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They look as if they had seen angels, Titian (and Michael Angelo too) were of the earth, earthy. Raffaelle seemed as though he had communed with the skies." He admired Northcote much more than Fuseli, to whom he did not, I think, do justice. He said he was a mere exaggeration of littleness-always swearing and straining for something that was out of his 'reach. I replied, that he certainly possessed humour, and instanced what he said respecting a picture of Constable, which (like almost all that artist's land scapes) seemed to have been painted during a shower of rain. "Jawn! bring me ma umbrella! I'am go-oing to looke at Meester Cone-stable's pictur," "What you say may be true, occasion ally," said Hazlitt, "but in general he was all sound and fury—a mere explosion of words. Talking with Northcote is like conversing with the dead. You see a little old man (eighty years of age), pale and fragile, with eyes gleaming like the lights that are hung in tombs. He seems little better than a ghost, is almost as insubstantial, and hangs wavering and trembling on the very edge of life. You would think that a breath would blow him away; and yet my God! what fine things he says."-" Yes," observed some one," and what ill-natured things; they are all malicious to the last word. L called him a little bottle of aquafortis, which, you know, corrodes every thing it touches"-" Except gold," interrupted Hazlitt: "he never drops upon Sir Joshua, or the great masters."

THE FUTURE PROSPECTS OF

GREAT BRITAIN.†

It becomes an interesting question, whether the singular prosperity of England, does not contain within itself the seeds of decline? But we have a right to distrust those prophets of evil, who exert their sagacity only in seeing the seeds of ruin in the most palmy state of national fortune. If all the leading commercial powers have fallen, England has been placed in a condition distinct from them all. All those states were exclusively commercial: they had no foundation in the land. Tyre, Carthage, Venice, Genoa, Holland, had no territory extensive enough to give them a national existence independently of the sea they were strips of territory, in habited by men whose natural dwelling was on ship-board; they had no popu

From Croly's Life of George IV.

lation that could meet the attack of the military powers that pressed on them by land: their whole armour was in front; their backs were naked. All the maritime states were thus compelled to the perilous expedient of employing foreign mercenaries. The mercantile jealousy that uni formly refused the rights of citizenship to the neighbouring states, left the merchant helpless in his day of danger. The French cavalry insulted the states of Amsterdam at pleasure; the Austrians seized Genoa, and besieged Venice, when an Austrian cock-boat dared not appear on the Adriatic. In older times, the Mountaineers of Macedon tore down the battlements of the Phonician cities, when their ships were masters of all from Syria to the Pillars of Hercules, Scipio found but a solitary force of mercenaries between the shore and the walls of Carthage.

From the catastrophe of those small, jealons, and tyrannical states, what argument can be drawn to the fate of the extensive, the generous, and the enlightened, and, above all, the free?

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The population of the British isles is worthy of a great dominion. It probably amounts to twenty millions; and that immense number placed under such fortu nate circumstances of rapid communication and easy concentration, as to be equal to twice the amount in any other kingdom. Facility of intercourse is one of the first principles of civilized strength. The rapid returns of merchandise are not more indicative of prosperous commerce, than the rapid intercourse of humankind is essential to national civilization and safety. In England, for whatever purpose "united strength may be demanded, it is forwarded to the spot at once. It makes the whole land a fortress. If England were threatened with invasion, a hundred thousand men could be conveyed to the defence of any part of her coasts within fourand-twenty hours.

Some common, yet striking calculations evince the singular facility and frequency of this intercouse. The mail coaches of England run over twelve thousand miles in a single night-half the circumference of the globe! A newspaper, published in the morning in London, is, on the same day, read a hundred and twenty miles off! The traveller, going at night from London, sleeps, on the third night, at a distance of more than four hundred miles. The length of canal navigation, in the vicinage of London, is computed as equal to the whole canal navigation of France!

