were cut off from all intercourse with other parts, for the land was then, in most places, very marshy and swampy, and whenever there was much rain, the villages were mere islands in the midst of mud and water. Many parts too, which are now occupied by pleasant corn fields and thriving farms, were then covered with forests, in which were found wild beasts, which rendered it unsafe to travel by night. Many of the people were in a state of slavery or serfdom, even for many years after this. These were nearly in the same state as the negro slaves of the United States of America at the present time. But there was this great difference in their favour, that although they were bought or sold with the land on which they lived, as a part of the estate, they could not be bought or sold in any other way, so that children were not separated from their parents, or wives from their husbands, as is now done where slavery exists. The slaves were generally persons who had either been guilty of some crime, or had been taken prisoners in war, or else they were the descendants of such persons. Above them, there was a class called "freed-men," these were generally employed as servants or labourers, but had liberty to change their masters whenever they chose, just as working men have now. A higher class of these were the free-men, many of whom were possessed of large property. Some of them were landed proprietors; others were engaged in commerce, to encourage which Athelstane ordered that any merchant who had made three voyages across the sea, should become entitled to the rank of a Thane or nobleman, that being the highest rank next to royalty.

Slaves were, at a later date, sold at £2 to £3. They were bartered, driven hither and thither, and exchanged in every possible way. Even Alfred and Athelstane, determined and powerful monarchs, were unable to stay the progress of domestic slavery, while, long afterwards, the foreign slave trade, as an exporting business, prevailed largely. The country was then populous, or it could not have sustained the long and terrible struggles of the times; and it was wealthy, or it could not have paid the quantities of bullion exacted frequently by the sea kings.

Physic and its Phases; the Rule of Right and the Reign of Wrong. By ALCIPHRON, the "Modern Athenian." London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. Pp. 76, sewed.

WE happened to open this poetical attack upon medical practice-we say neither quackery nor science-at page 14, and there fell upon lines that we deemed worthy in their subject and themselves of being circulated widely; and we determined to help that work. Dr. Thompson's courage at Alma has not been noticed sufficiently. He is dead-died probably from his exertions upon that field; but some farther notice than has yet occurred might be taken of bravery far greater than is absolutely necessary to charge even on the cannon's mouth. We had the lines set before we had read the work itself—a practice of which we are not frequently guilty; and although they occupy rather more space than we can easily spare, yet they form a tribute, earned well, to two medical men, who were examples to a doubly hazardous profession:

--

There was a ship the "Eclair," which for months and for moons,

Had cruised along the African lagoons-
The terror-as her seamen loved to boast-
Of every slaver on the Western coast;
All things went well and bravely with ship,
Till Fever met her in her homeward ship,
Then corpse on corpse was lowered o'er her side,
And soon the surgeons sickened too and died,
But home she got-how, is a marvel still !
Her hands were so reduced-and half were ill;
Yet even on English waters nought could check
The Fever-demon that assailed her deck.
Who'cer approached the fatal ship was taken
Ill of the pest-yet was she not forsaken.
In that most fearful hour-for on the roll
Of scientific names, was one brave soul,
Who grappled with the foe! Let Britain tell
How Sidney Bernard volunteered and fell,
The sailor's friend. Can Westminster not spare
A tablet for the "Hero of the Eclair!"

And wherefore, soldiers, to our country's shame,
Is there no record yet of Thompson's name!
No stone to mark how that devoted one
By the red Alma, when the fray was done,
In mercy to the wounded of the o'erthrown,
Remained to do his god like work-alone!
Where'er he looked were marks of fire and steel,
Spent shot and shell, dismounted gun and wheel,
The broken sabre, and the cloven helm-
All that could daunt the soul, or overwhelm.
Corpses in heaps, the dead and staggering steed,
And groups ef wounded in their direst need!
Yet there the gallant Scot maintained his post,
Beside a remnant of the Russian host,
Whose wounds-such wonnds! his orders were to dress
And soothe the sufferers in their mad distress.

Foes, to a man. Right pleasant patients they —
Eight hundred Calmucks who had lost the day!
But down he knelt, beneath the lowering heaven,'
And, in pursuance of the orders given,
Went to his duty with a manly heart-
Soldier and Surgeon-true to either part!
With only one attendant, who could speak
His country's tongue, amid unceasing shriek,
And groan, and wail, and cry, woful to hear-
The raven and the vulture hovering near-

There, unappalled by all those sounds and sights,
Nobly he toiled two fearful days and nights,
Limb after limb examined and bound up,
And poured the cordial balsam in the cup;
Desisting only when himself struck down,
The unconscions winner of a world's renown.

