with a view to commerce. The architectural monuments of the Hindoos indicate no great progress in the art of rearing buildings, but the magnitude, and, in some places, the delicate workmanship, of their excavations, do all but supply the deficiency. They had invented the art of painting; in their sculpture the allegorical prineiple had developed itself to the destruction of the plastic; their music was characterised by those wild, inartificial,

there is a tendency to indulge in weak and womanish reveries of mysticism. The virtue of the Hindoo is contented with the attainment of self-control; it is almost unacquainted with the duty of exertion. He seeks heaven by the abnegation of pleasure, by the endurance of positive pain,-by dreamy contemplation, not by active virtue. It is impossible to say to which of the aboriginal tribes of India we owe our decimal notation, but local use is in favour of Hindoo claims. The mathematics, algebra, and the astronomy of this people in their present form, it is all but established they learned from their western neighbours. Such seems to have been the state of civilization among the Hindoos at the time they ceased to exist as an independent nation. The imperfect organization of their government, and the enervating influence of moral quietism, account for their ineffectual resistance to the hardy warriors of the north.

The Edinburgh New Dispensatory; containing, I. The Elements of Pharmacy; II. The Materia Medica; III. The Pharmaceutical Preparations and Composi– tions;-including Translations of the Dublin Pharmacopoeia of 1826; London Pharmacopoeia of 1825; and of the Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia of 1817. With illustrative Commentaries and Tables. Twelfth Edition, much enlarged and improved. By Andrew Duncan, M.D. Professor of Materia Medica in the University of Edinburgh, and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, and Royal Society of Edinburgh. Edinburgh Bell and Bradfute. London: Longman, Rees, and Co. 1830.

DR DUNCAN has long enjoyed a very high reputation as Professor of Materia Medica in the University of Edinburgh. His attainments as a scholar, and his habits of indefatigable industry, not only render him eminently qualified to discharge his duties in that capacity, but entitle him to our respect as an author. He has already done much to advance the progress of medical science; and we are happy to find him still at his post, not only assiduously watching the successful labours of his contemporaries, but endeavouring himself to extend our knowledge on subjects interesting and important to his profession.

Owing

The first edition of the Edinburgh New Dispensatory, published by Dr Lewis in 1754, was republished several times during his life, with such additions as the advancement of the sciences connected with pharmacy rendered necessary. After his death, it was successively edited by Dr Webster, Dr Duncan, senior, and Dr Rotheram. At length, in 1800, when the Edinburgh College was preparing to publish another edition of the Pharmacopeia, it was proposed by Dr Duncan that it should be accompanied with a new edition of the Dispensatory. to the discoveries of Black, Priestley, Cavendish, and Lavoisier, and the progress made in the department of vegetable chemistry, this addition to the work was become indispensable. No sooner was Dr Duncan's proposal carried into execution, than a host of competitors entered the field; and we need only cite the names of Murray, Thompson, Paris, Phillips, and Brande, to remind our readers, that while the science of Pharmacology was studied with success in France and Germany,

new theory is characterised by great beauty and originality. The introduction of motion, however, to which he has recourse, does not appear to us indispensable to the procedure, which, after an enquiry of fifteen years, he has adopted. Instead of supposing the straight line of variable position, which acts such an important part in his subsidiary propositions, to move along the axis, he might have simply assumed its position to be indefinite, thus

to from its unnatural alliance with motion. Colonet Thompson, we are aware, will subscribe, on reflection, to the superiority of a principle, whether of developement in series, or of limiting ratios, or even of infinitesimals, that' dispenses with any extraneous and unnecessary reference to velocity. With this exception, however, we admire the subtlety of the process by which he attains to demonstrate the fact that the angles of a triangle amount to right angles. But we appeal, at the same time, to himself, whether such a formidable array of demonstration be congenial to the spirit of elementary geometry, or to the simple nature of the truth evolved. For our own part, rejecting certainly Euclid's own axiom, we would infinitely rather adopt Playfair's elegant, though disputable, substitute, or yield, in willing delusion, to the func tional process of Legendre, than be encumbered with Colonel Thompson's circumlocutory mode of investigation.

