of the golden-thonged sandal, crusted with emeralds, rubies, and pearls. But all these ornaments often failed to distract the eye from those which she owed to Nature. Her luxuriant hair, perfumed with delicate unguents, such as nard from Tarsos, cranthe from Cypros, essence of roses from Cyrene, of lilies from Ægiva, or Cilicia, fell loosely in a profusion of ringlets over her shoulders, while in front it was confined by the fillet and grasshoppers of gold. More perishable ornaments, in the shape of crowns of myrtle, wild thyme, poppy, white sesame, with other flowers and plants sacred to Aphrodite, adorned the heads of both bride and bridegroom."

A large concourse of friends formed around the chariot, strewing flowers in the way, or swinging censers from which rolled clouds of perfume, whilst those most interested might be seen with their eyes anxiously directed towards the heavens, watching for the appearance of omens. If a solitary crow made its appearance above the procession, the event was interpreted as foreshadowing disaster; but a pair of crows, or turtle-doves, were looked upon as prophetical of halcyon fortunes.

Having reached the Temple, the Priest bearing in his hand a branch of ivy, meets the bride and bridegroom, and precedes them to the altar. The ceremonies are introduced by the sacrifice of a heifer, and the solemn invocation of all the virgin Goddesses, after which Zeus, Phabus, the Graces, and lastly the Mother of Love-the divine Aphrodite were successively addressed. "The victim meanwhile has been opened, and the gall taken out and significantly thrown behind the altar. Soothsayers, skilled in divination, inspected the entrails, and if their appearance was alarming, the nuptials were broken off or deferred. When favorable, the rites proceeded as if hallowed by the smiles of the Gods. The bride now cut off one of her tresses, which, twisting round a spindle, she placed as an offering on the altar of Athena, while, in imitation of Theseus, the bridegroom made a similar oblation to Apollo, bound, as an emblem of his out-door life, round a handful of grass or herbs." All the other gods, protectors of marriage, were then, by the parents or friends, invoked in succession, and the rites thus completed, the virgin's father, placing the hand of the bride groom in that of the bride, said, "I bestow on thee my daughter, that thine eyes may be gladdened by legitimate offspring. The oath of inviolable fidelity was now taken by both, and the ceremony

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concluded with fresh sacrifices." These protracted ceremonies generally consumed the day, so that when the happy pair again sought their chariot, a convenient twilight enveloped the scene.They were ushered on their way to the groom's house by torch-bearers, and bands of dancers and singers. Every variety of musical instrument was brought into requisition, the " phorminx," the soft flute," and "the cittern's silver sound." So, borne upon a flood of melody, perfumes loading the air, bright and happy faces beaming on every side, offended by no discordant tone, or uncouth sight-amidst the voluptuous evening, and through a "purpling atmosphere" of bliss and hope, the favored couple approached the threshold of their future home. Here they were met by servitors carrying various utensils for domestic use, such as sieves, pestles, &c., the object of which we presume was to remind the bride of the housewifery duties awaiting her. Through these the company passed to the banqueting hall, where the choristers chaunted the Epithalamium, the last notes of which had hardly died away, when troops of dancing girls, clashing silver cymbals, and crowned with myrtle wreaths, rushed, or rather floated with a dreamy grace, into the hall, "vividly representing, by their free, varied and easy movements, all the warmth and energy of passion." Then followed the feast, which, in the earlier days of the republic, was simple and unostentatious, but latterly displayed unbounded extravagance, and a sumptuousness truly regal; and thus the public ceremonies of the important occasion were concluded.

"Mr. Walter Savage Landor (says the Boston Courier) has been calling the attention of the British public to the factmade known by William Howitt-that some of Shakspeare's descendants are in needy circumstances, with a view of procuring relief for them. But it is impossible that any descendant of Shakspeare should be in want, because there has been no such person in existence for nearly a hundred years. Shakspeare died in 1616, leaving two daughters only, Susanna and Judith. Judith married Mr. Thomas Quincy, a short time before her father's death. Three sons were born to her, but they all died before her, and she herself died in 1662.

