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life-a doctrine extremely favourable to apathy and indolence. In the view of a rational humanity, the quantum of suffering is here the object: what comparison between an unexpected crick of the neck, and a consequent speedy and happy passage to Fidler's Green, with even the first five minutes fright, to a poor exposed animal? When I see distress and misery, which imply sense and feeling, I cannot stop to consider by how many legs the object is supported, or whether it looks up towards heaven, or downward towards the earth; my heart takes the alarm, and I am not ashamed to acknowledge the pain it feels, on the impossibility of giving relief; yet I dare not di late on the extent of that pain in such cases. Nevertheless, I have committed too many murders, to be at all apprehensive of the charge of sentimentality, even from Windham himself, were he now living and looking.

The roup had been somewhat prevalent, and a very fine cock had lately perished in a corner hard by, with hunger and cold. Oh! take the nasty thing away, turn it out!-a language often held by women overladen with sensibility, and even by men mature in science, but not in the science of feeling, which may require an apprenticeship. I became now a proprietor per force, and my first idea was to allow my new property an hour's enjoyment in a warm and comfortable place, and then to dispatch him on his last errand to that happy country, where he would be tolerably certain never to be troubled again with the roup. But seeing cause to act otherwise, I took him for my patient. He was well cleaned by the fire-side, and his mouth and nostrils washed with warm soap and water, which made him expectorate and sneeze off a considerable quantity of most offensive matter. His eyes were washed with warm milk and water, and the head gently rubbed dry with a cloth. Refusing to eat, indeed being unable to see his meat or drink, repose was judged the first requisite, and the patient was allowed a warm bed of hay, in a rabbit hut. After some hours, his head was again cleaned, but still he shewed no desire to eat, any farther than attempting to peck at some barley, of which he heard the rattle before him. Considerable fever, which seemed to intermit, but a sense of cold always predominant: I then chose the stimulant plan, watch ing the fever. Food and medicine were administered together in pellets, or ra

ther long-crams of barley-meal and flour, in which was mixed a portion of flourmustard and grated ginger. The patient was crammed with this several times a day, and kept warm; the necessary ablutions being also performed. As much cold or milk-warm water, sometimes sweetened with treacle, was given as he would readily take, to counteract, in due degree, the very heating quality of the medicine. He was frequently indulged with a solace by the fire-side, which always seemed to have an invigorating effect. He breathed with difficulty, rattled in the throat, and frequently gaped. In three days, the obstruction in his head being considerably abated, his sight was plainly returning; in a week, it was nearly perfect, he could feed himself, and the little medicine now given him, was mustard infused in his water, afterwards sulphur. Lastly, a pinch of calomel in a cram of dough. He was inured to the cold by degrees, and in about a month was as saucy and strutting as recovered health and high spirits could make him; and has since repaid his doctor's bill with some hundreds both of eggs and chickens. His spurs being too long, and interfering with his gait, I cut them down for him with my pen-knife every three months, the use of which he seems to comprehend, although he has often rewarded me with a sore peck for my trouble.

Having moulted late, he caught cold on the first frost, and suffered a relapse. Cough, gaping, ruffled plumes, shaking. Discases are cured by their opposites, and the fire-side occasionally, with warm lodging, proved a speedy remedy. A white hen was now purchased in a lot: she appeared pallid about the gills, and not quite well. Perhaps she had taken cold, being tossed about from place to place, in the higler's basket, and had received an addition to it in my poultryhouse, which is exposed to currents of cold air. She became Egyptianized, and queerish in the ogles, (Smithfield slang); anglice, or rather medically, she had caught a legitimate ophthalmia in one eye, which soon extended to both. Violent inflammation, tumid circles of livid swollen flesh around the eyes, and other symptoms as before. Bathed around the eyes with brandy, or camphorated spirit; occasionally with mild solution of common salt and water. The swellings soon reduced, but the flesh remained pale. Black pepper was added once to the medicines before-mentioned, and appa

rently

ently with good effect. The patient seemed perfectly recovered and thriving; but probably, for want of effectual and continued attention, the disease had alternate recession and accession, until, on a sudden change of weather, a discharge from the nostrils ensued, so prevalent and fetid, as to affect the atmosphere of the place. As the shortest course, the hen was killed. There was an additional motive. The cock Isaac became unwell, the gaping symptom, as if somewhat stuck in his throat, was particularly prominent. He recovered, however, in a few days, but the circumstance occasioned a revival of the old question, -Was he really infected by the white hen, or did they both receive their malady from the general atmospheric cause? As fashion requires, my wife and I took opposite sides of the argument, and the dispute was waged with much animation; nor will I, to this hour, acknowledge myself to be worsted. There can be no doubt of the power of infection in putrid miasmata, but the matter must have sufficient time in which to acquire putridity to a degree sufficient for infection; on the other hand, a number of animals will be similarly affected with disease from a sudden atmospheric cause. The dread ful consequences of sudden or inordinate abstractions of animal heat, and the insidious attacks of the consequent diseases, have never been duly appreciated, even by medical men. Perhaps it may not be too much to assert, that no man can be thoroughly au fuit in this science, who does not himself stand in the first

rank of cold-catchers.

