the head and shoulders. He then goes into the outer room, into a colder air, thus thinly elad, and without slippers or pattens; no bed is prepared for him, nor is he again attended to by any one, unless he demands a nargeel to smoke; but most generally he dresses himself in haste, and departs. The Turkish bath is far more capable of affording high sensual pleasure, and is consequently visited as much for the mere delight to the feelings which it produces, and to lounge away an agreeable hour, as for the performance of a religious duty while the Persian bath seems altogether resorted to for the purpose of the toilette, as one would submit to a hair-dresser, to have the hair cut, curled, powdered, and set in order for a party.-Buckingham's Travels. : PLANETARY SPECULATIONS. THE Comparative revolutions of the planets, and the extreme probability that they are all of them inhabited, furnishes a train of very whimsical and amusing inferences. For instance, the affinity of these planets to one another, and to one common centre, would lead one to suppose that their inhabitants partook of this generic similarity. Mercury, on such a plan, must have its man, as well as the earth. But the revolution of that near visitant of our sun round its own axis is made in six hours. The day, therefore, of Mercury, consists of but three hours, for meals, and their provision and preparation, exercise, business, and pleasure. One of our common trials there would starve the thought and thought, and all conversation is a suit in Chancery. But though it may be true, that in planets enjoying a middle position, like our earth, the safest and best walking may be found for beings like ourselves, it would be too much to assume, that, upon nearer or more distant worlds, there is no walking at all. Vast power is, no doubt, capable of amazing varieties in creation. The very senses may be fewer, more numerous, or possess other properties than ours. The human creatures of Saturn may, for instance, have that sort of phosphoric ignition in the dark, which lights certain animals here to their prey, and probably fascinates as well as shows it. Day and night, moreover, with the Saturnine, may not be the unavoidable alternations of labour and repose, but the strength, as well as the will to labour, may carry them through a period of activity. equal to our own. To be sure, the opposite conclusion is more likely to be true, because, where the grossness is greater, there is more torpor, and night may not arrive too three of our own hours.-Man of Twa soon after an active day of five, four, or even Lives. APOLOGY FOR JACOBINISM. THE effect of an heroic passage in one of Quand on a tout perdu et qu'on n'a plus d'espoir, stituted On prend le pan de sa chemise et en fait un mou choir! 66 Racine's tragedy of Berenice is reported to have totally failed on the stage from a similar absurd application. An attendant inquires on entering, "Où est la reine Berenice?" Some mischievous wag in the pit replied in an indecorous rhyme, which convulsed the house with laughter, and the play was hissed. Among such a thinking people" as the English, ludicrous associations are not equally omnipotent; but the story of Dryden and the Earl of Rochester is well known; and, amongst the green-room traditions of Covent-garden theatre, there is one which regards a tippling actress, who was hooted off the stage in the piece of Cymon, from some one of the audience having replied, in her absence, to her lover's question— whole court. The mercurial senate would have sunk under the combined wit and wisdom of our Pitt and Fox, Burke, and Sheridan. The action there is probably quicker, through its whole animal existence, than ours. Ideas must flow quicker. Our winged words would creep to them. The tongue must move faster, and even language itself be still further abbreviated, to suit the demands of such rapid communication. But if we should be of opinion, that as Mercury completes his year in eighty-eight days, and is six times as strongly enlightened by the sun as we are, he may not be cool enough for animal production: this will not be supposed of our more intimate acquaintance Jupiter, who, though his revolution round the common sun takes him nearly twelve of our years to accomplish, has a day of scarcely five hours, and six hundred and eighteen of our weeks to be distributed in business, pleasure, and repose. As to Saturn, with a day and night of only seven hours, and not having so much as a hundredth part of the light enjoyed by Jupiter, with thirty of our years to wander in twilight dejection round the sun, the men there, perhaps, slumber between Lord Chesterfield, if we recollect right, par "Ah! is she then gone? where shall I o'ertake her?" "She has stepped to a gin-shop hard by in Long Acre !" ticularly mentions to his son to avoid all words which can, by any possibility, suggest other ideas than those they are intended to convey. Now a plain