Susanna, the elder daughter, married Dr. John Hall, and died in 1649. The sole issue of this marriage was a daughter, Elizabeth Hall, who was born before

her grandmother's death, and is mentioned in his will, though called his "niece," a word used at that time to denote relationship generally. She was twice married; first to Mr. Thomas Nash, and afterwards to Sir John Bayard, but she never had any children, and died in 1670. With her ended the direct line of Shakspeare.

It is curious how few of the great men of England, whether in literature, science, or government, have left descendants. The line of Shakspeare is extinct, as we have seen; so is that of Milton, Bacon, Newton, Harvey, Pope, Gibbon, Johnson, Swift, Lord Mansfield, Pitt, Fox, Gray, Cowper, Collins, Thompson, Goldsmith, Gay, Congrave, Hume, Bishop Butler, Locke, Hobbes, Adam Smith, Bentham, Wollaston, Davy, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Flaxman, Gainsborough, Sir Thomas Lawrence; either they were never married, or never had chil

dren. Burke's son died before him, and so did Smollet's daughter. Addison's daughter died unmarried. We are not aware that there are any lineal representatives of Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden, Jeremy Taylor, Hooker, or Barrow.We have mentioned only such names as occurred to us without reference; a little research might doubtless much increase the list.

Bayard Taylor, in his voyage from Christiana to Dronthein, some time last January, had a funny discussion on board about religious matters, growing out of which, he says, in The Tribune:

"I was reminded of a criticism which I heard a portly Englishman make the other day on Emerson 8 English Traits.' 'Because the man has no religion himself,' said he,' he thinks we have none.' 'No,' I mildly ventured to remark, 'he fully recognizes the religious element in the English character, but he discriminates between it and your reverence for the Church as a part of the Government.' I was answered by a stare of surprise, as if Religion and the Established Church could possibly be two different things. One of the passengers, a communicative, gentlemanly person, as

tonished me by speaking of St. Paul's missionary labors in England! 'St. Paul in England!' I exclaimed, 'Oh, yes,' he asserted, 'he introduced Christiany before the Roman invasion.' 'Why,' I said, the Roman invasion was before Christ.' 'Oh, oh,' stammered he in some embarrassment, don't exactly mean the political invasion-I mean the religious invasion under St. Augustine!""

An Athenian gentleman presented the famous courtezan Glycera, with a very small jar of wine and sought to enhance its value by pretending it was sixteen years old.

"Then it is extremely little for its age." To how many modern wits has not this bon mot been attributed!

Those Hetaire were exceedingly keen. A comic poet remarked to one of them

that the water from her cistern was delightfully cold.

Ah yes! it has always been so since we have got into the habit of throwing your plays into it."

"The Shepherd's Hunting "--from which the following exquisite verses are taken-verses every Poet should know by heart-was written by George Wither rated in the Marshalsea prison. He had in his twenty-sixth year, while incarcepreviously published a satire entitled denunciation of the government, and its "Abuses Stript and Whipt," whose bold measures could not, of course, be suffered to go unpunished. In the Civil war, which soon after overwhelmed Charles 1st and his ministers, Wither espoused the cause of the people, and sold his patrimonial estate to raise a troop of horse for the Parliament. In the course of the contest he was promoted to the rank of Major General, and subsequently from the sequestered estates of certain Cavaliers, obtained a large fortune, of which at the Restoration he was remorsely stripped. Wither remonstrated against this procedure, but his remonstrance was unanimously voted to be a libel, and the unlucky Poet was again thrown into prison. In 1663 he was released under bond of good behavior, and died in London on the 2d of May, 1665, at the ripe age of seventy-nine years.

ON HIS MUSE.

