been shed. One who had swallowed the Scotch Declaration, would scarcely strain at the Covenant.-Edinburgh Review. Court of Charles II-Towards the close of the protectorate, many signs indicated that a time of license was at hand. But the restoration of Charles the Second rendered the change wonderfully rapid and violent. Profligacy became a test of orthodoxy and loyalty, a qualification for rank and office. A deep and general taint infected the morals of the most influential classes, and spread itself through every province of letters. Poetry inflamed the passions; philosophy undermined the principles; divinity itself, inculcating an abject reverence for the court, gave additional effect to its licentious example. We look in vain for those qualities which give a charm to the errors of high and ardent natures, for the generosity, the tenderness, the chivalrous delicacy, which ennoble appetites into passions, and impart to vice itself a portion of the majesty of virtue. The excesses of the age remind us of the humours of a gang of footpads, revelling with their favourite beauties at a flashhouse. In the fashionable libertinism there is a hard, cold ferocity, an impudence, a lowness, a dirtiness, which can be paralleled only among the heroes and heroines of that filthy and heartless literature which encouraged it. One nobleman of great abilities wanders about as a Merry-Andrew. An other harangues the mob stark-naked from a window. A third lays an ambush to cudgel a man who has offended him. A knot of gentlemen of high rank and influence combine to push their fortunes at court by circulating stories intended to ruin an innocent girl, stories which had no foundation, and which, if they had been true, would never have passed the lips of a man of honour.* A dead child is found in the palace, the offspring of some maid of honour by some courtier, or perhaps by Charles himself. The whole flight of panders and buffoons pounce upon it, and carry it in triumph to the royal laboratory, where his majesty, after a brutal jest, dissects it for the amusement of the assembly, and probably of its father among the rest! The favourite duchess stamps about Whitehall, cursing and swearing. The ministers employ their time at the council-board in making mouths at each other, and taking off each other's gestures for the amusement of the king. The peers at a conference begin to pommel each other, and to tear collars and periwigs. A speaker in the House of Commons gives offence to the court. He is waylaid by a gang of bullies, and his nose is cut to the bone. This ignominious dissoluteness, or rather, if we may venture to designate it by the only proper word, blackguardism of feeling and manners, could not but spread from private to public life. The cynical sneers, the epicurean sophistry, which had driven honour and virtue from one part of the character, extended their influence over every other.Ibid. Washington Irving.-A man with dark hair, about forty years of age, and middlesized-say five feet in height; he is not handsome, but has a good masculine face; there is nothing remarkable in his appear. ance; and, altogether, in conversation and manner, he is a common place man. He has no formality, speaks without choosing his words, and is an agreeable man; but not what any one could call a hero. He has been wandering over the whole of the ancient kingdom of Granada, and it is a broad field, and the soil is rich. Royal Dinner for the Devil.-His majesty professed, that were he to invite the devil to dinner, he should have these three dishes; 1. A pig (whether young or old-roast, boiled, or braised, is not in the bill;) 2. A poll of ling and mustard; 3. A pipe of tobacco for digestion.-Apothegms of St. James, London, 1608. The Anemone.-The history of the anemone is curious. It was brought to France in the early part of the eighteenth century, we believe from Persia. The kind first introduced, was the semi-double, or seed-bearing variety. The gentleman who brought it to Paris was exceedingly jealous of his flowers, and no entreaty could prevail on him to part with one of them. They were at last procured by a trick. A person to whom he was showing his parterre let fall his cloak as if accidentally on the anemone bed, then in seed, and hastily gathering it up with an apology for his awkwardness, some of the seed, as was intended, stuck to the velvet, which a servant, who was in the secret, hastily picked off and concealed. The seed thus obtained was sown, grew, and, by the liberality of the ingenious plunderer, the flower soon became common in Paris and in Europe. Arab Hospitality.-An instance of Arab hospitality between avowed enemies, which occurred in the neighbourhood of Bussorah, will show how far habit and usage can conquer the feelings which are natural to us. The Montefik Sheik Twiney, who possessed nearly the whole of the country from Hillah to the sea, and the Sheik Gathban, who had the district of Chaub, both on the opposite banks of the Shatul-Arab, were enemies to such a degree, and for so long a time, that it became a proverb in Bussorah, when any one would express the violent hatred of another, to say, "It was like the hatred of Twiney to Gathban;" as if the feeling was thought to be hereditary and inherent in the government of the provinces themselves. A reverse of fortune dispossessed Twiney of his sheikdom, when he fled for refuge to the porch of his oldest enemy in the Chaub district. The Sheik Gathban, having