The late combination of the rail road and steam-engine systems, and the almost miraculous rapidity of passage thus attained, will increase this intercourse in an

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incalculable degree. Ten years more of peace may cover England with rail-roads; relieving the country of the expenses of canals, highways, and all the present ponderous and wasteful modes of convey. ance; bringing the extremities of the land together, by shortening the time of the journey from days to hours; and, by the nature of the system, which offers the most powerful stimulant to the native ingenuity of the English mind, and summons the artificer from the rude construction of the boat and the waggon, to the finest science of mechanism, providing, in all probability, for a succession of inventions, to which even the steam-engine may be but a toy. The secret of directing the balloon will yet be discovered; and England, adding to her dominion of the land and the sea, the mightier mastery of the air, will despise the barriers of mountain, desert, and ocean.

But the most important distinction between the materiel of British strength, and that of the old commercial republics, is in the diversity of the population. The land is not all a dock-yard, nor a manufactory, nor a barrack, nor a ploughed field; the national ship has a sail for every breeze. With a manufacturing population of three millions, we have a professional population, a naval population, and a most powerful, healthy, and superabundant agricultural population, which supplies the drain of them all. Of this last and most indispensable class, the famous commercial republics were wholly destitute, and they therefore fell; while England has been an independent and ruling king dom since 1066, a period already longer than the duration of the Roman Empire From Cesar, and equal to its whole duration from the consulate.

But, if the population of our settle ments be taken into account, the king of England, at this hour, commands a more numerous people than that of any other sceptre on the globe, excepting the proba bly exaggerated, and the certainly ineffective, multitudes of China. He is monarch over one hundred millions of men! With him, the old Spanish boast is true: "On his dominions the sun never sets." 'But the most illustrious attribute of this unexampled empire is, that its principle is be nevolence!-that knowledge goes forth with it that tyranny sinks before it-that, in its magnificent progress, it abates the calamities of nature that it plants the desert and that it civilizes the savage-that it strikes off the fetters of the slave-that its spirit is at once glory to God and goodwill to man.”

22

66

A NEW VIEW OF THE CAUSES

OF HYDROPHOBIA †.”

How does it happen, that in these enlightened days, when the mists are dis pelled which clouded the vision of our forefathers, and men have begun to look at, and to examine things for themselves, that there is still one subject which retains all its tremendous power over every class of society-women and children, heroes and statesmen, the most illiterate and the most learned, all are filled with terror when the name is introduced of that most ter→ rific of diseases, Hydrophobia. Let us meet the terrific spectre, and see if a little common sense can be brought to bear upon a huge mass of folly and superstition; a few remarks will suffice, at all events, to make this universal bugbear somewhat less apalling.

It may appear not a little presumptuous, at once to declare our conviction, that the disease called hydrophobia in the dog has nothing to do with the disease of the same name in the human species; in other words, that the madness of the biter has no effect on the madness of the bitten, and that a man who has been bitten by a dog in perfect health, is just as likely to have all the symptoms of hydrophobia as if he had been bitten by a mad one. And these are the reasons.

The saliva of the rabid animal has been always supposed to possess the virulent property which occasions hydrophobia. As one proof that it has this poisonous quality, it is remarked, that a bite inflicted on the naked flesh is more often followed by disease than when any part of the clothing has intervened, because the saliva is then absorbed; and does not pass into the wound. The simple fact being that the bite will be less severe, because of the additional resistance of the clothing.

The effects of all poisons with which we are acquainted are certain and determinate: it never happens that a known poison can be received into the animal system with impunity; the time is also specific at which its operation begins and ends. But assuming that the saliva of the mad dog is poisonous, the real truth is, that it has no effect at all on by far the greater number of those who have been subjected to its influence; and even on those who have been supposed to have been affected by it, the time at which the symptoms appear, is altogether undetermined. We speak now of its effects on the human species; for what is called hydrophobia in them, is attended with

+ From the Westminster Review.-No. XXVI. ›

many symptoms very different from those which accompany the disease of the same name in quadrupeds.