And though for her sake I am crost Though my best hopes I have lost, And knew she would make my trouble Ten times more than ten times double,

sonal violence practised by the native revenue and police officials generally prevails throughout the Presidency;' and, adverting to the objection taken by some of the witnesses to describing under the name torture the personal violence,' the use of which is clearly proved, they declare their conviction, that, if the word 'torture' be used in the ordinary acceptation assigned to it by Dr. Johnson, 'pain by which guilt is punished, or confession (and they would add, money) extorted,' this word may, with perfect propriety, be applied to designate the practices prevalent in Madras.' They add, indeed, that it is beyond all dispute 'that many practices which indubitably exist, must cause acute, if temporary or even momentary, agony; and that in no few recorded instances (as appears by the calenders,) even death has followed upon their infliction."

The tortures most fashionable are described as follows:

"The tortures which the Commissioners find to have been employed are of various kinds and of different degrees of severity. Some of them are so light as to amount to little more than a menace. Some are so severe as to cause not only extreme present pain, but permanent injuries, mutilation, and even, not unfrequently death. Some of them exhibit an amount of diabolical ingenuity on the part of the torturer, and a degree of moral abasement and degradation in the victim, of which our western minds can hardly form a conception; some, in fine, are so loathsome and indecent, and at the same time so excruciating, that, although they are set down nakedly in the Report, we must abstain from any specific allusion to their nature.

"The most common forms of torture appear to be the Kittee (in Teloogoo called Cheerata,) and the Anundal, which in the same language is called Gingeri. "The kittee corresponds with the thumb-screw of the European torturer. It is a wooden instrument somewhat like a lemon-squeezer, between the plates of which the hands, the thighs, (in women, also the breasts,) the ears, and other more sensitive parts of the body are squeezed to the last point of endurance, often to fainting, and even to permanent disablement. In many places the kittee has been superceded by the more simple plan of violently compressing the hands under a flat board, on which a heavy pressure is laid, sometimes even by the peons standing upon it; or of compelling the sufferer to interlace his fingers, and delivering him over to the iron gripe of the peons (or policemen,) who sometimes rub their hands

with sand, in order to give them a firmer grip. In other cases the fingers are bent back till the pain becomes unendurable.

"The anundal is a more purely eastern torture. It consists in tying the victim in a stooping or otherwise painful and unnatural position, generally with the head forciby bent down to the feet by a rope or cloth passed around the neck and under the toes. The posture, however, is varied at the caprice of the executioner. Sometimes the poor wretch is made to stand on one leg, the other being forcibly tied up to his neck. Sometimes the arms and legs are curiously interlaced, and the frame, thus violently distorted, is kept bound up for hours, in a condition little short of dislocation. Sometimes a heavy stone is laid upon the back, while thus bent; and it often happens that the peons amuse themselves by sitting astride upon the unhappy sufferer who is undergoing anundal. More than one of the witnesses depose to the infliction of this torture, under the fierce Indian sun, upon a number of defaulters placed together in rows, for two, three, four, and even six hours; and this in the immediate vicinity of the cutcherry, or revenue office, and in the presence of the tahsildar, or native collector, and of the assembled villagers.

"These tortures are often used simultaneously: the kittee being applied to a man's hands, ears, or thighs, while he is actually undergoing anundal.

"Flogging in various forms is also one of the ordinary instruments for the col lection of revenue. In most cases the defaulter is hung up by the arms to a tree, or to the roof beam of a house, as a preparation for the lash, which consists either of a scourge of leather thongs (called cornechewer, and sometimes jerbund,) or of the tough fibres of the tamarind tree or of the coir rope Many of the witnesses complained of having been flogged to laceration.