it was not less zealously cultivated in our own country. The Edinburgh New Dispensatory, nevertheless, maintained its popularity, and continued to receive the almost undivided patronage of the profession. Such was the opinion entertained of its value, that it was reprinted, without permission, in the London Medical Dictionary, and in the Family Herbal of Dr Thornton. With the addition of an account of the indigenous plants of the United States, it also constituted the American Dispen-avoiding the pollution which geometry has been exposed satory of Dr Coxe, and the New American Dispensatory of Dr Thatcher. In the meantime, several editions of the original were published by Dr Duncan, and, in 1826, it re-appeared in an enlarged and improved form. The progress of pharmacy, which, in Germany, advanced under the auspices of Gren, Goettling, Frommsdorff, Sertuerner, Buchner, Brandes, and Vogel; and in France, under those of Fourcroy, Vauquelin, Seguin, Pelletier, Caventon, Henri, Braconnot, and Chevreuil, imperatively called for an entire re-casting of the work. A supplement to this edition was published in 1829, which embraced the notes subjoined by MM. Chereau and Robiquet to the tenth edition of the Dispensatory, published by M. Pelouse at Paris. As might have been anticipated from the celebrity of these pharmaceutists, the notes contained a variety of useful and valuable information on subjects more cultivated in France than in this country, and which, therefore, it was necessary to add to the former edition of the Dispensatory, for the sake of rendering it more complete. Among other important additions, a list of officinal plants, arranged according to the natural orders of Decandolle, and a physiological classification of the materia medica by Dr Duncan, formed a part of this supplement. After this brief sketch of the history of the New Dispensatory, it only remains for us to state the circumstances that have called forth the present edition, and to bear testimony to the additions and improvements which recommend it to the notice of the profession.

The first circumstance which rendered a complete revision of the former edition necessary, was the publication of a new edition of the Dublin Pharmacopoeia, the value of which was considerably enhanced by the incorporation of the first part of Dr Barker's " Chemical and Practical Observations ;" the second was the necessity of embodying in the work the notes of MM. Chereau and Robiquet, by which the editor has been enabled, as he himself states, "to correct and supply all that seemed erroneous and defective to judges of the highest reputation in a country where pharmacy is estimated by a very different standard to what it is in this empire." The new edition, called for by these additions to the science, is not, as too frequently happens with new editions, a mere reprint with a new title-page, or at most, a new preface. We have carefully collated it with the preceding edition, and have found it throughout carefully revised and much enlarged.

The First Book of Euclid's Elements. With Alterations and Familiar Notes. Being an Attempt to Improve the Arrangement and the Argument, by reducing the Axioms to one; and to establish the Theory of Parallel Lines, without recourse to an Axiom on that subject, or the introduction of any principle not common to other parts of the Elements. By a Member of the University of Cambridge. London. Robert Howard. 1830.

THE main object of this publication being, as expressed in the title-page," to establish the theory of parallel lines, without recourse to an axiom on that subject, or the introduction of any principle not common to other parts of the elements," our attention is naturally directed, in the first place, to this attempt on the part of the author. As any lengthened discussion on such a topic would be inconsistent with the scope of a literary Journal, we are restricted to this general verdict, that Colonel Thompson's

Having expressed ourselves thus briefly on this part of the work, we proceed to give our opinion of its merits as a new edition of Euclid. The definition which the writer gives of straight lines, as "those, between two of which it is impossible to enclose a space," is objectionable on two grounds: first, that it is merely negative; secondly, that it involves the consideration of space, the very notion of which presupposes the idea of extension, which is, in the subsequent books of Euclid, destined to be defined as generated by the motion of lines. Moreover, this new definition introduces much perplexity into the proposition, that "two straight lines cannot have a common segment;" which reduces itself to the mere corollary of a definition, on adopting Mr Playfair's account of a straight line. Another of our author's improvements, is his concentration of Euclid's axioms into one. And, in reference to this subject, we deny at once the necessity of enumerating axioms at all. They do not proceed from induction; for a very infant would, on their first annunciation, display his instinctive perception of them. As to the pretended (we must use the term) "reduction of the axioms into one," it is perfectly nominal; for, supposing that any one of the axioms was not equally clear with the first, our writer's process would only be a series of propositions disguised under the name of corollaries-a term that implies the non-necessity of demonstration. Again, the very scholium attached by our author to the postulates, ought to have convinced him of the absurdity of such conceptions becoming beggars of their own existence, since whatever can be conceived, has a mathematical reality. We must object, in like manner, to the sanction given by the author to the second and third propositions of Euclid, That geometer, after assuming the possibility of a circle being described-in other words, of a straight line remaining constant while revolving round one extremity→→ had no right to discard the equal possibility-though not perhaps physical, at least mathematical-of a straight line, instead of one extremity, having both extremities displaced, and applied to another straight line. We may remark here, that the author's first note shows that he himself has not overcome the difference between physical delineation and geometrical conception; a confusion that is apparent in the formula with which all his demonstrations conclude" the same may be proved of any other straight line, triangle," &c., where he forgets that the diagram is a mere relief to the mind, and not truly the subject under consideration,—that a general diagram may exist in the mind without any external representative. The prolixity of the author's enunciations and demonstrations is another

