the level of the adjoining country, and are covered with elegant gardens aud country seats. On one side, was a widely extended view of the English channel; on the other, of the Seine winding throug hits rich and beautiful valley, which at the close of October was still green with the softest verdure. On the opposite bank of the river was the little fishing town of Honfleur, with its chapel overlooking the sea, and at our feet lay Havre, with its crowded docks, and its compact and busy population. There is scarcely any thing more picturesque than the contrast of green and quiet fields, with the bustle and activity, the white sails and waving flags of a great commercial city-the sailors in their red jackets towing a ship into the harbor, soldiers at their evening parade on the ramparts of a fort, the distant fishing boats gliding along the coast, and the country people passing out with their purchases, through the gates of the city. I lingered among such scenes until after sunset, and then returned to the hotel just in time for dinner, which is usually served in France between five and six o'clock.

The next day I took a seat in the Diligence for Rouen, on my way to Paris. Our course for the first five miles from Havre, lay under the hills at no great distance from the river. At Harfleur, a village which will never be forgotten while Shakespeare continues to be read, we ascended a hill of nearly a mile in length, which brought us to the level of the country above. The face of the country on this, and other roads which I have since travelled in the north of France, is substan tially the same. It lies entirely open without fence, ditch, or hedge, and is cultivated in small patches of two or three acres. The surface is gently undulating, with no high hills, and yet scarcely ever a dead level. Occasionally, in looking forward to some gentle eminence over which the road is carried, you hope to reach a station from which the country may be viewed for some miles round,-from which some distant mountain may be seen on the skirts of the horizon, to relieve the dull uniformity of rich and cultivated fields, perpetually passing in the same forms under the eye. But when the summit is gained, the same prospect again presents itself; and there is scarcely a spot in the distance of fifty miles from Havre to Rouen, where the eye can reach beyond six or eight miles.

As you would naturally suppose, there is very little wood in France. No trees are seen scattered over the fields as in our country. It is only where the soil is unfit for cultivation that forests are found; and these are quite a different thing in France, from what they are in America. They are commonly small tracts of a few miles only in extent, in which not many of the trees are more than twenty feet in height. Such is the scarcity of fuel, that they are rarely suffered to stand more than twenty or twenty five years; except that by a wise provision of the government, the proprietor is compelled to leave twelve trees to attain to the age of forty years, and six to the age of sixty, in each acre. This deficiency of France in one of the greatest ornaments of rural scenery, is somewhat supplied in Normandy, by planting a belt of trees around an estate, or by long avenues of the chesnut or the maple, which conduct to the chateaux. A distant prospect of woods, which is indicative, among us, of a want of cultivation, is in France, therefore, the highest proof of its existence. The French

still adhere to those formal principles of landscape gardening, which were prevalent in England in the days of Addison. The traces of the scissors are every where to be seen on their groves and shrubbery. Avenues of trees are trimmed up on the inner side, into a perfectly smooth wall, and are bent over at top with an arch of scrupulous exactness. A mass of box is tortured into the shape of a summer-house, a fountain, or a statue. That "luxuriancy and diffusion of boughs and branches," which the English have been taught by Addison, to regard as the characteristic beauty of a fine grove, has no charm for the French.

At evening we descended from the country above into the valley of the Seine, at Rouen. This is a city of 100,000 inhabitants, and is greatly distinguished for its cotton manufactures. It is situated on the north side of the Seine, with beautiful fields of many miles in extent on the opposite side of the river; and with cliffs of chalk and limestone three hundred feet in height overhanging the town, and appearing almost ready to fall upon

the houses.

During our next day's journey of eighty miles to Paris, the road lay through the valley of the Seine, which is skirted on each side by the same chalky cliffs, which overhang the city of Rouen, (though less precipitous,) and which are thinly covered with soil along their steep and winding faces to the very summit. In the steepest places, walls of stone are erected to support the soil, and the hill-side rises by a series of terraces from the bottom to the top. The Seine winds through the valley, sometimes inclining to the hills on one side and sometimes on the other, in a stream of less than a quarter of a mile in width. As we occasionally ascended an eminence which gave us an extended prospect of the river, a scene of picturesque beauty opened on the view, which is unequalled in any other part of France. The valley of the Seine lay spread out before us in one great panorama of fifteen or twenty miles Its beautiful meadows, in the highest state of cultivation, extended down to the water's edge, without fence or hedge to impede the prospect.

in extent.

