could look upon even in Italy. 10th. The Legacy, paint- creation. If he were not startled from this entrancement ed by J. Inskipp, (who is he?) engraved by J. Stewart; by a shrew-mouse suddenly running across his foot, or the pretty, but a little commonplace. 11th. The Corsair's glittering undulation of a snake among the withered leaves Bride, painted by J. Hollins, engraved by H. Rolls. This across the pathway, his eye would be unconsciously drawn is the last, and the best. By the goddesses! a glorious glimpses of adjacent fields, and shining tracks of the river off, and carried out of the forest, by discovering green woman! Could we meet with another such, we should here, a spire of one of the churches; there, the tower of ourselves turn corsair. Rich is the Turkish dress in which another; clusters of house-tops; steam-engine chimneys, she reclines on her embroidered couch,-dark, very dark are like obelisks; and distant hills, cultivated or barrenthe luxuriant tresses, flowing from beneath her costly turban through the loop-holes of intermingling boughs and broken over her white neck,-fair, exquisitely fair, are her small foliage around him. hands, the one gently supporting her head, and the other lying in its beauty upon her voluptuous lap. Then her feet by the shade of Ovid! her snowy feet peeping from beneath her long cimar, ignorant of slippers, or of covering of any sort, are enough to convert an aged anchorite into a love-sick stripling! But her face-above all, her face!—the depth of fascinating meaning, tender but not enervating, speaking from her eye, and breathing on her lips, and dimpling in her chin, and shining on her brow, and melting into rapture on her glorious bosom ! How lovely, too, the sunset scene discovered through the large and open verandah casement! how finely in keeping is its glow of warm light with the ripened daughter of that Eastern land, stretched in languishing allurement before us! By the goddesses, a glorious woman! one worth travelling over half the globe to see, to speak to, and to love. O, Frederick Muller! amiable, but most milky and watery poet! couldst thou not write something less commonplace, and more spirit-stirring, about a creature so thrillingly beautiful? By Heaven, Frederick Muller, thou art not worthy to kiss the smallest of her toes. We will wager thee a diamond ring to an old shoe-buckle, that there is more genuine poetry in any one of the manly tones of her lord the Corsair, whose step she at this moment hears along the corridor, than in all thy seven stanzas of mortal rhyme.

him, rising in Babylonish confusion from the populous Presently voices and sounds of all kinds would assail valleys and village-crowned eminences; but gradually distinguished, if his ear nicely pursued them, through their innumerable varieties,-harmonious and dissonant, loud and low, mournful and lively; the rustling of winds among the leaves-the gush of waters down a wear-the barking chimes of the church clock, or the knell of a death-bell; a of dogs-the crowing of cocks-the cries of children-the barracks, the whistling of carters, the rumbling of carriages, gun, a drum, a bugle-born, a flourish of trumpets from the. the ringing of anvils, the reverberating thumps of tilt-hammers, with an indistinct, but deep perpetual under sound, like a running bass, composed of all these blended noises, covering the whole, and constituting 'the busy hum of men' thronging the streets of the town below, or travelling on the numerous high roads branching from it. These would form ciations which they would awaken in the mind of him who altogether a concert inexpressibly captivating, by the asso could listen to them as one of the millions of sentient beings, whether brute or intelligent, that inhabit the little locality, exquisitely picturesque, and genuinely English, within the precincts of Sheffield. Though in solitude himself, his delight would not be solitary, but social in the highest and circuit of the horizon were thinking of him at that moment, purest degree. Though not a living creature within the he would be thinking of them, of them all, and all together. His joy would be a mysterious sympathy with all their joys, an ineffable interest in all their occupations, and a cordial good-will to every thing that lived, moved, and breathed within his sensorium.

"Whatever draws a man out of himself, makes him wiser, and better, and happier; at least if it does not, the fault is effectual means of improvement which Providence has his own, and he has to answer for abusing one of the most placed within his power. He cannot benefit others without being himself benefited in return, either by the influence of his own action, his own feelings, or by the gratitude with which it is more than repaid on the part of his fellowcreatures. Ascetics may say what they please, but seclusion all to enjoyment. is neither favourable to wisdom nor to virtue, and least of

The prose contents of the volume are" The Tempter, an Arab Legend," probably by Croly; "Irish Legends and Traditions," by the Rev. R. Walsh; "Home, Country, all the World," by James Montgomery; "The Indian Mother," by Mrs Jameson, authoress of the " Diary of an Ennuyée," and "The Loves of the Poets;" "Eastern Story Tellers," by Mr Carne; "The History of a Trifler," by Miss Jewsbury; "The Seven Churches," by Charles Macfarlane; "The Residuary Legatee," by Miss Mitford; "The Roman Merchant," by the O'Hara Family; A Hawking Party in Hindostan," by Miss Roberts, and "The Dispensation, an Irish Story," by Mrs S. C. Hall. From these, all of which possess more or less merit, "We love our native home, our native place, our native we shall select a few passages from the paper by Mont-province, our native land. There is a peculiar and distinct gomery, which appears to us to be characterised by a delicate sensibility, and a fine philosophy :

By James Montgomery.