Is it to be imagined that a poison in jected into a wound will retain peaceable possession there for months, and even years, and then suddenly disturb the whole system? The interval between the bite, and the supposed effects, has been sometimes so long, that, literally speaking, it may be said to be not the same individual who pays the penalty for the bite; for the animal frame has, in the course of so many years, undergone a complete change: every atom of the former self has been de composed, and the poisonous matter supposed to have been left in the wound at the time of the bite, must also have disappeared.

It is no answer to this observation, to affirm that other diseases are given to the human subject by the introduction of virous matter; the small-pox, for instance, by inoculation, which also remains locally dormant for some time, and then affects the whole system. The certainty of the symptoms, and the time when they will appear, in the one case, and the capricious uncertainty, as it regards the when and the where, in the other, are circumstances which show most decidedly, that the two cases are not governed by the same laws. If the saliva had the invariable effects that the variolous matter has, there would be no more mystery in the one case than in the other.

In what infection consists, and what is the first effect which constitutes the reception of disease, are curious and puzzling inquiries. Some organic change must take place at the moment disease is communicated, or what is meant by taking infection? The symptoms of the disorder do not appear till after a certain number of days; but the disease must be received somewhere in the system at a stated time before it shows itself.

Hydrophobia in man is of rare occurrence. During the last thirty years only six or eight cases have been known at Bartholomew's hospital; and among twenty persons, who at one time were bitten, only one had the disease; so that the exceptions from the effects of this supposed virulent poison, here seem to form the rule, whilst the observance of the usual laws of cause and effect, if the received theory of hydrophobia be a true one, are very rare; not more frequent than one in twenty!

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It is said, that there are ten animals besides the human species that are susceptible of this disease. These are the dog, wolf, fox, and cat; the horse, ass, mule. cow, sheep, and pig. The first four only,

as it is pretended, have the power of communicating it.

The mysterious and capricious agency with which, among the human species, hydrophobia has hitherto appeared to select its victims, has been one fearful adjunct in the catalogue of its horrors. It has set at defiance all the laws by which we reason, either from experience or analogy. By some unknown spell it has seemed to seize upon its unhappy choice, and to have exerted its baneful influence peculiarly over the powers of his mind. But on a short examination, the solution of the enigma presented itself. As far as we know, it has never occurred to any one to suppose, that the cause of this direful malady originates in the nature and shape of the wound, and not from any virulent matter injected into it.

A wound made with a pointed instrument, a nail for instance, the hand or foot, has not unfrequently been followed by tetanus; and the same consequences have succeeded a wound where the nerve has been injured, without being divided.

It deserves particular notice, that the only four animals that are said to have the power of communicating this malady have teeth of a similar form. They would make a deeply-punctured wound; which is precisely the kind of wound which more often than any other is the herald of tetanus.

Though the symptoms of hydrophobia have hitherto been considered somewhat to differ from tetanus, they agree in their principal characteristics; in being spasmedic, in peculiarly affecting the muscles of the throat, and, in short, in producing the same great excitement in the whole nervous system. A more attentive examination of the subject will perhaps show, that the symptoms of each disease are more exactly similar than has hitherto been imagined; and that they have been modified only by the peculiar constitution of the patient. All that is meant here to be asserted is, that there is nothing in the symptoms of the one disease which has not, in its general character, been found in the symptoms of the other. Immense quantities of opium can be borne by those labouring under either disease without the usual effects. Excision is said to be the only remedy in both diseases; and in each it is equally powerless after the nervous excitement has once commenced.

The horrible custom is said not to be yet entirely exploded of smothering the unhappy sufferer between two featherbeds, from the fear that he may communicate the disease by biting those around him. It has sometimes happened, that under the influence of extreme terror, the

poor wretch has, in his agony; begged to be prevented from injuring his attendants; but we have never known of any instance where an inclination to bite has been exhibited. Hydrophobia is no more the necessary consequence of a bite than blindness is.

