to heart that he is said thereby to have lost his | by the merchants and their friends, and but reason. Quite recently some specimens have for the exercise of great care, Mr. Markham been reared at Kew, but the plant can only would have failed. Once, with no food but grow naturally within precise limits of lati- some parched maize, he was for eleven hours tude, varying in size, according to the local- in the saddle, riding quickly over a rugged ity, from a high tree to a diminutive shrub; country, and in extreme cold, which he and there was no precedent for Mr. Mark- dreaded less for himself than for the young ham's work of transporting it to India. He plants that were in his keeping. Many other had to overcome many difficulties incident such difficulties had to be overcome before to the labor of exploring some thousands of the various boxes could be brought in good miles in search of the best varieties, and of condition to the coast and transported to collecting a sufficient quantity, in opposition India, where another series of difficulties had to the jealousy of the residents, who, though to be contended with before suitable soil and they are now gathering the bark so reck- climate could be found. All this is well delessly that there is danger of its soon be-tailed by Mr. Markham, who records that coming almost extinct, were loth to assist in the greatest success has been attained at the the formation of a trade which they thought detrimental to their interests. He obtained the help of several competent agents-the most zealous and successful being Mr. Spence who searched different districts, and in the course of a few months produced better results than could have been expected. By Mr. Markham himself an ample supply of seeds was collected, with the assistance of his native Indian friends. "Suspicious they certainly were at times, and with good reason, after the treatment they have usually met with from white men, but willing, hardworking, intelligent, good-humored, always ready to help each other, quick in forming the encampments, conversing quietly and without noise round the camp fires, and always kind to animals; altogether very efficient and companionable people." A formidable opposition, however, was raised

plantations in the Neilgherry Hills, under the superintendence of Mr. McIvor. A postscript informs us that on the 31st of last August 72,568 plants were flourishing. From such a stock unlimited supplies of quinine and cinchonidine may soon be procured, and besides the inestimable benefit conferred on the natives of India by the naturalization of an important drug, a likely result is that after the lapse of a few years Peruvian bark and quinine will decline greatly from their present high price in the European market, and will take their place more fully than they have done hitherto as medicines of free use for the poor.

Mr. Markham's pleasant record of travel and adventure is the book of a man who has really something fresh to tell the world of readers, and which happens both to be well worth the telling and to be well told.

RESEARCHES ON THE NATURE AND TREAT-| MENT OF DIABETES. By F. W. Pavy, M. D. (Churchill.) The discovery that the liver is not only a bile-making organ, and by over-activity an embitterer of life, but a sugar-making organ and a sweetener of the blood, is one of the glories of modern physiology. Dr. Pavy has placed his name by the side of the distinguished French physiologist, Claude Bernard, by his researches on this subject. Bernard showed that the liver formed sugar; but Pavy showed that it first formed starch or a starchlike substance, which became converted into sugar in the air. He questions, indeed, if in health sugar is ever formed in the blood; but in the disease called diabetes it unquestionably exists. Wo have thus arrived at a knowledge of how this sub

stance gets into the blood. It is either thrown
into the blood from the liver in greater quanti
ties than it ought to be, or it is detained in
the blood by some deficient excretory power.
Henceforth the treatment of diabetes becomes
more scientific, reasonable, and certain, and Dr.
Pavy has devoted this work to the consideration
of its nature and treatment.
We need not say
that it is entitled to the consideration and study
of the medical profession.-Athenæum.

THE Island of Fayal has been desolated by a succession of earthquakes, extending over nineteen days, in consequence of which all the inhabitants who could were quitting for other islands in the Azorian group.

From The Saturday Review. THE WORKS OF WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED.*

ever,

trie, and the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. This was followed by Knight's Quarterly Magazine, to which some of Praed's best producIt is difficult to account for the fact that tions were contributed, and among them his none of our publishers have yet re-issued the longest poem, the "Troubadour." This works of W. M. Praed. Since his death, in work, however, was never completed, for a 1839, the book has been promised at fre- total disagreement took place between the quent intervals, and on one occasion it was staff and the publisher. The young men actually announced by a well-known firm. became weary of the task they had underThe delay is the more inexplicable because taken, rather as a source of amusement than Praed is by this time tolerably well known, with any serious object in view; and on and there can be no question whatever that more than one occasion Mr. Charles Knight, an edition of his works would very soon be the publisher, was compelled to postpone taken up. Two American publishers issued the issue of the magazine, and make an his longest poems. The edition published apology to the public. Praed and his friends in 1852 is the most comprehensive, although seem to have been not only irregular in their it abounds in errors and misprints, some of contributions, but also a little tyrannical. which confuse or entirely alter the meaning They were neither disposed to submit to the of the author. It had no pretension, how-restraints, nor to heed the warnings with to be regarded as a perfect copy. The which the prudent publisher sometimes aim of the editor, Mr. Griswold, was ex-found it necessary to visit them. Some pressed modestly enough. He simply hoped wished to promulgate opinions which were that the book "might have the effect of in-calculated to bring destruction upon the ducing some English publisher to give us a complete collection of the works of an author whose carelessness of his literary reputation should not deprive the world of one of the most charming books for which any writer of our time has furnished material." The volume includes Praed's chief contributions in verse to Knight's Quarterly Magazine, a few pieces from the annuals, and the two English poems that gained for the author the Chancellor's medal at Cambridge in 1823-24. It is much to be regretted that not a single letter of Praed's has yet been printed out of the whole mass of his correspondence. No small proportion of his compositions still lie buried in extinct magazines and annuals, and few are acquainted with the exact spots whence these treasures may be exhumed. There are several of his poems," Union " he was always a brilliant and effecfor example, that seem to have been overlooked, in the London Magazine, some of which we should have been glad to quote had our limits permitted.

