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POETRY.-A Tree in the Street, 358. Sleeping in Jesus, 358. Within this green and wooded little dell, 358. Freedom! I love thee, 399. Nelly's Little Shoe, 399. Little Ones in Bed, 399. Cradle Song of the Poor, 400. Sabbath Day, 400. Peace with Aspiration, 400.

SHORT ARTICLES.-Lecturers Established, 1641, 339. Spoiling the Monasteries, 339. Felt, 357. Peculiarities of Quakers, 387. Remonstrating Ministers, 387. Defence of the Clergy, 398, Mrs. Ellerton, 398.

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THE article upon Christianity and Hinduism, which occupies so large a space in this number, deserves the attention of every man who desires to understand the past, present, and future of

the East.

Alluding to the Napoleon pamphlet, lately reprinted in The Living Age, the Spectator re

The same paper begins a notice of Charles Reade's new novel, as follows:

and action required; strongly vivid in Christie
Johnstone, playfully buoyant in Peg Woffington,
with a scintillation of satire.
There was,
however, but an indifferent sense of the critical
morality requisite in works of imagination, and
from the writer's nature or earlier practice a
strong turn for theatrical melodrama. The last
fault was more visible in Never too Late to Mend
than in the previous novels, perhaps because
the nature of the story encouraged its develop-
ment. A rigid critic of the classical school
might raise a question as to the critical morality
in Never too Late; doubting whether the persons
and the circumstances are proper for fiction,
unless treated with deeper thought and less one-
sidedness than Mr. Reade exhibits. However,
in that unquestionably powerful work he reached
his culminating point, and has quickly sunk to
his setting; for much lower as a story-writer he
cannot well go than in Cream, containing 'The
Autobiography of a Thief,' and 'Jack of All
Trades, a Matter-of-Fact Romance.""
The Literary Gazette says:

"FEW writers have so rapidly and decidedly disappointed expectation as Mr. Charles Reade; yet when one looks back upon his literary career the causes of his decline seem to be distinctly traceable. His first two novels exhibited a nice marks: appreciation of character, with a refined or "M. de la Guerronière and his Imperial in-powerful delineation as the nature of the life spirer would have been safer if they had used more reserve in their explanation to France and England. They had already felt the embarrassment of their allusion to the Temple Discussion Forum, since at a later stage it became expedient for the Emperor to make us, if possible, believe that he had never intended to involve Englishmen in his charge of preaching assassination. But the same indiscretion which proved the intent of libelling our countrymen furnished the most direct means of extorting an apology from the Imperial libeller. As the Emperor attacked the Temple Discussion Forum, the chairman of that assembly, Mr. William Carpenter, boldly wrote to the Emperor himself, denying the assertion that he the chairman was paid for the duty of presiding in the Forum, and explaining, that the discussion of regicide was an historical theme having no reference to contemporary politics; the majority of the forensic orators being substantial tradesmen and men of business. Through his secretary, the Emperor replies by thanking Mr. Carpenter for his explanation, and expressing his regret that the writer of the pamphlet had misconstrued a circumstance "As Mr. Murray, the publisher, was pacing now so satisfactorily explained. Mr. William the deck of a Mediterranean steamer, he fell Carpenter has certainly cleared up the "painful misconception more satisfactorily than Lord Malmesbury has done. In this case the apology appears to be more explicit and unreserved. Perhaps even the Imperial inspirer may learn that it is an awkward plan to make the assertion first and get the information afterwards. If he had followed the vulgar English plan of getting his information first, he would not have begun with an unfounded assertion and ended with having to apologize to the company of a tavern in Fleet Street."

into conversation with a stranger, who told him that he had been exploring and travelling in Africa, and intended on his return to England to write an account of his travels. The stranger was Dr. Livingstone; and Mr. Murray was so charmed with his conversation that he then and there agreed to give him two thousand guineas for the projected book. We believe that Mr. Murray, with his usual liberality, has presented Dr. Livingston with a considerable sum in addi tion, since the great success of the work.

