were made along the charred skin, for the ion that this is its only but its very great merit. purpose of inserting into them strips of cal- The sanguinaria is inert; the chloride of zinc ico smeared with the paste. These incisions paste was known before; but the incisions varied in number, being usually made about constitute a new feature in the treatment of half an inch apart, but sometimes there cancerous tumors, for which we find no parwere not more than four in a breadth of five allel in the writings of the past or in the or six inches. They were carried along the practice of present surgeons. Cancer, in its whole length of the eschar, and to a depth constitutional nature, remains as ruthless and somewhat short of the living tissues beneath. as unassailable as ever. Chloride of zinc For the first two or three days they were may or may not continue to be used for the seldom deep enough to lodge the strips of destruction of the local disease. But the adcalico; still even the scratches sufficed for vantage placed in the hands of surgeons by the percolation of the remedy into the sub- the invention of gradual incisions claims jacent living parts. Each day the incisions henceforth their very frequent adoption in were a little deepened, and fresh strips of the treatment of cancerous tumours, as well anointed calico, or rolls of cotton-wool cov- as a grateful acknowledgment of the ingeered with the paste, were inserted into them, nuity of their inventor." until in the course of from two to seven weeks, the average time being about three This notice of the "Report on Cancer" is weeks, the whole depth of the tumour was confined to the barest outline of the new penetrated; and then the use of the paste practice. Those who wish for fuller inforwas discontinued, and the eschar left to sep- mation on the subject must obtain the report arate." itself. They will find there some curious

It is in these incisions that the principal particulars relating to an audacious attempt value of Dr. Fell's method consists, accord- at imposition by a charlatan, recommended ing to the opinion of the Middlesex Hospital by men who ought to have known better; a surgeons. The application of zinc to cancer is not new; taken internally, the blood-root did not seem to have any effect one way or other.. The external application seems limited to removing the pdor; for the purpose of destroying cancers it appears to be practically inert. In a review of the whole treatment, the report ascribes the virtue to the incisions.

"The last peculiarity of this treatment is the practice of incisions; and we are of opin

The Stanhope Prize Essay: the Character and Place of Wickliffe as a Reformer. By Herbert Cowell. J. H. and J. Parker.

very full account of Dr. Fell's plan and the methods of carrying it out in detail; a critical survey of the whole treatment so far as the short period in which it has been under observation permits of judgment, and numerous cases illustrative of that treatment. It should be observed that the surgical staff of the Hospital consider that further improvements may arise from Dr. Fell's plan, when it has been subjected to more extensive investigation and experiment.

brought support to Wickliffe in his protest against Rome. He himself was moved by higher principles, but Mr. Cowell is right in THE Stanhope prize essay for 1857, by Her- his representation of the general tone of the bert Cowell, of Wadham College, on the Char- movement of which this early reformer was the acter and Place of Wickliffe as a Reformer, pre- head. The tide of public feeling was in the disents an interesting view of the state of Eng-rection of political rather than religious liberty, land in the reign of Edward III., with a clear exposition of the special work which Wickliffe was able to accomplish by his labors and his writings. Of the personal piety of the reformer and his fervent spiritual character there is no difference of opinion, but Mr. Cowell shows that he exerted public influence chiefly by his attacks on the clergy for their immorality and their abuse of power and privilege. It was the English sense of justice and love of liberty rather than Christian zeal for the truth which!

and there was no strong or general desire to oppose more than the gross abuses of the church. The masses of the people could little sympathize with the spiritual aspirations of the reformer, whose services were better appreciated by a succeeding generation. But though his efforts for reformation were premature, his name is not the less cherished and honored as one of the founders of the Protestant cause in England.-Literary Gazette.

ON RECEIVING A BASKET OF VIO-To-day our ocean queen the earth disdains,
LETS IN WAX.

tree,

Unvisited save by some wandering bee;
'Mid the deep wood-silence, unbroken all day,
Save by babbling brook or rustling spray;
Like a gem in the shade of its deep leaves set,
You may find the coy sweet violet!

