the atmosphere. On the other hand, we are acquainted with many physiological facts, in which the living membranes are conducted in the same manner. The venous blood reddens in the lungs, when it is separated from the air only by the vascular membrane; the same effect is produced in the gills of fishes. The beautiful experiments of Mr. Edwards have proved, that the skins of certain reptiles offer a phenomenon entirely analogous. I have myself lately proved, that in birds, and young mammiferous animals, the blood reddens, and assumes the arterial qualities, in the jugular vein, when uncovered and exposed to the air, if the precaution be taken to slacken the circulation by a slight pressure on the lower (extrémité cardiaque) of the vein. It appears, therefore, that the absorption of the gases and vapours should be attributed to the permeability of the living membranes to those bodies. The theory of that permeability is not yet well understood, notwithstanding the efforts of some celebrated men, such as Priestly and Dalton ; but here physiology must stop, and depend for its future progress on the advances of physical science.

THE COLLEGE OF ST. ANDREWS.+

It is generally considered a priori that the College of St. Andrews in the "Aged City," is a very eligible place for education, but a posteriori, I have my doubts. It is cheap énough, I believe, and there is a most efficient police against peccadilloes in womankind. But there are no stimuli either to the prófessors or students of the college, and no model on which the latter can form their manners. The citizens of the "Aged City can hardly be looked upon as intellectual beings at all, either by the one class or the other, and thus the young men, instead of having, as they should have, the world expanded to them, have it narrowed to a mere nothing. They see no honour in any race of beings but students, and the offices to which St. Andrew's studentship leadsparochial ministerships and manses to those who have a hope of patronage; and parishschools, with twenty pounds a year, to those who have none.

If the advantage of colleges apart from, and independent of society, were capable of demonstration in any way, it is clear that the "Aged City" would be the very place where to find it; because there the people out of the university, with whom the students come in contact, can have little in

+ Abridged from the New Monthly and London Magazine.-No. CX.

fluence upon them in any way, farther than in the way of comparison. Now, instead of there being any superiority about the students that have attended the "Aged City," of whom I have seen and conversed with many, there is a great deal of narrowness and prejudice; a lamentable ignorance of every thing, save the few elementary and "by rote" inatters that have been conned in the classes; and a most injurious tendency to despise and neglect all other matters for the sake of these. But that is the very exclusivism of a monastic system-the very cause that kept the mass of the people in ignorance, till they found out a philosophy for themselves, that arose from the things around them, and was calculated to point out to them their use. I have farther observed, that unless the education which is got at these places, not only bears upon the profession, but actually be that very business itself, the very first thing that is done is to forget it. A parson, when he gets inducted into a manse, and makes certain that his term of tutorage is over, leaves the five books of Euclid without the gate; and, in my pilgrimages in the Land of Cakes, which have been general and varied, and, though I say it myself, observant, and with a desire to come at the truth, 1 have more than once seen a parson who had been renowned for scholarship at college, and continued renowned for eloquence in the pulpit, sadly put to his shifts when, at the annual examination of the parish-school, he had to make trial of the acquirements in the rudiments of mensuration and algebra of the son of some substantial farmer, with whom the parson wished to stand well, both as to courtesy and erudition; the which elements had been communicated by some one more recently off the irons than himself, and who had taken the school for a year or two, as a stepping-stone to the manse of the next parish. In like manner, when I have met with any of those nurslings of the " Aged City," that have left the channels into which they naturally run, and followed the plough, or posted the ledger, as it might be, after the manner of their fathers, I have in general found that they have doffed the whole of the college lore as an incumbrance and impedi

ment.

I am aware that the doctrine that I have now stated will be deemed a heresy; and I do thank the chance-medley of events that I am not now upon the scenes of St. Andrew's, for there is little question but that I should undergo a severe scratching from the claws of the tabbies, who would come down upon me with a long array of "the dawn of knowledge in those sacred abodes;" of " the lights of every age that have emanated from them," and the whole will be rounded by something about "venerable with years," and "hallowed by time," like a roll of drums

in the rear of a battalion. But the truth will bear all that-and more.