Though it was the first week of November the grass was still in the richest verdure; and having in many instances been recently mowed, the fields had the soft and velvet hue of the finest period of spring. The winter vegetables were still green in the gardens; the wheat and rye were up; and the whole country as far as the eye could reach, had that peculiar kind of neatness and beauty, which a finished garden puts on in the month of June, when all is yet regular in arrangement, and delicate in hue, and rich in promise. This resemblance was still more striking from the manner of cultivation, which is generally practised in France. In this country, you no where see large fields of wheat or other productions of the soil, spread out in a single mass. The whole country is a garden, divided into beds of fifty or a hundred feet in one direction, by four or five hundred in the other. One is planted with wheat and another with barley; one with pease and another with oats or turnips. Thus, at the present season especially, there is a perpetual variety in the aspect of the country when seen from a distance, which gives it, under a bright sun, the appearance of an immense and highly finished picture spread open before you, On eacir

side the view is bounded by those bold hills, which I have already described as encircling the bason of the Seine, along whose steep sides, to the very summit, are carried the same varied and picturesque lines of vegetation. Here and there, a white cliff stands forth amidst the changing green of the hill-side; or long traces of a red color show the gravelly spots, which are adapted to the culture of the vine. At the distance of every mile or two, a chateau appears on some commanding station which overlooks the country. The hamlets of the peasants are clustered around the foot of the hills, and the banks of the river are thickly set with villages, which are beautiful at a distance, whatever they might prove when near at hand.

In most of the villages through which we passed, I observed in some public place, an image of the Saviour, frequently as large as life, suspended on the cross in the agonies of dissolution. To one who witnesses these representations for the first time, there is something deeply affecting in the view; and it is impossible to pass them without lifting up the soul in adoration to Him," whose love was stronger than death." Yet it is obvious that the effect on the inhabitants of Catholic countries, is directly the reverse. These strong appeals to the imagination, being constantly before their eyes in places of business and recreation, are stripped of all their power to impress the feelings. The bargain is struck, and the jest goes round, under these vivid representations of the dying agonies of the Redeemer; and the heart is irrevocably hardened by the very means, which were intended to call forth its deepest affections. But I must conclude. We entered Paris at eight o'clock, P. M. through the Champs Elysees.

ART. XI.-REVIEW OF KNIGHT'S EULOGIUM.

An Eulogium on Nathan Smith, M. D. late Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physic and Surgery, in the Medical Institution of Yale Col lege; pronounced at his funeral, by J. KNIGHT, M. D. Professor of Anatomy and Physiology. New Haven: H. Howe. 1829. pp. 38.

WHEN a man of acknowledged abilities, who has adorned a liberal profession, and been extensively known as an able instructor of youth, is suddenly called away from life in the midst of his labors for the public good, it is equally due to the memory of the dead and to the feelings of surviving friends and associates, to erect at least some frail memorial to his talents, his services, and his worth. We shall, therefore, devote the few hours that are left us in closing this number of our work, to the melancholy office of portraying the character of Nathan Smith, M. D., late professor of the theory and practice of physic and surgery, in the Medical Institution of Yale College. In doing this, we shall avail ourselves of the materials furnished in the Eulogium by his respected colleague; and shall mingle with them our own recollections of a character, which continually rose in our estimation during the progress of a long and familiar acquaintance.

That Dr. Smith was no ordinary man, was obvious to the most careless observer. With none of those dazzling qualities which attract

