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the British army. At the battle of Freehold he fur-Though not attached to the medical staff at the nished as signal a proof of his resolution and bravery. time, Dr. Stuart applied himself to discover a means After the regiment, which was only three hundred of alleviating or curing this dreadful disorder, and and fifty strong, had for two whole hours sustained, found out a remedy which perfectly accords with alone and unsupported, the attacks of five thousand the views of modern medical science. The disease of the enemy under General Lee, Stuart, with is merely a bilious fever, with the bile rendered eighty men as a forlorn hope, was directed to sus- acrid and corrosive by the extreme heat. tain the attack of the enemy's whole column, with Stuart's cure consequently consisted of five grains a view to cover and secure the retreat of the rest tartarized antimony and one table-spoonful of soft of the detachment. Not only did he withstand the sugar, dissolved in fifteen table-spoonfuls of boiling enemy in a narrow pass in which he had posted his water, of which one is to be taken every fifteen or men, but, after a long and severe conflict, repulsed twenty minutes until it has operated three distinct them. Nay, more; in the evening of the very same times, when an immense quantity of acrid thick day, being again detached in command of two com-viscid bile is evacuated, and the patient immediately panies of men, in order to cover the retreat of some relieved: toast and water, with nitre, is to be used troops who were in danger of being cut off by a for constant drink, and one ounce of Glauber salts very superior force, Stuart, after accomplishing this taken in it on the second or third day after. This piece of service, contrived also to kill five and cap-treatment, along with bark in port wine during conture twenty-seven of the enemy by means of an valescence, completed the recovery.* Dr. Stuart's ambuscade. reputation as a physician was not confined to this cure; for, about the year 1787, he discovered a substitute for Peruvian bark in the produce of this country, so that ague and scurvy might be counteracted by a remedy at one fourth the cost of bark, occurring abundantly at home.

These exploits, were they not well-authenticated by statements published both in this country and America prior to the year 1815, might savor somewhat of the style of Baron Munchausen. It is certain, however, that while Stuart actually put in claims to indemnification for 65,000 acres of land, In 1803, Stuart was appointed barrack-master of and other losses valued at £244,346, his services Billerica, when, the barrack erections being ruinwere at one time so far acknowledged, that a pen-ous, some insubordinate militia, instigated by their sion of £300, afterwards withdrawn, was granted commanding officer, assaulted him as the cause of him. He seems to have irritated, by expressions the wretchedness of the accommodations, and beat of contempt, the commissioners appointed to inves-out six of his teeth; for which he prosecuted the tigate the claims of the royalists, with whose pro- commanding officer at the expense of £100 to himceedings he affected to make no secret of his self, although the officer was convicted, and sendisgust, and thus occasioned the withdrawal of his tenced to pay a fine to the king. He was latterly pension; nor was any adequate compensation ever barrack-master at Landguard Fort; an unhealthy substituted. situation, where he lost a daughter in April, 1813, and a son in February following. Finding the health of his other children likewise in danger, he solicited a change of barracks. Not succeeding in this, he retired from the public service, and settled in London, in Vernon Place, Bloomsbury Square, where an accident occurred, 20th December, 1814, which consummated the fate of one of the nearest descendants of the royal house of Stuart. The carriage of a Mrs. Kelley, who was described as the daughter of Mr. Dolland, in St. Paul's Churchyard, came unexpectedly upon the unfortunate man, by suddenly turning the corner of Southampton Street. He was unable to escape in time, and being knocked down by the pole, was trampled upon by the horses. This occurred in the immediate neighborhood of his own residence, to which he was conveyed alive; but, in spite of the most anxious care and attention, he expired on the 28th of December, in the sixtyseventh year of his age, leaving behind him an amiable but destitute widow, two sons, and a daughter; and this just as he was beginning to be recognized by his friends, and might have succeeded in establishing himself as a physician in the metropolis. We have not yet spoken of Dr. Stuart's literary abilities. He had, however, some pretensions to