One word on the hydrophobia of animals, and particularly as it appears in the dog; he is more often the subject of the disease, and his domestic habits bring him more under our observation.

There seems to be scarcely the slightest resemblance between any of the symp toms of the hydrophobia of man and those of the brute creation. The dog, under the influence of his disease, generally appears dull and out of spirits, and snaps at any person or thing near him. His aversion to fluids is by no means universal-he has very frequently been known to drink a short time before death; so that the horror of water does nor form a characteristic symptom of his malady. It applies much more properly to that of the human species, where even the sight of fluids often produces violent spasms in the throat; the contraction has been so great that it has been found impossible to swallow, notwithstanding the earnest wish of the patient to do so.

That a dog should be called nad in consequence of having the symptoms referred to above, is a sad error of language, and leads to the many absurd opinions which depend upou this term; we must consider, however, that the moment such an idea enters into the head of any person (who has a tongue also), the alarm of a mad dog is echoed far and wide; the poor animal is hunted abont till its frightened condition give it the appearance of wildness. There are few people who have not, at one time of their lives, felt the terror inspired by either seeing or hearing of such an animal in their neighbourhood.

Men may call a certain disease canine madness if they will; our position is, that this disease is not to be communicated to other animals by a bite, but by the usual mauner in which other diseases, that are called infectious, are communicated. It may be as infectious among other animals as the disease called the distemper among dogs is considered to be; or possibly, it may be an epidemic: either supposition will account for the fact, that dogs in the same neighbourhood have frequently had this disease, when there has been almost, if not absolute certainty that they have not been bitten.

In conclusion, we state, that the saliva of the so-called rabid animal has no poisonous quality. The disease named

hydrophobia in man is caused by the injury of a nerve; when fatal effects occur, they are accidental circumstances attending the wound; and, as they more frequently follow punctured wounds than others, the teeth of a dog are as likely to produce them as anything else, and the reason why every bite is not succeeded by the same consequences is, because no nerve is injured so as to produce the appalling nervous excitement that has received the name of hydrophobia.

SCRAPS OF ANTIQUITY.+

forth one day from his palace window,
WHEN Ptolemy II., King of Egypt, looked
afflicted as he was at the time with the
gout, the consequence of his luxurious in-
dulgences, and distracted with kingly
anxieties, he observed a multitude of his
plebeian subjects reclining in festal ease,
with immense glee and great good appe-
on the sandy banks of the Nile, and dining
tite on such plebeian entertainment as
they had provided for themselves.
serable me!" said the monarch," that my
"Mi-
fate hath not allowed me to be one of
them!"

So

Dancing seems to have been reckoned, as well among the Hebrews as the Greeks, one of the first-rate accomplishmets, and' poetry, but with their religions worship. to have been associated not only with their Almost all the earliest Greek poets, as Thespis, Cratinus, and others, not only excelled in dancing, but taught it to freemen, or gentlemen, for money. We do dancer, or kept a dancing-school. not read, however, that Homer was a phocles was one of the best dancers of his generation; he had a very handsome person, which he was fain to exhibit in the dance's grace-displaying movements. After the celebrated battle of Salamis, in the glory of which he and Eschylus alike as warriors partook, he exhibited himself as a lyrist and dancer, nearly in the same manner as David did before the ark: he footed it along, dancing and singing to his lyre, being anointed also with oil, and naked to the waist; though others say he wore his ́ robe.

acted, he not only danced, but played at When his play of Nausicaa was the ball. With the Hebrews, dancing must assuredly have been associated with notions of dignity, otherwise it would not have been used in their most solemn wor

+ From the Edinburgh Literary Journal-No.

CVI.

ship. And yet the tauntig rebuke given to David by his wife, presupposes, in her estimation, something of levity combined with that exercise. With the Romans, after their connexion with Greece, dancing was also deemed a high accomplishment. Iu the age of Cicero, the first men of Rome made a boast of their skill in dancing; as Claudius, who had triumphed; Cœlius, the enemy of Cicero ; and Lic. Crassus, son of the celebrated Parthian Crassus.