the notice of others, with a rooted contempt for all parade of talent, and a plainness of manner which put him at once upon a level with the humblest circle that he entered, there was still something so peculiar and striking even in the casual effusions of his mind, as to fix the attention of all who met him, and give decisive indications of bold, original, and independent thought. Those, however, who knew him only in the zenith of his reputation, surrounded by admiring pupils, and endeared to the affections of a large and enlightened community, can very imperfectly estimate the difficulties through which he rose to this enviable distinction. His early life, to the age of twenty four years, was spent at a distance from all literary advantages, in the pursuits of agriculture among the mountains of Vermont. The greater part of the state was then a wilderness; exposed to the incursions of savage tribes upon its borders; struggling under the privations of the revolutionary war; dependent, in no small degree, for subsistence on the precarious products of the chase; and liable to continual attack from beasts of prey in the surrounding forests. In such a state of society, the means of education are, of necessity, few and limited. And even if it were otherwise, there is a peculiar charm in the employments which arise out of the exigences of such a state, which unfits the mind for the calmer pursuits of knowledge, and makes the toil of intellectual discipline doubly irksome by contrast. How little should we expect, that one already grown up to manhood in such circumstances, and detached, at one time, on military service against the neighboring tribes of Indians, or encamped at another, in the midst of the wilderness, remote from human habitations and in the dead of winter, in pursuit of game, would in a few years rise to the highest eminence in a learned profession, and ❝ do more for the improvement of medicine and surgery in New England than any other man!" The manner in which Mr. Smith's attention was turned to those pursuits, in which he was afterwards so much distinguished, is a striking illustration of the apparently trivial means, by which great talents are sometimes called forth by Providence, and directed to the benefit of mankind. He was present, by mere accident, at a surgical operation performed by Dr. Jonathan Goodhue, then the most distinguished practitioner in that region. His curiosity was awakened as to the structure of the human frame; and with his characteristic enterprise, which in most men would have been a spirit of mere adventure, he applied shortly after to enter the office of Dr. Goodhue, as a student in medicine. With the design probably of deterring him from a pursuit which appeared so fruitless, Dr. Goodhue declined to receive him until he should have gained sufficient literary information, to qualify him for admission to the freshman class of Harvard College.

Mr. Smith, with his constitutional ardor, immediately commenced his literary pursuits, and having complied with the prescribed condition, was received by Dr. Goodhue as a pupil. After spending three years under the tuition of this gentleman, he entered on the active duties of his profession at Cornish in New Hampshire. So great was his thirst for information, however, that, within two or three years, he suspended his practice for a time, to enjoy the advantages of a residence at Harvard College, where he attended several courses of lec

tures on medicine and surgery, and received the degree of Bachelor in Medicine.

Returning to New Hampshire with a mind enlarged by knowledge, and disciplined by a familiar intercourse with some of the ablest men of the profession, Dr. Smith resumed the practice of medicine with new ardor. At that period medical science was at a low ebb, throughout the greater part of New Hampshire and Vermont. Instead of availing himself of this circumstance to accumulate wealth, and extend his reputation by the contrasted ignorance of others, his enterprising spirit soon struck out a plan for elevating the profession, by the esta blishment of a Medical Institution in connexion with Dartmouth College. To qualify himself for the office of lecturer in such an institution, he left a lucrative and increasing business, and repaired to the University of Edinburgh, then regarded as the fountain-bead of medical knowledge. Here he spent nearly a year in attending upon the lectures, and mingling in the society of Black, of the elder Munro, and of others, whose names are the ornament of their profession; and after witnessing the practice of the London hospitals, he returned to this country with the most recent improvements of Europe in the science of medicine.

Dr. Smith now entered on that course of instruction, which he pursued for so many years with unrivalled success. But he had difficulties to contend with for a time, which would have subdued any spirit, less enterprising and determined than his. He had literally to create the Institution by his own exertions; to provide the requisite means of instruction-a chemical apparatus-anatomical preparations-a medical library-a building for lectures and operations. At first, the whole course of instruction, as well in medicine and surgery, as in the various subsidiary branches, was conducted by himself alone; and it was not until after his unaided exertions had given an extensive celebrity to his school, and made it an ornament and a blessing to the state, that he received any support from legislative patronage. Thus did he make himself the father of medical science in two states; while the influence of his instructions was felt in a greater or less degree throughout the whole of New England. "Every physician," says Dr. Knight, " especially all who had been his pupils, desired him as their counsel lor; and the sick, and the friends of the sick, looked to him as their last resort in all cases of difficulty."

In the autumn of 1813, Dr. Smith accepted an appointment as Professor in the Medical Institution, then recently established in Yale College. It was certainly a step attended with no little hazard, to leave the center of so wide a sphere of usefulness, as he had created around him in the northern parts of New England, and to enter anew on the delicate task of building up an influence in the midst of strangers. A distinguished name is often, in such circumstances, the very cause of failure, for it creates expectations which can be rarely equalled. In Dr. Smith, however, the anticipations of the public were more than realized. A flourishing Medical Institution has owed its prosperity in no small degree to his successful labors, and his well-earned reputation. It is no injustice," Dr. Knight remarks, "to the associates of Dr. Smith to say, that their principal object has been to learn from his wis

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