matter of fact correspondent of ours has been greatly scandalized by the following passage from Sir W. Scott's Life of Napoleon :-" The red nightcap was the badge of breechless liberty."Vol. i. p. 113. Apology for Sans Culottes ! And from a pea like Walter Scott's!!! I would not credit Byron's lore, Nor Hazlitt, Campbell, Hunt, nor Moore, Paris, when blessed in ninety-three, Though Liberty shone full upon her, Fair Liberty! thy free to plant All France took up the spade; Yet honour's seat, we all must grant, And that I deem the rea on why A VIRTUOSO. THE Italians commonly call a taste for the fine arts, or skill in them, by the name of Virtue. They term the productions of artists, objects of virtue; and a person, who has a taste for such things, is denominated a virtuoso, that is, a virtuous man. Of the great Tintoret, his biographer accordingly writes, that he took much delight in every virtue, and especially in music, and playing on various instruments; "Il quale si è dilettato di tutte le virtù, e particolarmente di sonare di musica, e diversi strumenti." We smile at first at this use of the word virtù by the Italians; but we may find, on reflection, that it is less absurd than we had supposed. Although the Fine Arts do not in themselves constitute virtue, we cannot but think that they promote it. It is not impossible, unfortunately, but it is somewhat difficult for one, whose mind is filled with an intense love of art, to be very vicious. His time and thoughts are engrossed by objects of powerful interest; and idleness, whence vices generally spring, cannot originate and take root, where the whole soul is preoccupied. Disgraceful vices, accordingly, have rarely been found to exist in men devoted to literature; and a similar devotion to the fine arts, has been most commonly an effectual preservative against the contagion of evil. If we were required to seek for innocuous men, of pure and blameless lives, we should undoubtedly look first amongst men of letters and virtuosi; the former rarely stain, by baseness, the honourable pursuits for which they live; and the latter, by the strict monopoly of themselves which they yield to their favourite objects, justify, for the most part, by their harmlessness, the name they bear. The great mass of mankind are usually occupied with their daily labours: and whilst they are actually at work, they not only do no evil, but are active about good; it is only at leisure hours that they take mischief in hand. If a taste for letters and the arts, therefore, were generally diffused, and the means of gratifying it supplied, which is not a very difficult thing, the quantity of drunkenness, gaming, riot, and such modes of consuming spare time as are injurious to the community, would be reduced to a small amount. For, wherever the large majority are sober, regular, orderly, and decent, the sanction of public opinion and example becomes so powerful, that it is not easy for a few foolish and worthless persons, who may be disposed to violate the decorum of society, to indulge in habits which would excite indignation, and be speedily repressed. Benevolent individuals have already begun to provide for the instruction and literary wants of the lower orders; it would be well if some philanthropic society would undertake also to create in them a taste for the fine arts; to make the many virtuous in their amusements. METHOD OF ARRESTING THE BLEED ING FROM LEECH-BITES. It is well known that sometimes, especially in very young children and persons of scorbutic habit, all the means recommended to check the hæmorrhage from leechbites, as cold water, flour, alum, caustics, and pressure, prove so entirely useless, that actual cautery and ligature must at last be resorted to. M. Ridalfe, of Leghorn, recommends a new method, which he has It consists in found as safe as it is simple. applying a cupping-glass to the wound, when a coagulum is almost immediately formed, and the bleeding arrested. This effect is very quickly produced, and has been found to take place even in children, and in persons where the mass of the blood appears to be in a state of dissolution, and without any tendency to coagulation. The instrument may safely be removed within a few minutes, but it is prudent to let the coagulum remain for some time.