Balked in his expectations of reward, he had made up his mind to settle in Jamaica, in prosecution of his profession, and for that purpose embarked with his family on the 26th September, 1785. Misfortune, the doom of his race, again, however, tracked his footsteps: within sixteen days after his arrival, a tremendous hurricane destroyed all his property; he was attacked by a dangerous illness, and obliged to return in the greatest distress. To crown this succession of calamities, he was, on his arrival in England, arrested on a false process at Plymouth, thrown into St. Thomas' Ward, the prison for debtors for the county of Devon, and there subjected to a course of ill-treatment. Having set forth his case in a memorial to the king, presented at his majesty's first levee in December, 1792, it was most graciously received. He was shortly afterwards officially requested by General Delancey to present another memorial to the treasury. But after doing so, and waiting several months for a reply, he found that his memorial had never been laid before the Board. It was lost! Under the pressure of necessity, he at this juncture accepted

the situation of assistant barrack-master at St. Domingo, upon an assurance, from very high authority, that his claims on government, so far from being weakened, would be strengthened thereby. Mis- * Medical men acquainted with the yellow fever of the chance did not forsake him even in this humble tropics, and with the intertropical variations of climate, capacity. In Admiral Christian's fleet he was have observed in our own country, during the hypast seawrecked not seldomer than three times in his voy-son, a certain modification both of the disease and its cause. We had, up to July, the intense heat at high temage out in 1795 and 1796, when above five thousand peratures of the West India islands, succeeded thereafter men perished, and not one sixth of four hundred by the rainy or wet season, generating the malaria that sail returned to England. He was afterwards at has subsequently prevailed, and giving rise to the great the capture of St. Lucia, at Martinique, and in St. prevalence of bowel complaint, dysentery, and bilious Domingo at a period when seven thousand six hun-yellow tinge of the skin, and as unequivocal symptoms fever of a remittent character, accompanied even by the dred British soldiers, and as many seamen, were of yellow fever as in these latitudes we could reasonably carried off in five weeks by the yellow fever. expect.

66

the name of an author, having published in Amer-Our race reproached for adverse fate alone,
ica, two volumes of travels under the name of
Smyth. Under the signatures of "Simplex" and
“F. S. S." he published six elegies, called “Des-
tiny and Fortitude," some poems, and many papers,
several of which appeared in the Monthly Maga-
zine. He had also announced his own memoirs, of
the interest necessarily attaching to which some
faint notion may be formed from the perusal of this
hasty sketch; and along with them a Genealogi-
cal Chart of the Descendants of the Royal House
of Stuart, the most Ancient and Illustrious in the
World during a period of Two Thousand Years."
The strange vicissitudes of such a life as Stu-
art's, operating on a poetical temperament, engen-
dered that morbid superstition which seems more or
less to have haunted the minds of every member of
the Stuart race. Amongst his other productions,
there is a long poem on the fate of this family,
characterized by an excess of such feeling.
Amongst their disasters he recounts the bloody fate
of Queen Mary; and even Darnley (also a Stuart)
is included in the fatal category, as well as his
father the Earl of Lennox. He then adverts to the
death of Henry, Prince of Wales, to that of the
queen of Bohemia, to the execution of Charles I.,
and to the death of Charles II. (which he supposes
to have been effected by poison;) to the execution
of Monmouth, and to the speedy death, from grief,
of the Lady Wentworth; with the fate of his own
father, and the misfortunes of his own peculiar lot.
He asserts at once the honor and misfortunes of the
Stuarts in the following lines, which may be reck-
oned a curiosity of literature;-

Although our lives with honor we have led.
That Stuarts sought for arbitrary rule—
Perish the thought! as false as ill-designed;
Excepting bigot James, religion's tool,

Whose sanguinary zeal debased his mind.
Too brave, too well-informed for such a part,
Strong were their talents as their judgments
sound-

Pure amor patriæ possessed each heart;

Their native land their true affections found.
But sycophants in every age abound;
Time-serving reptiles, cringing, mean, and base,
That scandal's brazen trump delight to sound,
For hire against their native royal race.
A race marked out to bear the storms of fate,
Crushed by hard fortune's overpowering weight,
Through ages thus oppressed by her to groan,

Dominion, high command, and splendor gone,
Glory, and wealth, and crowns and sceptres fled;

FEMALE INDUSTRY IN IRELAND.

