He then examined into the causes of the particular defect of each animal, and generally ascertained that there was disease of the foot. The blacksmith took off the shoe, pared out the hoof, and then Sir Astley made a careful examination of the part. Having discovered the cause of the lameness, he proceeded to perform whatever seemed to him necessary for the cure-cut out a corn, make a depending opening to cure a quittor-order the proper shoe for a contracted heel, &c. ....

'The improvement produced in a short time by good feeding, rest, and medical attendance, such as few horses before or since have enjoyed, appeared truly wonderful. .... I have myself paid fifty guineas for one of these animals, and made a good bargain too; and I have known my uncle's carriage for years drawn by a pair of horses which together only cost him twelve pounds ten shillings.'

The baronet's battues had, in like manner, their professional features. The brother sportsmen were, for the most part, physicians or surgeons of renown. Some of them were tolerable shots, and so was their host; but he at least could seldom play out the Squire's part for a whole morning.

It was not an uncommon event to lose him for an hour or two; for if a bird towered, or a hare, after being shot at, evinced anything particular in her death-throes, he would either quietly sit down under a hedge, or would walk home to his dissecting-room, and examine the nature of the injury, and the cause of the peculiar circumstances which had attracted his notice. Nothing could afford him greater delight than when he arrived at an explanation of the peculiar phenomena which had instigated him to make the inquiry.'

The vision of Arcadia would be incomplete without what follows:

'It rarely happened but that one or two of the dogs which we had out with us had been submitted by Sir Astley to some operation or experiment, a circumstance which in some measure accounted for their inferiority as sporting dogs. Some amusement was always afforded by the timidity which these animals manifested when near my uncle.'

Hereabouts the biographer describes his uncle as 'crying like a child' over something in Oliver Twist.' It must have been a great relief to his Recurrent Nerves.

An unfailing member of these shooting-parties was Dr. Babington, whose Irish humour seems to have been the prime condiment of the evening banquet. Our author gives several of the Doctor's stories-let us find room for one :

He told us that, after having been many years from Ireland, an irresistible desire again to see his native soil made him determine, during a certain vacation, to revisit it. In order to reach his native village it was necessary for him to cross a river by a ferry. Years before he had passed at this spot a thousand times, and, as he sat in the boat, vivid recollections of his youth recurred, filling him with mingled sentiments of pleasure and pain. After some minutes' silence, he in

quired of the ferryman if he had known the Rev. Mr. Babington, the former rector of the place. "Did I know him? Faith, and I did, for the kindest of men he was to us all." "He was my father," said Dr. Babington. "Was he, by the powers!" exclaimed the fellow, and, wrought up at once to a wonderful pitch of enthusiasm, "Then I'll take you nearer to the falls than ever man showed his nose before."

Sir Astley had the misfortune to lose his lady in June, 1827, and the shock was so severe that he resolved on withdrawing from practice. In September he sold his house in Spring Gardens, and remained for a time shut up in Hertfordshire; but the interval was not long. The retirement became intolerable-within a few months he had taken another house in town, and resumed his profession-and in July, 1828, he re-married.

His anatomical zeal attended him to the last, wherever he was. He makes, late in life, an excursion to his native Norfolk-and his journal is mostly of this tenor :

Cromer, Sunday, Sept. 25th.-Rose early and dissected eels; went to church.

'26th.-Rose early; rode on horseback along the beach, and saw a boat with 1400 herrings come in: the beach a busy scene. Picked up three dog-fish; beautifully clean animals for dissection.

27th.-Rose early, and rode before breakfast. A porpoise this morning of about four feet in length. Dissected a gurnet.

28th. Before breakfast walked on the beach, and dissected dog- fish and herrings' brains.

"29th.-It rained, but I went to the beach for a little time before breakfast. They brought me a porpoise; I sent the heart to Guy's Hospital, and dissected dog-fish. The brain is composed of," &c." vol. ii. pp. 421, 422.

His reputation

Another of his later trips was to Paris. procured him a most flattering reception there. Among other attentions he was invited to a grand déjeuner by Dupuytren :

"We went to the Hôtel Dieu, and I found a room devoted entirely to myself, a cadavre there, &c. I dissected for nearly two hours before breakfast." -vol. ii. p. 408.

tute.

Sir Astley was made on this occasion a Member of the InstiHis honours, indeed, had accumulated rapidly. William IV. bestowed a Grand-Cross of the Guelphic Order-Louis Philippe sent, through Talleyrand, the decoration of the Legion -various Scotch and foreign Universities showered diplomas on him and at the Duke of Wellington's Oxford Installation in 1834 he was admitted D.C.L.

He continued ardent in practice until his increasing infirmities disabled him for it, and expired at his country-seat, after a short confinement, on the 12th of February, 1840, in the seventy-third

year

year of his age. His will is in all respects honourable to him— not least so, considering what his mode of study had been, the clause by which he commanded the dissection of his own body.

He left a very large fortune-and a reputation, as a practical surgeon, second to none. But it cannot be said that Sir Astley Cooper was a man of genius, or even, in any high sense of the word, a man of science. He will never be classed with the great luminaries of his own branch of the profession-and out of that he was no more than a shrewd, intelligent man of robust, vigorous faculties, sharp set on the world and its interests, scarcely tinctured with letters, as remote as any clever man could well be from high aspirations or elegant predilections of any sort. It was said of Lawrence that he could

'Fix noble thought on Abel Drugger's face,

And turn Malvolio's attitude to grace:'

but his pencil has preserved, without flattering, Sir Astley's portly presence-his handsome, acute, self-satisfied, and unrefined physiognomy. It was also most proper that his Life should be written; but if we are to have two bulky volumes of this gossiping class, and then a strictly professional supplement, about every man of such calibre, the prospect is rather formidable.