NEW BOOKS.

upon sure ground. What is wanted for a good life of the hero of Lucknow is original letters, anecdotes of himself, his own sayings and doings, and of these, with the exception of printed despatches which have been in all the papers, and of extracts from his own works, which have been before the public for many years, we have positively nothing. Whole chapters of exhortation to follow his bright example, and of what is popularly called "unction," might advantageously be exchanged for a few lines of dialogue between Generals Havelock and Outram in the famous Advance of the Two Thou

THE GOOD SOLDIER, ETC.-By the Rev. W. | teresting, and in reading them we feel we are Owen. (Simpkin & Marshall.)-The "Good Soldier," we fear, will beget a multitude of bad biographers. Obviously the complete materials for a life of Sir Henry Havelock are not yet forthcoming, and though, no doubt, the popular craving must be satisfied with an account of their hero, it is with some regret that we see crude and hasty sketches of this distinguished officer's career put forward by men who have no particular vocation to write about him. We prefer, however, this life by the Rev. W. Owen to that by Mr. Brock. The extracts from General Havelock's own histories of the campaigns in Burmah and Afghanistan are extremely in-sand.-Athenæum.

From Blackwood's Magazine.
FOOD AND DRINK.

Englishman considers himself ignominiously treated by fortune if he cannot get his beef

cheerful with his meal of chestnuts.

Besides varieties in the staple articles of Food, there are the infinite varieties of fancy. Our Chinese enemies make delicacies of rats and of birds' nests; our French allies, of frogs. The ancients, who carried epicureanism to lengths never dreamed of by Guildhall, thought the hedgehog a titbit, and had a word to say in favor of the donkey, which they placed on an equality with the ox ; dogs they considered equal to chickens, and even cats were not to be despised. The pork, which we eat with great confidence, they considered and not untruly, the least digestible of animal meats, fit only for artisans and athletes. They ate snails, at which we shudder, with the gusto we acknowledge in oysters. It would be difficult to persuade the British stomach to dine, in full consciousness, off a "sirloin of donkey," flanked by "ribs of dog, with fried toadstools." Is this repugnance only prejudice, or were Greek dogs and donkeys more succulent than ours?

AN Irish peasant, in a windowless hut, din-or bacon; the peasant of the Apennines is ing off a meal of potatoes and skimmed milk, flavored by the aroma of a lively imagination, as each mouthful is "pointed" at the side of bacon hanging against the wall, and a London Alderman seated at a Guildhall feast, are two figures presenting an impressive contrast of the varieties of Food, with which, in the restless activity of life, the human organism repairs its incessant waste. Potatoes and skimmed milk, and it may be a little sea-weed, supply the wants of the one; before the other there is spread a wasteful profusion of turtle captured on the North American coasts, of turkey reared in quiet farmyards, of mutton grazed upon the downs of Sussex, of beef fed on the rich pasture lands of Herefordshire, of pheasants shot in a nobleman's preserves, of turbot from the Atlantic Ocean, and salmon from the Scotch and Irish rivers, of cheese from France and Switzerland, oil from Italy, spices from the East, and wine from Portugal, Germany, and France-a gathering from all nations assorted with exquisite culinary The varieties just rehearsed are at any rate skill. Yet, in spite of these differences in the easily accepted by the understanding as probthings consumed by the two men, the din-able aliments, but what will the reader say ner of the one, and the dinner of the other, on hearing that in many parts of the world become transmuted by vital processes into even clay is a respectable and respected the same flesh and blood, into the same or- food? Travellers, who see strange things, ganic suostance and organic force. How are very positive in their assertions on this ever various the articles of Food and Drink, head. Humboldt, a man whose word justly it is clear that there must be a process by carries with it European authority, confirms which all differences are annulled, one sim- the statement of Gumilla, that the Otomacs ilar result attained. Whatever characters of South America, during the periods of the these substances may have outside the or- floods, subsist entirely on a fat and ferruginous ganism, they must quit them shortly after clay, of which each man eats daily a pound their entrance into it, putting off specific or more. Spix and Martius declare that the differences and merging all varieties in a vi- Indians of the Amazon eat a kind of loam tal unity. The hunter on the Pampas sub- even when other food is abundant. Molina sists on buffalo beef, with scarcely a particle says the Peruvians frequently eat a sweetof vegetable food to vary his diet. The Hin-smelling clay; and Ehrenberg has analysed doo is content with rice and rancid butter, the edible clay sold in the markets of Boand cannot be induced to eat flesh. The Greenlander gorges himself with whale oil, and animal fats of any kind he can secure; the moderate Arab has his bag of dates, his lotos bread, and dhourra. On the coast of Malabar we find men regarding with relig-ière, the inhabitants of New Caledonia apious horror every species of animal food; while the native of New Holland has not a single edible fruit larger than a cherry on the whole surface of his vast island. The

