be frequent under their management, Dr Heinroth might adduce examples out of 42,000 inhabitants of Leipsic, in which number six homöopathic physicians are comprised. IV. The diet may be the true conjuror after all in these miracles. We know, from the history of old Cornaro and others, what great effects a strenuous attention to diet will produce; but, though in chronic cases, when months or even years are required by the homöopaths for insuring recovery, the diet may have prodigious influence, how will this apply to the treatment of acute complaints, in which a day or even less is sufficient for the operation of the medicine, and the patient's complete restoration? Here we have thecito, tuto, et jucunde' of Celsus, realized.

On Hahnemann's History of Chronic Disorders we cannot bestow that degree of attention which the research and ingenuity displayed in it deserve; but those who find the principles of the Organon incredible or incomprehensible, will yet discover much curious and valuable matter in the first volume of Die Chronischen Krankheiten. He traces every disease of this description to some miasm, that has, at one time or other, infected the frame, and includes them all in their origin under three great heads, Syphilis, Sykosis, and Psora ;-the first two being varieties of the venereal malady, and the last name applying to the wide range of cutaneous disorders, from leprosy down to the itch. He considers one-eighth of chronic complaints to originate in the venereal varieties, and the remaining seveneighths to be the offspring of Psora.

Psora is the most ancient, as well as the most fruitful, of these terrible sources of disease. The oldest historical records describe it as extensively diffused. Moses* speaks of several of its kinds. It was known too well to the Greeks, as well as to the Israelites, to the Arabs, and more recently to the Europeans of the middle ages. During that period it long bore the shape of St Anthony's fire, but the return of the Crusaders from the east in the 13th century, brought back the more dreadful form of leprosy; and to so great an extent, that in the year 1226, there were, in France alone, two thousand houses for the reception of lepers. Habits of growing refinement, and the means of greater cleanliness, did so much, however, to combat the outward mani

*In Leviticus, cap. xiii., and again, cap. xxi. v. 20, where he speaks of the corporeal blemishes which an officiating priest must be free from, Moses uses a word which the Alexandrian interpreters have rendered by Yaga avgía, the Vulgate by Scabies jugis. Yoga is likewise used by these interpreters in Deuteron. xxviii. 27,

festations of this disease, that towards the end of the 15th century, just when syphilis was beginning to appear, the external symptoms of Psora were reduced to a far milder form of cutaneous eruption. Still its miasm remained the most infectious of all, and the most widely propagated. We need not search for it alone in the crowded hospital, the manufactory, the prison, the poor-house, or the noisome abodes of penury; it is to be found in the most gorgeous and the most sequestered scenes;-in the saloons of princely extravagance, and in the rocky cell of the hermit. The chronic complaints derived from this origin are of different kinds and degrees of intensity, but their name is Legion. Nearly five hundred symptoms are enumerated in Hahnemann's description of them; and the terms of the common pathology, in which they are erroneously arranged as distinct diseases, are far from exhausting the modifications of this one many-headed and many-handed monster.

The treatment of Psora hitherto pursued has been, of course, according to Hahnemann, entirely wrong. It has been too general a rule to consider cutaneous eruption as a mere local evil, having its place upon the skin, by which the rest of the organization is not affected, and which may be safely and sufficiently removed by preparations of sulphur, zinc, quicksilver, &c. Hahnemann, on the contrary, affirms the cutaneous disorder to be only the outward indication of internal malady, which has penetrated the whole organization before it reveals itself upon the superficies of the body. By the removal of this outward indication, therefore, the inward pest acquires fresh vigour, and displays its augmented powers in a multiplicity of dismal forms. Twenty-five pages are filled with the melancholy catalogue of the results of such mistaken treatment; a catalogue supplied by the medical history of ages, down from the case of that Athenian mentioned in the fifth book 'Emdur, who died of dropsy from having banished a cutaneous eruption by the use of the warm baths of Melos. Homöopathie attacks Psora in all its shapes and stages, in the inward seat of disease; and is said to prove very efficacious in curing this class of chronic complaints, as well as syphilis and sycosis, with all their grisly family-more hideous than their queen.'

ART. XI.—Sir Thomas More; or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society. By ROBERT SOUTHEY, Esq. LL.D. Poet Laureate. 2 vols. 8vo. Lond. 1829.

IT T would be scarcely possible for a man of Mr Southey's talents and acquirements to write two volumes so large as those before us, which should be wholly destitute of information and amusement. Yet we do not remember to have read with so little satisfaction any equal quantity of matter, written by any man of real abilities. We have, for some time past, observed with great regret the strange infatuation which leads the Poet-laureate to abandon those departments of literature in which he might excel, and to lecture the public on sciences of which he has still the very alphabet to learn. He has now, we think, done his worst. The subject which he has at last undertaken to treat is one which demands all the highest intellectual and moral qualities of a philosophical statesman,—an understanding at once comprehensive and acute,—a heart at once upright and charitable. Mr Southey brings to the task two faculties which were never, we believe, vouchsafed in measure so copious any human being,—the faculty of believing without a reason, and the faculty of hating without a provocation.

