ironed, and guarded by a file of men, going round the market begging; numbers gave him a trifle. It was amusing to observe the ceremonious behaviour of the giver and receiver on these occasions. Both took off their hats, made a profusion of low bows, and then embraced each other with a politeness that accorded oddly with their half savage appearance.

• Charity is a very prevalent virtue amongst the Russians, though they appear to care little whether the object be worthy or not. I have not unfrequently seen a Russian give a coin of five farthings value to a professed beggar, who returned him two farthings in exchange.'-vol. ii., pp. 264, 265. Before we take leave of Captain Keppel, we believe that we can afford him some information on a subject which he mentions in his first volume. He says (p. 309), that while he was examining the ruins of Kisra Shereen, he was informed that about two years and a half ago an European had made an accurate survey of all the buildings, and had taken with him a stone covered with inscriptions. Who the European was, he adds, he has yet to learn. The latter question we cannot distinctly answer, but we suspect that the stone was that from which Mr. Vescovali copied part of an inscription, containing a considerable portion of Diocletian's edict for fixing a maximum of prices throughout the Roman empire. This district of Persia was included in that empire, under the reign of Diocletian. The copy of the inscription was brought not long since to England by Mr. Vescovali, who informed Colonel Leake that he had taken it from a stone" which he found in the possession of a gentleman who had been travelling in the Levant."

ART. XII. A Letter on the Medical employment of White Mustard Seed. By a Member of the London College of Surgeons. London, 8vo. pp. 31. Carpenter. 1827.

THE Materia Medica has, upon its list, an amazing number of simples whose original pretensions have been long exploded, and which are at present but rarely employed, unless it is to give safe convoy to some delicate freight of precious virtue. And yet there is scarcely one of these names that had not its day of celebrity: coming out in a first-rate character, receiving the applauses of a packed crew of mercenary partizans, and at last subsiding into its natural position amidst the lumber of the laboratory.

White mustard seed has been long, and continues to be the rage amidst all classes of invalids in Paris. With us, the phrenzy has assumed a milder form. We see no colours leading the multitude astray---no bounty offered for acclamation. Indeed, we cannot trace amidst our population any very sanguine apostle of the new light, beyond an occasional proprietor of a Thames-street warehouse, who feels within him a thorough admiration of the blessings of white mustard seed, after rising from the contemplation of a considerable stock in hand. Above all, the faculty does not seem alarmed, except now and then in the case of some superseded familydoctor, who has lived too long to witness the preference which is bestowed on See the M. R., vol. iii., p. 326.

Lately published by Murray.

so empty a pretender. We are haunted with a suspicion that some such victim of the ignorance of a patient, may be found in the author of this pamphlet. We should wish also that he had vouchsafed some test of authenticity on this occasion, and not have left his very important assertions to the spontaneous adoption of his readers.

With such preliminary impressions as arise from what has been just mentioned, we proceed to state the testimony of this surgeon. He says, that in chronic complaints, or such as are of long standing, the seed was altogether powerless and of no effect, even in doses of considerable magnitude---whilst in fevers and disorders where any of the coats of the stomach or intestines are hurt, it may produce the worst symptoms. He then mentions a case in which the exhibition of white mustard seed was attended with fatal consequences. Notwithstanding so much experience, our author was subsequently induced to make a personal trial of its properties, or, to use his own expression, to dive into its very essence. He took it for three weeks, and whatever tendency it has at all, was rather to constipate than relax, to produce a sensation of fulness in the stomach, and to render a thousand degrees more offensive that which was sufficiently repulsive before. He adds, that the pores of the skin became the channels of an effluvium of the like disgusting odour. Determined to see the experiment out, the patient courageously increased the quantity.