heard of his flight, and receiving news of his approach, rose and went out, attended by all his principal dependents, to meet him. The interview was that of the oldest and most sincere friends. The fugitive sheik was set on the horse of his protector, and, being conducted to his residence, was placed there in the seat of honour, when Gathban, taking his ring and seal from off his finger, placed it on that of Twiney, saying, "As long as you remain beneath my roof, you are not only in perfect safety, but I constitute you, by this seal, the Sheik of the Chaub, and woe be to him who spurns your authority." This chief remained some time in dukhiel with his enemy, who, after the most strenuous efforts, at length effected an accommodation on his behalf with the Pasha of Bagdad, who had dispossessed him; and Twiney was again restored by the influence of Gathban to the full authority of his own sheikdom, and, with it, to the former enmity between the Montefiks and the Chaubs, which continued with the same force as ever.-Buckingham's Travels. The Galette.-Having ridden from Dieppe to Argues to visit the chateau, we were forced by hunger, that most domineering of all tyrants, into a dirty little cottage, which the people called L'Auberge. It was the strangest combination of kitchen and pig-sty, and henroost, that ever I saw. Cooking, and cackling, and grunting, were all going on at once when we arrived, and some of the joint produce was offered for our luncheon, in form of a dish of eggs and onions swimming together in lard. The people of the house seemed to consider this mess as the acme of cookery; but in spite of sundry epithets bestowed upon it, such as charmant, delicieux, &c. we had bad taste enough to prefer some plain boiled eggs, the friendly shells of which had kept them from all contamination. I suppose that particular dishes become, as it were, national property, because they are so nasty that no one can eat them, except those who are brought up to it; but certainly, when our mouths have been seasoned to any of these national messes in our youth, every thing else seems flat, stale, and unprofitable. They are so intimately combined with all our early recollections, that in after years they form no small link in that bright chain of memory which binds our affection so strongly to the days of our infancy. It is all very Catholic and gross, I know, but nevertheless salt, sal mon, and peas to a Fleming, gruyere to a Swiss, or barley-broth and oatmeal-porridge to a Scot, will do more to call up old and sweet remembrances of home, and happiness, and early days, than the most elaborate de scription. But all this is nothing to the power which Galette has, morally and physically, upon a native of Britanny. I do not mean to speak any thing profanely, but had Eve been a Bretonne, the devil might have offered her an apple to all eternity; she would not have said thank you for it. Nay, had it been a whole apple-pie, she would have turned up her nose, and we might all have been in Paradise up to this present one thouHe sand eight hundred and twenty seven. might have prated about knowledge, too, as long as he liked; it would not have made any difference; for the Bretonnes have seen no blue-stockings since Madame de Sevigne's time, and I never could find one of them that knew the difference between London and Pekin, or that wished to know it. But if the tempter had offered her a Galette-good-b'ye, Paradise; she would never have withstood it. She would but have bargained for a little milk and a piece of butter, and gone out as quietly as my fire is doing at this moment. But it may be necessary to explain what sort of a thing a Galette is. The receipt is as follows: Take a pint of milk or a pint of water, as the case may be, put it into a dirty earthen pan, which has never been washed out since it was made; add a handful of oatmeal, and stir the whole round with your hand, pouring in meal till it be of the consistency of hogwash; taste it from your fingers, and let the rest stand till next morning; then, pour it out as you would do a pancake upon a flat plate of heated iron, called a Galettier, taking care to ascertain that it be not too hot. This being placed over a smoky wood fire, will produce a sort of tough cake called a Galette, which nothing but a Breton or an ostrich can digest. In this consists the happiness of a Breton, and all his ideas somehow turn upon this. If you ask a labouring man where he is going, he answers Manger de la Galette. If it rains after a drought, they tell you Il pleut de la Galette. The height of sorrow is to want de la Galette; and the height of hospitality is to ask you in pour manger de la Galette.New Monthly Magazine. Queries for the Blues.-Is not the favourite word "talented" purely Cockney, not at all English, and very vulgar besides ?-Is not the favourite phrase, "last evening," a vulgarism for "yesterday evening," and only worthy of the authorship of the Court Circular? Is not the favourite phrase, "left for London," a vulgarism for "left us for London," and worthy of a similar rank of authorship?-Is not the favourite singularplurality of "the Miss Snubnoses," a vulgarism for the Misses Snubnose," and not to be tolerated but in a village, and that village not less than fifty miles from the metropolis? Is not the favourite word of narrators, "incredibly,"-as, "Mr. A. danced incredibly long," or, "Miss B. looked incredibly short ور -a literal declaration that, in neither case, ought the narrator to be believed?