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It is, indeed, most extraordinary that a mind like Mr Southey's, -a mind richly endowed in many respects by nature, and highly cultivated by study,-a mind which has exercised considerable influence on the most enlightened generation of the most enlightened people that ever existed-should be utterly destitute of the power of discerning truth from falsehood. Yet such is the fact. Government is to Mr Southey one of the fine arts. He judges of a theory or a public measure, of a religion, a political party, a peace or a war, as men judge of a picture or a statue, by the effect produced on his imagination. A chain of associtions is to him what a chain of reasoning is to other men; and what he calls his opinions, are in fact merely his tastes.

Part of this description might, perhaps, apply to a much greater man, Mr Burke. But Mr Burke, assuredly, possessed an understanding admirably fitted for the investigation of truth,—an understanding stronger than that of any statesman, active or speculative, of the eighteenth century,-stronger than every thing, except his own fierce and ungovernable sensibility. Hence, he generally chose his side like a fanatic, and defended it like a philosopher. His conduct, in the most important events of his life, at the time of the impeachment of Hastings, for example, and at the time of the French Revolution,-seems to have been

prompted by those feelings and motives, which Mr Coleridge has so happily described:

'Stormy pity, and the cherish'd lure

Of pomp, and proud precipitance of soul.'

Hindostan, with its vast cities, its gorgeous pagodas, its infi nite swarms of dusky population, its long-descended dynasties, its stately etiquette, excited in a mind so capacious, so imaginative, and so susceptible, the most intense interest. The peculiarities of the costume, of the manners, and of the laws, the very mystery which hung over the language and origin of the people, seized his imagination. To plead in Westminster Hall, in the name of the English people, at the bar of the English nobles, for great nations and kings separated from him by half the world, seemed to him the height of human glory. Again, it is not difficult to perceive, that his hostility to the French Revolution principally arose from the vexation which he felt, at having all his old political associations disturbed, at seeing the well-known boundary-marks of states obliterated, and the names and distinctions with which the history of Europe had been filled for ages, swept away. He felt like an antiquarian whose shield had been scoured, or a connoisseur, who found his Titian retouched. But however he came by an opinion, he had no sooner got it, than he did his best to make out a legitimate title to it. His reason, like a spirit in the service of an enchanter, though spell-bound, was still mighty. It did whatever work his passions and his imagination might impose. But it did that work, however arduous, with marvellous dexterity and vigour. His course was not determined by argument; but he could defend the wildest course by arguments more plausible, than those by which common men support opinions which they have adopted, after the fullest deliberation. Reason has scarcely ever displayed, even in those well-constituted minds of which she occupies the throne, so much power and energy as in the lowest offices of that imperial servitude.

Now, in the mind of Mr Southey, reason has no place at all, as either leader or follower, as either sovereign or slave. He does not seem to know what an argument is. He never uses arguments himself. He never troubles himself to answer the arguments of his opponents. It has never occurred to him, that a man ought to be able to give some better account of the way in which he has arrived at his opinions than merely that it is his will and pleasure to hold them, that there is a difference between assertion and demonstration,-that a rumour does not always prove a fact,-that a fact does not always prove a theory, -that two contradictory propositions cannot be undeniable truths,

-that to beg the question, is not the way to settle it,—or that when an objection is raised, it ought to be met with something more convincing, than scoundrel' and blockhead.'

It would be absurd to read the works of such a writer for political instruction. The utmost that can be expected from any system promulgated by him is that it may be splendid and affecting, that it may suggest sublime and pleasing images. His scheme of philosophy is a mere day-dream, a poetical creation, like the Domdaniel caverns, the Swerga, or Padalon; and indeed, it bears no inconsiderable resemblance to those gorgeous visions. Like them, it has something of invention, grandeur, and brilliancy. But like them, it is grotesque and extravagant, and perpetually violates that conventional probability which is essential to the effect even of works of art.

The warmest admirers of Mr Southey will scarcely, we think, deny that his success has almost always borne an inverse proportion to the degree in which his undertakings have required a logical head. His poems, taken in the mass, stand far higher than his prose works. The Laureate Odes, indeed, among which the Vision of Judgment must be classed, are, for the most part, worse than Pye's, and as bad as Cibber's; nor do we think him generally happy in short pieces. But his longer poems, though full of faults, are nevertheless very extraordinary productions. We doubt greatly whether they will be read fifty years hence,but that if they are read, they will be admired, we have no doubt whatever.

But though in general we prefer Mr Southey's poetry to his prose, we must make one exception. The Life of Nelson is, beyond all doubt, the most perfect and the most delightful of his works. The fact is, as his poems most abundantly prove, that he is by no means so skilful in designing, as in filling up. It was therefore an advantage to him to be furnished with an outline of characters and events, and to have no other task to perform than that of touching the cold sketch into life. No writer, perhaps, ever lived, whose talents so precisely qualified him to write the history of the great naval warrior. There were no fine riddles of the human heart to read-no theories to found-no hidden causes to develope-no remote consequences to predict. The character of the hero lay on the surface. The exploits were brilliant and picturesque. The necessity of adhering to the real course of events saved Mr Southey from those faults which deform the original plan of almost every one of his poems, and which even his innumerable beauties of detail scarcely redeem. The subject did not require the exercise of those reasoning powers the want of which is the blemish of his prose. It would