feelings, than disorder is a natural state of our bodies. It is the exception of a rule; which, however, though it is only a casualty, if duly heeded, is a wise and merciful provision, to point out existing, and to warn us of more impending dangers. A faultiness of function would hardly rouse us to seek for a remedy, if it was not for the concurrent uneasiness. It is commonly by this that our attention is awakened, and by it we are guided in ascertaining the seat and amount of the mischief. The carelessness with which we often regard those uneasy sensations that precede actual suffering, is not an uncommon cause of its aggravation. If we disregard the warning, we can hardly hope to escape the penalty. The uncomfortablenesses of indigestion, the effects of wrong eating or over-drinking, long precede the painful attacks of gout; but the transgressor will not amend. The headaches and vertigos of the too industrious student point out his danger, yet meet with little regard. The over-anxious merchant is told by his tongue, long before he becomes the subject of incurable disease, that he is wrong; but he will not listen. How often the fluttering moth gets singed by passing and repassing through the attractive candle-flame, before it plumps finally into the melted fuel! The edge of the thunder-cloud throws sufficient gloom to warn us of the coming storm. There was a finger-post at the stile over which you got into Bye-path Meadow, which told you that the way led not only to Doubting Castle, but to Trouble and Sorrow, to Head-ache and Heart-ache; only you would not stop to read it. We are careless till we suffer, and then we upbraid the nature of things. We need not be unjust because we have been unwise. P. S.

REVIEW OF THE MONTH.

THE frost which commenced in the middle of January, and continued till the 24th of February, will long be remembered in the annals of British meteorology. We are not aware that the temperature fell so low on any night as it did in the beginning of January 1854 (see "Excelsior," vol. i. p. 156), but with constant snow on the ground, and with a thermometer seldom rising to the freezing-point, the trial to animal life was very severe. The sparrows lay dead in the squares of London, and in the country creatures as hardy as the rooks fell victims to cold and hunger united. In different parts of the island cases occurred of persons frozen to death; and owing to bronchial and kindred complaints, there was a serious increase on the bills of mortality. Nor was it only on land that the deadly chill was felt. In the Edinburgh "Witness" of February 24, it is mentioned, that on the beach at Portobello cart-loads of the Solen siliqua, or edible razor-fish, and large quantities of the Mactra stultorum, or fools' cockle, lay dead, the frost having penetrated into their sandy retreats at ebb-tide. The editor adds, "It is probable that both species will be less common on our coasts than heretofore for years to come; and their wholesale destruction by a frost a few degrees more intense than is common in our own climate, shows how simply, by slight changes of climate, induced by physical causes, whole races of animals may become extinct. It exemplifies, too, how destruction may fall upon insulated species, while, from some peculiarity of habitat, or some hardiness of constitution, their congeners escape. There are two species of Solen in the Firth S. siliqua and S. ensis, but we have not seen, on the present occasion, a single dead individual of the latter species; and of at least four species of Mactra, the Mactra

stultorum seems alone to have suffered." At Deal ice was floating about in the English Channel; and at Dover, a friend informs us, that in the moon-lit nights the fishermen went out and brought ashore boat-loads of enormous congereels, which they found floating on the surface in a state of stupor. According to the fishermen, "they had come up to look at the moon ;" and, as in the case of the burrowing molluscs at Portobello, it would be curious to know the reason why the congers were more affected than other fishes. Nothing showed the intensity of the cold more strikingly than the length of time which was required for the powerful thaw to penetrate. For upwards of a fortnight after it began, many houses in the capital remained with their water-pipes firm frozen; and it is not likely that the present generation will witness a recurrence of the anomalies, grave and gay, of so extreme a season.