That learning has been preserved, and also disseminated by those institutions no one denies, and no one refuses them the merit which may be due to them on that account; but the monastic institutions did the same in ages of greater darkness, and therefore the same, if not greater merit, is due to them. When all knowledge, that had any pretention to be scientific, was contained in words only, and the knowledge of things was very imperfect and empirical as far as it went, there was no keeping the former but by classes of men set apart for the purpose; and as there was little connection between the two, perhaps the more completely the keepers of the verbal knowledge were separated from the people, the better. When all books were written, and a copy of a small one cost a fortune, the art of reading would not have been of much use to the people at large, because they could not have afforded to put it in practice; and, therefore, previous to the invention of printing, the close system did well enough for the only men that could be readers. Even after the invention of printing, and till the active part of the people had been so educated as that they could combine the knowledge of words and things, and put forth books that could inform other people, the colleges were of great use; and even now, I concede that those classes of persons that have, as it were, grown out of the institutions, could not be continued unchanged without them. But the doctors must not deceive themselves; the science of modern times-that which has filled all countries, and this country more than any other, with contrivances of utility and ornament has really very little to do with colleges. It has made more progress in the last fifty years than they have done since the first day of their existence; and during that period, at least, they have been "as they were." The steamengine has become a wonderful thing within the last hundred years; from a mere notion, and rather a confused one, it has come to be the nearest approximation to life. And who have made it so? Why, sometimes skilful mechanics, and at other times idle boys, in order that they might enjoy their play. And what have the doctors of the "Aged City" done the while?-Why, they may, like the Rhodian, have "ate many beeves, and drunk many flagons of wine;" but if they have contrived so much as a mouse-trap, in the way of the useful arts, or a knot of the cravat in the elegant ones, the record has been treacherous. Let them have their due, by all means; nay, let them have a little more; but do not let us, the people, stand wondering at them; for we may be well assured that if any practical good is to be done, we must do it.

or

"But the great men issue from the. colleges." "-" So they do some of them, and some not; but do they get their greatness there? What college gave Smeaton his mills, or his Eddystone light-house? or Arkwright his spinning-machinery? Davy his chemical discoveries? or Telford his bridges and canals? Which of them gave Newton his theory of light and colours? and in which of these classes (and there was a Barrow at Cambridge then), did he pick up the Principia? Upon the concession usually made to the doctors, and they take it readily enough, the man that taught Shakspeare his letters, or the woman that first fed him with pap, might claim the merit of "The Tempest."

I have heard a great deal of boasting among the doctors of the " Aged City," about the great men that have been there, and profited by so being; but whenever I have come to the analysis, I have found that they had marvellously little merit in the matter. The recent instances which I have found them the most forward to cite, have been Dr. Leyden, Professor Lesslie, and Dr. Chalmers. Now, I have access to know, that in no one of those three cases is there any merit whatever due to the doctors. Leyden, who had acquired his poetic talent before he was a student of any college, was an élève of Edinburgh, and went to St. Andrew's in the capacity of tutor; and then his acquirements were so extensive and varied, that he got the name of "The University of Leyden." That he was both delighted and instructed by the philological powers of Dr. Hunter, there can be little doubt, for that was a wonderful man; and if St. Andrew's could have conferred immortality upon him, she would have thereby conferred it on herself. But the giant mind which conquered the languages of the East, at the rate of a dozen per month, was matured in the cottage at

stormy Ruberslaw;" and if any human being called it into action, that being was his mother's blind uncle, at whose tales of martial adventure little Leyden used to be thrown into ecstacies. One cannot help lamenting the untimely fate of Leyden, in whom there was quenched, perhaps, one of the brightest spirits that ever lived; and it is no exaggeration to say, that when he fell a victim to the pestilence of Java, a darkness settled down upon the literature of India, and many centuries may pass over before a successor worthy of him be found.

It was at St. Andrew's that Leyden studied divinity, and was licensed as a preacher of the Scottish kirk; and the envy of the parsons at talent so gigantic, made him the object of rather a ludicrous piece of waggery.