"He who retires, as I have often done, on a bright summer evening, into the depth of one of our Hallamshire woods, while he saunters along in the dreamlike repose of a brown study, or leans against an old oak in the fine abstraction of serener thought, might imagine himself alone and in silence, merely because his eye and his ear were unobservant of motions and murmurs perceptible on every hand. But were he to pause at one of those cheerful openings, where, from a small patch of ground, beneath a handbreadth of blue sky, in a little amphitheatre of trees, the great world seems hermetically excluded, he would soon find himself in the very midst of the joy and activity, the labour, fatigue, and anxiety, of life.

"At first, the dazzling dance of insects in the sunshine, and their musical drone in the shade, might surprise him into a feeling of sympathetic delight; but the flitting forms and richer melody of birds would quickly charm away his attention, to hearken to the sweetest inarticulate tones in

•Hallamshire is the name of a district, not very accurately defined, but extending about six miles on every side of the town of Sheffield, within which the corporation of cutlers exercises its tradeJurisdiction."

kind of attachment belonging to each of these relationships; but patriotism is the bond of the whole; and he who loves his country, loves his home and all between. But at home, and in our country, this sentiment, like the light of heaven and the air we breathe, is so familiar, that we are scarcely conscious of its presence, unless reflection be powerfully awakened to it by the return of some national or domestic occasion on which we are wont to felicitate ourselves, and those who are dear to us, on this cause of so much of our mutual felicity.

cident there that reminds us of what we have loved from "In a strange land, it is far otherwise; the smallest insprings of affection; and the sight of a flower, the sound our childhood, and left perhaps for ever, touches the finest of a voice, the cast of a countenance, the colour of a garment, the air of a song, may electrify both nerve and spirit, and quicken emotions more deeply transporting than have ever been inspired by the scenes and enjoyments themselves, which are thus overwhelmingly renewed. The pleasures of memory are sometimes, though seldom, more lively than the pleasures of hope, but they are always more defined; and the certainty that we have been blest,' is something still in possession, which a wise man would not exchange for the unreal reversion of blessings to come, in the precarious contingencies of life. The farther, too, that we are removed from the time and the place of our earliest and sweetest associations, the more they are endeared to us, and the oftener recollected. The very sadness which accompanies the remembrance of departed joys' makes them a thou

Miss Landon has also contributed two poems, Offering," and "The Legacy." We extract the first, premising that Miss Landon is the young lady from whose exertions in literature we expect more than from any of her contemporaries 19d tha algumret deward spaz wal

We conclude our extracts with a very excellent sonnet tains matter to the full as interesting as any that has yet But to turn to the Number now before us. by a contributor of our own:

the adroitness of the king in punishing them, with a view to frightening the Presbyterians; and the state of the gipsies in Scotland. It is also worthy of notice, that the crimes of the lower classes stand more prominently forward in this Number than in any that have preceded it, and that in a way not extremely flattering to our prejudices in favour of Scotch morality. We say nothing of the maiming and destroying, in the most wanton and savage manner, whole flocks of sheep, or of setting coalpits on fire, for the gratification of private malignity; these, we would be told, were a mere effervescence of the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum. But we suspect our readers will be a good deal surprised when we tell them, that this little volume contains ample proofs that there existed in Edinburgh, at the commencement of the 17th century, an extensive corporation-secret, of course-of perjurers.

minable book-selling and book-making days, abound with all sorts of unnecessary digressions, but there is a fashion now in vogue of lauding to the skies one set of men, for the purpose of decrying another; and there is an affectation of displaying a kind of motley erudition, by appending to every other page a foot-note-catalogue of booktitles, sufficient, indeed, to "puzzle the wise, and make the unlearned stare." But with none of these sins can the author, before us be fairly charged; nay, we rather question whether he has not, to an objectionable degree, fallen into the opposite extreme; for we observe that Mr Liston does not, from the first to the last page of his work, refer to a single authority, although it must, prime facie, appear evident, that he has necessarily had to communicate the results of investigations and experiments meritoriously conducted by his predecessors and contemporaries. But, in the present instance, we are not inSo much for the present. As soon as the work is com-clined to condemn this, because we perceive that Mr Lispleted, we propose treating our readers to a dissertation on its merits as a whole.