livia, which he finds to be a mixture of talc and mica. The inhabitants of Guiana mingle clay with their bread; and the negroes in Jamaica are said to eat earth when other food is deficient. According to Labillard

pease their hunger with a white friable earth, said by Vauquelin to be composed of magnesia, silica, oxide of iron, and chalk. The same writer asserts that at Java a cake is

made of ferruginous clay which is much through such avenues as we shall open, and sought for by women in their pregnancy. not to try any short cut of his own.

To conclude this list we must add Siam, Si- To begin with the Method which ought to beria, and Kamtschatka as countries of clay-preside over all investigations into Food: eaters.*

of Food have been extensive and minute, but they have been almost exclusively confined to alimentary substances which have been analysed, weighed, and tabulated with great labor, and in a chemical point of view with considerable results; but in a physiological point of view-the only one really implicated

Assured as we are that all alimentary variThis is rather a staggering accumulation eties must be transformed into the organic of assertions, which we cannot dismiss alto- unity we name Blood, and assured also that gether, even if we suppose a large allowance the substances so transformed are really vaof scepticism justifiable. Granting the fact rious in kind, specifically distinct before they that certain kinds of earth are really nutri- have undergone this transformation, it is tious (and it is difficult to escape such a con- clear that our chief attention should be withclusion), we are completely at a loss for an drawn from these alimentary substances to adequate explanation of it. Little light is fall with greater emphasis on the alimentary thrown on it by the assumption, probable process; that is to say, we must less consider enough, that the earth must contain organic what the substances are in themselves, than matters; because in a pound of such earth what relation they bear to the organism which there could scarcely be contained sufficient they nourish. Obvious as this may seem, it organic matter to supply the demands of an has generally been disregarded, especially of adult. Nor will it get rid of the difficulty late years. The researches into the nature to say that the earth only appeases hunger without nourishing the system; because, in the first place, Humboldt's testimony is that the Otomacs subsist on the clay at periods when other food is deficient; and, in the second place, although the local sensation of Hunger may be appeased by introducing substances into the stomach, the more imperious systemic with scarcely any results at all. No one sensation of Hunger is not thus to be ap- doubts that Food is a physiological question, peased. We must, therefore, be content, inasmuch as it relates simply to an organism. at present, with accepting the fact, which the Nevertheless, it has fallen into the hands of science of a future day may possibly explain. the chemists; and our treatises, text-books, Omitting clay as not explicable for the pres- and even popular works, have been encument, we propose to take the reader with us bered by hypotheses which may amuse specin an inquiry, having for its object to ascer-ulative ingenuity, but furnish very little positain what Science can tell us positively re- tive result. Against this vice of Method, specting the relation of alimentary substances and this misdirection of valuable labor, a and the organism-to see what is known voice should energetically be raised. The respecting Food and its varieties. If in the error is not a speculative error, simply: it is course of this survey we detain the reader to one carrying important consequences; it consider certain generalities, when he is im- either leads physicians and farmers into sepatient to arrive at the details, let him be rious mistakes, or leads them to throw up assured that these generalities, seemingly scientific guidance in disgust, because the hytoo abstract and remote for immediate prac-pothesis, so convincing on paper, turns out tical objects, are essential to a right compre- stubbornly irreconcilable with fact. Let us hension of the details; and that our most not, however, be misunderstood. In declarpractical and pressing objects, whether of ing the chemical hypotheses on the subject feeding cattle or of feeding ourselves, do in- of Food to which Liebig, Dumas, Boussinevitably rest upon abstract philosophic prin- gault, Payen, and others, have given the ciples, and are determined by scientific hy-sanction of their names, to be more of an potheses. We promise him abundant detail, encumbrance than an illumination, there is but must ask him to approach the question no idea of undervaluing their labors. All real work is important, no genuine research is unworthy of our gratitude; but it is one thing to reverence power, and respect the

*BURDACH: Physiologie, ix. 260.