Alas, for me! I may not go

Where the wild fern bends to the waters' flow,
Chained are the steps that would gladly roam
In the track of the breeze to the violet's home.
I dwell 'mid the tide of eddying life;
The very air with its sound is rife !
I may not leave these streets and walls
For lone wood-dells and water-falls;
So deep in its own sweet verd'rous gloom,
Unseen by me, must the violet bloom!
Yet have I violets! See my prize!
Purple and white, with their golden eyes!
Violets vying with Nature's best,
Tenderly set in a mossy nest!
Better in this, that these dainty flowers
Fade not away with the fleeting hours;
But their beauty will last with the fancies they
raise,

Through rain and tempest, and wintry days.
Then thanks, warm thanks, to the skilful hand,
And tenfold thanks to the heart that planned
This graceful gift! So these flowers shall be
Ever a source of sweet thoughts to me,
And though storms blow wildly, and skies are
drear,

Shall bring dreams of spring-time through all
the year!
Chambers' Journal.

F. H. S.

And o'er the subject deep, a mighty conqueror

reigns!

Friendship no longer to the shore descends
With cheeks bedewed, while fond ones look their
last,

As at the bedside of departing friends,
Ere death the bitterness of death to taste.
Securely walking, as on city street,
The self-same heaven above, though stars be

strange;

Countrymen, neighborhoods, and kindred meet,
Serene th' illimitable deep they range;
Many they love, and much of all they know,
Religion, language, laws, together with them go.
Thyself a navy! Offspring of man's mind,
Aspiring ever, and expanding still;
Pilot of labor wheresoe'er we find
The wilderness expecting human skill.
Earth calls-man hears-wide ocean intervene,
Crowds pine on this, hope points to other
strands;

Our iron Island oscillates between

The old and new, th' outworn and virgin lands;
Labor embarks with proud elated mien,
Glory and wealth with him, albeit as yet unseen.
Instinct with living fires, for purposed ends,
Submissive, pliant to the helmsman's skill,
From continent to continent extends,
From pole to pole the iron isle at will.
Not belching death from her artilleried sides,
Not clothed with thunder, terror, rage, and pain;
On peaceful errands, olive-crowned, she glides,
Tyrannic only o'er the watery plain ;
From teeming nations, scarce-requited toil,
Floats man to nature, labor to the soil.

Linking two hemispheres, the far and near,
Esteeming lightly distance, change, and time,
Ordained to trample on, and domineer
Over the wild dissociating brine;
Far as th' o'erarching western heavens extend,
Onward, still onward, tens of thousands come;
Thy sides food-seeking families ascend,.
Descending thence, to their appointed home;
Men of one name, one language, and one birth,
Subduing and replenishing the earth!
JOHN FISHER MURRAY.

-Chambers' Journal.

From The Saturday Review.
THE S
SPANISH COURT:

of Louis XIV. At Madrid, you have Louis XV., tout impur. What need of a Parc aux Cerfs, when there are the united services for a preserve?

THE condition of the Spanish Court and Government is a disgrace to Europe. The first-fruits of civilization, even on the unkindMany people are surprised to hear that liest soil, are usually the external decencies; these intolerable scandals have produced a but in Madrid these humblest conquests of general desire for the return of the Queenmoral progress seem to be abandoned. The Mother to Spain. Considering who Maria accredited phrase in certain circles about the Christina is, the remedy called for at Madrid Court of Spain is, that there is a mystery may seem only intelligible on the principles about it; but the mystery is like the secret of homoeopathy. This Royal lady has just de Polichinelle. Everybody in Europe whis- most deliberately stamped herself with the pers it. The smallest piece of news in character which she is to wear in the eyes of Madrid is enough to set every tongue pro- posterity. She had to choose between the faning it. If the Ministry changes, if Armero horns of an uncomfortable dilemma, and to brings in Mon, and Mon refuses to come in say whether she would be regarded as a without Pidal, and Pidal introduces Bermudez cheat or as something which most women de Castro, and the dead generally unbury would consider a good deal worse. A Comtheir dead, but one name is made responsible mittee of the Constituent Cortes appointed to for it all. If it is announced that a Royal report on the sequestration of her property, child is about to be born to Spain, and had endeavored, with spiteful and perhaps prayers are offered in all the churches for her not very honorable dexterity, to show that Majesty's deliverance from danger, the same the State had a claim against her for very name mingles with the public orisons. One large sums of money unlawfully received. omnipresent influence animates Court life and She had enjoyed an extravagant revenue as politics, and yet it has an inner shrine whither Regent and guardian of her infant daughter, you may easily get directed if you want a but both the Regency and the guardianship place, or a command, or a railway concession. were to cease on her marrying a second time As you make your way to a certain boudoir, and, unfortunately, her relations with he you will pass Cardinals who have been to present husband, now Duke of Rianzares, converse about the Concordat, Princes of the had been such as to make it a charitable supBlood who have been consulting about their position that her widowhood ended soon after own or their daughters' marriage, and For- Ferdinand's death.. The Committee had eign Ministers who have come to mediate 'in stated the alternative with malignant clearthe rupture with Mexico. The inmate will ness; and when, on the defeat of her politireceive you graciously, if you are properly cal enemies, the Queen-Mother announced equipped; and you will find that there is no that a formal refutation of their charges good thing in Spain but can be begged or would be immediately submitted to the world, bought from a Madame Dubarry who, in- all the curiosity in Spain was awake to watch stead of paint and patches, wears a sword, a the issue of the struggle between modesty sabre-tasche, and spurs. The present moral and cupidity. The result establishes the status of the Bourbons reminds one of the wisdom of the dictum that avarice is the best theory, held by some persons, that in very of all passions to cultivate, because it lasts old families the good qualities of the race die longest. Maria Christina refuses to be called. out, leaving a residuum of unqualified evil. a swindler, because swindlers are sometimes. The greatest House in Europe will certainly required to refund-she consents to be called not disprove the theory. Except where the something else, because hard words break no blood has been sweetened by adversity, it bones. In a bulky pamphlet, published in seems to have steadily eliminated all its her name by three' well-known advocates, nobler particles, and to have run itself clear, this Princess, who some years since was. in the course of years, from all its ingredients travelling about Europe with a train of marexcept vice, fanaticism, and imbecility. At riageable daughters, labots to show, with Naples, you have the cold cruelty and morose- much emphatic asseveration and great affluness of Louis XIII. At Venice, you have the ence of proofs, that she was not married till formal superstition and mechanical routine 1844. No wonder the question is asked, DOCK. LIVING AGE. VOL. XX. 3