The medical poet praises the army and navy surgeons, and reproaches bitterly those of the profession, or the majority of them who enjoy a domestic practice. Even science applied to the medical studies is dealt with in this way :

With test tube, speculum, or stethescopeThree baubles brought by Quackery into vogue. Patients, he informs us, are kept ill because quick cures will not pay. Patients, like professionals, on that account are culpable-because they grudge to pay unless they experience considerable work.

Why meanly grudge to quick and honest skill

The "cheque" you pay the wretch who keeps you ill? 'Dr. Dickson is the hero of this poem. Threefourths of our notable names are the anti-heroes -mean fellows who practise the Dicksonian science, and cut its inventor or originator. Of

course such "gentlemen" will not practice honestly. A considerable part of the "poem" and the "proofs" is directed against the obstetric art as practised now-the writer alleges that it is a job merely a way of living-and not commendable, but being a feminine science, should be in female hands. Dr. Simpson, of Edinburgh, is one object of his sarcasm, not refined, but honest-for the poet is evidently a medical man. A work somewhat similar, in prose, was sent to us some time ago, and was put aside, because the discussion is not the most delicate imaginable, and a little out of our way; but we fancy that this rhymester is to make a noise in the world, and some of the more idealistic professionals may also defend themselves in rhymes.

Memorials of James Watt. By the GREENOCK WATT CLUB. 1 vol., with illustrations.

THE British people, or their descendants, breast the currents of the Mississipi and the Missouri; navigate the central lakes of America, carry commerce up the Magdalena, force a passage through Nicaragua; penetrate into the heart of Africa; link together their Indian empire by its magnificent rivers, win a way up the Murray that has flowed since the creation until now an apparently useless stream; and from the arctic to the torrid zones; over all the globe-in every sea; defy wind and tide, and rivers and currents-because upon the Clyde, half a century since, an ingenious mechanic invented the steam-engine, or rendered useful the crude ideas that had existed formerly on the subject. There is no branch of mechanics which has not been revolutionised by Watt. Onr manufacturing greatness would have been simply impossible without his, or some similar, invention. The advantages that men expect, and those that they have received from railways are all the work of his mind. The superior clothing of the living generation springs from the steam engine. The superior culture of the earth that we are told to expect soon will originate in the same potent agency. The last generation produced no man to whom mankind are more universally indebted than

James Watt.

We are not surprised that Greenock should be proud of this illustrious son. Scotland is distinguished because he was a Scotsman. It would be strange, therefore, if his native town had not an efficient club in honour of his memory-one which might induce others to emulate his example. The volume recently issued by that body contains many curious particulars respecting the origin and early life of Mr. Watt, the condition of Greenock, the state of the Clyde, and the rapid progress of the west. These statements are interesting in all quarters, but they must be especially so in the west-the scene of those wonderful changes that

191

have passed over that part of the land since the great rebellion.

The volume is written by the Secretary of the Club, we understand, and reflects great credit alike for its research and its style. The condition of Scotland, before the commencement of Mr. Watt's career, is graphically described in the following paragraph :

If the appearance of the great inventor be held, as it must, to form an important epoch in our national annals, it cannot be here altogether inappropriate to remark, somewhat more distinctly than has yet been done, the character and the exigencies of the period to which the event belongs; illustrating especially, as these circumstances do, many points in our subsequent memorials. The period was one of amazing energy and enterprise throughout the kingdom. We have already seen what indications had been given, in the north, of a national awakening to the importance of foreign trade and the value of home commercial enterprise to the country.

Hitherto commerce and industry in feudal Scotland had been prosecuted rather as a means of existence, than, as now, of princely luxury and refinement.

It was the beginning of a new state of things when, after the Union, the claymore and brand in one part of the country began to be exchanged for the pickaxe and the plough ; while in another, clanship, with its endless feuds, was all but forgotten in the frequent and peaceful labours of the anvil and the loom; when private enterprise felt that it cou'd extend itself securely; when ships began to multiply; when the arrival of foreign commodities rendered a reciprocation of trade both necessary and inevitable; when the resources of the country became the object of attention; when, instead their estates could maintatn ?-a more enlightended and inof the question of feudal lairds-how many belted men terested inquiry came to be, what were the agricultural, mineral, mercantile advantages of their lands ?-when territory accordingly began to be cultivated, the bowels of the earth to be explored, and the produce poured into the eager hands of the manufacturer and the merchant. Population then rapidly increased, and as rapidly became concentrated, in no part of the country more preceptibly than in the west and along the shores of the Firth of Clyde, that splendid estuary, whose waters, skirting the coasts of Renfrewshire, and penetrating far into the richest mineral districts of Lanarkshire, were soon to become the great artery of foreign and domestic opulence to Scotland. Harbours then were built or enlarged, rivers and firths were surveyed, roads, bridges, canals, required by the new inland traffic, were demanded; and, ere the lapse of the first half of the century, under the influence of a few sagacious men, general intre

pidity in many of the productive arts had begun to mark out these favoured spots which have since become the seats of unrivalled manufactures, and of all but unrivalled wealth.