-Is not the favourite phrase, "it was utterly impossible to go, and still more so to stand," a climax of impossibilities, difficult to comprehend but in the novel of a woman "moving in the fashionable circles?"-Is not the favourite word, "lay" for "lye," a vulgarism, pardonable only to a sailor, who has no time to think, or to a parliamentary orator, on whom such time would be thrown away? -Do not the noblemen and gentlemen who daily advertise for sale "chaste" services of plate, give a better character of their plate than of their own education ?-Do not the favourite novelist mixtures of French with English, the perpetual “Oui-mon cher-et bien," and others equally remote from untravelled capacities, give the idea that the writer is either a titled tabby, just arrived "from a continental tour!" or an old governess, daubed with rouge and sentiment, or a bedlamite, or the whole three in one?"A-propos de moutons," as her ladyship says so charmingly, what is become of poor dear old Lady Morgan ?-Is not the word "breakfast" quite as capable of communicating its glad tidings to a hungry traveller, or even to a romance-reading angel of seventeen, as the pretty word "déjeuné ?"-Is not "the view of Miss Bronze's shoulder-blades,' to the full as expressive of that charming display, as any information that can be given by that very crooked, though travelled word, "coup d'œil ?"-Is not the word "mutual," in such phrases as, "Sir Vincent Valancour and the lovely Armida St. Osmond flirted the whole evening of the St. Leger ball, to the mutual satisfaction of each other," rather superfluous?-Does not the use of past and future touch on tautology, in such phrases as, "Mr. Brummagem Brushwood was horsewhipped yesterday, for the fourth time, in the vicinity of the House of Commons, when he declared that, if the like outrage took place again, he would complain to the Speaker; it is to be presumed that his experience of the past will teach him what to hope from the future ?"-Is not the favourite phrase, "I am free to confess,"-as, "Mr. Speaker, I am free to confess that, in the whole course of my life, I never heard greater nonsense than fell from Mr. William Smith on the Catholic Question,"-vulgar, tautologous, un-English, and parliamentary ?-Is not the equally favourite phrase, "Now, Mr. Speaker, that I am upon my legs," in precisely the same condition ?-Is not the "subject-matter" equally tautologous, silly, and official?-Does not the use of the "sum and substance," merit to be reserved for a methodist oration and the Marquis of Anglesey's despatches?-Is not the favourite habit of putting the adverb before the verb-as, "the reverend prebendary only ate a turbot, a haunch of Southdown mutton, a venison pasty, and a Christmas pie"-liable to mis lead us as to the nature of this epulatory feat, and seemingly expressive of the historian's regret that the reverend person did not drink them also, or perhaps eat them over again; and is not the phrase a vulgarisin for "ate only ?"-And, lastly, is not the booby who advertises daily in the morning papers that he is "wishful to exchange his living of 1200l. a year," very likely to be the individual who would perform the same feat, or at least not have the prowess of his stomach impeded by the activity of his brains ?—Monthly Magazine. Raspberry Wine.-If an attempt be made to form wine from raspberries and sugar, a liquor will be produced with but little, if any, of the flavour of the fruit; but a small quantity of juice of raspberries added at the decline of the fermentation, or a little fresh fruit suspended in the cask at the same pe riod, will be sufficient to communicate an excellent raspberry flavour. Edible Birds'-nests.-These singular productions are constructed by a species of seafowl (which resorts in large flocks to Tavoy), from a fine description of sea-weed, or, perhaps more properly sea-moss, so gelatinous in its nature as to yield, when boiled, either a soup or a jelly, possessing highly nutritive qualities. The abundance of these nests, which are much esteemed and demanded in China, may be inferred from the fact, of the farin at Tavoy island being purchased for the sum of sixteen thousand rupees, by a Chinese, for the period of a twelvemonth, and considerably more was expected for the mo nopoly of it for the ensuing season.-Asiatie Journal. Comparative Speed of English and Russian Travelling.-English.-The unhappy criminals, upon whom the Recorder presented his late Report, were kept in an uncertainty as to their doom for a night and day after it had been scaled; the sentence of death which was passed at Windsor at halfpast eight the one evening, not having reached Newgate until half-past five on the next day; -a journey of twenty-one miles performed in twenty-one hours, or at the rate of one mile per hour.-Russian.-The intelligence of the death of Alexander reached St. Peters. burgh from Taganrog, and was there deliberated upon by the senate, Constantine proclaimed, and the news returned to Teflis, in Georgia; in the market-place of which the proclamation was publicly read on the twen tieth day from that of his death, a distance, in all, of two thousand two hundred miles, (taken in a direct line, and including all delays and detentions), traversed in nineteen days; being at the rate of one hundred and sixteen miles per day, or about five miles per hour.-Moral.