and apprehensions with which we look to the progress and prospects of a people, destined, beyond all doubt, to have a vast influence on the future destinies of mankind?

Mr. Mann appears to see no remedy for the enormous danger that he describes so forcibly but education-and, theoretically, he is right; an educated people would not tolerate such a system of government-but education can be at best but a slow and future remedy, while the evils are present, urgent, violent, and will far outstrip the schoolmaster and the lecturer. But, moreover, education is of different degrees-the religious and moral education with which Mr. Mann would fertilize the hearts of his countrymen could hardly be expected to reach the masses in whom he has shown all political power to be lodged. Such an education, indeed, would of itself constitute a species of aristocracy-but we doubt whether mere reading and writing, even if suddenly extended amongst the electoral body, would in any considerable degree improve the working of the constitutional machine, which exhibits, we confidently believe, the terrific enormities' deplored by Mr. Mann-not because universal suffrage and the ballot-box are given to tongues that cannot read and to hands that cannot write-but because universal suffrage and the ballot-box exist at all. With such elements there can be no good government. Where or how this great and growing nation is to find its remedy for these fundamental defects in her organization we know notbut scarcely, we think, by the slow processes of education. It may more probably arise from the condensation of population, the increased difficulties of emigration, and the rivalry of states. It may be accelerated by accidents of war, of faction, of patriotism, or of ambition. We can only express-with our best wishes for her welfare and happiness-our own fixed conviction that unless they will allow something in the nature of an aristocracy to create itself in the bosom of their society-some more permanent depository of public opinion-some more responsible guardian of national character than can be supplied by universal suffrage and the ballot-box, they can never attain that stability and integrity of public councils, public credit, and public principles which are essential to the dignity, the honour, the prosperity, and, we may even add, to the civilised existence of a people.

ART.

ART. XI.-Life of Sir Astley Cooper, Bart.; interspersed with Sketches from his Note-books of distinguished contemporary Characters. By Bransby Blake Cooper, Esq., F.R.S. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1843.

IR ASTLEY was of respectable parentage. His grandfather enjoyed reputation as a surgeon at Norwich. His father, the incumbent of Yelverton, in Norfolk, afterwards of Great Yarmouth, seems to have been an accomplished and benevolent man. It appears that, shortly after the publication of Cowper's Task,' the Rev. Samuel Cooper, D.D., produced a poem with the same title of this we had never before heard, nor indeed is it now stated distinctly that it was ever printed; but our author records, with natural pride, that Dr. Parr preferred it to its namesake-witness an epigram ex cathedrá :

-

'To Cowper's Task see Cooper's Task succeed;

That was a Task to write, but this to read.'

This oracle will probably remind our readers of a classical prototype- Aio te, Æacida, Romanos vincere posse ;'

and some may still hesitate in what manner to interpret the 'hum' from the vaporous tripod of Hatton. To write a good poem must always demand time and strenuous exertion:

Ἐν μυρίοισι τὰ καλὰ γίγνεται πόνοις :

but it seems a dubious compliment to tell a poet that the reading of his piece is Task-work. Almost the only other circumstance related by our biographer to the special honour of Parr's poetical favourite, appears to us, we must own, of equally questionable character. It is, that the vicar of Yelverton drove to the parish-church every Sunday morning in a coach drawn by four powerful long-tailed black horses.' If the distance was not unusually great, we are inclined to think the family might as well have performed their sabbath-day's journey on foot; but unless they were all constructed on the model of Cheyne or Daniel Lambert, what pretext could there be for putting more than a pair of the blacks to the carriage? The story says more for the Doctor's living than for his life.

His wife, an amiable and elegant lady, enjoyed in her own time a literary reputation more extensive than that of the Norfolk Tusk. One of her novels, Fanny Meadows, must have been familiar to ourselves at some early day, though we do not pretend to remember more of it than the title of the rest, text and margent, all memory seems to have perished. Mr. B. Cooper does not intimate that he ever saw a copy of any of his grandmother's numerous works.

This couple had a large family to fill their coach—and our author devotes a lengthy chapter to brothers and sisters, and even sisters-in-law, before we have a word about Sir Astley. We rather hesitate as to the propriety of this arrangement; but there can be no doubt that the collateral details so introduced are wholly devoid of interest. Mr. Bransby Cooper might have waited for some fitter opportunity to do justice to the character of his own mother, of whom his uncle could have seen but little; and his transcriptions of the epitaphs of sundry infant Coopers would have been inexcusable had they belonged to the blood of Cowper.

At last, after fifty pages, we reach the birth of the hero— August 23rd, 1768, and his baptism on the 9th day of the succeeding month, as appears from the parish registers -with the Shandean addition, that Mrs. Cooper, while pregnant with him, experienced more suffering than with any of her previous children, or than she did with any of those born after him.' Tantæ molis erat. Then come copious particulars of the infancy and boyhood of the future Sergeant-surgeon. Our readers may perhaps be satisfied to know that he was a handsome, good-humoured, spirited lad, distinguished for the skill and courage with which he rode, first the cow, then the pony, and in due season one of the four black-tailed horses. His village celebrity, however, resulted chiefly from his audacity in climbing trees for birds'-nests, and capering along bridge-parapets or the roof of the barn, for mere sport. Many a page is given to miraculous leaps and tumbles, hairbreadth escapes, maternal alarms, and fatherly rebukes. These tricks and scrapes were, as may be guessed, the salient features of a period of idleness-and he found favour with no teacher except a poor dancing Frenchman, who included the vicarage in his weekly peripatetics. All this is told with painful minuteness and solemnity. If Sir Astley had risen to eminence in any department of letters, such details might have had their curiosity. Was it worth while to exhibit with elaborate circumstantiality that a man who scarcely read anything had no turn for books when a boy?