The author of the volume has made himself

intimately acquainted with all the details of Watt's early life; and there is a passage of some length, but of great interest, which we extract, partly to indicate the nature of the volume, but chiefly from its intrinsic worth, and the information it

conveys.

The child Pascal, the great prototype of mathematical precocity-by stealth, it is said, lest he should incur the displeasure of his father, worked out at twelve years of age, with a piece of charcoal on the floor tiles of his chamber, the thirty-second proposition of the first book of Euclid, and that before it seems he had ever heard of a triangle, parallelogram, or circle, or knew the definition of a straight

line. But the recluse of Port-Royal would not, to our mind at least, have been a less great man, though the amiable Gilberte had not by her manner of narrating the attendant

circumstances, done it in terms which went to make a prodigy of her illustrious brother. A modern Pascal-a name hardly less honoured perhaps among the savaus of the Institute than it is familiar in the academic halls of our own country has no miracle of his infancy to point to; and yet Chalmers is not surely the less conspicuous in the walks of science and literature, or less wonderful in the breadth and comprehensiveness of his majestic imagination, because the spark of his mathematical and intellectual genius was only struck out in the third term of his college life, and when he had attained his thirteenth year. No less, it is conceived, can Newton be thought to inherit the title of immortal, because only in his thirteenth year did he begin to astonish his playfellows at Grantham, by the effects of that passion for the mathematics, which soon became with him irresistible. The enduring frame of the great Watt needs no adventitious aid from the marvellous in dealing with the facts of his early life; and he whose little finger is thicker than the loins of any ordinary man, may surely afford to hear without being disconcerted, the boastful jargon of the pigmies around him. At thirteen years of age, young Watt, like that other giant Timnath, when the Philistines were upon him, awoke up into something of his real strength on being put to the study of mathematics. This we conceive to be the true date of his intellectual birth,the happy moment when he took into his hands the mystic key of all scientific knowledge with which, in after years, he was successively to unloose so many of the secrets of nature, and lead manhood to the participation of some of her most precious treasures.

Of the mathematical preceptor of so apt and promising a pupil, too little is unfortunately known that could be very interesting to the reader. In regard to few particulars in the memorials of Watt's youth, is one disposed to lament the scantiness of information more sincerely than in this. His name was John Marr, a name not unknown to historical record. He would seem to have been retained in some capacity in the household and family of the lord of the manor, Sir John Schaw. We have seen his subscription as a witness to some characters granted by Sir John in 1751. In these deeds he is designated John Marr, mathematician, in Greenock. He appears to have had a salary from the town, as in the years 1750 and 1751 there are found in the accounts of the town treasurer more than one payment made to him. Nothing further is known of him than what appears in the records of the society of freemasons, known as the Lodge Greenock Kilwinning, No. 11, of which he was a brother, and in which he acted in some official capacity, having been initiated into the mysteries of the craft in the City of Glasgow. To be able to record more of James Watt's mathematical preceptor would be gratifying, not less on his account than that of his pupil, and the gratification would be proportionately heightened could a relationship, by no means improbable, be happily traced up from him to another John Marr, who was mathematician in the household of King James VI., and friend of the great Napier, of Merchiston. The following anecdote, in which the latter John Marr acts so dramatic a part, is so interesting in itself, and so graphically narrated, that we cannot resist the opportunity of quoting it. Lilly, in his "Life and Times," thus relates the circumstances to Elias Ashmole:-"I will acquaint you with one memorable story related to me by John Marr, an excellent mathematician and geometrician, whom I conceive you remember. He was servant to King James I. and,