-Repertorio di Medic, and di Chirurg. di Torino. INDIAN SOCIETY. (From the Edinburgh Review, No. XCV.) INSTITUTION OF CASTES. THE benefits that were perceived to result from the division of employments, seem to have occasioned the institution of Castes, or the establishment of hereditary professions. The first legislators, struck as they must have been with the advantages derived from the division of labour, or from individuals confining themselves to particular occupations, and making them the principal or the exclusive business of their lives, would naturally be desirous of securing their continuance, and increasing their magnitude. For, at first sight, it would seem certain, that if individuals were obliged to follow the professions of their fathers, their attention not being diverted to other objects, and all their energies being directed from their earliest years to that pursuit, in the prosecution of which their lives were to be passed, they would attain to much greater proficiency in their respective callings, than could ever be expected when every one was allowed to choose a profession for himself, and to wander at pleasure from one thing to another. Had castes been found only in one or two countries, their establishment might have been ascribed to accident, or to the peculiar views of particular legislators. But castes have not, as has commonly been supposed, been confined to Egypt and India: on the contrary, they have extended to all Asia, to Greece, England, and even America. Wherever, in short, we have authentic accounts of the early progress of society, we find that castes were established very soon after the first dawnings of civilization. But an institution so universally diffused must have originated in circumstances common to every people in an early stage of their progress. And it seems difficult to believe that these could be any other than the efforts of legislators to secure and extend the advantages resulting from the separation of employments. But the expectations of those who imagined that, by distributing the people into tribes or castes, and rendering professions hereditary, the progress of civilization would be greatly accelerated, were not of a sort that could be realized. Instead of contributing to the advantage of the arts and sciences, the tendency of castes is undoubtedly to render them stationary, or to cause them to retrograde. In a country where the distinction of castes was rigidly maintained, the inferior classes would look with a jealous and jaundiced eye on the greater wealth and comfort of those above them; while the higher classes would treat those below them as an abject and degraded race. Under such VOL. 1. T circumstances, there would be no communication, no relation; all would be separate, independent, and hostile. Society would be held together by no common tie of interest, sympathy, or affection; every germ of future improvement would be effectually destroyed; and so destructive would be the operation of the system, that it is not easy to suppose it could have ever been maintained for any considerable period in a perfect state. It is difficult to suppose that any people could have made so great a progress in the arts as the ancient Egyptians certainly did, had they been always subject to this institution. Its inevitable effect must have been to extinguish all invention; and yet it is certain that many inventions were made in Egypt, in periods posterior to the division of the people into castes. The most probable conclusion then seems to be, that as experience served to disclose the ruinous consequences of hereditary professions, the fetters they imposed would be relaxed; and that though the principal offices might continue to be engrossed by particular tribes, those on whom the discharge of the more ordinary duties had devolved, would gradually be intermixed, until, in process of time, the ancient distinctions were, in a great measure, effaced, and a sufficient supply of hands had been found to undertake and prosecute whatever new arts might arise. But it is said, that whatever may have been the case elsewhere, the institution of castes has been inviolably maintained in India, from the earliest period to the present day. "What is now in India, has,” we are assured, “ always been there, and is likely still to continue." The Hindoos of this day are said to be the same as the Hindoos of the age of Alexander the Great. The description of them given by Arrian, has been quoted as applying to their actual situation. It is affirmed, that they have neither improved nor retrograded; and we are referred to India as to a country in which the institutions and manners that prevailed three thousand years ago, may still be found in their pristine purity! The President de Goguet lays it down distinctly in his learned and invaluable work on the Origin of Laws, Arts, and Sciences, that in India "every trade is confined to a particular caste, and can be exercised only by those whose parents professed it."