what possible improvement can she bring to to take advantage of the false steps of freethe morals of the Court of Spain? But the answer is, that she will bring common discretion. False, cruel, avaricious, tyrannical, and, as she herself admits, licentious, she has still the instincts of a woman. Though she may not have self-command enough to disappoint a single passion, she will do her best to reconcile her vices with appearances. She will affront scandal rather than relinquish one dollar of her hoards; but she does not love scandal for its own sake-she has no taste for orgies in the face of day, and would very much rather sin in private than in public. She is, in fact, desired in Madrid for the excellent example she affords. The person now styled Duke of Rianzares is not known to have caused the rise or fall of a single Cabinet. Probably, like the rest of the world, he has his hates and likings, but no political event can be traced to them; and if he has coveted distinction in any field outside the Palace, no indulgence has been extended to this creditable ambition. Maria Christina must be fully alive to the dangerousness of a Potemkin who is bent on having a Crimea in Cuba, and, if only for this reason, her mitis sapientia would be invaluable at Madrid.

The Oriental tinge which colors Spanish character may not imply any great austerity of morals, but it produces acute distaste for violations of external propriety, and a peculiar disgust at open irregularities in the other sex. It is greatly to be feared that Queen Isabella is at the same moment wearing out the affection of the Spanish nation for the Royal office, and its respect for those free institutions which sanction the seat of the younger branch of Spanish Bourbons on the throne. There are some, indeed, who appear to extract comfort from the shameful pro

dom; and in truth, nothing but the power which she accidentally possessed of playing off O'Donnell against Narvaez, prevented Queen Isabella from becoming, the other day, the slave and creature of an armed dictator. Curiously enough, the Court of Spain owes its present independence to the profligacy with which it has been wont to dispense its favors. It has created such a mob of Generals, and such a variety of discordant interests in the army, that no one competitor for military absolutism can hope to carry with him the support of more than a fraction of the forces and of their officers. But this even balance among a crowd of ready conspirators would be instantly destroyed by the conspicuous success of any one General in domestic or foreign war. Espartero, though he never drew a sword out of Spain, might have been Dictator long ago if it had not been for that cast of character which his disappointed friends stigmatize as feebleness, but which looks to an Englishman much more like simple honesty. Had hostilities really broken out between Spain and Mexico, the destroyer of the monarchy would not probably have been long in showing himself; and in any case, a Crown which has for years been the sport of military conspiracy needs but a push to topple it from the head of a sovereign who is an object of general contempt.

From The Saturday Review. THE MARRIAGE OF FELLOWS QUESTION.

