A VERY interesting trial for murder took | place lately in Austria. The prisoner, Anna Alexander, was acquitted by the jury, who, in the various questions put to the witnesses, in order to discover whether the murdered man, Lieutenant Mathew Wurzel, was a poison-eater or not, educed some very curious evidence relating to this class of persons. As it is not generally known that eating poison is actually practised in more countries than one, the following account of the custom, given by a physician, Dr. T. Von Tschudi, will not be without interest. In some districts of Lower Austria, and in Styria, especially in those mountainous parts bordering on Hungary, there prevails the strange habit of eating arsenic. The peasantry in particular are given to it. They obtain it under the name of hedri, from the travelling hucksters and gatherers of herbs, who, on their side, get it from the glass-blowers, or purchase it from the cow-doctors, quacks, or mountebanks. The poison-eaters have a twofold aim in their dangerous enjoyment; one of which is to obtain a fresh, healthy appearance, and acquire a certain degree of embonpoint. On this account, therefore, gay village lads and lasses employ the dangerous agent, that they may become more attractive to each other; and it is really astonishing with what favorable results their endeavors are attended, for it is just the youthful poison-eaters that are, generally speaking, distinguished by a blooming complexion, and an appearance of exuberant health. Out of many examples, I select the following: A farm-servant who worked in the cowhouse belonging to was thin and pale, but nevertheless well and healthy. This girl had a lover whom she wished to enchain still more firmly; and in order to obtain a more pleasing exterior, she had recourse to the well-known means, and swallowed every week several doses of arsenic. The desired result was obtained; and in a few months she was much fuller in figure, rosy-cheeked, and, in short, quite according to her lover's taste. In order to increase the effect, she was so rash as to increase the dose of arsenic, and fell a victim to her vanity; she was poisoned, and died an agonizing death. The number of deaths in consequence of the immoderate enjoyment of arsenic is not inconsiderable, especially among the young. Every priest who has the cure of souls in those districts where the abuse prevails could tell of such tragedies; and the inquiries I have myself made on the subject have opened out very singular details. Whether it arise from fear of the law, which forbids the unauthorized possession of arsenic, or whether it be that an inner voice proclaims to him his sin, the arsenic-eater always conceals as much as possible the employment of these dangerous means. Generally speaking, it is only the confessional or the death-bed that raises the veil from the terrible secret. The second object the poison-eaters have in view is to make them, as they express it, "better winded!"—that is, to make their respiration easier when ascending the mountains. Whenever they have far to go and to mount a considerable height, they take a minute morsel of arsenic, and allow it gradually to dissolve. The effect is surprising; and they ascend with ease heights which otherwise they could climb only with distress to the chest. The dose of arsenic with which the poisoneaters begin, consists, according to the confession of some of them, of a piece the size of a lentil, which in weight would be rather less than half a grain. To this quantity, which they take fasting several mornings in the week, they confine themselves for a considerable time; and then gradually, and very carefully, they increase the dose according to the effect produced. The peasant R—— living in the Parish of A――g, a strong, hale man of upwards of sixty, takes at present, at every dose, a piece of about the weight of four grains. For more than forty years he has practised this habit, which he inherited from his father, and which he in his turn will bequeath to his children. It is well to observe, that neither in these nor in other poison-eaters is there the least trace of an arsenic cachexy discernible; that the symptoms of a chronic arsenical poisoning never show themselves in individuals who adapt the dose to their constitution, even although that dose should be considerable. It is not less worthy of remark, however, that when, either from inability to obtain the acid, or from any other cause, the perilous indulgence is stopped, symptoms of illness are sure to appear, which have the closest resemblance to those produced by poisoning from arsenic. These symptoms consist principally in a feeling of general discomfort, attended by a perfect indifference to all surrounding persons and things, great personal anxiety, and various distressing sensations arising from the digestive organs, want of appetite, a constant feeling of the stomach being overloaded