fault; many of them might be easily comprised in onefifth of the room they occupy. For example, we appeal to himself, whether a line be not introduced in his Proposition xxiii., A, which is entirely unnecessary, and even hurtful, from inducing a comparison between two subsidiary triangles that are quite irrelevant to the demonstration. The writer must see that, his demonstration being shaped so as to introduce the case of the obtuse angle, he ought to have enunciated both cases together. Lastly, in proposing to alter the text of Euclid, he ought to have taken bolder ground. A more philosophical view of angular magnitude than that of Euclid would at once dispense with Propositions x., xiii., and xiv., and reduce, as Leslie has done, Proposition xi. to Proposition ix. We are happy to see that the author coincides with our own long-cherished opinion regarding Proposition xxx.

In conclusion, we are happy to express our warm admiration of the devotion which the writer evinces to our own favourite study, and our conviction that success and eminence must attend his perseverance in the same "nullius addictus" spirit.

Frascatis ; or, Scenes in Paris. In 3 vols.

Colburn and Bentley. 1830.

use of it begin to pride themselves in their own shame, and to make a boast of their misdeeds. It is on this account that we find ourselves under the necessity of putting "Frascatis"-although infinitely less noxious than "The Roué," &c.-upon our list of interdicted books.

Memoir, written by General Sir Hew Dalrymple, Bart.,
of his Proceedings, as connected with the Affairs of
Spain, and the Commencement of the Peninsular War.
London. Thomas and William Boone. 1830. Sve.

Pp. 317.

THIS is the narrative of a soldier, and told in a straightforward, unpretending manner, worthy of his character. The work was originally composed with a view to its being deposited in the archives of the author's family; but certain misrepresentations contained in the Marquess of Londonderry's Peninsular War, induced him to prepare it for publication. His death prevented the accomplishment of his purpose, and the work is now given to the world by his son, exactly as he left it. Those who take an interest in the history of the Peninsular War, London. will find in this brief narrative a great deal of additional light thrown upon the movements in the South of Spain Sir Hew comand in Portugal, during the year 1808. pletely vindicates his own conduct, in the share he took in these transactions. It is clear from his statement, if indeed Colonel Napier had not already settled the question, that the delays and contre-tems which had their issue in the Convention of Cintra, were attributable solely to the inexplicable vacillation of the British Ministry, which made them send out general after general in such hot haste, that two of them were virtually superseded on As it is our anxious desire to keep the field of battle. ourselves free from party politics, we have no intention of discussing the merits of the late Marquess of Londonderry; but it is only doing him justice to say, that from first to last, he gave his voice for the appointment of the Duke of Wellington to the command in Portugal, and experience has demonstrated the correctness of his judgment. We are happy to find Sir Hew bearing testimony to the merits of Colonel Napier's "incomparable work."