After a reign of nearly thirty years, the Emperor Nicholas expired at St. Petersburg on the 2d of March. There can be little doubt that in his person a great impediment to the peace of Europe is removed; but there is a Russian policy, independent of the life of any Czar,-the policy of Peter, Catherine, and Alexander, as much as Nicholas, a policy of first weakening and then devouring every neighbour. And for the security of Europe and the welfare of the world, we should like to see cut off Cronstadt and the Crimea,-the iron claws which cater for the great Muscovite crustacean.

The net revenue paid into the British Exchequer during 1854 was 56,737,1331.; and the expenditure was 59,946,1927. During that year 323,112 of the inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland emigrated, being at the rate of nearly a thousand a-day, of whom the majority (192,993), went to the United States. In England, on January 1, 1855, there were 839,164 paupers receiving parochial relief.

DR. STENHOUSE ON CHARCOAL.

303

Dr. Stenhouse, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, has published a valuable lecture on the use of charcoal as a disinfectant. Charcoal has long been employed as a filter to free water of its impurities; Dr. S., with a similar view, employs it in filtering air. He has contrived a respirator of powdered charcoal, the wearer of which may breathe with impunity the foulest or most infected atmosphere; and in regions where the air is tainted, as in pestiferous intertropical districts, or where the miasmata of ague, yellow fever, &c., abound, he recommends the use of charcoal ventilators. "Effluvia and miasmata are usually regarded as highly organised, nitrogenous, easily alterable bodies. When these are absorbed by charcoal, they come in contact with highly condensed oxygen gas, which exists within the pores of all charcoal which has been exposed to the air even for a few minutes in this way they are oxidised and destroyed." As a sort of experimentum crucis, Dr. S. covered over a dead cat with a layer of powdered charcoal, about two inches thick, and kept it in his laboratory a year, but no perceptible odour escaped. The application of this simple expedient to the lower decks of ships, to churchyards, hospitals, &c., is abundantly obvious.

We have lying before us an elaborate volume, "Bengal as a Field of Missions. By M. Wylie, Esq., First Judge of the Calcutta Court of Small Causes." As the production of a layman, of a resident, who has had rare opportunities for observing and judging, and of a Christian philanthropist, who has brought to his survey a mind of eminent comprehensiveness, acuteness, and candour, this work is invaluable. It will be eagerly welcomed and earnestly pondered by those who value exact information, and who feel the transcendant importance of the subject.

From Messrs. Johnstone and Hunter we have received an edition of the Scottish Psalms, accompanied by upwards

of two hundred tunes, any one of which, by means of a new and ingenious contrivance, can be brought under the eye on the same page with any one of the hundred and fifty psalms. Of course, this clever expedient may be applied to any other version of the Psalms, or any hymn-book.-Encouraged by the success of their beautiful edition of Dr. John Owen, we are glad to see that the same enterprising publishers are preparing to issue, on a similar plan, the works of John Howe, with the Memoir by Henry Rogers revised.

Since the pen dropped from Johnson's kingly grasp, we have had few worthy Lives of the Poets. Practically, Keats and Shelley are still without record, and an unskilful biography was more injurious to the memory of poor Pollok than the unkindest reviewal could have been. A terse memorial, elaborated after the fashion of his own exquisite lyrics, would have done more for Campbell's fame than the three heavy tomes which now oppress his sepulchre; and if Wordsworth's renown has sustained no detriment from a similar indiscretion, it must be because the reader is so soon sent to sleep under the mesmerising influence of prosaic minutiæ. Nor will the success of Moore's Journal, with its puns and bon-mots, encourage any following bard to "attempt" his own life. With all our love and tenderness for Montgomery's memory, we were alarmed by the portentous scale on which his history was projected; and the perusal of the two volumes already published has verified our fears. There is matériel enough for some fifty or a hundred pages of interesting narrative; but spread over a surface so disproportionate, it has become extremely flat and prolix. A subject which would have made a charming cabinet-picture may appear quite absurd on one of Haydon's vast canvasses; and of all men really good and gifted, few occur to our recollection less adapted for a Boswellising biography than this mild and gentle minstrel.