at early morning, an unusual degree of salivation, a burning from the pylorus to the throat, a cramp-like movement in the pharynx, pains in the stomach, and especially difficulty of breathing. For all these symptoms there is but one remedy-a return to the enjoyment of arsenic. According to inquiries made on the subject, it would seem that the habit of eating poison among the inhabitants of Lower Austria has not grown into a passion, as is the case with the opium-eaters in the East, the chewers of the betel nut in India and Polynesia, and of the cocoa-tree among the natives of Peru. When once commenced, however, it becomes a necessity. In some districts sublimate of quicksilver is used in the same way. One case in particular is mentioned by Dr. von Tschudi, a case authenticated by the English ambassador at Constantinople, of a great opium-eater at Brussa, who daily consumed the enormous quantity of forty grains of corrosive sublimate with his opium. In the mountainous parts of Peru the doctor met very frequently with eaters of corrosive sublimate; and in Bolivia the practice is still more frequent, where this poison is openly sold in the market to the Indians. In Vienna the use of arsenic is of everyday occurrence among horse-dealers, and especially with the coachmen of the nobility. They either shake it in a pulverized state among the corn, or they tie a bit the size of a pea in a piece of linen, which they fasten to the curb when the horse is harnessed, and the saliva of the animal soon dissolves it. The sleek, round, shining appearance of the carriage-horses, and especially the much-ad | * mired foaming at the mouth, is the result of this arsenic feeding. It is a common practice with the farm-servants in the mountainous parts to strew a pinch of arsenic on the last feed of hay before going up a steep road. This is done for years without the least unfavorable result; but should the horse fall into the hands of another owner who withholds the arsenic, he loses flesh immediately, is no longer lively, and even with the best feeding there is no possibility of restoring him to his former sleek appearance. The above particulars, communicated by a contributor residing in Germany, are curious only inasmuch as they refer to poisons of a peculiarly quick and deadly nature. Our ordinary indulgences' in this country are the same in kind, though not in degree, for we are all poison-eaters. To say nothing of our opium and alcohol consumers, our tectotallers are delighted with the briskness and sparkle of spring-water, although these qualities indicate the presence of carbonic acid or fixed air. In like manner, few persons will object to a drop or two of the frightful corrosive, sulphuric acid, (vitriol,) in a glass of water, to which it communicates an agreeably acid taste; and most of us have, at some period or other of our lives, imbibed prussic acid, arsenic, and other deadly poisons, under the orders of the physician, or the first of these in the more pleasing form of confectionery. Arsenic is said by Dr. Pearson to be as harmless as a glass of wine in the quantity of one sixteenth part of a gain; and in the cure of agues it is so certain in its effects, that the French Directory once issued an edict ordering the surgeons of the Italian army, under pain of military punishment, to banish that complaint, at two or three days' notice, from among the vast numbers of soldiers who were languishing under it in the marshes of Lombardy. It would seem that no poison taken in small and diluted doses is immediately hurtful, and the same thing may be said of other agents. The tap of a fan, for instance, is a blow, and so is the stroke of a club; but the one gives an agreeable sensation, and the other fells the recipient to the ground. In like manner the analogy holds good between the distribution of a blow over a comparatively large portion of the surface of the body and the dilution or distribution of the particles of a poison. A smart thrust upon the breast, for instance, with a foil does no injury; but if * Arsenic produces an increased salivation. the button is removed, and the same momen- | producing instant death, and the drunkard tum thus thrown to a point, the instrument dies of the want of drink! Many persons, enters the structures, and perhaps causes it cannot be denied, reach a tolerable age undeath. der this stimulus; but they do so only by taking warning in time-perhaps from some frightful illness-and carefully proportioning the dose to the sinking constitution. "I cannot drink now as formerly," is a common remark-sometimes elevated into the boast, "I do not drink now as formerly." But the relaxation of the habit is compulsory; and by a thousand other tokens, as well as the inability to indulge in intoxication, the ci-devant drinker is reminded of a madness which even in youth produced more misery than enjoyment, and now adds a host of discomforts to