No one has ever entertained a doubt (in this country) that we are the most moral people in the world. It is, therefore, rather a curious circumstance, that all our morality deserts us, if we may believe the testimony of travellers, the moment we cross the Channel. It is passing strange, that men who in England, and in the eye of their families, affect even a puritanical strictness of character, should reconcile themselves so rapidly to that organized system of debauchery which the reigns of the Louises, and the reckless ambition of Philippe Egalité, have left as a legacy to Paris. Yet precisely these men are your most regular attendants at the gaming-table and elsewhere-they drink deep with a feverish and furtive delight of all the licentiousness of the place; and return home, after spending a few months in this manner, to wipe their mouths and look demure, and wonder at the wickedness of our neighbours. It is a melancholy truth, that while the inhabitants of other countries carry back with them to their respective homes, a knowledge of what has been done in France for arts, sciences, and manufactures, or a remembrance of their social intercourse Bombastes Furioso: a Burlesque Tragic Opera. By with the talented and respectable portion of the commuWilliam Barnes Rhodes. With Eight Designs by nity, the great mass of Englishmen have no other tale George Cruikshank. London. Thomas Rodd. 1830. to tell, than that they have made the round of sights in Paris, and frequented the Palais Royal. To judge THIS is the first of a series of comic dramas, to which by the work which has suggested these reflections, and George Cruikshank is to contribute the illustrations. by other late tours and novels professing to describe the Tom Thumb, the Mayor of Garrat, the Beggar's Opera, capital of France, one would be inclined to believe the High Life below Stairs, Midas, and a number of others, hordes of English at present resident there, little better are to follow immediately. Cruikshank has appreciated than the sharpers, their favourite associates. the character of Bombastes, or rather of Liston, with great should wrong them, for they are really honest and ho- delicacy. It is not a comic character;—the passion is nourable men, when at home. The truth is, that the deep and tragic,-the gestures (look at the actor or the high tone of morality diffused through British society, engravings) are elegant and true to nature; but then renders it more difficult for a man to deflect from inte- that face, with which nature, for some inscrutable purgrity, than to withstand temptation. The strictness of pose, has sought to veil the workings of a fine and feelpublic judgment on this point forms a kind of go-cart for ing soul! There lies the comic in Liston's acting-in the support of those whose naturally weak and rickety his shoulder-of-mutton face. His brow is expressive of moral constitution might otherwise break down. It intelligence, his feelings prompted him to come out as a seems to be such men who compose the bulk of the tragic actor, he felt and understood his part, but then the pilgrims sent by this country to Paris. They sneak lower compartment of his face-no mortal can look at it away from the severe observances of home to take a little without laughing. He wooed the tragic muse as the sip of naughtiness in a country which affords more oppor- Beast wooed Beauty; his mistress loved his princely soul, tunities, and where they are less checked by domestic but could not reconcile herself to his uncouth exterior. ties, as school-boys evade the eye of their master when He lingered in a kind of “limbo of vanity" between trabent upon tricks which would ensure punishment if gedy and comedy-unfitted for the one by his figure, for they came to his knowledge. It is perhaps well for us the other by his feelings—until he stumbled upon Bomthat we have such a receptacle in the neighbourhood to bastes Furioso and Billy Lackaday; in these peculiar draw off our peccant humours; but all its advantages walks of tragedy and comedie larmoyante he has ever will be more than counterbalanced, if those who make since reigned without a rival.

Yet we

Prospectus of a Plan of Philosophy, contrary to all Modern Systems, and founded on the Word of God. By Florent Galli, ex-aid-de-camp to General Mina; Member of the Arcadia of Rome; Founder, and perpetual Honorary President, of the Academy of the Regenerados; Editor of the Europeo in Spain, and of the Iris in Mexico; Author of the Memoirs on the last War of Catalonia. London. Fowlett and Brimmer. 1850. HERE is a goodly-sized, neatly-printed quarto pamphlet, which has been published as the herald of a new philosophy, which is to regenerate the world! The great system which is to accomplish this "consummation so devoutly to be wished," is "far advanced, and a large plate, presenting a type of it, is ready for publication." This plate the author describes in the following words: T "It represents a section of the universe cutting the globe of the earth from one pole to the other, and the vault of heaven is on the horizon; the middle is occupied by a hieroglyphic relating to the nature of God;-the whole is surmounted by the Genesis of human speech, with the radiations of all known languages in the five parts of the world, to the amount of two thousand five hundred, including languages and dialects." Francis Maximus M'Nab was nothing to this.

MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE.

THE TWO SIDES OF THE PICTURE.

By Henry G. Bell.

Ar that happy period in which a difficult line in Virgil, a long sentence in Livy, or an elliptical expression in Tacitus, constitute the only miseries of life, we attach a very different meaning to the words "joy" and "grief," from that which an intercourse with the world is soon destined to give us. In those days of rarely-obscured sunshine, we know of only one spot where any thing like sorrow is to be found,-where the thoughtless but delightful gaiety of childhood is frowned, or scolded, or whipt out of us,-where some little foretaste of the miseries of mortality is forced upon our reluctant palates,— | and where we are taught, that, even in this fair world, there may be such things as "weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth." Where is the boy, who, as he looked on his unintelligible grammar, or greasy Ovid, has not, with all the sincerity of his nature, wished a thousand and a thousand times, that every one of those ancient philosophers, cramped historians, and most unprofitable poets, had been in the very bottom of the Red Sea, when they sat down to write, with so much nonchalance, books which were to cost all the future generations of children so many tears and groans? What does he know, and, if he did, what would his opinion be, of that most melancholy Johnsonian maxim, "of allowing the future to predominate over the present?" Does he not look up into the blue sky, and hear the invisible birds singing in multitudes above him? Does he not look round upon the green fields, and the dark woods, and the majestic mountains, and the glittering streams, and does he not almost instinctively become a juvenile epicurean, anxious to seize the passing hour, and spend it merrily, content to let the next provide for itself?