Let us, however, give one specimen of his pranks :—

'A very laughable occurrence took place betwixt Master Astley and a Mr., who had an imbecile wife, and was, consequently, obliged to manage his domestic affairs himself. It came to the ears of Master Astley that this gentleman was much inclined to take unbecoming liberties with his maid-servants, and, resolving to ascertain the truth of this report, on hearing that Mr. had a vacancy in his establishment for a maid-servant, Master Astley took the resolution of disguising himself as one, and applying for the situation. For this purpose he

borrowed

borrowed a dress of one of the servants in the Doctor's house, and, accoutred in her habiliments, proceeded, in the dusk of the evening, to Mr. -'s house. Arrived, he was introduced to Mr. ——— who, pleased with the appearance of the supposed maid-servant, engaged her for the vacant situation, and, indeed, was apparently so pleased with her, that he accompanied her part of the way home, holding a conversation till they arrived at a stile where they were to part. Previously to this taking place, however, Mr. endeavoured to impress a kiss on the lips of his companion, when Master Astley suddenly discovered himself, and said, "Now, Mr. -, I have often heard you were fond of the maids, but I am Astley Cooper;" and then, bidding him good night, said, “I shall say nothing about it to the Doctor.".—vol. i. p. 53.

Strong attachments of every sort come usually by slow growth from obscure and unsuspected beginnings; but it is never so with the love of a modern romance, and very seldom with the professional devotion of a modern biography. Mr. Bransby Cooper, accordingly, must trace his uncle's choice of the surgical calling to some one definite incident of his early days; and we are informed that he happened to call at his foster-mother's cottage one fine evening, anno ætatis thirteen, just after her son, the playfellow of his childhood, had met with a bad accident in the reaping-field: the femoral artery had been cut-the poor people knew not how to arrest the hemorrhage-life was ebbing fast away: young Astley Cooper took a silk handkerchief from his neck, and bound it so adroitly round the limb, that the flow of blood was stopped until a medical man reached the spot. To the praise which this presence of mind and cleverness of hand brought him, and still more to the pleasure he felt in saving his humble friend and companion, we owe, of course, the selection of Sir Astley's walk in the business of life. That the biographer considers as indubitable-his only doubts are, first, whether his uncle could ever at that time have heard of a tourniquet; and secondly, whether, supposing him to have heard the instrument described, we ought to admire the less on that account his readiness in devising and applying a substitute. But Mr. Bransby forgets two circumstances, both of them recorded by himself-to wit, that the old surgeon of Norwich, having retired from practice, was an inmate in the vicar's house during the later years of his life; and, secondly, that the old surgeon's son, William Cooper, by far the most prosperous and remarkable person in that generation of the family, was an eminent London surgeon, lecturer in Guy's Hospital, and an annual visitor at Dr. Cooper's parsonage (vol. i. p. 89). With such connections, but especially as domesticated under the roof with a retired practitioner, how could Astley have failed to have his boyish curiosity excited on the subject of surgery? How unlike all other grandfathers must his have been,

if he had never heard at least of a tourniquet. But is it likely that the old gentleman had so entirely dropped his trade as not to retain about him its commonest implements in case of domestic accidents? We should be surprised, if the truth could be expiscated, to find that a tourniquet had not been among young Astley's playthings. For the rest, we have it in a subsequent page from Sir Astley himself, that at Norwich, two or three years later, he chanced to visit the hospital, and saw Mr. Donnee operate (for the stone) in a masterly manner; and it was this,' he says, which inspired me with a strong impression of the utility of surgery, and led me to embark in it as my profession. (vol. ii. p. 421.) So much for Mr. Bransby Cooper's story of the foster-brother's ligature

' one of those unaccountable occurrences in which an individual, by a single action, seems to display an intuitive knowledge of a principle which it has taken others, in the progress of science, years to arrive at; and, in this instance, seems to justify the application to the surgeon of the observation usually applied only to the poet-Nascitur, non fit.— vol. i. p. 54.

Nor is the last incident in Astley's Norfolk history a whit less extraordinary. It appears that in his seventeenth year he conceived a tender admiration for a neighbouring clergyman's pretty daughter of the same age; and so violent was the passion, that he borrowed, on a false pretence, one of the long-tailed horses, and actually rode twenty-four miles to see his nymph and back again the same summer evening. Portentous exertion! But the biographer proceeds:

What it was that prevented this evidently mutual attachment from leading to their future union, their ages and position in life being so similar, I never heard: their youth, and the fact of their being at so early a period separated from each other, were probably the only circumstances which presented an obstacle to their apparently mutual wishes.' -vol. i. p. 83.

Cruel Mr. B. Cooper affords us no hint as to the subsequent fate of the heroine: it is so unusual a thing for a boy and girl to be enchanted with each other at sixteen, and yet not found at sixand-twenty in the relation of man and wife, that we have reason to complain of this silence; but he is too good a biographer not to make amends by communicativeness on topics apparently less in his way:

During my late visit to Norfolk, I went to this parsonage, and there saw the very room, the only one which has not undergone alterations since that period, in which Miss Wordsworth and her father were sitting when young Astley made his appearance after his long ride. It was then used as the dining-room, and, small as it is, the present incumbent,

a relative