the ordinary fragility of age. As for arseniceating, we trust it will never be added to the madnesses of our own country. Think of a man deliberately condemning himself to devour this horrible poison, on an increasing scale, during his whole life, with the certainty that if at any time, through accident, necessity, or other cause, he holds his hand, he must die the most agonizing of all deaths! In so much horror do we hold the idea, that we would have refrained from mentioning the subject at all if we had not observed a paragraph making the round of the papers, and describing the agreeable phases of the practice without mentioning its shocking results. But the misfortune is, that poisons swallowed for the sake of the agreeable sensations they occasion owe this effect to their action upon the nervous system; and the action must be kept up by a constantly increasing dose till the constitution is irremediably injured. In the case of arsenic, as we have seen, so long as the excitement is undiminished all is apparently well; but the point is at length reached when to proceed or to turn back is alike death. The moment the dose is diminished or entirely withdrawn, symptoms of poison appear, and the victim perishes because he has shrunk from killing himself. It is just so when the stimulant is alcohol. The morning experience of the drinker prophesies, on every succeeding occasion, of the fate that awaits him. It may be pleasant to get intoxicated, but to get sober is horror. The time comes, however, when the pleasure is at an end, and the horror remains. When the habitual stimulus reaches its highest, and the undermined constitution can stand no more, then comes the reaction. If the excitement could go on ad infinitum, the prognosis would be different; but the poison-symptoms appear as soon as the dose can no longer be increased without A SKETCH OF MAZZINI.-A correspendent of the Edinburgh News, who lately spent an evening in London with M. Mazzini, thus attempts to convey an idea of the striking personal appearance of the trium vir:-"I should have known him among a million, although I cannot describe him, not having the gift of portraiture. The pictures of him which are in common circulation, are sufficiently like him before you have seen him, and perhaps afterwards too, but I have not come on one of them since that evening. A delicate but indeficient back-head, a bald coronal region of wonderful height and amplitude, a brow proper more remarkable for beauty than volume, and more expressive of keenness than power, dark eyes fitter for pity than defiance, and a thin, regular, long, pale, Persian face, are the first things that catch the eye of a stranger. The coalblack hair of the head and untouched beard yield fitting shadows, and form an appropriate ground for so eminent a countenance, surmounting, as it does, a small and slender figure. I soon perceived that, with all its beauty, it is a melancholy face; a most thoughtful, not unremembering, faithful, hopeful, yet | sad countenance. It struck me, however, as being LITERARY MISCELLANY. THE principal new works issued in Great Britain, and noticed by the critical journals, and in which American readers have an interest, are enumerated below. BISTORY, TRAVELS, AND BIOGRAPHY. The Life of Hon. Henry Cavendish, with an ab stract of his more important scientific papers, presents the only biography of this remarkable philosopher. As marking a phase in the progress of chemistry, it is an important contribution to the history of science. It vindicates, of course, Cavendish's claim to the discovery of the composition of water, and goes into a reply to the celebrated article of Sir David Brewster, in the North British Review, which claimed the honor for Watt. The work is praised as clear, scholarly, and impartial. Lord Mahon has added the fifth and sixth volumes to his " History of England from the Peace of Utrecht," which extend over seventeen years, embracing the period immediately preceding and during our war of Independence. The Athenæum, after indicating in a comprehensive sketch of the events embraced in this period, its importance as an historical era, remarks of Lord Mahon's qualifi cations thus: "But Lord Mahon is too timid-too conventionally respectable-for such a work. What he has done on a large scale, he has done well enough; just as might be expected from his culture and his political leaning. The tangled web of court and ministerial intrigue is unravelled, exhibited, and knitted up again by him with a minute dexterity to which works like that of Mr. Adolphus can make no pretension. The origin and progress of discontent in America, as they appear to one having no sympathy with revolutions, are traced with a copious preciseness, and in the new light of a purely Englishwithout being a high Tory-point of view. The other-perhaps the most essential-part of the historian's task, Lord Mahon has gone over