There is nothing I recollect better, than the loitering, reluctant pace, in which I used to move to school. How gladly did I avail myself of every excuse for lengthening the way, and delaying the inevitable hour of confinement! There was not a dog-black, white, or brown-smooth, rough, or shaggy-cowardly, tame, or fierce-to whom I did not speak; there was not a sign above a butcher's, baker's, grocer's, or haberdasher's door, that I did not stop to read; there was not a blind ballad-singer, or wooden-legged fiddler, or one-armed flute-player, to whose

melody I did not lend most willing ears. But there was one amusement, which, in my morning pilgrimage to school, afforded me more delight than all the rest put together; this was the examination and internal criticism of half-a-dozen paintings, which, ignorant of change or even of locomotion, occupied, without alteration, for at least two years, the window of what to me appeared a magnificent print-shop. This window, in my commonly uninteresting walk through several long streets, was the very cynosure of attraction, the fountain of the wilderness, the oasis of the desert. Morning after morning I gazed upon the enchanting pictures; and not a day elapsed in which I did not discover in them new beauties unremarked before. Had any of them been taken away, I should have felt as if I had lost an humble but faithful friend.

There was one among them, however, that rose in my opinion far above all the rest. I entertained for it a sort of romantic attachment; and this attachment was founded, I believe, upon good grounds. There is something in the work of a master that comes home to the heart even of a child; and though unable, perhaps, to tell what it is that pleases him, he nevertheless feels that he is looking upon the production of no common genius. I remember, perfectly, that I did not prefer it because it was set in a more splendid frame, or painted in more gaudy colours; but because the expression of the scenery and figures it contained had something heavenly. It represented a simple burying-ground, where a group of village girls were scattering flowers upon a new-made grave. Among them was one whose face I shall never forget. The sun had set behind some distant hills, but the purple clouds, still in the sky, threw upon her figure a rich and mellowed light, that accorded finely with the settled me lancholy stamped upon her features ;-but it was not melancholy alone; there was a holy resignation and an innocent purity in her looks perfectly irresistible. She had lost, perhaps, her mother, the dear guardian of her childhood, or a sister whom she had loved as the friend of her youth, or him on whom her dark eye delighted to gaze-the worshipped star of her heart. She was a being on whom I could have looked for ever. I was only a child, but the light of that celestial countenance kindled in my bosom somewhat of the feelings of maturer years. Many an indistinct and dream-like vision of future days floated across my fancy; and, in them all, my fate, my happiness, were intertwined with a creature of similar loveliness. But there are none such in existence. She was the fairy creation of some fond enthusiast. have looked in vain for her prototype among the inhabitants of a world of dissimulation and sorrow.

I

I had an uncle who resided at some distance in the country, and was seldom in my father's house, but who, it was confidently expected, was to make me his heir. He dined with us regularly every Christmas. There was always a family-party assembled on the occasion; but my uncle commonly made his appearance an hour or two earlier than the rest, and employed himself, till dinnertime, in distributing sweetmeats among my younger brothers and sisters, of whom there was a pretty numerous and annually increasing tribe. His present, however, to the eldest girl, Sarah, and myself, was more substantial; -it was a bright golden guinea, clear and unsullied as when it issued from the mint; to us it seemed as valuable as the talisman of Oromanes, or the philosopher's stone; there was nothing which science had ever discovered, or art adorned, or luxury improved, which it did not seem to place within our reach; the lamp of Aladdin was a spell of insignificant power, compared with that little piece of burnished metal.

On the occasion to which I now allude, I had fixed, at least a couple of months before, how part of my Christmas gift was to be expended. I had resolved upon purchasing my favourite picture,-I had driven a nail into the wall of my bedroom, immediately opposite my