Mr. Rigby's exertions were soon afterward seconded by an accidental visit from Mr. Neild, secretary to the Society for the Relief of Persons imprisoned for small Debts. This benevolent gentleman (whose recent death is a loss to the community) is well known as having taken an active share in the object of that society, and as the adviser of many humane and judicious arrangements in the economy of prisons and work-houses. We insert a short extract from his letter, containing a report of several work-houses in Norfolk :

At Thetford I found the poor farmed at three shillings per head, per week, clothing included. The keeper is a wool-comber. The house is old; the beds and bedding, and rooms, very clean, and well ventilated; all the children had shoes and stockings on, their hands, face, and necks clean, (the boys at Bury were all barefoot, barelegged, and dirty,) and some attention had been paid to their education, but they were too young, and had been there too short a time to make much progress. At Lynn the children were at church morning and afternoon; their singing delightful; they were decently and uniformly clothed, and properly fed (not farmed) by the parish; religiously educated, and, as far as my observations, well attended to. At Aylsham, the poor-house is one of the best I have seen, and stands a lasting monument of the liberality and humanity of the gen. tlemen concerned.'

This statement was followed by a very unpleasant report of the Norwich work-house. We spare our readers the detail of the disgusting particulars, and copy merely the concluding paragraph of Mr. Neild's letter:

The following account of the deaths in this work-house, for two years and nine months last past, proves two things; first, that the wretched state in which I found it was neither an accidental nor a temporary circumstance; secondly, that nothing is more destructive to human life than shutting up so many persons in close rooms, surrounded by every species of filth, and where they constantly breathe

the foulest air.

Deaths.

1803.-93 1804.-81 9months in 1805.-85

553-Deaths calculated for the whole year, is one in five.'

We need scarcely wonder at this extraordinary mortality, on learning, among other things, that the sick were intermixed with the rest of the paupers in their crowded apartments; the rooms originally intended for the reception of patients having long ceased to be applied to their proper purpose. Such, in these public buildings, is often the fate of regulations which are originally good! A perpetual desire to lessen personal exertion

exists on the part of the servants in these establishments, and the individuals charged to superintend them are often little better. With regard to the point in question : Mr. Rigby produces (p. 59.) an affidavit from one of the city-surgeons; declaring that, on applying to the work-house committee for a separate room for the sick, he experienced a refusal, and was even taunted with having made the application for the purpose of saving himself trouble in going round the different apartments! The remaining part of this tract contains rather more satisfactory information. It relates a number of visits made to the work-house by Mr. Rigby, and his satisfaction at the adoption (though frequently slow and reluctant) of several of his suggestions. He sums up the chief circumstances in this paragraph:

If I have suffered the mortification of repeated disappointment in my well-meant efforts, I have not been without some satisfaction;much good has been lately effected; the economy of the work-house has been improved; a system of cleanliness and regularity has succeeded a system of filth and disorder; and, (which has materially contributed to this salutary change, by rendering it more permanently practicable,) a reduction of the numbers in the work-house has taken place, by an extension of the less exceptionable mode of out-door relief; the new work-house has not been built;-that giant evil, which threatened to have been so extensive and so enduring in its baneful influence, has been averted; a moral attention has been excited towards the poor children in the house, and, as before observed, they are now systematically taught to read and write; and notwithstanding the inexplicable obduracy of the guardians on this subject, as affecting the poor at large, the poor in the work-house have been ⚫ effectually protected from the small-pox, by a regular system of vaccination.

Since the introduction of vaccination, the natural small-pox is no longer kept up among the poorer classes, as formerly, by a communication of infection from the inoculated children of their richer neighbours. One consequence, however, of an exemption otherwise so fortunate, is that, when the poor persist in neglecting vaccination, a greater number of their children are exposed at one time to variolous infection, if the disease happens to be suddenly introduced. An affecting example of this occurrence is detailed in a letter from Mr. Rigby to the workhouse committee; in which he urges the propriety of sending to the Infirmary any strangers who may happen to arrive in the city when affected with the disease.