So much has been said of late about the want of employment in Ireland, that a few words concerning the industry of the most dependent portion of the population-the women-may not be unacceptable. An Irish wife of the humbler classes is usually known to the traveller in the provinces as a desolatelooking slattern, with a troop of dirty and idle children at her heels; but if he will only take time to go beyond the external phenomena of the road-side, in various cases, we can assure him, he will be presented with a picture of a very different kind. The cheaper sorts of blonde lace sold in England are the production of Ireland; and not only do the plain French cambric handkerchiefs come in great part from the looms of the latter country, but much of the embroidery on the expensive descriptions of these articles is executed in the huts of the Irish villagers, or in the garrets of the towns and cities.

For the present, however, we would direct attention to the manufacture of an imitation of point lace, commenced in the county Limerick, as presenting matter of congratulation to the philanthropist, as well as of imitation to the landed gentry. A benevolent lady at Currah Chase, by way of providing employment for the poor girls of her neighborhood at those times when they have nothing to do in the house or the field, has established a lace school in one of the lodges of her own park. In fine weather the young women take out their work, and and sit under the trees; and thus seem to convert a business into an amusement peculiarly fitted for their sex. But it is really a business of considerable importance both to themselves and their families.

'Tis mine with them to join my mournful moan. 'Midst sylvan wrecks, like one tree left, I stand To storms exposed, by furious tempests torn, And branches broken by each passing hand, Distressed, oppressed, unheeded, and forlorn.

which these are a few of the best stanzas, displayed The critic might not say that a long poem, of much beyond the mechanism of verse. Yet, as the undoubted production of a man whose descent is linked, although by illegitimate ties, directly with the sovereign race of our native land-as emanating from one who conceived himself struggling under their doom, and even composed the verses in question under the inspiration of that superstition-they are fraught with an interest beyond their intrinsic merits.

It interferes with no duty, and with no task; it merely fills up time that would otherwise be vacant or misemployed; and it enables them not only to dress as neatly as English girls of the same station, but to provide their huts with food at that unhappy period of the year when, even in ordinary seasons, the Irish peasant has little else to live on than his hopes of the ripening crop of potatoes.

The lace is sewed upon muslin or net, and afterwards cut out; and so expert have the girls become, that the second prize for needlework was adjudged to one of their specimens at the Royal Irish Agricultural Improvement Society's show at Limerick. As a higher honor still, it may be mentioned that the queen of the Belgians-the queen of point lace

during her late visit to England, selected from the stock of a London lace-seller a shawl worked at the Currah Chase school.

When we say that the average number of workgirls here is only thirty, and that the proprietress shows no disposition to enhance either prices or wages, but appears resolved to continue the little manufactory on its original plan, as a mere resource against idleness, and its concomitant want, we shall not be supposed to have any wish to exaggerate its importance as a branch of the national industry. We would merely hold it up as an example and encouragement to the good and gentle of the Irish ladies. There are many other employments for which their sex is fit. There are many which, from their nature, will long escape the rivalry of machinery. We have seen in Russia, for instance, the richest specimens of embroidery on velvet, executed in the huts of the peasantry, and competing successfully in the market with the productions of

the town manufactories. But even in lace alone | caps, have dosed people with till their stomachs might much more might be done in Ireland than there have turned at the gibberish if not at the thing itself is at present; and the materials are so cheap, that your precious potato I mean. I did n't write such any benevolent person, with ever so bare an inde-nonsensical words as your solanums, and tubers, and pendence, might establish a Currah Chase school. albumen, and protein, and fibrine; but I said, in plain The good effected would of itself be a sufficient Hampshire English, that potatoes were rubbish, that reward; but in the instance we have now brought living on them would turn our apple-cheeked, bigboned farming men and women into windy, herringto notice, the kind lady of the Chase has received a token of gratitude which must have touched her gutted, lantern-jawed sneaks! I said it, and it has come to pass. heart and filled her eyes. The poor girls, by working at extra hours, and lavishing all their skill upon the task, produced a chef-d'œuvre in point lace, and presented it as a gift to their benefac

tress.