enterprise. Others, as Mr. Knight says, "made captious objections" to authority; and at length the whole team became so thoroughly unmanageable that the publisher resolved to discontinue the magazine. After paying the little band a warm compliment on their talents, he reproached them with being guilty of" something like a heartless indifference to the consequences of wanton neglect." And with this rebuke the young writers found their plaything taken from them and broken up.

Among his friends at Trinity, Praed was distinguished for his wit and genial nature, no less than for his sarcastic powers, which undoubtedly were considerable. "Few encountered, none o'ercame him," is the testimony of the Rev. John Moultrie. At the

tive speaker, and he bore off the largest number of prizes from the university of any man of his time. In 1822 he gained two gold medals for the Greek ode and the Greek and Latin epigrams; and in the following year he also gained Sir William Browne's medal for the Greek ode, and the Chancellor's medal for the best English poem on "Australia." In 1825 he again obtained the Browne medal and the Chancellor's prize for a poem on " Athens." Before quitting the university, he took the degree of B.A.; and in 1829 he was called to

"A dragon's head is flayed to warm

the bar. He went the Norfolk circuit for a He could probably have written a clever
time, but his election for St. Germains par- poem on anything. Lillian took its origin
tially withdrew his attention from his profes- in a few ladies challenging Praed and others
sion. The energy with which he opposed to write upon these lines:-
the Reform Bill offended his constituents;
but in 1835 he was returned for Great Yar-A headless maiden's heart."
mouth, and subsequently he filled, at various
times, the offices of Secretary to the Board
of Control, Recorder of Barnstaple, and
Deputy High Steward of the University of
Cambridge. There seemed a fair prospect
of his achieving a very distinguished posi-
tion in the State, when he was seized with
consumption, and died at the age of thirty-

seven.

From this groundwork Praed constructed a story of singular ingenuity. His description of Lillian, the headless maiden, is wonderfully lifelike:

'In the cottage on the moor,

With none to watch her and caress,
No arms to clasp, no voice to bless,
The witless child grew up alone,
And made all Nature's book her own.
*
***
*

*

*

Beautiful shade, with her tranquil air,
And her thin white arm, and her flowing hair,
And the light of her eye so boldly obscure,
And the hue of her cheeks so pale and pure!
Reason and thought she had never known,
Her heart was as cold as a heart of stone;
So you might guess from her eye's dim rays,
And her idiot laugh and her vacant gaze.
She wandered about all alone on the heather,
For Lillian seldom spoke or smiled,
She and the wild heath birds together;
But she sang as sweet as a little child-
Into her song her dreams would throng,

Silly and wild and out of place;
And yet that wild and roving song

Entranced the soul in its desolate grace."

From the time of Praed's leaving college he wrote but at rare intervals, and there can be no doubt that he set little value himself on productions which were nothing more, after all, than the diversions of his leisure hours. His ambition was to become a famous statesman-not an eminent writer. Nevertheless, his writings are sufficiently copious to show that he possessed powers of a high and rare order. His thoughts were always fresh and original, his command of language was great, and his facility in constructing rhyme could scarcely have been surpassed by Lord Byron. His verse flows on with an easy smoothness that is rarely interrupted even by a single halting line. Wild and fantastical it often is, as befitted the weird, fanciful stories in which Praed's imagination ran riot, but there is the touch of genius in every dash of the pencil. His powers, it must be remembered, were exercised only in their immaturity; and we can but conjecture what the result would have been had his talents been applied in the service of literature at a later period of life. As it is, his writings promise more than they give, and we finish each piece in the full assurance that the writer was capable of "Her face was oval, and her eye doing far better. Had Praed lived a few Looked like the heaven in Italy, years longer, it is probable that he would Serenely blue, and softly bright, Made up of languish and of light. have returned to his first love, and given us And her neck, except where the locks of brown a greater work than the Troubadour or Lil-Like a sweet summer mist fell droopingly down, lian, while ripened judgment would have led Was as chill and as white as the snow, ere the him to avoid early faults. Even his cha- Has sullied the hue of its heavenly birth; rades are so full of true poetry, so musi- And through the blue veins you might see cal and abounding in apt imagery, that The pure blood wander silently, we lose sight of the riddle we are expected Like noiseless eddies, that far below to solve. No matter how intrinsically triv- In the glistening depths of a calm lake flow." ial was the subject Praed selected, he always To this image of "snowy neck" and "blue treated it with matchless skill and power. veins " there is a counterpart in another of