In the American Medical Gazette for June, there is a letter from an American Medical student in Paris, which asserts that Magendie, the French physiologist, opened one of his Lectures in the following words:

"Gentlemen: Medicine is a great humbug. I know it is called a sciencescience, indeed! It is nothing like science. Doctors are mere empirics, when they are not charlatans We are as ignorant as men can be. Who knows anything in the world about medicine? Gentlemen, you have done me the honor to come here to attend my lectures, and I must tell you frankly now in the begin

ning, that I know nothing in the world about medicine, and I don't know anybody who does know anything about it. Don't think for a moment that I haven't read the bills advertising the course of lectures at the Medical School; I know that this man teaches anatomy, that man teaches pathology, another man physiology, such-a-one therapeutics, such-another materia medica-Eh bien! et apres? What's known about all that? Why, gentlemen, at the school of Montpelier (God knows it was famous enough in its day!) they discarded the study of anatomy, and taught nothing but the dispensary, and the doctors educated there knew just as much and were quite as successful as any others. I repeat it, nobody knows anything about medicine. True enough, we are gathering facts every day. We can produce typhus fever, for example, by injecting a certain substance into the veins of a dog-that's something; we can alleviate diabetes, and, I see distinctly, we are fast approaching the day when phthisic can be cured as easily as any disease.

"We are collecting facts in the right spirit, and I dare say in a century or so the accumulation of facts may enable our successors to form a medical science; but I repeat it to you, there is no such thing now as a medical science. Who can tell me how to cure the headache? or the gout! or disease of the heart? Nobody, Oh! you tell me doctors cure people. I grant you people are cured. But how are they cured? Gentlemen, nature does a great deal; imagination does a great deal. Doctors do- -devilish little- -when they don't do harm.Let me tell you, gentlemen, what I did wher I was the head physician at Hotel Dieu. Some three or four thousand patients passed through my hands every year. I divided the patients into two classes; with one, I followed the dispensary and gave them the usual medicines without having the least idea why or wherefore; to the other, I gave breadpills and colored water, without, of course, letting them know anything about itand occasionally, gentlemen, I would create a third division, to whom I gave nothing whatever. These last would fret a good deal, they would feel they were neglected, (sick people always feel they are neglected, unless they were well drug god-les imbeciles!) and they would irritate themselves until they got really sick, but nature invariably came to the rescue, and all the persons in the third class got well. There was a little mortality among those who received but bread pills and colored water, and the mortality was greatest among those who

were carefully drugged according to the dispensary."

We have, heretofore, given willing heed to the notices of our pages from Southern journals. In the same spirit we advert now to one in the Times and Sentinel, of Columbus, Georgia, with the earnest desire always of hearing any suggestion, and improving any hint for the better management of our undertaking. We, therefore, assure "Justitia," that we do not take his criticism in dudgeon; that we cannot regard it as the stab of an enemy; that we willingly consider it the voice of a friend, and are ready to listen to his remarks at this and any other time.

In expressing a hope or wish to make it conform to Blackwood as an exemplar, it was with no expectation of being able, immediately, to make our work equal to that popular monthly. Russell is fully and fairly adopted as a vehicle for the expression of Southern sentiment and intellect; if the cultivated minds of the South, generally, will give us their aid; if we have the good fortune to receive the warm, steadfast, active support of the people of the Southern country, we can perceive no reason why the fine intellect and taste which belong to that country should not produce every desired effect, and make the Magazine in substance and form as attractive as any other existing periodical. But we want all this help, and when our friend "Justitia " notes our short coming on this or any future occasion, we would take it kindly of him to press this view of the subject on the attention of his friends. Without a very general assistance from Southern intellects, no Southern work can succeed. The reason of this is obvious enough. There are not among us, as in Europe, and even, in a less degree, at the North, numbers of men, more or less cultivated, driven to literature as a means of support, and ready to furnish material for any periodical work. What they are compelled to do for bread, we hope our Southern intellects will do for the honor and improvement of their country. We court their aid and open for their use, the means of imparting it. If we sometimes fall short of their expectations, they must conclude that we would be glad to furnish them with something better, and that nothing prevents but the holding back of the better things by those who have them, and who might so easily impart them. If they will do this, we have no fear that we shall fall below the standard of the most rigid requirement.