On the Monday of the assize week in 1807, Mr. Robinson, one of your surgeons, called upon me, in the morning, to say he had been to visit a poor woman at the Waggon and Horses, in St. Giles'sstreet, who had just been brought thither from the London waggon,

and

and that she was in the eruptive stage of the small-pox, and he was very anxious that I should advise him how she could be disposed of. I told him I feared I had now no power, either as a magistrate or as a guardian, to direct in such a case, as a late resolution of the Court had rescinded the orders, under which, heretofore, patients under such circumstances had been sent to the infirmary; but I wished him to apply to Mr. Simpson, the clerk of the court of guardians, to Mr. Lubbock, the mayor's justice-clerk, and to the chief magistrate himself; all which Mr. Robinson took the trouble of doing, but to no purpose; there was no place to which she could be sent, and she was under the necessity of going through this infec tious disease, at a public house, in a public street, and at a public time, when there was a more than usual number of strangers in the city. The consequences were obvious; a person in the public. house caught the disease, from whom it was communicated to another in the neighbourhood; and thence it gradually spread to the several parts of the city, and continued its ravages among the poor to the end of the year 1809; during which time no less a number of deaths, from this dreadful disease, than two hundred and three, were recorded in the weekly bills of mortality. The greatest fatality was in 1808; in some weeks ten, thirteen, and even fifteen died; and from June, 1808, to June, 1809, the number of deaths was 171.'

All these lives were lost by a complaint which would not have been diffused in the city, had the sick stranger been sent to an insulated place like the Infirmary.

MONTHLY CATALOGUE, For MARCH, 1814.

NOVEL S.

Art. 16. The Good Aunt: including the Story of Signor Alder. sonini and his Son. By Harriet Ventum, Author of "Charles Leeson," &c. 12mo. 38. 6d. Boards. Chapple. 1813. We can recommend this tale as a moral and a tolerably interesting performance; though, as it seems to be intended for young ladies, the story of Signor Aldersonini and his profligate son might have been better omitted. In page 22. tenancy is put for tenantry; and in page 74. she was treated unfriendly' is an error of grammar. Art. 17. The Brothers in High Life; or, The North of Ireland. By Mrs. D. Johnson. 3 Vols. 12mo. Kearsley. 1813. Surely, this can only be a specimen of "High Life below Stairs," since one of The Brothers' takes leave of his mother by saying, Your Ladyship! farewell. Throughout the book, the expressions are equally vulgar, and the grammar is glaringly incorrect. Even the moral tendency of the work deserves no commendation, and the conduct of the best characters is regulated neither by sense nor principle.

Art.

By

4 Vols.

Art. 18. L'Intriguante; or, The Woman of the World.

A. F. Holstein, Author of

Isadora of Milan," &c.

1813.

12mo. Boards. Colburn. Although this picture of a Woman of the World' is highly coloured, it is probably in many parts as good a resemblance as it is amusing. Lady Olivia's lessons of conduct to young ladies are happily delivered; and, though we wish, for the sake of morality, that the artifices of her pupils had been painted as less successful, we must acknowlege that the tale keeps curiosity alive. It also presents something new in its plan, since one of the principal characters is hanged in the first chapter. We are sorry, however, to observe no improvement in that hyperbolical and incorrect style of writing, by which this author disfigures the ingenious fictions which he is capable of producing, and calls forth our remonstrances in every report of his works.

-

Art. 19. Liberality and Prejudice, a Tale. By Eliza A. Coxe. 12mo. 3 Vols. 18s. Boards. Crosby and Co. 1813. “In vain an author would a name suppress, From the least hint a reader learns to guess; Of children lost our novels sometimes treat, We never care, assured again to meet."