Every one who knows any thing about the Scottish clergy, must know what sort

of meeting a Presbytery dinner is. More than usually grave and starched upon other occasions, that is the time when they unbend. It was the fate of Leyden to be licensed at one of the Presbytery taverns, where the bowl is of noble size, and the brethren are of course very prone to mirth. They knew that Leyden beat them all in learning and eloquence, but they did not much mind that. There was a root of bitterness, however; Leyden beat them all at golf; and Cor K had no chance of being captain and toast-master for the season while Leyden was in the neighbourhood. As they had no chance with him in the field, they resolved to work him at the Presbytery; and his own unsuspicious nature gave them an ample opportunity. Before the meeting, Leyden took one of the more experienced brethren aside, and asked him if there was any thing particular required of him in evidence of qualification for that clerical office which he that day sought to attain. The parson put on a face of more than wonted gravity, took Leyden by the arm, drew him aside, and told him that he had so arranged that the public trial should be as easy as possible; but that there was a voluntary display in which Leyden was expected to excel, and that was, saying grace before dinner, the length and fervour of which were the real tests of a young minister's talents; and that, though expected upon all occasions of the kind, it was never asked.

The business of the Presbytery, which proved more than usually tedious and lengthy, was got through, and the brethren repaired to the dining-room, each more prepared and eager to do justice to the dinner than another. The covers were removed, and as glorious a display of the choicest viands as parsons could desire, smoked before their distended eyes and watering mouths. The moderator had the knife and fork half-raised to transfix a sirloin of beef, and the croupier was raising his steel at the bowels of a haggis, when up started Leyden, and began bis grace, in a strain of fervour that had never been witnessed on a similar occasion. The whole were held by the ears: the two operators suspended their weapons in mid air, and though all eyes were still rivetted upon the dinner, all were silent and motionless as the grave, equally astonished at the storm of eloquence, and anxious that it should blow over. But Leyden got warm with the subject, and, pleased with the silent and wondering attention with which he was met, became louder and more lengthy; and the people of the house came into the room to profit by the unwonted display of pious eloquence. They bore it for about twenty minutes, but as there was no appearance of a coming close even then, the moderator rose and said, "Mr. Leyden, this is out

of all order; do as you please upon other occasions, but when we meet we have always short graces and long dinners, so sit down and let us all ply the carnal weapon." Leyden sat down in utter confusion, amid peals of laughter; and it is understood that the disgust that he felt at the trick thus played upon him, was the real cause of his abandoning divinity for letters, and thereby, though his untimely death abridged it much, conferring a benefit upon literature.

Professor Leslie, too, owed not a great deal to St. Andrew's; and that he went there at all was the effect, and not the cause of his abilities. The minister of Large, the parish in which he was born, found out by accident that he had taught himself some parts of the elements of geometry, and he was sent to college more because it was the fashion than any thing else. While at Etruria, and when travelling with the Wedgwood's, Lesslie learned far more than at St. Andrew's: and if his peculiar views in philosophy are not altogether his own, there can be little doubt that they were imparted or elicited by the elder Wedgwood; and there is no question that it was at Etruria that he first attended to the nature of heat, the foundation of his first and greatest fame. He had no means of acquiring any chemical knowledge at St. Andrew's, for there never was a chemistry class there regularly connected with the college, and so little was known of it (except gastro-chemistry), that two years after the publication of "Lesslie's Essay," the principal of the philosophy classes was collecting the whole country side to see mercury boiling in a barometer tube, as if it had been a world's wonder; and even Chalmers himself, who began his public career as a chemical lecturer at St. Andrew's, in opposition to the college, and even in hostility to a part of it, then spoke of "ebullition in a glass vessel" as something to be wondered at.

In the whole of Lesslie's mind there is nothing St. Andrean; and it would be easy to trace the whole of his acquirements to the circumstances under which he has been placed. With Chalmers the case is still more prominent, as his career has been more versatile and more upon popular grounds; and, indeed, if we were to take any one of the great men that have been at St. Andrew's, we should be able to trace their acquirements to a source very different from the prelections in the "Aged City." Twenty months of study, of which every five are at an interval of seven, and where the student has no impulse, and no literary society, are not very likely to stimulate the mind to any thing; and therefore the conclusion is, that the "Aged City" manufactures parish ministers and schoolmasters, but, with the exception of golf-balls and res ports, nothing else.