·Elements of Surgery. By Robert Liston, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in London and Edinburgh, senior Surgeon to the Royal Dispensary for the city and county of Edinburgh, Lecturer on Surgery, &c. &c. &c. Part First. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. Edinburgh: Adam Black. 1831.

A COMPETENT knowledge of surgery is not to be obtained by the perusal of books; but it is certainly necessary that the younger members of the profession should be put in possession of such works as communicate, in a precise and logical manner, the elementary principles of surgical science. The Principles of Surgery, by Latta, Bell, Allen, &c. were excellent, and to them have been respectively awarded all the popularity they merited; but the progress of physiology and pathology render the frequent revisions of such systematic works necessary, for as facts accumulate and discoveries are made, new information is obtained which affects the most elementary principles of our knowledge. All sciences are progressive; but medical science is more especially so, because it is founded entirely on facts which daily increase in number and variety; besides which, the darker ages that so long clouded its history, are only now gradually passing away. Its superstructure, which can only be securely founded on the immutable principles of truth, is not yet completed, and each who has the genius, must contribute to it his portion of labour. It is almost superfluous to dwell on the high character which Mr Liston enjoys, as one of the first surgeons in Europe, which of itself is almost a sufficient guarantee for the excellence of the work he has here undertaken, and which, we are satisfied, will be hailed with pleasure by the older as well as the younger members of the profession.

It did not follow, that because Mr Liston handles the scalpel dexterously, he should be equally successful in using his pen; for the possession of knowledge is not always accompanied with the power of communicating it to others; and it is much to be regretted, that medical men, even of high professional attainments, when they turn authors, not only affect a culpable negligence in their style of writing, but commit blunders flagrant enough to disturb the ghosts of all the orthodox grammarians that ever flitted into the other world. We did not look for eloquence in Mr Liston's "Elements of Surgery"—we did not expect to find metaphors streaming like meteors through his pages-we did not anticipate that similes would glitter like sunbeams before our eyes; but we looked for a dispassionate philosophical tone of writing, such as is most appropriate for the communication of scientific knowledge to scientific men,-and we have not been disappointed; for the style is throughout unaffected and manly. Not only do medical works, in these abo

ton has limited himself to stating, in a concise manner, those universal truths, which-whoever may have discovered them are now public property, and constitute the basis of all medical knowledge. Nay, a positive advantage has been hereby gained; for Mr Liston, considering, truly, that his work will become a text-book in the hands of the younger part of the profession, has very wisely avoided referring to controversial authors, who have distinguished themselves in unprofitable physiological speculations, in which the ignes fetui of Fancy are continually mistaken for the light of Truth. Thus, in giving his opinion in favour of the muscularity of the arteries, and in describing the proximate cause of inflam mation, subjects that have been sadly weatherbeaten, Mr Liston contents himself with stating his own opinions, deduced, of course, from data that have been already published, and very properly avoids pressing controversial evidence on the attention of his readers. Indeed, the main interest of the work consists in its containing the opinions of Mr Liston on the most important subjects connected with surgical science; and these he has given in a most distinct and satisfactory manner.

We are obliged, from the limits of our Journal, to speak thus generally of the merits of Mr Liston's "Elements of Surgery;" but we can assure our professional readers, and more especially the pupils of the Royal Infirmary, that they will find this the best elementary work on Surgery that is now published. As its title indicates, the volume before us constitutes only its first Part; and we understand the second and last Part will be published towards the end of the present session.

the true sense of the word. The gentlemen who aspire to this designation on the other side of the channel, write flash-on this side, they write whack.

jects are mixed up in such a higgledy-piggledy manner, so devoid of all arrangement, that it is impossible to arrive at any satisfactory result. Again, if a man of talent be at the head of the committee, which really sometimes happens, he knows how to give the examination such a turn as to evolve a clear and distinct story from the witness. But when this is not the case, the niembers of the committee blunder on with all sorts of irrelevant and ill-timed questions, and frequently, leaving the true subject, run off upon some incidental topic. Thus, we rise from perusing their report rather more ignorant, and incalculably more confused, than when we sat down. Of the fifth article, "On the Occult Sciences of the Ancients," we have only time to say that it is extremely

The review of Victor Hugo's "Hernani" is just. The article on the French Revolution is able, and composed in a good spirit. We wish we could say as much for that on the "revolt" (the word is a good word) of the Netherlands. The article on Commercial History is not much to the purpose. Where did the author fall in with the word "statistician?" and the "Huskissonian era" sounds rather queer. These are trifles, it is true, but they indicate the nature of the essay--which is, trifling.