Roupy hens should be instantly with drawn from the rest, were it only for cleanliness sake, and their necks wrung by those who are too wise to encounter trouble. If a cure be aimed at, they should be kept rigidly separate, until perfectly sound, and by no means suffered to breed; for I recollect in Hampshire, on breaking the eggs of such, their contents were black and putrid. The distemper, however, which is merely influenza, taken on its first access, is easily

removed.

Extracts from Memoranda, September 9, 1807.-Wind north-west, sharp. The most wonderful effect on all the young, even to the full-grown stock. Rouped instantly, feathers staring, discharge at the nostrils, breath and skin fetid. The roup mere influenza-glan. ders; and the discase of the young chicks, before seasoned, similar to the

distemper in young dogs. Only remedy warmth. Might be cured in a bot-house. Chicken bitten by a rat; many with their heads raw from fighting: brandy, with two or three drops of laudanum, proved a good application to the wounds, not only in disposing them to heal, but from the scent preventing the others pecking the wound, which they are invariably disposed to do. A dose of two or three drops of laudanum, in water, appeared to hasten the death of a weak chicken, (I have, in two cases, observed the same effect of laudanum with infants.)

July 27, 1808.-Heat succeeded by sudden rain. Mortality among chickens of all sizes amazing. Large young cocks and pullets wasting away; rooped; gian dered. Said in the neighbourhood, there was a chicken-plague. Disease oc casioned by the weather, beyond possi bility of doubt. Prevention, by shelter against atmospheric vicissitudes. Wol derful change from the vast heat of the egg and of the body of the hen to a cold and piercing air.

August 6.-Full four score chickens lost during this season, by disease.

August 25.-My opinion settled. De ring north-east winds and cold, influenzal weather, all have been pining, thin, and sickly. On a shade of change to the south side of the east, with sun, all revive. In the bad stage, the large chick ens lean, light as feathers, and blind like Spanish sheep from a similar cause. Blighting weather, wet or drought, extremes of cold or beat, fatal to chickens: in genial and seasonable weather, all safe. This is the true history of the roup. The old poultry, in the mean time, frequently remain very slightly, or totally, unaffected.

Gave

May 12, 1809.-Sudden very hot weather had an ill effect on all the chicks. One had a fever so highly inflammatory, that its body burned my hand to the very marrow, like actual fire. nitre in milk and water at night. In the morning, the chicken cool and brisk. Repeated the dose, in too large a quantity, and brought on a cold fit. The fever changed to an intermittent, but the patient recovered and made a good fowl. After all, perhaps most advantageous, as surely least troublesome, to destroy all diseased chicks, and calcu late only on the strong, To doctor numbers individually, impracticable. The distress and everlasting chip-chip of the sick, distract the hen, and prevent the proper care of her broud. In the

mean

mean time, the sick chicks will sometimes eat voraciously, until they die; and if they survive, they remain lean and voracious throughout the season, showing probably no sign of thrift, until late in autumn; of course most costly. Judgment of selection must be exercised in the case. A brood of young chicks, for the first two or three weeks, may be most beautiful in plumage; on a sudden, many of them will be metamorphosed into the most haggard, ruffled, and dirty devils imaginable. Dissected some which died. Crops full and obstructed, scour ing. Some marks of inflammation. Livers unsound, and a spot denoting the approaching adhesion of the lungs to the pleura. Chickens in plenty may be obtained, either in the usual and natural mode of hatching, or by artificial heat, which I have formerly practised; the great difficulty lies in rearing them, and this is much enhanced upon cold and wet clayey soils. In dry, sandy, and calcareous districts, they know little of disease among their poultry; and in all parts, where successful breeding is me ditated, sufficient room and exercise for pecking about, as well as shelter, is of the first consequence.

My brother farmer of Middlesex will, I hope, derive some satisfaction from what I have written, and my treating the subject so much at large, will, I trust, be excused, on the consideration that I have been requested so to do by friends, at various periods. Your correspondent, Mr. Editor, will not wonder that he has found the usual remedies fail, nor expect that a mere form of words, with the formal compound, its sequel should have a magical effect in the cure of disease. The practice of medicine is not quite so

easy.