WE spoke of this question the other day as it concerns non-residents. We have a few words more to say on it as it concerns the staff of the several Colleges, and, in the agresidents-that is, the literary and educating

to what may seem a dry local question will be excused by those who know its great importance to the persons whose interests are affected, and (what is infinitely more to the purpose) its vital connexion with the future efficiency of our great national places of learning and education. The more we consider the subject, the more does the question of the marriage of Fellows appear to us the cardinal question of University Reform.

ceedings of the Spanish Court, by reflecting gregate, of the University. Our recurrence that, whatever Queen Isabella is, she is still a protest against absolute monarchy. She has, we are told, the sense to see that an attempt to govern without a Parliament would be an admission of her cousin's title to the Crown; and hence she keeps alive traditions and germs of freedom which may blossom hereafter in more genial days. The danger does not, however, impend from the sons of Don Carlos, whose chance of reinstatement in any event is almost inappreciable. In Spain, as in every other Continental community, it is a military autocracy which waits

Of course there is no such thing now in existence at Oxford or Cambridge as celibacy in the medieval sense. A certain number of

The

men-more at Oxford than at Cambridge-purposes of education. Professorial teachhave been attracted by the religious poetry ing, practically speaking, is teaching by puband monastic self-devotion of the Middle lic lectures; and teaching by public lectures Ages, and have shown a yearning for the is really useful and efficient in the case of revival of those famous fraternities which, physical science alone. Classics, mathemawith all their perils and evils, did great things tics, moral philosophy, history, political econin their dark and stormy day. But it is a omy, to be taught properly must be taught yearning only, which must change itself into catechetically, either to single pupils or to a something more practical before we can take small class-even ordinary College classes notice of it in settling the character of our are found by experience to be too large. actual institutions. We have no monks now The attempt made at Oxford to teach Latin -none of the self-devotion of the monk-none scholarship and composition by means of of the noble works which were the children public lectures, must be said, we believe, to of childless men. We must look to other have proved unsuccessful, in spite of the sources of energy and duty. We must look great ability and energy of the Professor to the natural devotion of men to a calling through whom it has been made. of their own choice, and their natural desire to earn, by honorable exertion, their own and their children's bread. The Fellows of Colleges are not celibates-they are men waiting for a College living to be married. These are your doctors and your tutors. Their life is cut in two; and both moieties are, too often, failures. They do not give themselves heartily to the work of study and teaching, because they know they will have to quit it; and when they quit it, they are often too old to give themselves heartily to any thing else. By the help of unequalled prizes, which have had more to do with making men read at Oxford and Cambridge than the teaching, things shambled on tolerably education. Besides this, Professors are and well so long as the real studies of the place were limited to classics and mathematics. But now that a wider range is taken, and subjects are introduced which require the real devotion of a life, the system of bird-ofpassage tuition and learning has totally broken down. Men cannot become great in political and physical science while they are looking for the death of an incumbent more especially as half the year is lost in vacations, which the dulness of College life renders almost necessary to prevent a Fellow from becoming a human fossil before he is thirty.

The framers of the Oxford and Cambridge Acts have tried to meet the difficulty-which they could not overlook-by the extension and better endowment of the University Professoriate, leaving the College system as it is. We are afraid, as we have said before, that this device, natural and tempting as it was, will prove insufficient for the purposes of learning, and still more insufficient for the

standard of Latin scholarship is said to be declining; and the accomplishment of writing Latin verse, we fear, almost verges on extinction. Even in the case of physical science, it may be doubted whether the system of lecturing to large classes is not rather a matter of necessity than of choice-you cannot afford to repeat the necessary experiments for each individual pupil. As an intellectual stimulus, public lecturing may be occasionally useful in all subjects of instruction; but it cannot be looked to as the regular mode of teaching in any. Such, we are confident, would be the verdict of any man practically acquainted with the business of

must be elected mainly for their learning; and it by no means follows, though it is often the case, that a learned man is a good teacher. We will not dwell on other evils of constant public lecturing to young, half-instructed, and enthusiastic audiences-evils which, though they have been exaggerated by bigoted alarmists, are nevertheless but too real, and of which some Continental nations still feel the lamentable effects.

The Professoriate is better suited to the purposes of learning than those of education. But even for the purposes of learning it is defective. It is too narrow, formal, and limited-it seeks too much to organize definitely that which in its nature is incapable of definite organization. Its theory is that you elect a man to represent, or rather to be, the genius and learning of the University in a particular subject, and that the man elected devotes his whole life to the special object of his chair. But things cannot be ordered after this fashion in the intellectual