MY CHRISTMAS DINNER!†

It was on the 20th of December last that I received an invitation from my friend Mr. Phiggins to dine with him in Mark Lane, on Christmas Day. I had several reasons for declining this proposition. The first was, that Mr. P. makes it a rule, at all these festivals, to empty the entire contents of his counting-house into his little dining-parlour; and you consequently sit down to dinner with six white-waistcoated clerks, let loose upon a turkey. The second was, that I am not sufficiently well read in cotton and sugar, to enter with any spirit into the subject of conversation. The third was, and is, that I never drink Cape wine. But by far the most prevailing reason remains to be told. I had been anticipating for some days, and was hourly in the hope of receiving, an invitation to spend my Christmas Day in a most irresistible quarter. I was expecting, indeed, the felicity of eating plum-pudding with an angel; and, on the strength of my imaginary engagement, I returned a polite note to Mr. P., reducing him to the necessity of advertising for another candidate for Cape and turkey.

The 21st came. Another invitation-to dine with a regiment of roast-beef eaters at Clapham. I declined this also, for the above reason, and for one other, viz. that, on dining there ten Christmas Days ago, it was discovered, on sitting down, that one little accompaniment of the roast-beef had been entirely overlooked. Would it be believed? -but I will not stay to mystify-I merely mention the fact. They had forgotten the

horse-radish!

The next day arrived, and with it a neat epistle, sealed with violet-coloured wax, from Upper Brook Street. "Dine with the ladies -at home on Christmas Day." Very tempting, it is true; but not exactly the letter I was longing for. I began, however, to debate within myself upon the policy of securing this bird in the hand, instead of waiting for the two that were still hopping about the bush, when the consultation was suddenly brought to a close, by a prophetic view of the portfolio of drawings fresh from boarding-school-moths and roses on embossed paper;-to say nothing of the album, in which I stood engaged to write an elegy on a Java sparrow, that had been a favourite in the family for three days. I rung for gilt edged, pleaded a world of polite regret, and again declined.

The 23rd dawned; time was getting on rather rapidly; but no card came. I began to despair of any more invitations, and to repent of my refusals. Breakfast was hardly over, however, when the servant brought up

+ From the Monthly Magazine.-No. L. VOL. III. 2 H

-not a letter-but an aunt and a brace of cousins from Bayswater. They would listen to no excuse; consanguinity required me, and Christmas was not my own. Now my cousins keep no albums: they are really as pretty as cousins can be; and when vio lent hands, with white kid gloves, are laid on one, it is sometimes difficult to effect an escape with becoming elegance. I could not, however, give up my darling hope of a pleasanter prospect. They fought with me in fifty engagements-that I pretended to have made. I showed them the "Court Guide," with ten names obliterated-being those of persons who had not asked me to mince-meat and misletoe; and I ultimately gained my cause by quartering the remains of an infectious fever on the sensitive fears of my aunt, and by dividing a rheumatism and a sprained ancle between my sympathetic cousins.

66

As soon as they were gone I walked out, sauntering involuntarily in the direction of the only house in which I felt I could spend a happy" Christmas. As I approached, a porter brought a large hamper to the door. "A present from the country," thought I; 'yes, they do dine at home; they must ask me; they know that I am in town." Immediately afterwards a servant issued with a letter: he took the nearest way to my lodgings, and I hurried back by another street to receive the so-much-wished-for invitation. I was in a state of delirious delight.

I arrived-but there was no letter. I sat down to wait, in a spirit of calmer enjoyment than I had experienced for some days; and in less than half an hour a note was brought to me. At length the desired dispatch had come: it seemed written on the leaf of a lily, with a pen dipped in dew. I opened it—and had nearly fainted with disappointment. It was from a stockbroker, who begins an anecdote of Mr. Rothschild before dinner, and finishes it with the fourth bottle-and who makes his eight children stay up to supper and snap-dragon. In Macamadizing a stray stone in one of his periodical puddings, I once lost a tooth, and with it an heiress of some reputation. I wrote a most irritable apology, and despatched my warmest regards in a whirlwind.

December the 24th.-I began to count the hours, and uttered many poetical things about the wings of Time. Alack! no letter came ;-yes, I received a note from a distinguished dramatist, requesting the honour, &c. But I was too cunning for this, and practised wisdom for once. I happened to reflect that his pantomime was to make its appearance on the night after, and that his object was to perpetrate the whole programme upon me. Regret that I could not have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Paulo, and the rest of the literati, to be then and there

assembled, was of course immediately expressed.

