equally obligatory. This also happens in many other continental universities, and especially in those of Italy, and the reason of it is a good one it proceeds upon the principle, that no physician can be a good one, unless he knows all that a surgeon ought to know; and in like manner, that to be a good surgeon it is necessary to have all the education and know all the duties of a physician.'-p. 146. Enough has been said to afford the reader some idea (we hope a clear one) of the manner in which the medical service of the French hospital is conducted. We shall merely notice a few errors into which the author has fallen. He saysThe students who attend the clinics are admitted on presenting a ticket, signed by the dean of the faculty of medicine, and the hospital-governor.' [p. 142.] The hospitals are all free; no tickets are necessary, except at the Hotel-Dieu, where the practice of requiring introductions will be probably soon discontinued. The whole conversation during the visit, is in Latin.' [p. 145] Laennec, the author of an excellent work on diseases of the lungs, or rather on a new plan of detecting them by the Stethoscope, was the only one who used to speak in Latin-he has been dead several years. In Paris, dissections are not allowed to be carried on all the year. From October to April is the period fixed, beyond which, on account of the heat, the dissecting-rooms are shut.' [p. 149] Some dissection may be had all the year round. 'Besides the élèves of medicine and surgery, there are also élèves of pharmacy, who are placed under the head-apothecary. They are all internes. [p. 133] They are externes and internes too. The élèves of the Charité and the Hotel-Dieu finish their practical education in the Maternité and Vénériens.' [p. 120] There is no finishing in any particular hospital. 'To become élève interne, it is necessary to have been at least one year an élève externe. The one is a step to the other, and very much depends upon the candidate's behaviour.' [p. 128] Scarcely at all upon their behaviour, but upon their concours. One word more on the subject of the medical profession, The eager desire-the mad craving-the auri sacra fames (for that alone expresses it fully) the ravening after wealth has been truly said to be the plague-spot on the character of the people of England. And, to continue the metaphor, the internal poison, whereof this plague-spot is the external index, has circulated and is circulating throughout all the ramifications-through all the veins and arteries of the huge frame of society. There is not a profession-there is not a trade in this country-however exalted or however humble-through all the gradations-through all the workings of which its baleful influence may not be traced. Under such circumstances, it is not to be expected that the medical profession should have escaped the infection. And that infection having once crept in, all the healing powers even of the art of healing itself, are vain hereare unable to stop or even to retard this moral disease's gigantic and appalling progress.-They may say, with the fabled deity of their tribe-with their own magnus Apollo 'Inventum medicina meum est; opiferque per orbem Dicor: et herbarum subjecta potentia nobis.' * * * # Nec prosunt domino quæ prosunt omnibus, artes.'-OVID, MET. Lib. 1. What are we to think of the morality of a country, where he who supports a gaudy equipage upon borrowed money, which he knows that he has no prospect of ever being able to repay, is considered far more respectable than he who makes his visits on foot, because he knows that his finances will not permit him to ride. In France, the medical men, even those of the very first eminence in the profession, who do not make their professional visits on foot (which very many respectable ones do), generally use a cabriolet, where, of course, they require only one horse and one servant, instead of two horses and two servants. And if rapidity of motion be one great thing required, the advantage of the cabriolet appears to us considerable. Moreover, if the doctor should happen to be one of those who, like "the little busy bee, Improve each shining hour," he may pursue his studies quite as well in his cabriolet, with a steady servant to drive, as in a close carriage-a plan which we would humbly recommend in preference to his taking the reins into his own hands. The fact is, that in France men are not regarded and valued so much in proportion to their wealth, or the show which they make of wealth, as in proportion to their wisdom and knowledge, or at least to the reputation they have acquired of possessing those qualities. Now, in England, the case is different, and wisdom and knowledge here, if unaccompanied by wealth, are overlooked or treated with contempt or insolence. Consequently in the latter country, the professional man, however really respectable by his talents and acquirements, knows that he has no chance of being respected unless he can make a show of wealth similar to that of the lord whose ancestor has been enriched and ennobled for being buffoon and pimp to some Henry, James, or Charles, invested with the ensigns of royalty, or of the black-leg or stockjobber, who has amassed wealth by cheating and gambling. The general provision for the relief of the poor, which forms the subject of the three concluding chapters of Dr. Johnston's book, involving the question of the English Poor-laws, is a vast and arduous subject; and one, the consideration of which must be deferred to some other opportunity. ART. XIII.-Memoirs of Rear-Admiral Paul Jones, Chevalier to the Military Order of Merit, and of the Russian Order of St. Anne, now first compiled from his Original Journals and Correspondence; including an account of his services under Prince Potemkin: prepared for publication by himself. Edinburgh. 1830. 