† See the paper on "Hunger and Thirst" in our January Number. [It is in the Living Age, No. 716.]

work achieved, another thing to assign the the organism they are to nourish. Music is nature and position of that work. With re- not harmonious to the deaf, nor is color gard to the vast chemical researches into splendid to the blind. The substance which the subject of Food which have occupied a nourishes one animal affords no nourishment quarter of a century, it seems to me that to another, nor will any table of “nutritive their value has been almost exclusively,chem- equivalents," however precise, convince us ical, and only in an indirect and limited de- that a substance ought to nourish in virtue gree physiological. Hence, in spite of the of its composition, when experience tells us unanimity and apparent precision observable that it does not nourish, in virtue of some in the analyses and hypotheses offered by defective relation between it and the organchemists, no important practical results have ism. That "one man's meat is another been attained, not a single alimentary prob- man's poison" is a proverb of strict veracity. lem has been solved by them. There are persons, even in Europe, to whom There may be readers who, failing to see a mutton-chop would be poisonous. The the ground of this distinction between chem- celebrated case of the Abbé de Villedieu is ical and physiological investigations, will not a rare, but not unparalleled example of aniunderstand the importance I attach to it; mal food being poisonous : from his earliest but they will perhaps come round to my years his repugnance to it was so decided, point of view before this essay reaches its that neither the entreaties of his parents nor close. The chemists, whatever we may think the menaces of his tutors could induce him of them, will continue their labors, analysing, to overcome it. After reaching the age of weighing, experimenting, and propounding thirty on a regimen of vegetable food, he was hypotheses; and it is right they should do over-persuaded, and tried the effect of meat so: all honor and success to them! But if soups, which led to his eating both mutton the question of Food is to receive any and beef; but the change was fatal: plethora practical solution, it must no longer be left and sleepiness intervened, and he died of in their hands; or only such details of it cerebral inflammation.* In 1844, a French left in their hands as properly belong to soldier was forced to quit the service because them. It must be taken up by physiologists, he could not overcome his violent repugwho, while availing themselves of every nance and disgust towards animal food. Dr. chemical result, will carry these into another Prout, whose testimony will be more convincsphere and test them by another Method. ing to English readers, knew a person on Not a step can the physiologist advance with- whom mutton acted as a poison: "He could out the assistance of the chemist; but he not eat mutton in any form. The peculiarity must employ Chemistry as a means of ex-was supposed to be owing to caprice, but the ploration, not of deduction—as a pillar, not mutton was repeatedly disguised and given a pinnacle-an instrument, not an aim. The chemist may analyse fat for him; but he, on receiving this analysis, will request the chemist not to trouble him with hypotheses respecting the part played by fat in the organism for although the chemist may accurately estimate the heat evolved in the oxidation of so much fat, the physiologist has to do with a vital laboratory, extremely unlike that in which the chemist works, and he has to ascertain how the fat comports itself there.

Alimentary substances are substances which serve as nourishment; but a great mistake is made when it is imagined that their nutritive value can chiefly reside in the amounts of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, and salts, which they contain; it resides in the relation which the several substances bear to

to him unknown; but uniformly with the same result of producing violent vomiting and diarrhoea. And from the severity of the effects, which were in fact those of a virulent poison, there can be little doubt that if the use of mutton had been persisted in, it would soon have destroyed the life of the individual." Dr. Pereira, who quotes this passage,† adds, " I know a gentleman who has repeatedly had an attack of indigestion after the use of roast mutton." Some persons it is known cannot take coffee without vomiting; others are thrown into a general inflammation if they eat cherries or gooseberries. Hahn relates of himself that seven or eight

Journal de Medicine. Août 1760, quoted by Lucas, De l'Hérédité, who is the authority for the next statement.

† PEREIRA: Treatise on Food and Diet, p. 242.

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