+ Dr. Robertson says, that "the station of every Hindoo is unalterably fixed; his destiny is irrevocable; and the walk of life is marked out, from which he must never deviate." ↑ The same opinions are maintained by later authorities. Dr. Tennant says, that "the whole Indian community is divided into four great classes; and each class is stationed between certain walls of Robertson's Disquisition, p 202. + Origin of Laws, &c. Eng. Trans. vol. iii. p 24. Disquisition on India, p 199. No. VI. DECEMBER 6, 1828. manded, for what can man more worthily sacrifice than for truth? The honour of victory lies but in the contest. If the public were wise and alive to their own interests, to possess useful truths would be no distinction; and to publish them would be no merit. In abandoning the cause of truth, because of the general prevalence of error, we but quit the pump because the ship is sinking. Finally, the perversity of the public is in the order of nature, and should neither surprise nor disappoint us. MY AUNT MARGARET'S MIRROR. (By Sir Walter Scott.) You are fond, nephew, said my aunt Margaret, in a visit I made her one evening, of sketches of society which has passed away. I wish I could describe to you Sir Philip Forester, "the chartered libertine" of Scottish good company, the Lovelace of his day and country, this gay knight, renowned for the number of duels he had fought, and the successful intrigues which he had carried on, flourished about the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is necessary, for the authenticity of the legend, which I am about to relate to you, that you should know Sir Philip Forester, with his handsome person, elegant accomplishments, and fashionable manners, married the youngest Miss Falconer, of King's Copland. The eldest sister, a woman of masculine understanding, and ambitious turn, had previously become the wife of my grandfather, Sir Geoffry Bothwell, and brought into the family a good fortune. Jemima, the wife of Sir Philip, was the reverse of her sister in every respect. Her understanding was feeble, her beauty, while it lasted, consisted in a great measure of delicacy of complexion and regularity of features, without any peculiar force of expression. Even these charms faded under the sufferings attendant on an ill-sorted match. She was passionately attached to her husband, but, a selfish voluptuary, he treated her with a callous yet polite indifference, which, to whose heart was as tender as her judgment was weak, was perhaps more painful than absolute ill usage. As Sir Philip observed carefully all the usual forms towards his lady, he had the art to deprive her even of the compassion of the world; and useless and unavailing as that may be, it is to a mind like Lady Forester's most painful to be without. one The tattle of society did its best to place the peccant husband above the suffering wife. Some called her a poor spiritless thing, and declared, that with a little of her sister's spirit, she might have brought to reason any Sir Philip whatsoever, were it the termagant Falconbridge himself. But the greater part of their acquaintance affected candour. The tone of such critics was, "To be sure, no one will justify Sir Philip Forester, but then we all know Sir Philip, and Jemima Falconer might have known what she had to expect from the beginning. What made her set her cap at Sir Philip ?—He would never have looked at her if she had not thrown herself at his head, with her poor ten thousand pounds. I am sure, if it is money he wanted, she spoiled his market. I know where Sir Philip could have done much better. And then, if she would have the man, could not she try to make him more comfortable at home, and have his friends oftener, and not plague him with the squalling children, and take care all was handsome and in good style about the house? I declare I think Sir Philip would have made a very domestic man, with a woman who knew how to manage him. Now these fair critics, in raising their profound edifice of domestic felicity, did not recollect that the corner-stone was wanting; and that to receive good company with good cheer, the means of the banquet ought to have been furnished by Sir Philip, whose income (dilapidated as it was) was not equal to the display of the hospitality required, and at the same time to the supply of the good knight's menus plaisirs. So, in spite of all that was so sagely suggested by female friends, Sir Philip carried his good humour every where abroad, and left at home a solitary mansion and a pining spouse. At length, inconvenienced in his money affairs, and tired even of the short time which he spent in his own dull house, Sir Philip Forester determined to take a trip to the Continent, in the capacity of a volunteer. It was then common for men of fashion to do so; and our knight perhaps was of opinion that a touch of the military character, just enough to exalt, but not render pedantic, his qualities as a beau garçon, was necessary to maintain possession of the elevated situation which he held in the ranks of fashion. Sir Philip's resolution threw his wife into the agonies of terror; by which the worthy baronet was so much annoyed, that, contrary to his wont, he took some trouble to soothe her apprehensions; and once more brought her to shed tears, in which sorrow was not altogether unmingled with pleasure. Lady Bothwell asked, as a favour, Sir Philip's permission to receive her sister and her family into her own house during his absence on the Continent. Sir Philip readily assented