in an extremely brief, vague, and unsatisfactory manner. With the exception of a short chapter on literature and art placed, in the manner of Hume, at the end of his work, as if these subjects had only an incidental and altogether subsidiary connection with the history of the time, some eight or nine pages are all that he devotes, out of nearly eleven hundred, to the entire range of topics embraced in the term 'social history.' The Literary Gazette speaks of the author and the work in high eulogy : "It is always with extreme satisfaction that we read the announcement that Lord Mahon has accom. plished another stage of his journey. From the peace of Utrecht, where his charming narrative begins, up to our own day, we have no classic historian who has gathered up the scattered events, which are else like water spilt upon the ground. Great deeds are lost without great writers, who can raise themselves by an effort of the imagination to the high conceptions of the original actor, and can feel both the glow of the iron while in the furnace, and resemble the metal when it has cooled. History, to be sure, deals with the little as well as with the lofty, but he who is equal to cope with the last, will not be vanquished by the former. Mr. Macaulay is advancing upon the heels of Lord Mahon. Yet it must be some years, at least, before he can reach the goal which is Lord Mahon's starting-place; and should he ever tread the same path, he will not, we are convinced, efface the footsteps of his predecessor. That Mr. Macaulay will sustain his honors we have no sort of doubt, but we believe that Lord Mahon will keep his likewise. The only difference will be, that we shall have the pleasure thenceforward of travelling the road with a lamp on each side of us. Nay, great as is Lord Mahon's reputation, we expect it to be greater hereafter." It may be stated that Lord Mahon, after a deliberate discussion, decides the author of the Junius Letters to be Sir Philip Francis. D'Israeli's Life of Lord George Bentinck attracts general notice, and meets with diverse treatment. The Athenæum thinks that "dryness and D'Israeli were never so strongly associated as in this volume; about one fifth only of which is interesting to the general reader." The Britannia, on the other hand, regards it as a most successful specimen of biography. A translation of a new work by the indefatigable German traveller, Kohl, has appeared-Travels in Istria, Dalmatia, and Montenegro-the result of an excursion made during the past year, along the tion had been directed to the inhabitants of these eastern coasts of the Adriatic, partly because attencoasts by some of the events of the late Hungarian and partly because our information respecting the territories and inhabitants of Istria, Dalmatia, and Montenegro, is somewhat meagre. The Literary Gazette remarks: war, "What we respect in Herr Kohl, is the absence of pretence, and the conscientious matter-of-fact manner in which he proceeds to discharge the limited duties which he has imposed upon himself." Narrative of the Voyage of the Rattlesnake, by John Macgillivray-a history of an exploring expedition sent out in 1846, to complete the survey of Torres Strait, and examining the sea between the Barrier Reefs, New Guinea, and the Louisiade islands, under the command of Capt. Stanley, a son of the late Bishop of Norwich. This voyage made the important discovery of a clear channel, of at least thirty miles wide, along the southern shores of New Guinea. The work, as descriptive of the voyage, and of the countries visited, is highly commended. The Examiner says:— "Mr. Macgillivray has here published one of the best books of travels of its class which has fallen under our notice for many years. It is indeed second only to one to which all books of maritime travels are likely to be second for a long time to come, we mean that portion of the Narrative of the Voyage of the Adventure and Beagle' which is Mr. Charles Darwin's. The judicious narrator of the Expedition has been no idle observer of the strange countries and stranger people that were brought under his notice in his four years' peregrination, and hence the public is presented with much varied knowledge, not only regarding his own special scientific pursuits, but relating to the rude and strange men of whom little or nothing was known before, and about whom, it must also be admitted, much remains still to be known." Others of the best critical journals speak as well of the work. Memoir of Peer Ibraheem Khan, is a curious work, portraying the life of a remarkable character, who took an active and most important part in the English war in Afghanistan. His character and his deeds are highly praised in Major Herbert Edwardes interesting account of his campaign on the Punjaub frontier. Holland's Life of Chantrey, the sculptor, is sharply censured for its inadequacy, by the Westminster: "It is of the very lowest