Middlesex, October 16.

L.

P. S.-I wish to make the amende bonorable in time, or rather to take time by the forelock. A perusal of part of Walter Scott's beautiful poem, the Lady of the Lake, has induced me to suspect myself in error, in my late criticism on the pronunciation of Donaldbane, in the tragedy of Macbeth. I request information on that point, anticipating with how great truth it may be said, that I am a far abler critic on poultry than on the Scotish language and antiquities.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

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MONG the numerous papers which

The diurnal prints, are too expensive for every individual, and in conse quence the weekly ones have been esta-. blished; but these of necessity give a very abstracted account of the various occurrences of the preceding seven days, and are often objected to on the ground of the subscriber being kept so long in ignorance of the passing events. From these circumstances, I am inclined to think, that any person having it in contemplation to establish a newspaper, or any proprietor of an existing weekly print, inclined to extend his plan, would find it advantageous to introduce such a paper as that I have alluded to, (and at the price of six-pence) which would scarcely fail of meeting a friendly reception from a public, ever ready to support new and useful arrangements.

INDEX.

To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine.

SIR,

YOUR correspondent I. A. appears

totally unacquainted with any part of the process of stereotype printing, since he wishes to know whether it is possible for so many errors which he has discovered in Oddy's edition of Hume and Smollett's History of England, to be committed in the stereotype? I answer, Yes. For stereotype plates are cast from pages set up with moveable types; of course they are fuc-similes of them: therefore, if those pages are not carefully corrected before an impression of them is taken in the plaster (in order for casting), the same errors will always appear in the stereotype plates, as are in the pages of the moveable type. Perhaps your correspondent's remarks may be timely taken up by Mr. Oddy, for him to be more careful in future in his corrections, so that his publication may yet approximate rather nearer to the point which he has promised: namely, “that it shall be a beautiful and correct stereotype edition."

M-QUADRAT.

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OME months ago I submitted to the public, through the channel of your valuable Magazine, an outline of a poem on the Deluge, which I have been collecting materials for, and arranging, these

A issue from the metropolitan press, six years past; and now wish, through the

it is rather remarkable that there should be no one published twice a week.

1

same medium, to obtain the opinion of some of your experienced correspondents,

respecting

respecting a new kind of measure, in which a part of that work is sketched, and which I, at present, intend to complete it in.

I am persuaded to think, that our common heroic metre, which ought to combine every excellence of the language, is not allowed sufficient scope to embrace all the beauties and advantages of which our versification is susceptible. It is made to consist almost wholly of the short, or dissyllabic foot; that is, the iambus, trochee, &c. whilst the majestic sweetness of the trisyllabic, or longer measure, such as the amphibrach, anapest, &c. is excluded of right, and only admitted by courtesy, as it were. And though the lines where these latter measures are used, are often produced as instances of the most enchanting melody, yet many writers refrain from their use; and, if they cannot well reject a word so formed, recur to the unwise expedient of chciting a syllable by an ellipsis: as in What vary'd being peoples ev'ry star, Our envi'd sov'reign, and his altar breathes." δεξ

So much genius has been employed since the time of sir John Denham, upon the fabric of the heroic or iambic line, that it were hopeless to attempt any thing new in its structure. Strength, variety, and sublimity, seem to have been exhausted of their powers for it, by Dryden, Milton, and Young; polish and elegance can, since the days of Pope, yield nothing more; gaudy richness and Juxuriance, even to satiety, have been culled for it by Thomson; and many of the lesser poets have obtained all that pure simplicity, from her humble confined repositories, had to bestow. Though the number and variation of its beauties, as in the transposition of figures, are immense, yet each change has been already sounded: the performer may touch again the same chords, but they will vibrate on the ear with diminished sweetness.

Some late writers, knowing how use less it was to add sweet syrups to honey, have, through a mistaken notion, offered to us the stale, if not sour, mead of antiquity; hoping thereby to deaden the relish of a refined taste, or starve to hunger a pampered appetite.

We have one strong instance of the ascendancy of a peculiar mode of expression over the common heroic measure, when applied to the delineation of a sublime and deeply interesting subject; this is in the Ossian of Macpherson, which is,

I believe, universally acknowledged to be more attractive in its present dress, than if the same sentiments and images had been decked in all the suavity and splendour of iambic measures. I do not attempt to state particularly whence this superiority is derived; it is enough for my present purpose, if it exist as a fact.

