If we are to believe him it is our business now to trace back our steps in order to recover our lost ground, and to recur to the knowledge of half a century ago. If this be so, medicine is truly in an unfortunate predicament, for certainly nothing can be more vague, inconsequential and unscientific than the theories in behalf of which Mr. Foot so strenuously pleads. In the treatise of M. Mahon, wé have a complete specimen of that sort of unsatisfactory reasoning, which we hope to see banished from whatever assumes to itself the name and dignity of science. In the description of symptoms called syphilitic, we find neither precision nor method. They are made to be so numerous, and so much diffused over the body, that any thing or every thing may be called so, Disputes must be endless without accurate diagnostic symptoms. In M. Mahon's histories we are told of healthy infants becoming syphilitic without contagion, the disease having lurked in their blood. Does an English surgeon exist, who can believe such a tale ?

How far the children of parents affected with syphilis, can be healthy, and what (if they are diseased) are their peculiar diseases, we wish to be dispassionately investigated. That they cannot have a true syphilis, without the application of virus, we have no doubt; nor has any one, we believe, on this side the channel, except Mr. Jesse Foot. We have seen nothing in M. Mahon's treatise to make us alter this opinion. It is a very poor composition; and it is moreover disguised by a bad translation, which is in parts nearly unintelligible.

MISCELLANEOUS.

ART. 24.-Prostitutes Reclaimed and Penitents protected: being an Answer to some Objections made against the Principle and Tendency of the London Female Penitentiary, with Observations on Licensed Brothel-houses,, and on the Means of discouraging Prostitution. By William Blair,, Esq. Surgeon of the Lock Hospital and Asylum, the London Female Penitentiary, the Bloomsbury Dispensary, and New Rupture Society, &c. Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and of the Medical Societies of London, Paris, Brussels, Aberdeen, &c. &c. 2s. Seeley. 1809.pdmɔ

ART. 25.-The Remonstrant; being a Letter to Mr. William Hale, în Re-* ply to his Address to the Public upon the injurious Tendency of the Lon~ don Female Penitentiary. By G. Hodson. 1s. Conder, 1809.

ART. 26.-Cursory Remarks on a recent Publication, addressed to the Public, upon the dangerous Tendency of the London Female Penitentiary, &c. &c. By Juvenis. 8vo. Williams. 1809.

WE noticed the Address' of Mr. Hale, to which the above three pamphlets are a reply, in our last Number, pp. 220, 221, in which 6 not' after the reader will please to insert the word 10, p. 221. We have already given our unbiassed probable effects of the London Female Penitentiary. The principle on which the institution is founded, is certainly beneficent, and we

ought' in line opinion on the

trust that virtue and happiness will, in a majority of instances, be the result. The experience of the Magdalen Hospital certainly favours this conclusion. That hospital was established in 1758; since which period there have been near four thousand admissions. Of these it is without any exaggerations of probability, supposed that at least two thirds of the whole number have been reclaimed and become useful characters in society. But Mr. Hale thinks that the effect of this new insitution will be to increase the sum of prostitution," and that its principle is wholly unsupported by the word of God.' These objections have been very ably and very satisfactorily refuted by Mr. Blair, Mr. Hodson, -&c. We particularly recommend the perusal of Mr. Blair's pamphlet as well as that of Mr. Hodson. When Mr. Hale asserts that such institutions, as the London Female Penitentiary, are not supported by the injunctions of Christianity, he might as well have argued on the same ground, against infirmaries and hospitals. Christianity warmly inculcates the GENERAL PRINCIPLE OF BENEVOLENCE; but it leaves the practical modifications to the discretion of individuals. Whatever only tends to lessen the sum of vice and misery or in any way to mitigate the wretchedness, and the depravity of mankind, cannot but be countenanced by Christianity. It is consonant to its genius and in unison with its precepts. That Magdalens and Penitentiaries of this description are not novel things, Mr. Hale might have learned from the lifeof Ignatius Loyola, the father of the Jesuits, who founded an hospital at Rome for the reception of those unhappy persons who were desirous of abandon ing the paths of prostitution. He endowed the institution which he established, with a large sum of money; his example was followed by many persons, and particularly by Leonora Osoria, the wife of John Vega, ambassador to Charles the Fifth. Several ladies of quality interested themselves in the reformation of these poor destitutes. But the establishment itself exposed Loyola to a torrent of obloquy, as is said by Ribadaneira, who is quoted by Bayle.When Loyola was told that the pains which he was taking for the conversion of these prostitutes was only so much time lost, and that they would soon be again sunk in the vortex of their former infamy, he replied that he should think his labour well bestowed if he could keep them only for one night from offending God. Great good sense, piety, and humanity characterise the observation. He who can make virtue respected or vice loathed, who can produce bliss or alleviate woe, only in some of the fractional parts of life, is a benefactor to his species. The impulses of philanthropy have incited us to make these remarks in favour of an institution which we believe to be principally supported by persons whose theological tenets are very adverse to our own. But CHARITY IS OF NO

SECT.

ALPHABETICAL CATALOGUE

Of Books published in March, 1809.

List of Articles which, with many others, will appear in the next Number of the C. R.

Reliques of Burnes.

Chatfield's View of Hindostan."

Sharpe's Metrical Legends.)

Graves's History of Cleveland.

Woolcombe on Diseases.

Bancroft's Life of Washington.

Hamilton's Parliamentary Logic.

Sir J. Carr's Caledonian Sketches concluded,

ART. I.-Reliques of Robert Burns; consisting chiefly of original Letters, Poems, and critical Observations on Scottish Songs. Collected and published by R. H. Cromek. 8vo. pp. 453. Cadell and Davies. 1808.

IN almost every dispute that has agitated the minds of men, from the grand controversy between Arius and the Athanasians, down to the petty squabbles about the authenticity of Ireland and Chatterton, it has been the fashion to employ the weapons of general invective, which are wholly irresistible by any other mode than that of recrimination. In this species of warfare, it would be very difficult, on any occasion, to say with which party the advantage rested. The principal benefit to either, seems to consist in the excessive cheapness and readiness of the instruments; but, where the defence is equally easy with the attack, we cannot venture to flatter the assailant with hopes of attaining any very great superiority from the use of them. For this reason, men of

sense and moderation have actually begun to doubt their ef ficacy upon any occasion; and the terms ignorance and illiberality,' have been adopted more sparingly; since, in the opinion of thinking people, they have done greater mischief to their employers than to those against whom they are level led. Under this impression, we lately discovered nothing illiberal' in the pleasure which some gentlemen appeared to derive from the circumstance of a book (in their opinion very valuable) being sealed up' from the curiosity of nine tenths of the readers of this country; although we indulged a little mirth at the expence of a feeling so totally dissonant from our own habits of reflection. Under the same impression, we are not at all disconcerted at finding employed against ourselves the very weapons of which we thus know the futility, especially since they are accompanied by an evident misrepresentation of our own arguments. CRIT. REV. Vol. 16. April, 1809.

Z