order of the Memoires pour servir,' redeemed from utter worthlessness by the few facts concerning Chantrey which the local knowledge of the writer has enabled him to rescue from oblivion for the use of the future biographer. The alternate puerility and inflation of Mr. Holland's style, and the seriousness with which he makes all his calculations from the meridian of Sheffield, are at the turning point between the tiresome and the amusing." The Life and Letters of Barthold George Niebuhr, with Essays on his Character and Influence, by the Chevalier Bunsen, and Professors Brandis and Loebel, is announced as in press, and is eagerly waited for. Mr. Dickens' Child's History of England has been reprinted from his Household Words, and is a work of great merit. The Lives of the Prime Ministers and other Eminent Ministers of State, by J. Houston Browne, is announced. The Shrines and the Sepulchres of the Old and New Worlds, by Dr. R. R. Madden, a work of great 1esearch, is about to be published. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places, and People, by Mary Russell Mitford, is in the press of Bentley. A new historical work by Miss Martineau is an nounced--a History of the British Empire during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, to be published in monthly parts. The ninth and tenth volumes of Grote's History of Greece, republished in elegant form in this country, by Messrs. J. P. JEWETT & Co., Boston, are announced as nearly ready. lectures on the same subject. The struggles of the Reformation in the Sclavonic lands of Bohemia and Poland are detailed, and the historical and biographical sketches are admirably drawn. GENERAL LITERATURE. Dr. Latham, the celebrated ethnologist, has published two works recently. A Handbook of the English Language, which is commended by nearly all critics. The Athenæum says: "No man has done more than Dr. Latham to place the study of English on its proper footing. By his philosophical treatment of it, he has raised it to the dignity which it deserves, and shown that, while an essential in the earliest education of children, it is not unworthy to hold a high place in college pursuits. His present work is a sort of medium between his large and school grammars. It is rendered much more interesting, as well as more useful, to a student than the school grammar, by containing not merely a greater number of facts, but also a more copious discussion of principles and a fuller explanation of the origin and reasons of particular usages. On the other hand, it is less abstruse and more practical than the large work on the English language." The other work of Dr. Latham is entitled, The Germania of Tacitus, with Ethnological Dissertations and Notes, which does not receive quite so genial a reception. The Examiner sharply criticises it as follows: "We fancy that a close ethnological examination, if it could be made, would prove to us that Dr. R. G. Latham and Mr. G. P. R. James come of exactly the same variety under a common stock. Both are clever men, and neither gives himself fair play. They will be for ever sprouting and leafing, and they will not let themselves be pruned. They build a mass of books upon a given, not very wide, base; a mass like the body of a top, upon a limited, though durable and colid peg; and down the mass must go, by its own weight, if it be not kept spinning. Dr. Latham, having acquired a certain number of respectable ideas connected with ethnology and language, proceeded to make admirable use of his acquirements in the production of a work upon 'the English language. That work perhaps contained some pomps and affectations-we thought we saw some, but we did not care. The book was a good book, nobody has given us a better of its kind. But having produced this his main joint, Dr. Latham has since been putting it we do not know how many times again upon the public table, cold, hashed, fried, potted. We liked the joint when first served. We did not grumble when it was offered again, cold; we accepted it thereafter, hashed; not many weeks ago, when it came up again fried, we binted a hope that there remained no other ways of cooking it; and now, Heaven help us, here we have a stew made of the trimmings." Douglas Jerrold is engaged in issuing a uniform edition of his numerous writings, the second volume of which, containing his "Men of Character," England and France under the House of Lancas-originally contributed to Blackwood, has been just ter, is also announced, from an anonymous source. Sketch of the Religious History of the Sclavonic Nations, is a new work, by Count Krasinski, who has delivered at Edinburgh interesting courses of published. Of course, they are well received. The Athenæun knows "of but few better counsels that we could offer in the interest of our readers' good spirits, and of the humanities which delight in wise wit and witty wisdom,' than a recommendation to |