Raleigh. But I looked not on them save as a thing good for confections, to be baked in pies, as quinces and such fruit; and though you speak but scurvily of them, let me tell you that they be marvellous refreshing and pleasant, eaten sopped in wine, which doth take off a coldness belonging to them when raw. Nay, they may, to give them a better grace, be stewed with prunes.

year's end. But the mischief's done, and at an end. The potatoes are ruined, stock and seed! I won't tell you in the outlandish gallimaufry what has done it; but it's done, and my corn, Cobbett's corn, Indian corn

It is well known that in several of the continental countries the manufacture of thread lace is an unfailing resource for the women; and in Normandy, more especially, we have been both surprised and Cobbett. What is the man talking of? I spoke ainused by a peep into the workshop of the hamlet. about potatoes, and not apples. I tell you, people The business is usually carried on during the night, in Lancashire in 1720. And now, instead of good have sunk and sunk since potatoes were first planted for in the daytime the stout Norman lasses work like wheaten bread and wholesome streaky bacon, they men or horses in the field; and the place of meet-taste nothing but your cursed root from year's end to ing is the cow-house, where the sweet breath of the "milky mothers" keeps them warm. They have all, besides, their own chaufferettes, (little boxes pierced with holes, and enclosing a pan of live cinders,) on which they rest their feet as they sit around a little round table. This table has but one lamp for the whole circle; but each is provided with a white glass bottle filled with clear water, which reflects the light upon her work as well as if she had one to her own share. Oh the joyous laugh! oh the buoyant song! oh the wild railleries that fill the midnight cow-house! till, tired at length both of work and merriment, the light-hearted girls withdraw to their huts and their beds, from which the sun is to rouse them in a few hours to another course of toil and enjoyment.-Chambers' Journal.

WILLIAM COBBETT AND SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
SCENE-The other world.

Cobbett. Oh! There you are, Sir Walter. Come,
shake hands. My crow's plucked at last. I will
speak to you, now.
Raleigh. And right welcome, Master Cobbett. You
have been wont hitherto to use scurvy language of
me; why, I know not; and civilities have been
scant between us. I rejoice to think they shall be
frequent henceforth.

I

Cobbett. Yes, yes. To tell you the plain truth, could not bear the sight of you. Don't look so black; but it was you colonized Virginia, and introduced into Ireland that vile, watery, rotgut thing, the potato. Raleigh. Nay, these be strange reasons for sulky looks. Did I not, by the one act, add to our empire a fair territory, fertile in all manner of grain, wellwatered, and, as Master Hariot doth still opine, rich in the precious metals; and, by the other, bring into our Britain a delicate fruit, right flavorous and

wholesome for confections and sweetmeats?

Cobbett Fiddle-de-diddle!

Raleigh. Truly you trouble me much, Master Cobbett. But why your wrath against that wholesome root, the openamk, as the savages called it, but which we named after the Spaniard, "potato?"

Raleigh. I know it well. Lane brought me sundry plants thereof from the colony, which I planted side by side with my first potatoes, in my garden at Youghall, in Ireland.

Cobbett. Did you? Well then, I almost forgive you the potatoes. But my corn is coming over by ship-loads, to drive the beggarly, watery, waxy potato be seen again; or, if seen, it will be only to please the out of the fields, where, please the pigs, they'll never pigs-for the laborers won't touch 'em when they learn what's good for them. So, here's my hand, Sir Walter Raleigh, and I forgive you the potatoes.

Raleigh. Ah! Master Cobbett, 't is a strange world, and a changeful!