-The comparative importance of the deaths of great men and small, is in the ratio of five to one in favour of the former. ON MUSCULAR ACTION, AND ON BY MR. SHELDRAKE. On the most effectual Method of Instructing Young Persons in those exercises, that will improve their Personal Appearance, and render their Forms more perfect. THIS subject may be arranged under two divisions. First, that which may be practised in every gentleman's family, by those who are usually employed to take care of young children in the earliest periods of their lives; and who, indeed, would be more beneficially employed in the practices that will now be recommended, than they are in performing the duties that are commonly laid upon them. The second consists of young persons, who are so far advanced in life as to be the subjects of professional attention, I shall, at present, confine myself to the first class. Young children, in the families of gentlemen, are generally well managed while they are in the nurse's arms, because the anxiety of parents, and the attention of professional men, who are, at that period, much employed, prescribe a rational course of treatment, and compel the nurses to follow the course that is prescribed. It is in the succeeding stages that the mismanagement be. gins and this is too often carried to excess that is productive of lasting injury. : The children are given to girls, or very young women, first to carry, and then to lead them about, as they acquire the power of using their limbs, to give them exercise, which, it is supposed, may be increased at pleasure. It is believed that this requires no other care but that of the servants, and, of course, the children being kept in motion. As they increase in age, their exertions are increased, and the scenes in which those exertions are made, are extended to walking, to running about, and engaging in such other exercises as the discretion of the servants shall direct; for the management of children, at this period of their lives, is believed to be so simple and so easy, that it may be safely entrusted to the care of that class of servants that has the least knowledge, and has had the least experience. Let us now inquire into this fact. The persons who become nursery-maids are usually the daughters of cottagers, or of persons in some inferior stations in life; they have been brought up among their natural relations, and, as persons of every class of society have peculiarities which distinguish them from all others, these servants carry the peculiarities of their own class into their new situations. As man is an imitative animal, the servants, who teach the gentleman's children to do whatever they are employed to teach, instruct them, by VOL. I. 3 S showing by their own actions, what is to be done. The consequence is, that the gentleman's children learn to imitate the habits and manners of the servants, instead of those of their own class. This will happen when the utmost caution is used; but the want of care, and, sometimes, worse motives, induce those, who have the care of children, to do them very serious injuries, without having any fixed intention of doing so. Of this kind of mischief I have known many very striking examples, but shall content myself with giving one. A man of business, of the first class, who lived in Pall-mall, had a family of young children; the nursery-maid was regularly employed to take them, for air and exercise, into St. James's Park; but was ordered, on no account, to extend her walk beyond the length of the palace-garden wall, so that she might certainly be found, if wanted. One of the children was not able to go alone, and of course must be carried; the other was a girl of five years old, and very well able to walk. After some time this child became unhealthy, and weak, her knee bent, her ankles were distorted, and she became a patient of mine, to have that defect remedied. No satisfactory account could be given of the cause that produced this unexpected alteration in the health and form of a child that had been so healthy; at last the servant was dismissed for some other fault, and then the whole truth became known. This girl had a little affair to manage with a man who lived at Chelsea. The only opportunities the lovers had to meet, were when she was sent to walk in the Park with the children. then, with one child in her arms, and the other running by her side, made the best of her way to Chelsea, and, when the purposes for which her assignation was made were effected, she returned without being missed, as her mistress, taking it for granted that her orders were obeyed, did not take the trouble to see if she remained in her appointed place. The child could not go on long in this manner without feeling its consequences; she was fatigued by this excessive exercise, and cried as she walked, or rather ran, along the road; she was well beaten for this, as well as to prevent her from telling what she went through; being thus intimidated, the poor child went on in this injurious course till the servant was dismissed, when all that she had suf fered was made known, and effectual remedies were provided. She In this course of education, if it deserves the name, children are continued five or six years, or till they make the next decided step in the progress of education, which is either the preparatory school, or some private course, in which practices that resemble those which prevail in preparatory schools, are adopted. In the first course, as it has No XV.