An author, with the generality of readers, derives an advantage, as well as a disadvantage, in bringing forward a new work in heroic-metre; whether it be in rhyme, or in blank verse. The advantage, I conceive, to be this: should a new work, in the style and harmony of its measures, approach to an equality with the best of former productions, it becomes, in some degree, associated with their beauties, (I speak of the rhythm only) and, like an attendant in the suite of royalty, acquires a dignity not intrin sically its own: it pleases, by presenting to the mind's eye a picture formerly contemplated with pleasure, and of which a renewed glance, though but slight, is ever acceptable.

On the other hand, though much may be fresh in its manner or diction, yet it is not allowed the full merit of those charms that are inseparably attendant on agreeable novelty; whatever of newness may be exhibited, is, without much reflection, fancied to have been beheld before. As its beauties are assimilated with those of others, so are they both covered with the same venerable mantle of age. By having a general, or common point of resemblance to the productions of another, all its claims to novelty are, in that general resemblance, enveloped and forgotten.

I know not of any beauties of the he roic measure, that are not to be found in Mr. Barlow's poem of the Columbiad; yet would some of the nice examiners of the present time disrobe him of all, and lay them, as a sweet-smelling offering, at the shrine of our forefathers. They style the blushes of the rose old and affected, because the leaves of its parent were suffused with the same bloom twelve months ago. With some every thing belongs to the present age, but the merits of it.

From some such considerations as these, it appears to me to be more desirable to attempt to combine the perfection of the old numbers with a new movement and cadence, than to endesvour to equal the excellence of former writers, in the same course which they

bave

panion for thee?

The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves

Decay

with years; sea shrinks, and increases again;

herself is conceal'd) în revōl (

have pursued. And I haste to enlarge In thy glorious course), for whōt is comon the immediate design of my communication; which is, first, to present a few infant specimens of a new measure, that I conceive may be made to accord with all the beauties of the common heroic, and bring with it a dower of additional grace, melody, and variety; next, to trace out rules for the government of this measure; and lastly, to request the strictures of others, on the fitness of this verse for the epic narrative, with any obser. vations that may tend to its improve

ment.

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flōw'r.

When swelling būds] their ōd]oŭrous fōjliage shed.

Ta filery whirls, full of victōrĭous thoughts.

Each individual seeks a several gōal. On mutual wants | built mutual hap]piness.

These natural love! maintaīn'd], hǎbī]tual thōse.

Up to thě fiěry concave, towering high.

These I fix as the shortest admissible lines of the new measure, and that a proper combination of the long foot or anapestic, &c. and the short foot or iambic, &c. may always be preserved, no line must be allowed to exceed fourteen syllables, as hereafter noticed,

Take the following as examples; the matter of which is principally from Os sian's poems:

Ở thôu thắt rollěst, ăs round is the

shield

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The moon
ving heav'n;

But thou art for ever the samej, för
Pürsü'st) the bright steps of thy courses.
ever, with joy,
When dark is the world

With tempests, when rolls the loud thun-
děr, and lightning flies,
Thou look'st in thy beauty from heavěnļ,
and laugh'st at the storm.

Daughter of Tōsc |ăr bring, ōh bring,] mě

the harp.

The light of the sōng| ǎrīsès] în Ơs| sïän's

soul.

It resembles the field, when dark ( něs covers the hills;

When shadows increase on the sun's] dëscending plain.

see, O Malvină, mỹ sõn❘ near the echoing rock

Of Crōna; but, lo! 'tis the mist of the dēs jǎrt lake,

Ting'd with the western beam]: hŏw lōvěly the mist!

That assumes the form of Oscar), tūra,
oh ye winds;

Türn from it ye blasts, that rōar] from
Ardven's rough side.

Why thou în visiblē] wānděrěr, brēeze of
the vale,

That bendëst the thistlě] of Lōră,| whỹ hast thou left

Mỹ listěn jing ear? Nó distint| roaring]

of streams,

No sound] of the harp from the rock,] I,
joy ful hear.

Mălvină,] thou huntress of Lüthă,[ cōme,
O recal!

To the sōr rowful bard his soul. My
Lochlin of lakes, to the dark,] thế
eye | I put forth
billowy bay

To

of

Fingal

thorno, prouds in the swēll|ing of

waves. He descends.

from Ocean descends, from the

roar of winds.

The heroes of Mōrvěn] arě fēw] în ă strânfger's land.

Man dar'd not the sky, But rested his eyel on the green refresh[ ing herb.

No aspen tree quivĕrļĕd his leaf,| nor bōwědj ǎ pine;

For the wind was low] in the dūsļkỳ foünftain'd shade.

See night settles fast on the world, dark clouds ǎrise

In warring confusion] behind the west

ĕra hills;

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