Cobbett. Yes-in the matter of potatoes. But for the rest I fancy it remains much the same, placemen and pensioners scrambling for the loaves and fishes, and silencing honest men, still, I'll be bound; and your Johnny Bowleses still talking about the "glorious constitution;" and your fine gentlemen still giving themselves puppy-dog airs; and a wash of learned languages still running out of Oxford and Cambridge. But they have n't a Political Register to tell them what asses they are. That's a change for the worse, to be sure. However, the potato blight almost reconciles me even to that. How I wish they'd give us ghosts leave to visit the folks up yonder! I should think Westminster would invite me to a public dinner, at which not a potato should make

its

appearance.

Raleigh. And Westminster Abbey perchance afford me a monument. Farewell, Master Cobbett. Cobbett. Good morning. I'll go and crow over Punch. Perry.-[Exeunt severally.]

ACCORDING to the most accurate estimates, no less a space than 2,830,000 acres that is, nearly one seventh of the entire surface of Ireland-is occupied with bog. If, however, the quantity capable of being made into turf be taken as low as 2,000,000 of acres, Cobbett. Wholesome root! Don't put me in a pas- and at an average depth of three yards, the mass of sion. Do you know that your precious "wholesome fuel which they contain, estimated at 550 lbs. per root" has become the food of two thirds of England, cubic yard, when dry, amounts to the enormous sum Ireland, and Scotland? It is pigs' meat, and has made of 6,338,666,666 tons. Taking, therefore, the value pigs of the poor people who use it. I did what I could. of turf, as compared with that of coal, namely, as 9 I told all sensible Englishmen, those who took in my to 54, the total amount of turf fuel in Ireland is Register, what it would come to. It's true I did n't equivalent in power to above 470,000,000 tons of use the gailipot phrases that these Oxford and Cam- coal, which, at 12s. per ton, is worth above £280,bridge doctors, in their black gowns and conjuring | 000,000 sterling.--Chambers' Journal.

OFFICE OF THE LIVING AGE,
165 TREMONT ST., BOSTON.

THE speculations of Fraser's Magazine upon the unsettled state of affairs in Europe, are sad indeed. The moderate temper of this journal entitles it to the more weight. We should be glad that Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell would jointly appeal to the country at the next election.

The mission to Japan grows more and more distinct. These islands will soon be knocked at by British goods. Perhaps the American flag may be the better liked there, from the visit of an American vessel, which was recorded in the Living Age some months ago.

Scotch Nationality is almost a domestic question with us, so deeply has the literature of that part of the island sunk into the public mind.

The United States Senate has passed a bill for the purchase of the papers of the late Gen. Hamilton. It is to be hoped that the House of Representatives may concur, and that the President may be able to spare so much money from the Mexican war. Justice to the dead, to the living, and the yet unborn, demands that a full hearing be given to the great men who were for awhile overshadowed in the affections of the people by Mr. Jefferson's popularity.

We have to thank Messrs. Harper & Brothers for several good books: The Emigrant, by Sir F. B. Head; [This has been fully reviewed in former numbers.] The Use of the Body, in relation to the Mind, by George Moore, M. D. [A high opinion of this work we have already copied from an English review. As reprinted, it forms the twentieth volume of Harpers' New Miscellany.] Flowers of Fable, with numerous engravings. [This beautiful volume is a selection from the Fables of all authors, from which the compiler has endeavored to exclude all coarse, rude or profane expressions, and all fables which inculcate pernicious principles, such as treachery, cunning, revenge, &c.] Guide to Wisdom and Virtue, designed for young persons of either sex, selected mainly from the writings of an eminent physician; and Hutton's Book of Nature laid open-revised by the Rev. Dr. Blake. [Two books, which we welcome to our children's library.] The Pictorial History of England, No. 15. [This is a much fuller and better work than any other on the subject. It would be a great mistake to consider its pictorial beauty as its principal merit.] Letters on Astronomy, addressed to a lady; in which the elements of the science are familiarly explained in connexion with its literary history, with numerous engravings.

By Denison Olmsted, LL.D. [A beautiful book, with large type. The title recommends it better than anything we could say.]