Of Mr. Bransby Cooper's taste and talents we have enabled our readers to form their own opinion.

ART. XII.-1. Observations upon the Treaty of Washington, signed 9th August, 1842, &c. By George William Featherstonhaugh, Esq., F.R.S., F.G.S., late one of Her Majesty's Commissioners for the North American Boundary. London. 1842. 2. Speech of Mr. Benton, Senator for Missouri in the Secret Session of Congress, in Opposition to the British Treaty, 18th August, 1842. Washington. 1842.

3. Speech of W. C. Rives, of Virginia, on the Treaty with Great Britain, delivered in the Senate 17th and 19th August, 1842. Washington, 1842.

O

UR readers, having heretofore received from us such detailed information on the origin and progress of our boundary dispute with the United States, will naturally expect us to complete our task by laying before them the final result of that complicated discussion-a result which, though it falls, in our opinion, far short of the abstract justice of our case, is yet, we think, as satisfactory as-considering all the difficulties in which the incredible ignorance, negligence, and incapacity of our former nego

tiators

tiators had entangled the question- could reasonably have been looked for.

Of the clear, unequivocal justice of the whole of our claim we never have had the slightest doubt, nor do we believe that any one, even amongst the Americans, has ventured directly to deny that the British line approached most nearly to the intentions of the original negotiators; but we have already had occasion to show that the wording of the treaty was so curiously infelicitous as to be nothing short of nonsense, or at least to afford a sufficient colour for the King of Holland's award that its terms were inexplicable and impracticable.' (Quart. Rev., vol. Ixvii. p. 507.)

In consequence of the difficulty, or, as the royal umpire thought, the impossibility of reconciling the letter of the treaty with the claims of either of the parties, he took upon himself to recommend a new line, far to the northward of the St. John's, of which the result would have been to give the United States two-thirds, and England about one-third of the disputed territory.

6

We confess that we have never been able to discover the rationale of that award. On what imaginary evidence the royal umpire carried the United States beyond the River St. John's-or, having once crossed the River St. John's, upon what reasoning he stopped short of conceding their entire claim-or why, finally, when he had discarded both the terms and intentions of the treaty, he did not carry his conventional line along so obvious a boundary as that of the St. John's-we cannot comprehend. Mr. Benton, in his vehement attack on the treaty of Washington as more unfavourable to the United States than even the Dutch award, thought proper to remind Congress that the King of the Netherlands was on the list of British generals, and in the pay of the British Crown' (p. 6)—a statement which happens, like too many others in Mr. Benton's speech, to be totally untrue: but might it not with more plausibility be surmised, considering the state of the relations between England and Holland in January 1831, when this award was made, that any bias which might be imputed to the umpire was not likely to lean towards a power which was at that moment threatening Holland with hostilities in favour of the Belgian insurgents? But the personal feelings of the Ex-King of Holland-if (which we are reluctant to believe) any such existed-can change nothing in the facts of the case, as we have now to deal with them. The award was made, and, according to the terms of the reference, ought to have been final and conclusive! The British ministry, with what we may almost call an excess of good faith, accepted it; and it would no doubt have also been accepted by the United States, but it happened that at this moment the American minis

ter

ter in Holland happened to be Mr. Preble, himself a citizen of the state of Maine, which had a great territorial and pecuniary interest in establishing their pretended boundary, and had shown a great deal of angry feeling in the preceding discussion. We have seen of late such remarkable instances of ministers of the United States at foreign courts taking, without reference to their government, public steps with the apparent and almost avowed object of making themselves individually popular at home, that we now look back with less surprise than we then felt at this citizen of Maine having, two days after the award, addressed, in his public character, to the Dutch government a protest against the award, on the ground that the arbiter had exceeded his powers by recommending a new boundary, instead of adjudicating the boundary specified by the treaty of 1783;-and though it is known that President Jackson was not only willing but anxious to accept and ratify the award, the Senate-to which the opposition of the State of Maine obliged General Jackson to refer the question— adopted Mr. Preble's view of the matter, and rejected it by a decisive majority of 34 to 8; the present President, Tyler, and the present Secretary of State, Webster-who, as Mr. Benton insists, have made a less favourable arrangement-voting in the majority.

It seems at first sight difficult to understand why the United States should have rejected a decision which was so extravagantly in their favour; but it must be remembered that, under their Constitution, the general Government is held to have no right to dispose of any portion of the territory of any individual State, and as Maine; insisted that the whole disputed region was her incontrovertible right, the President could not cede an inch without her consent. Nor are we much surprised at the resistance of Maine; for when the King of Holland had once taken the extraordinary step of carrying the line to the northward of the St. John's, we ourselves must confess that he seems to have established the whole principle of the American claim (though he negatived it in several minor points), and that it therefore was not unreasonable in the people of Maine to insist that, the principle being thus decided in their favour, they were entitled to, and would by perseverance undoubtedly obtain, all its consequences;-an expectation which, however, we think it no disgrace nor even inconsistency in Messrs. Tyler and Webster to have resigned when experience had proved its futility. We must also recollect that England was at that moment under the misrule of the Reform mob, and in a condition that may have encouraged, if it did not suggest, the idea-not, it seems, altogether unfounded-that she might be safely pressed upon with impunity. These were, perhaps, the

motives