Anacharsis, though a Scythian, uttered sentiments as beautiful as those of Plato himself. Among his fine sayings is the one-" The vine bears three grapes: the first is that of pleasure: the second is that of drunkenness; the third is that of sorrow." A Greek poet, I forget his name, gave the first bowl, or crater, to the Graces, Hours, and Bacchus; the second to Venus, and again to Bacchus; the third to Mischief and Ate.

When Mark Antony was fast fleeing from his conqueror, after the battle of Mutina, one of his acquaintances gave as a reply to some person that inquired of him what his master was about" He is doing what dogs do in Egypt when pursued by the crocodile-drinking and run ning!"

How different are the times and modes of study practised by literary men in all nations and ages! Demosthenes studied always during the night, utterly secluded, and quaffing at cold water; Demades, his rival in the forum, hardly studied at all, but dissipated away his time amid wine and licentiousness. Eschylus was said to be always drunk when he wrote, whence Sophocles remarked to him with some of the bitterness of jealousy, that "if he wrote well, he did so perchance and unwittingly." If it be true that Eschylus wrote always in a state of inebriation, it may perhaps account for his harsh, consorted, yet furious, forceful, and sublime style of poetry. I should infer, from Homer's simple style, that he was a drinker of cold water. Not only Eschylus, but Alcæus and Aristophanes, composed their poetry in a state of excitation from liquor; yet Anacreon, bacchanalian as he was, wrote, it is said, always sober-he only feigned inebriety, Among modern writers, I have only heard of Tasso and Schiller who composed in a state of semi-ine briation: Schiller used to study till long after midnight, with deep potations of Rhenish Tasso was wont to say that Malmsey was that alone which enabled him to compose good verses.

The Greeks seldom drank wine undi. luted with water. Hesiod recommends three cups of water to one of wine; they sometimes drank four to one; the Greek proverb prescribes five of water to two of wine, or three of water to one of wine. The proportion of five to two seems generally to have been preserved by those who wished to drink cheerfully, and converse for a long time without inebriation. Anacreon, whom we may conceive the pattern of all jolly winebibbers, used two of water to one of wine. It was considered a Thracian or Scythian custom to drink pure wine. The Romans drank more undiluted wine than the Greeks; yet we hear Ovid himself saying, that he could never drink wine in an unmixed state; it was too strong for him.

Magnificent and large as are our modern steam-vessels, they are inferior, if we may judge from description, both in size and splendour, to the vessels constructed by the kings of Egypt and Syracuse, on a scale of grandeur corresponding to the immense preparations of their sculpture and architecture. Ptolomæus Philopater, King of Egypt, built a vessel four hundred and twenty feet long, fifty-six feet broad, seventy-two feet high from the keel to the top of the prow, but eighty to the top of the poop. She had four helms of sixty feet; her largest oars were fifty-six feet long, with leaden handles, so as to work more easily by the rowers; she had two prows, two sterns, seven rostra, or beaks, successively rising, and swelling out one over the other. the topmost one most prominent and stately; on the poop and prow she had figures of animals, not less than eighteen feet high; all the interior of the vessel was beautified with a delicate sort of painting, of a waxen colour. She had four thousand rowers: four hundred cabin-boys, or servants; marines to do duty on the decks, two thousand eight hundred and twenty; with an immense store of arms and provisions. The same prince built another ship, called the Thalamegus, or Bedchamber-ship, which was only used as a pleasure yacht, for sailing up and down the Nile. She was not so long or large as the preceding, but more splendid in the chambers and their furnishings.-Hiero, King of Syracuse, built an enormous vessel, which he intended for a corn-trader; her length is not given. She was built at Syracuse, by a Corinthian ship-builder, and was lauched by an apparatus devised by Archimedes. All her bolts and nails were of brass; she had twenty rows of oars; her apartments were all paved with neat square varigated tiles, on which there was painted all the story of

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