Pictures of Early Life. By Mrs. Emma C. Embury.

Messrs. Wiley & Putnam have sent usThe Butterfly's Ball; the Death and Burial of Cock Robin; and the History of Mother Hubbard. [This is a very elegant volume, with numerous beautiful wood engravings, by J. W. Orr. If this be an American artist, we have reason to be proud of him. In these tales the drawings represent the insects, birds and beasts, in the attitudes and dresses of fashionable people. Of the tales themselves we can say that they have contributed to form the minds of a large portion of Anglo-Saxon society.] Messrs. Gould, Kendall & Lincoln, of Boston, have sent us :—

Chambers' Cyclopædia of English Literature, a selection of the choicest productions of English authors, from the earliest to the present_time. Elegantly Illustrated. [The readers of the Living Age know how much we prize Chambers' Journal. The ŝame industry and sagacity are shown in this different department of literature, by the same editor. It ought to be in every library, public or private; and will be especially prized by young men and women who are desirous of making themselves acquainted with the authors whose names they so frequently see referred to. This edition is a fac simile of the English copy, and is issued in parts, at 25 cents each. Messrs. Redding & Co. are connected with the sale of the work in New England. It will be issued twice a month, and completed in 16 parts.]

The Pre-Adamite Earth: contributions to Theological Science. By John Harris, D. D. [Dr. Harris is the author of several works which have had a large sale in England and in the United States. In the preface, the author says of the work: "Revealed Theology is here seen in organic connexion with Natural Science." Such a book cannot be appreciated without careful perusal, which we shall be glad to be able to give to it. Some parts of it may serve to correct the extravagant speculations of the author of Vestiges of Creation, who is here shown, says an English reviewer, as being inconceivably ignorant, shallow and contradictory. Several other works are announced to follow this, and take up different branches of the great plan—which is to show that nature, and revelation, and reason, all speak the same thing;-are all developments of the Great Supreme.]

The LIVING AGE is published every Saturday, by E. | twenty dollars, or two dollars each for separate volumes. LITTELL & Co., at No. 165 Tremont St., BOSTON. Any numbers may be had at 12 cents.

AGENCIES.-The publishers are desirous of making arrangements in all parts of North America, for increas

Price 123 cents a number, or six dollars a year in advance. Remittances for any period will be thankfully received and promptly attended to. To insure regularity in mail-ing the circulation of this work-and for doing this a ing the work, remittances and orders should be addressed to the office of publication as above.

Twenty dollars will pay for 4 copies for a year. COMPLETE SETS to the end of 1846, making eleven large volumes, are for sale, neatly bound in cloth, for

liberal commission will be allowed to gentlemen who will interest themselves in the business. But it must be understood that in all cases payment in advance is expected. The price of the work is so low that we cannot afford to incur either risk or expense in the collection of debts.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 140.-16 JANUARY, 1847.

From the Examiner.

Wit and Humor, selected from the English Poets; with an Illustrative Essay, and Critical Comments. By LEIGH HUNT. Smith, Elder, and Co.*

"Wit, poct, prose-man, party-man, translator,

Hunt, thy best title yet is Indicator!"

So said Charles Lamb. His friend has since established a better right to the more sacred of these names, but still retains, and we hope rejoices in, Elia's favorite title. The delightful series of poetical extracts continued in this volume, will form, when completed, a colossal Indicator.

There is none of the race of critics, present or past, who selects with such unerring and delicate tact, or recommends his selections to the relish of others in such fitting home-going, easy, and elegant words. We know of no poetical criticism to compare with Mr. Hunt's, not simply for that quality of exquisite taste, but for its sense of continuity and sustained enjoyment.