There is a strong blending of the humorous and the pathetic in Praed's poems. A tinge of sadness runs throughout all his writings, and some of his most melodious verses are those which refe to an early disappointment and a sorrow that may not have been altogether imaginary. His pictures of life and character are equal to anything of the kind in our literature. Who that has made his acquaintance forgets the Vicar? or Quince? His sketch of the Nun, in the Troubadour, is very characteristic of his power in this direction :

earth

Praed's poems,
Hans:-

the Legend of the Teufel at college, he was assailed with all the
taunts and reproaches usually levelled at a
man who changes his political creed. The
Rev. John Moultrie alludes to these painful
circumstances in the Dream of Life :—

You might see beneath the dazzling skin,
And watch the purple streamlets go

Through the valleys of white and stainless

snow."

Which steal like streams along a field of snow."

One example of Praed's muse in a pathetic
vein, from the Troubadour, is all that we
can find space for :-

"Fare thee well, fare thee well!
Strange feet will be upon thy clay,
And never stop to sigh or sorrow;
Yet many wept for thee to-day,
And one will weep to-morrow;

Alas! that melancholy knell
Shall often wake my wondering ear,
And thou shalt greet me, for awhile,
Too beautiful to make me fear,
Too sad to let me smile!

Fare thee well, fare thee well!
I know that heaven for thee is won;
And yet I feel I would resign
Whole ages of my life for one-
One little hour of thine!

"Fare thee well, fare thee well!
See, I have been to the sweetest bowers,
And culled from garden and from heath
The tenderest of all tender flowers,
And blended in my wreath

The violet and the blue harebell,
And one frail rose in its earliest bloom;
Alas! I meant it for thy hair,
And now I fling it on thy tomb,
To weep and wither there!

Fare ye well, faro ye well!
Sleep, sleep, my love, in fragrant shade,
Droop, droop to-night, thou blushing token;
A fairer flower shall never fade,

Nor a fonder heart be broken!

"His generation knew him not; he seemed
To worldly men a trifler; and when years,
Correcting the rash fervor of his youth,
Taught him to honor much, which once he
scorned,

And guard what he had panted to o'erthrow-
Men deemed such seeming fickleness the fruit
Of falsehood or caprice, and factious tongues
Were busy to defame him."

Praed's best speech in the House of ComImons was delivered on March 8, 1831, upon the Reform Bill. In Blackwood's Magazine of the following month there is a slight reference to it :

"Mr. Praed's speech, which was delivered under manifest indisposition, and at a bad hour of the night to win easy approbation, was one of very great promise. The newspapers very inadequately reported it; but those who heard it were not disappointed in marks of that brilliant genius which has led to his obtaining a seat in the House."

The address contains observations which have not yet lost their force or pungency. We quote from Hansard :

"A system might be good, not only as regarded its own merits, but in so far as it was bound up with the habits, the feelings, and the circumstances of the people; and if it were so, it could not be safely exchanged for another system, even though it should be proved to be a better one.

He should certainly oppose all Reform He saw that for a long series of years atwhich went to a remodelling of that House. tempts had been made, and more successfully made than the friends of the Constitu Praed's parliamentary career gave prom- tion could have wished, to diminish the reise, like his writings, of great future dis-spect in which the House of Peers ought, tinction. The first time he rose to speak for all beneficial purposes of the State, to be held.. was on a question of finance, and when he form would be carried beyond that House He apprehended that Resat down Sir James Graham complimented to the threshold of another, and the House the new member on his maiden attempt, of Commons would become surreptitiously and added that, "in observing the great supreme in this country. He believed perspicuity with which the honorable and that this would not be a final measure. Allearned member had delivered his senti-though the Judge Advocate said that it was ments, he could not avoid congratulating sweeping enough to satisfy all moderate the House on the accession of talent and in- men, yet he looked forward to times when a formation they had gained by his introduc- what was sweeping enough to satisfy all bill would be brought in as much beyond tion" to Parliament. Praed subsequently moderate men as this measure was beyond spoke earnestly against the Reform Bill; that state of the constitution which satisfied and, as he had held extreme Radical views the high Tories."