2 vols. Post 8vo. WE are indebted to the author of this piece of biography for a complete and the only authentic account of a man who, in his day, at least, made no small noise in the world. The interest of the work is, however, simply the interest one takes in the truth; for neither the achievements, the character, nor the correspondence and writings of Paul Jones, are matters to leave an agreeable impression on the mind. The fact is, that the truth, as it is here faithfully and impartially laid down by a person who would naturally be tempted to view his subject with favour, has stripped a hero of lofty pretensions of much unfounded fame. The delusions of romance and the fables of rumour which go to form so considerable a part of the vulgar notions respecting Paul Jones, have succeeded in making up a personage of so much greater interest than the real man, that we fear we shall perform no welcome task in spreading the results to which the investigation of the documents now published must necessarily conduct every reader of discernment. The common idea of Paul Jones is, that he was an indomitable Buccaneer, that his name was the terror of his enemies, and the pride of his friends, that he swept the seas in his piratical vessels, and had no sooner performed a glorious exploit in one corner of the world than before the lapse of even a creditable space of time his bravery was achieving new conquests in another. A pirate is of course cruel and particularly black ; mysterious and sombre on ordinary occasions, but on the day of battle brilliant with a fierce delight, and then alone apparently enjoying the boon of existence. To these general traits of the corsair, in the case of Paul Jones other and peculiar ones are added by common fame. He was the darling of the women; : courts were at his feet, and monarchs wooed him to their service; and to crown the whole, he was a hero not for, but against his country. The facts we glean from this narrative will show how common fame vindicates her claim to the proverb, and how far she may have accidentally hit upon the truth. Paul Jones was a person of undoubted bravery, but his exploits were few, and except one, the capture of the Serapis, insignificant. The character of a privateer he disdained his sole thirst was after the distinctions of legitimate rank: when offered a letter of marque by the king of France, he treated the proposal as an insult. His great repute was in truth made much more by his intrigues than by his achievements, which, as we have said, with one exception, were of no great account: the courts he served were besieged by him, and though he received distinctions both from the king of France and the empress of Russia, he used no small art, solicitation, and bargaining, to procure them. The women occupied themselves with him for a brief space of time as they do with all lions; and when he timely went to court after his action with the British frigate, he was the vogue at Versailles for a moment: some liaisons and correspondence seem to have grown out of this visit, but they appear to have died off with as little satisfaction as an homme de bonnes fortunes could well expect. That a man should raise himself by fighting against his compatriots has never been thought an enviable ground of distinction. In Paul Jones's case, there was not much to relieve him from the odium which usually attends the renegade. The cause, it is true, was a just and honourable one; but it mattered little to Paul Jones, or rather John Paul, what might be the nature of the cause, (and we say this with a full recollection of all his fine speeches respecting the dignity of human nature) provided it contributed to satisfy his ambitious thirst of distinction. It is true, that this same ardour is the foundation of nearly all the great deeds that have astonished mankind, but when it produces little else than a restless and boastful intrigue, which wears out both himself and every body else with eternal projects, which were doomed either to be unsuccessful or never to take place, it ceases to be respectable. John Paul was born in 1747, at Arbigland in Kirkudbright: his father was a gentleman's gardener, and though he speaks in his letters of the competency he inherited, he received nothing from his family but his name, which he afterwards rejected for another. As a boy, he was employed in the merchant service, and traded chiefly between Whitehaven and the West Indies. When the American Revolution broke out, he was still a very young man, though he had commanded several merchant ves sels, and as it would appear, accumulated considerable property in Tobago. This property proved, however, for a considerable time, unavailable; and previously to his joining the American forces, he had been living for twenty months in that country on fifty pounds. He writes of the important obligations he had received from individuals, strangers to him, in the absence of other assistance, and assigns these services as the reasons which bind him to follow the cause of his benefactors; of course he dwells upon other topics of his apology for aiding the patriots, such as his being by habit half an American, the justice of the cause, the rights of man, and the right of an individual to take which side he pleases in a contest. The true motive of his taking service with the Americans was simply the chance he had of gaining distinction, and his impatience of the indolent and inefficient life he was at the moment leading. He afterwards puts his abandonment of ease and tranquillity for the dangers and labours of war in the light of a great sacrifice made in behalf of the cause of freedom. But when he enlisted under the banners of the autocrat of Russia, he was as enthusiastic in the liberties of Bellona, as he calls Catherine, as he had previously been in those of the goddess of liberty. In 1775, when the Congress first proposed to organize a navy, and had great difficulty in finding officers capable of commanding the few vessels they could arm, Paul Jones was appointed first lieutenant of the Alfred; the operations in which the American squadron were employed were not successful, and some of the commanders were tried by court-martial. Jones, however, did his duty; and was soon after put in command of the Providence. In this situation he shewed himself a bold and active seaman, and though he complains, as was his invariable usage, of every body connected with him, and had already begun to stickle for his rank, and pester authorities with projects, there is no doubt but that he succeeded in giving Congress a high, and we believe, a just idea of his utility. The American navy was in its infancy, and so feeble that brilliant exploits were not to be expected from it; that it maintained itself is a high praise, although Jones would make us believe that had it been under his management, it would have achieved great things. Congress appears to have been partly of his opinion, for he says they ordered three ships to be purchased, and gave him the choice of any one of them "until they could provide him with a better command." Before these ships were bought, they conferred upon him a higher distinction: he was sent to Europe with orders to the American Commissioners at Paris to invest him with the command of a fine ship, as a reward of my zeal |