Wit and Humor is the second volume of the series, of which Imagination and Fancy was the first, and Action and Passion is promised as the third. These titles would of themselves explain that the design extends beyond a collection of elegant and disconnected extracts, while it combines the best features of such collections. The two volumes already published are precisely the books one would wish to carry for companionship on a journey, or to have at hand when tired of work, or at a loss what to do for want of it. They are selections of the best things some of our best authors have said, accompanied with short but delicate expositions and enforcements of their beauties. With their prefatory notices of each poet, their critical notes on each quotation from him, and their italics indicating the selector's favorite lines-it is as though a friend took down volume after volume from our shelves; read aloud their choicest passages; marked, by the emphasis of his voice, what he liked the best; and interspersed his readings with brief, graceful, deep-felt comments on the author and his ideas. They are truly most genial, agreeable, social books.

tricks as the kitten;"-on which Mr. Hunt proceeds thus to speak, much to the purpose:

"I confess I felt this so strongly when I began to reflect on the present subject, and found myself so perplexed with the demand, that I was forced to reject plan after plan, and feared I should never be able to give any tolerable account of the matter. I experienced no such difficulty with the concentrating seriousness and sweet attraction of the subject of. Imagination and Fancy;' but this laughing jade of a topic, with her endless whims and faces, and the legions of indefinable shapes that she brought about me, seemed to do nothing but scatter my faculties, or bear them off deridingly into pastime. I felt as if I was undergoing a Saint Anthony's Temptation reversed-a laughable instead of a frightful one. Thousands of merry devils poured in upon me from all sides-doubles of Similes, buffooneries of Burlesques, stalkings of Mock-heroics, stings in the tails of Epigrams, glances of Innuendos, dry looks of Ironies, corpulences of Exaggerations, ticklings of mad Fancies, claps on the back of Horse-plays, complacencies of Unawarenesses, flounderings of Absurdities, irresistibilities of Iterations, significancies of Jargons, wailings of Pretended Woes, roarings of Laughters, and hubbubs of Animal Spirits; all so general yet particular, so de-. manding distinct recognition, and yet so baffling, the attempt with their numbers and their confusion that a thousand masquerades in one would have seemed to threaten less torment to the pen of a reporter."

This is followed up by the celebrated catalogue raisonné of the phenomena of Wit which occurs in Barrow's Sermons, (the local habitation of this exposition being itself an unconscious play of Humor;) and with brief allusion to the more prominent English writers on wit and humor. Mr. Hunt then sketches his own simple, non-metaphysical plan: "I resolved to confine myself to what was in some measure a new, and might at all events be not an undesirable or least satisfactory mode of discussion, namely, as thorough an account as I could give of the principal forms both of Wit and Humor, accompanied with examples." To his enumeration, however, he has prefixed some felicitous remarks. on laughter, wit, and humor, which contain all the metaphysics of the matter with which his readers need to trouble themselves :

The illustrative essay to this volume of Wit and Humor sets off in a happy mood, pervaded with the spirit of its subject. It reads as if the essence of all the good sayings of all the wits and humorists in "We are so constituted that the mind is wilwhose writings the author had been revelling while lingly put into any state of movement not actually culling his samples and simples, mixing with his painful; perhaps because we are then made poten own animal spirits and love for keeping up the ball tially alive to our existence, and feel ourselves a of merriment, had broken forth in irresistible over-match for the challenge. Hobbes refers all laughflow of playful imagery. A good-natured jest at Dr. King the civilian, "one of the minor, or rather the minim poets who have had the good luck to get into the collections," introduces the remark that laughable fancies have at least as many ways of expressing themselves as those which are lachrymose; gravity tending to the fixed and monotonous, like the cat on the hearth, while levity has as many

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* Republished by Wiley & Putiam, in their Choice
Library.
CXL.
VOL. XII. 7

LIVING AGE.

ter to a sense of triumph and glory;' and upon the principle here expressed, his opinion seems to be justifiable; though I cannot think it entirely so on the scornful ground implied by him. His limitation of the cause of laughter looks like a saturnine self-sufficiency. There are numerous occasions, undoubtedly, when we laugh out of a contemptuous sense of superiority, or at least when we think we

do so.

But on occasions of pure mirth and fancy, we only feel superior to the pleasant defiance which is given to our wit and comprehension; we tri

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