The second article treats of Codification, and is an able paper-as interesting as can be expected from a dissertation upon such an unpromising subject. We dissent, however, from the views defended by the writer. He attempts to strike into a middle path between Bentham and Savigny. Now, all such attempts at a compromise are necessarily failures. In all controversies, one or the other party, or both, must be wrong. When the critic thinks the latter is the case, let him examine the subject anew for himself, but never go staggering from side to side, with the indecision of a drunk man, now bowing respectfully to the one party" What you say, sir, is quite cor-able and amusing. rect," hiccup! then to the other" An admirable remark that of yours, sir," hiccup! The opinions of men of genius (and both Bentham and Savigny are worthy the name) are not loose and disjointed-an uncemented mixture of wheat and chaff, where we may select and reject at pleasure. They have an interdependence (if we may coin such a word;) each is modified by all the rest; they are incorrectly apprehended unless taken in connexion; to take one away, is like removing the keystone of a bridge. You cannot ingraft the anti-codification principles of Savigny upon the codification principles of Bentham, so as to bear fruit. They are essentially heterogeneous, and cannot amalgamate. We are not going to enter at present into the question, but we cannot refrain from making one observation. We see that the ingenious essayist before us has given into the common cant about the multiplicity of our statutes. The statute law of England is no doubt pretty voluminous, but nothing like what it is represented to be by a certain class of legal reformers. These croakers forget (or do not know) that the Parliament of Great Britain exercises executive, as well as legislative functions, and that nine-tenths of what are called Acts of Parliament (private bills, turnpike and canal acts, et hoc genus omne) are not laws of the land, and do not require to be studied by lawyers.

Hesperides; or, Poems, Human and Divine. By Robert
Herrick. A Selection from, with a Memoir of the
Post. Edinburgh. Henry Constable. 1830. 32mo.
Pp. 112.

THIS is a remarkably pretty little pocket edition of Herrick's best things. They were curious old fellows these poets of two hundred years ago. They said and did things which modern poets dare not say or do for their very lives. There is a quaintness in their thoughts, and an oddity in their mode of expression, which at once carry us back into a different state of society. Herrick was a sort of compound of Horace and Catullus, possess

soft elegance of the other. He was born in London, in
the year 1591, and was educated at Cambridge. He was
the contemporary and friend of Selden, Denham, Cotton,
With the last, in
Endymion Porter, and Ben Jonson.
particular, he seems to have been on the most friendly
footing. They were kindred spirits, and spent many a
merry hour together, else Herrick would never have writ-
ten these lively verses:

The third article is one of a class which we rarelying much of the good sense of the one, and much of the meet with in the Foreign Quarterly, and which we are not very anxious to see there. It is a long and rather a superficial sketch of the old Italian romantic poems. The For ign Quarterly is not, we take it, a retrospective review; its object is to inform us of what is doing in the living literature of other nations-a task which, if duly performed, will fully occupy its time. At any rate, when it next reverts to the olden times, for Heaven's sake, let it choose some less hackneyed theme than Italy. Why, all our periodicals, down to the Lady's Magazine, have been prosing on this topic for the last twenty years.

The article on the French Prohibition System is the best in the Number. We do not mean to deny that some of the others may evince higher talent, but the one in question is the most perfect of its kind. On one point, in particular, we are at one with the reviewer-the importance of the evidence led before parliamentary

"Ah, Ben!"*
"Say how, or when
Shall we, thy guests,
Meet at those lyric feasts
Made at the Sun,

The Dog, the Triple Tun;
Where we such clusters had,

As made us nobly wild, not mad

And yet each verse of thine

Outdid the cheer, outdid the frolic wine."

Fill me a mighty bowl

Up to the brink,
That I may drink
Unto my Jonson's soul.
"Crown it again, again;

committees of enquiry. The mass of statistical informa- Or this pleasant song : tion which has by their means been accumulated and preserved, is immense. We must be allowed, however, to remark, that, for want of a good working system, this information has been amassed to a most disproportionate extent, and the really valuable part of it is buried in fragments among a mass of rubbish. Take, as an example, the investigations "On the State of Ireland." No committee is adequate to a subject so vague and extensive. But look nearer, at the way in which it was set about. The Archbishop of Dublin is succeeded by a butter-merchant from Waterford: just after his lordship has been pumped dry of his shallow opinions about Catholicism, and we have begun to get interested in the enquiry, and to wish for further information, our attention is called away to the consideration of oak staves, birch hoops, salt butter, bags, cows, and shipping. The different sub- of fortune, which are so peculiarly the lot of poets.

And thrice repeat
The happy heat,
To drink to thee, my Ben!
"Well I can quaff, I see
To the number five,
Or nine; but thrive
In fancy ne'er like thee."

Poor Herrick was subjected to all the ups and downs