to a proposition which saved expense, silenced the foolish people who might have talked of a deserted wife and family, and gratified Lady Bothwell; for whom he felt some respect, as for one who often spoke to him, always with freedom, and sometimes with severity, without being deterred either by his raillery or the prestige of his reputation. A day or two before Sir Philip's departure, Lady Bothwell took the liberty of asking him, in her sister's presence, the direct question, which his timid wife had often desired, but never ventured, to put to him. "Pray, Sir Philip, what route do you take when you reach the Continent?" "I go from Leith to Helvoet by a packet with advices." "That I comprehend perfectly," said Lady Bothwell, drily; "but you do not mean to remain long at Helvoet, I presume, and I should like to know what is your next object?" 66 "You ask me, my dear lady," answered Sir Philip, a question which I have not dared to ask myself. The answer depends on the fate of war. I shall, of course, go to head-quarters, wherever they may happen to be for the time; deliver my letters of introduction; learn as much of the noble art of war as may suffice a poor interloping amateur, and then take a glance at the sort of thing of which we read so much in the Gazette." "And I trust, Sir Philip," said Lady Both well, "that you will remember that you are a husband and a father; and that though you think fit to indulge this military fancy, you will not let it hurry you into dangers which it is certainly unnecessary for any, save professional persons, to encounter." "Lady Bothwell does me too much honour," said the adventurous knight, "in regarding such a circumstance with the slightest interest. But to soothe your flattering anxiety, I trust your ladyship will recollect that I cannot expose to hazard the venerable and paternal character which you so obligingly recommend to my protection, without putting in some peril an honest fellow, called Philip Forester, with whom I have kept company for thirty years, and with whom, though some folks consider him a coxcomb, I have not the least desire to part." “Well, Sir Philip, you are the best judge of your own affairs; I have little right to interfere-you are not my husband." "God forbid!" said Sir Philip, hastily; adding, however, "God forbid that I should deprive my friend Sir Geoffry of so inestimable a treasure." "But you are my sister's husband," replied the lady, and I suppose you are aware of her present distress of mind "If hearing of nothing else from morning to night can make me aware of it," said Sir Philip, "I should know something of the matter." "I do not pretend to reply to your wit, Sir Philip," answered Lady Bothwell; "but My sister's interest may account for my being anxious to learn something of Sir Philip Forester's motions; about which otherwise, I know, he would not wish me to concern myself; I have a brother's safety too to be anxious for." "You mean Major Falconer, your brother. What can he possibly have to do with our present agreeable conversation?" "You have had words together, Sir Philip," said Lady Bothwell. Naturally; we are connexions," replied Sir Philip, "and as such have always had the usual intercourse." "That is an evasion of the subject," answered the lady. "By words, I mean angry words, on the subject of your usage of your wife." "If," replied Sir Philip Forester, "you suppose Major Falconer simple enough to intrude his advice upon me, Lady Bothwell, in my domestic matters, you are indeed warranted in believing that I might possibly be so far displeased with the interference, as to request him to reserve his advice till it was asked." "And being on these terms, you are going to join the very army in which my brother Falconer is now serving." "No man knows the path of honour better than Major Falconer," said Sir Philip. "An aspirant after fame. like me, cannot choose a better guide than his footsteps." Lady Bothwell rose and went to the window, the tears gushing from her eyes. "And this heartless raillery," she said, "is all the consideration that is to be given to our apprehensions of a quarrel which may bring on the most terrible consequences? Good God! of what can men's hearts be made, who can thus dally with the agony of others?" Sir Philip Forester was moved; he laid aside the mocking tone in which he had hitherto spoken. "Dear Lady Bothwell," he said, taking her reluctant hand, "we are both wrong:you are too deeply serious; I, perhaps, too little so. The dispute I had with Major Falconer was of no earthly consequence. Had any thing occurred betwixt us that ought to have been settled par voie du fait, as we say in France, neither of us are persons that are likely to postpone such a meeting. I know your good sense, Lady Bothwell, and that you will understand me when I say, that really my affairs require my absence for some months-this, Jemima, cannot understand; it is a perpetual recurrence of |