My daily potion,' says he, then, of this delectable trash was gradually augmented, aided by tea, and the diluent help of barley water, until, finding my stock of amiability decline, even to the loss of temper, I made one grand and desperate effort, and engorged at a meal as much as sufficed me for both breakfast and dinner. In proportion as the bulk was increased, the flatulence,' costiveness, and oppression' were multiplied; and at last to such an unbearable extent, that had it not been for the timely assistance of a friendly Seidlitz, I might have had good cause to rue so silly an exploit.'

The author then submitted the drug to chemical analysis. All medicines that possess a peculiar property will yield it in some form or another, by means of heat or some of the other applications which are capable of effecting decomposition. But white mustard seed gives out nothing, either in the form of extract, spirit, or sublimation, which varies in efficacy from the negative character of the article itself. The conclusion, then, at which our author has arrived, from what he has seen in cases wherein he himself was agent, and those in which he was sufferer, is, that white mustard seed is possessed of no virtue, that it has no significant or manageable operation. This position he maintains at some length; and, admitting his facts to be true, in an unanswerable manner. He concludes his examination of the pretensions of this drug, by a challenge, addressed to all the respectable physicians in Europe, to produce a case of actual disease which was permanently cured by the internal exhibition of it under any form.

We have objected to the want of authenticity with which the very material facts in this pamphlet may be met. It is fair to state, for we presume that the marks were intended to guide the curious, that the pamphlet bears the signature of B., that the address is " Spring Gardens," and that the author declares he does not write to screen himself behind an anonymous signature, and that if any person feel aggrieved at an inadvertency of expression, his name is as 'come-at-able' as his personal abode.

221

ART. XIII. 1. Sacred Specimens, selected from the early English Poets, with Prefatory Verses. By the Rev. John Mitford. 12mo. pp. 237. 8s. 6d. London. Baldwin, Cradock and Joy. 1826.

2. Specimens of sacred and serious Poetry, from Chaucer to the present day. By John Johnstone. 16mo. pp. 560. 5s. 6d. Edinburgh. London. Whittaker. 1826.

Oliver and Boyd.

THESE two little publications are framed nearly on the same plan, with the exception that the latter includes specimens of serious, as well as of sacred poetry. Mr. Mitford has indeed admitted some verses which belong rather to the serious than sacred class, and has added to them a poem or two of his own, which may be fairly said to augment the value of his work. He has, moreover, limited his specimens to the writings of the early English poets, whereas Mr. Johnstone has taken a wider range, and brings down his compilation even to the writers of our own day.

From the mere statement of their titles, it is obvious, that the two compilers have necessarily trodden over a considerable portion of the same ground. They have both, however, produced two very pleasing volumes. That of Mr. Mitford is more recherché, and contains a greater number of rarities than the other; en revanche, Mr. Johnstone's book seems to us likely to be the more popular of the two, since his subjects are more diversified and treated for the most part in a more modern style. We shall present the reader with a single specimen from each. The following quaint verses are given by Mr. Mitford, from Emblems Divine and Rural, together with hiero-glyphicks of the Life of Man. By Francis Quarles. A. D. 1644.'

Always pruning, always cropping,

Is her brightness still obscur'd?
Ever dressing, ever topping,
Always curing, never cur'd?

Too much snuffing makes a waste:
When the spirits spend too fast,
They will shrink at ev'ry blast.

You that always are bestowing
Costly pains in life repairing,
Are but always overthrowing
Nature's work by over-caring:

Nature meeting with her so,
In a work she hath to do,
Takes a pride to overthrow.

• Nature knows her own perfection,
And her pride disdains a tutor,
Cannot stoop to art's correction,
And she scorns a co-adjutor.

Saucy art should not appear
Till she whisper in her ear:
Hagar flees, if Sarah bear.

Nature worketh for the better,
If not hinder'd that she cannot ;
Art stands by as her abettor,
Ending nothing she began not;

If distemper chance to seize,
Nature, foil'd with the disease,
Art may help her if she please.
But to make a trade of trying
Drugs and doses, always pruning,
Is to die for fear of dying;
He's untun'd, that's always tuning.
He that often loves to lack

Dear-bought drugs, hath found a knack
To foil the man, and feed the quack.