My mind became restless and agitated. I felt, amidst all these invitations, cruelly neglected. They served, indeed, but to increase my uneasiness, as they opened prospects of happiness in which I could take no share. They discovered a most tempting dessert, composed of forbidden fruit. I took down "Childe Harold," and read myself into a sublime contempt of mankind. I began to perceive that merriment is only malice in disguise, and that the chief car dinal virtue is misanthropy. I sat "nursing my wrath" till it scorched me; when the arrival of another epistle suddenly charmed me from this state of delicious melancholy and delightful endurance of wrong. I sickened as I surveyed, and trembled as I opened it. It was dated from -, but no matter; it was not the letter. In such a frenzy as mine, raging to behold the object of my adoration condescend, not to eat a custard, but to render it invisible-to be invited perhaps to a tart fabricated by her own ethereal fingers; with such possibilities before me, how could I think of joining a friendly party"-where I should inevitably sit next to a deaf lady, who had been, when a little girl, patted on the head by Wilkes, or my Lord North, she could not recollect which-had taken tea with the author of "Junius," but had forgotten his name-and who once asked me "whether Mr. Munden's monument was in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's?"-I seized a pen, and presented my compliments. I hesitated-for the peril and precariousness of my situation flashed on my mind; but hope had still left me a straw to catch at, and I at length succeeded in resisting this late and terrible temptation.

After the first burst of excitement I suuk into still deeper despondency. My spirit became a prey to anxiety and remorse. I could not eat; dinner was removed with unlifted covers. I went out. The world seemed to have acquired a new face; nothing was to be seen but raisins and rounds of beef. I wandered about like Lear-I had

given up all!-I felt myself grated against the world like a nutmeg. It grew dark-I sustained a still gloomier shock. Every chance seemed to have expired, and every body seemed to have a delightful engagement for the next day. I alone was disengaged—I felt like the Last Man! Tomorrow appeared to have already commenced its career; mankind had anticipated the future; "and coming mince-pies cast their shadows before."

In this state of desolation and dismay I called-I could not help it-at the house to which I had so fondly anticipated an invitation and a welcome. My protest must here however be recorded, that though I

called in the hope of being asked, it was my fixed determination not to avail myself of so protracted a piece of politeness. No: my triumph would have been to have annihilated them with an engagement made in September, payable three months after date. With these feelings I gave an agitated knock

they were stoning the plums, and did not immediately attend. I rung-how unlike a dinner-bell it sounded! A girl at length made her appearance, and, with a mouthful of citron, informed me that the family had gone to spend their Christmas Eve in Portland Place. I rushed down the steps, I hardly knew whither. My first impulse was to go to some wharf and inquire what vessels were starting for America. But it was a cold night-I went home and threw myself on my miserable couch. In other words, I went to bed.

I dozed and dreamed away the hours till day-break. I awoke a little refreshed. Alas! it was the 25th of the month-it was Christmas Day! Let the reader, if he possess the imagination of Milton, conceive my sensations.

I swallowed an atom of dry toast-nothing could calm the fever of my soul. I stirred the fire and read Zimmerman alternately, Even reason the last remedy one has recourse to in such cases-came at length to my relief; I argued myself into a philosophic fit. But, unluckily, just as the Lethean tide within me was at its height, my landlady broke in upon my lethargy, and chased away by a single word all the little sprites and pleasures that were acting as my physicians, and prescribing balm for my wounds. She paid me the usual compliments, and then "Do you dine at home to-day, Sir ?" abruptly inquired she. Here was a question. No Spanish inquisitor ever inflicted such complete dismay in so short a sentence. Had she given me a Sphynx to expound, a Gordian tangle to untwist; had she set me a lesson in algebra, or asked me the way to Brobdignag; had she desired me to show her the North Pole, or the meaning of a melodrama; any or all of these I might have accomplished. But to request me to define my dinner-to inquire into its latitude-to compel me to fathom that sea of appetite which I now felt rushing through my frame-to ask me to dive into futurity, and become the prophet of pies and preserves! My heart died within me at the impossibility of a reply.

She had repeated the question before I could collect my senses around me. Then, for the first time, it occurred to me, that, in the event of my having no engagement abroad, my landlady meant to invite me! "There will at least be the two daughters," I whispered to myself; "and after all, Lucy Matthews is a charming girl, and touches the harp divinely. She has a very