These lines were brought to our recollection by the concealments and difficulties of the present tale, which are managed with too little art to excite even momentary suspence in a hackneyed novel-reader. Neither can they afford a lesson of morality, since the principal fe male character has

"A father to be shunned and feared;"

and she is represented as disobeying him, and in fact causing his death, and without detriment to her happiness or diminution of her excellence.

The language of this novel is also incorrect. For instance, the pronouns thou and you are often employed promiscuously in the same sentence. Vol.i. p. 5., himself and his servant' are stated to have been murdered; and p. 9., the occasional visitors at a house are said to find it' a convenient residence.'-In Vol. ii. p. 29., I recommend you to be cautious' is written for I advise; page 43., conscienceness' for consciousness, &c. &c. Mrs. Brownley is unnecessarily vulgar; and the cockney-confusion of v and w is improperly assigned to a constable on the banks of the Wye.

Art. 20. The Heroine; or Adventures of a fair Romance Reader. By Eaton Stannard Barrett, Esq. 3 Vols. 12mo. 189. Boards. Colburn.

1813.

'The idea of this work is not new, since the pernicious effects of indiscriminate novel-reading have been already displayed by Mrs. Lenox in "The Female Quixote," and by Miss Charlton in, the pleasing story of "Rosella:" but the present tale is more extravagant than either of those works, and the heroine's cruelty towards her father indisposes the reader for being interested in her subsequent

fate. Mr. Barrett may also be censured for not confining his ridicule to allowable subjects: "What should be great he turns to farce," both in his frequent sarcasms on the clergy and in his ludicrous parodies of scenes taken from our best novels: although it might be presumed that, if Cherubina's reading had been limited to respectable works of fiction, or if these had made the chief impression on her mind and memory, she would not have fallen into the follies which she commits. Still, however, her adventures are written with great spirit and humour, and they afford many scenes at which

Art. 21.

"To be grave exceeds all power of face."

Pierre and Adeline; or the Romance of the Castle. By D. F. Haynes, Esq. 12mo. 2 Vols. 12s. Boards. Crosby and Co.

1814.

It might be difficult to produce two volumes, into which more faults are compressed than may be found in the Romance before us. In Vol. i. page 121., a lover and his mistress' rejoice at discovering a uniform monotony of sentiment in their minds; and the lady apologizes for not making frankness' in her answer. At page 130. it is said that the Count was visibly dejected, yet his manly air taught him to suppress his rising sorrow.' In Vol. ii. p. 78., we hear of 'criminal liberality of sentiment;' and in page 256. a village priest is called-a prelate. In the first volume, page 32., we read as follows: So great was Adeline's grief that her mind made a dead stop, and dismissed the empty aid of the senses;' and we were also tempted to make a dead stop at this passage: yet we toiled on, and found the same expression thus modified in page 185.: De Gernier's ideas wandered from subject to subject, till at last they made a dead halt at the subject of his family.'

The story itself is lame and improbable; and, not to weary our readers by citing more faults, we may say that

"But one is past

Through all this work-'tis fault from first to last."

Art. 22. The Splendour of Adversity, a Domestic Story. By the Author of "Black Rock House," "Winter in Bath," &c. 12mo. 3 Vols. 15s. Boards. Crosby and Co. 1814.

Though the title of this book may be deemed affected, the tale will be found simple, and rather pleasing; some of the characters are drawn with skill and discrimination; and the tendency of the whole is favourable to virtue. We must, however, point out a few expressions which should be corrected, if an opportunity be afforded by a second edition of the work. Vol. i. p. 237., Augustus has learnt his mother,' instead of taught. Vol. ii. p. 75., heightening countenance,' for heightening colour; p. 107, to listen at the roaring of a bull;' 126., neither the one or the other,' &c. &c. .

POETRY.

Art. 23. The Ideot Boy, a Spanish Tale of Pity; and other Poems. By Edward Ball. 8vo. Pamphlet. Printed at Norwich. 1814. How it happens that verse-making and vanity are so nearly related, we do not undertake to explain: but the fact is too evident to be

denied,