-FEBRUARY 7, 1829. been described, if the children escape all the injuries to which they are liable, all possible means have been used to make them active, robust, healthy, and high-spirited; qualities of which, in the next stage of their education, much trouble is taken to deprive them; they are taught to remain confined to their seats for many hours in the day; to "behave pretty," as it is called, with arms folded, demure faces, and eyes fixed upon their books, to learn their appointed lessons. In this stage of education, all possible means are used to deprive them of those qualities, which it was the business of the first instructions to teach them. After the preparatory period of education is past, boys diverge into a course into which it is not our business to follow them; but we shall proceed to investigate the subsequent education of girls. The parents of those ranks for whose use these observations are intended, think it is an object of the first consequence that their daughters should obtain every perfection of form that can be acquired, and as many accomplishments as their circumstances will enable them to add to them; and, to acquire these, the schools, or practices in private, which resemble those of the schools, are resorted to. It is an object in all schools, that the scholars should be kept still and quiet for many hours in the day, that the teachers may instruct them, each in their turn, and without interruption. The high spirits, which are natural to early life, are now completely checked, and when girls, under these circumstances, are compelled to remain fixed to one place for hours together, with looks demure, and book upheld, they are said to be in good order. It will now be proper to rotice some of their employments. An author, writing upon this subject, has observed, that the practice of music is injurious to the human form; this is positively untrue, for the practice at the piano-forte, which is the most general favourite with the ladies, is as favourable to the figure, as any exercise that can be devised; the practice upon the harp, indeed, if not managed carefully, may, under some circumstances, be injurious; but when the form has been injured by imprudent practice at the harp, those injuries may be easily cured, and, with moderate care, may always be prevented. Dancing has been universally, and is still very generally, resorted to; but as I have treated on that subject in a separate discourse, I shall not enter upon it here, nor should I mention the gymnastic exercises, as they are called, for the same reason, but for the pertinacity with which they have been forced upon public attention, and intruded as being worthy of general adoption, and to supersede dancing, as a healthy as well as pleasurable exer cise; as it has been shown that they are highly injurious in every respect, they certainly ought on every account to be discontinued. After having given this rapid sketch of the practices which have been adopted to improve, as it was thought, the persons of young people, it will be proper to point out one peculiarity which pervades the whole. The practice of every stage, as I have called it, is calculated to counteract the effect of that which immediately preceded it: thus, in the first stage, the object was to give as much activity, strength, and elasticity to the forms and spirits of young persons, as the circumstances of the case would require; the object of that stage of the treatment which immediately followed, was calculated to diminish the activity of body and buoyancy of spirits which had just been created; and the same alternation of effects pervades the whole system. In the course that I shall recommend to be adopted, instead of that which has been followed, I shall propose what is essentially good, and may be effectually practised at all times, by the usual inmates of a gentleman's family, with a certainty of success; so that all who will take the trouble that is necessary, will certainly give to their children all that perfection of form of which they are susceptible. As I shall, in other discourses, enter more largely into the theory of muscular action, and endeavour to explain some of its phenomenæ, in a way that has not been done or attempted, I shall content myself here with pointing out certain practices, which, if adopted early in life, and steadily followed, by persons even of ordinary intelligence, will enable them to give to young children the power of using their limbs with firmness and precision; this will become natural to them, if they are well grounded in those practices in the early period of their lives, and will enable them to acquire any other exercises they may have occasion to learn, at any future time, with more facility than they could do if they had not been previously so instructed. These exercises should be begun as soon as children can walk firmly alone, and understand any directions that are given to them; they should begin with the simplest exercises, one at a time, and not proceed to a second, until they are completely masters of the first. After having mastered the most simple, they should proceed to those that are more difficult, and so on progressively, till they are masters of the whole, which they should then practise carefully and regularly for a certain portion of time every day. If all children were instructed, and required to practise these exercises, they would grow up with a power of using their limbs, and a freedom from personal defects, |