O the sad, the frail condition
Of the pride of nature's glory!
How infirm his composition,
And at best how transitory!
When this riot doth impair
Nature's weakness, then his care
Adds more ruin by repair.

Hold thy hand, health's dear maintainer,
Life perchance may burn the stronger:
Having substance to sustain her,
She untouch'd, may last the longer:
When the artist goes about,

To redress her flame, I doubt,

Oftentimes he snuffs it out.'---pp.136---138.

Mr. Johnstone appears to be indebted for the following animated fragment to Simon Wastell, a native of Westmoreland, who was born about 1562. The title is On Man's Mortality.'

'Like as the damask rose you see,

Or like the blossom on the tree,
Or like the dainty flower of May,
Or like the morning to the day,
Or like the sun, or like the shade,
Or like the gourd which Jonas had,
E'en such is man ;-whose thread is spun,
Drawn out, and cut, and so is done.-
The rose withers, the blossom blasteth,
The flower fades, the morning hasteth,
The sun sets, the shadow flies,
The gourd consumes,-and man he dies!
Like to the grass that's newly sprung,
Or like a tale that's new begun,
Or like the bird that's here to-day,
Or like the pearled dew of May,
Or like an hour, or like a span,
Or like the singing of a swan,

E'en such is man ;-who lives by breath,
Is here, now there, in life and death.
The grass withers, the tale is ended,
The bird is flown, the dew's ascended,
The hour is short, the span not long,

The swan's near death,-man's life is done!

pp. 225, 226.

ART. XIV. A Charge delivered at the Triennial Visitation of the Province of Munster, in the year 1826. By Richard, Archbishop of Cashel. 8vo. pp. 24. 2s. Dublin. Richard Milliken. London. Rivingtons. 1826.

In this short but elegant and judicious charge, Dr. Lawrence, archbishop of Cashel, calls the attention of the clergy of his province to the Catholic question. He does not attempt to decide upon the expediency of the proposed measures, he even avoids declaring his own opinion upon the subject; but he endeavours to prepare the way for a proper discussion of its merits, by softening down the asperities of party-spirit, and by exhibiting the contest as one not of a religious but of a political nature.

Adapted as his arguments are to the body of men to which they were originally addressed, they are, however, well calculated to produce a beneficial effect on a much wider sphere. It is not in the remote parts of Ireland alone, that men require to be called on to view the subject in its proper form, undistorted by the false medium of prejudice or animosity. There are many persons in England, who hold it a point of conscience, as members of the established church, to reject every proposition in favour of those who adhere to the church of Rome; who imagine that it would be deserting the cause of Protestantism to grant the Catholics any further relief; and who think it incumbent on them, to throw every impediment in the way of a religion which, without any sort of inquiry, they believe to be founded only in superstition. This blind and ill-directed zeal, meets not with the approbation of the archbishop; and in the course of his charge, he more than once maintains, that the claims preferred by the Roman Catholics ought not to be resisted on the ground of their imputed religious errors; and that it is the duty of a true Protestant to bear in mind, not so much the points in which they differ from him, as those in which they join with him in acknowledging the common basis of Christianity. We, my reverend brethren, in this province,' says the Archbishop, situated, as it is, in an extreme part of the United Kingdom, differ in our religious creed from the majority of those around us. In many points, however, and those of the most importance, we perfectly coincide. Would to God, that where we differ from each other, we always differed in charity, and abstained from calumniating what we cannot approve; persuaded that railing is not reasoning, nor ridicule argument. Let me not, however, be misconceived as insinuating that the great party-contest in this kingdom is one altogether of a religious description. It certainly is not. For it is a contest against the presumed injustice of withholding civil rights from any body of persons of any religious tenets. The peculiar differences of creed among us cannot, in reason, form a subject of complaint on either side; and consequently, ought not to be dragged into discussion.'-p. 7.