Charles I. When Merchiston first published his logarithms Mr. Briggs, then reader of the astronomy lectures at Gresham College, in London, afterwards of Oxford, was so surprised with admiration of them, that he could have no quietness in himself till he had seen that noble person whose only invention they were. He acquaints John Marr therewith, who went into Scotland before Mr. Briggs, purposely to be there, when these two so learned persons simuld meet. Mr. Briggs appointed a certain day when to meet in Edinburgh, but failing thereof, Merchiston was fearful he would not come. It happened one day, as John Marr and the Lord Napier were speaking of Mr. Briggs,—'Oh, John!' said Merchiston, Mr. Briggs will not come now ;' at the very instant one knocks at the gate. John Marr hastened down, and it proved to be Mr. Briggs, to his great contentment. He brings Mr. Briggs into my lord's chamber, where almost one quarter of an hour was spent, each beholding the other with admiration before one word was spoken. At last Mr. Briggs began, My Lord, I have andertaken this long journey purposely to see your person, and to know by what engine of wit and ingenuity you came first to think of this most excellent help unto astronomy, namely, the logarithms; but, my lord, being by you found out, I wonder nobody else found it before, when being found, it appears so easy.' He was nobly entertained by Lord Napier, and every summer after that during the Lairds being alive, this venerable man went purposely to Scotland to visit him." The only other preceptor was Robert Errol, the first master appointed to the grammar school of Greenock, his nomination having taken place as early as the year 1727, in which year he is mentioned for the first time in the town records. It is not known at what age our young geometrician was sent to the grammar school, or how long he continued under the instructions of its zealous and learned pedagogne. There is, however, the best reason for believing that he made good progress, and attained to a creditable proficiency in Latin, and, most probably, the elements of Greek. And although we are not in a position to hazard in regard to him what the great lexicographer said of his own classical attainments,-"That he should never have learnt Latin if it had not been flogged into him,"- -we know that our young philosopher learned his so well, that he is found in his eightysecond year, notwithstanding the contrarieties and occupations of a long and busy life in very different departments of study, making use of his classics with as much discrimination as taste, and delighting even the circles of Edinburgh literati, during its most brilliant epoch, with the extent and correctness of his critical and philological attainments.

This volume is printed in a very tasteful style, worthy of its subject. The illustrations are curious or valuable. The style is clear and distinct. The statements seem all to be carefully weighed. Even the gossip is really excusable and pleasant gossip. Most probably the work will get generally into mechanics' institutions and libraries. It would be a strange circumstance if it did not. And a series of such works, other towns doing for their notables wbat Greenock has done for Watt, would form a splendid addition to our biographical literature.

EDINBURGH

MAGAZINE.

THE

OUR old Saxon or Scotch proverbs embody vast wisdom. They avoid the verbiage of the present day, and come straight to a point. They are, as proverbs must be, experimental or practical, and their numbers would furnish the texts of papers on all topics.

A little spark

Breeds meikle wark.

The condition of Britain and China illustrates the couplet. Some time within the last three to four years a young boatman or labourer on the banks of the Canton river decided to join the rebels. The cause of this impulse in the young fellow's mind, like his appearance, his present existence, his influence, name, or prowess is alike unknown. There was a man, a young man probably, for his father was alive in October last-and he was one of twenty to thirty millions of rebels in China. There was a man-and the man was a rebel-but all beside these bare facts relating to the man is unknown here. In the western world we might suppose that there was a maiden as there was a man, and that the generous heart of the former, being impressed with admiration for the chivalry of Te-Pa-Wing, she had induced the man to swerve from his allegiance to the Mantchoos. That was often the course of love and rebellion in our own country one hundred and twenty years ago, and more; but as in China females are not visible before marriage, and in point of fact courtship with all its diplomacy, excitement, and romance is reduced to the most miserable vulgarity of buying a wife-we can hardly impute blame respecting this man to woman, since it is not probable that the Chinaman's mother incited him to revolt.

A knowledge of the cause of this unknown's rebellion would be most interesting, because it is that little spark which has caused nominally the dissolution of the British Parliament. It is the romance of the house that Jack built, put into modern practice. There is the man-only, where

Ꮃ Ꭺ Ꭱ .

is the man ?-who rebelled against the Emperor of China. Then, here is the man who begot the man who rebelled, &c. Next, here is the ship that carried the man who begot the man that rebelled, &c. Then, here is the flag and the register which covered the ship which carried the man who begot the man, and so on. So, here is Commissioner Yeh, who despised the flag which covered the ship which carried the man-and onwards as before. Next step, here are the policemen who served Yeh, who depised the flag which covered the ship, &c. Then we have Bowring, next Seymour; Palmerston following, and followed by Cobden, by the Parliament, by the Queen, and closed up by the electors of Great Britain--a powerful body indeed to be disturbed in their buying and selling, their ploughing and sowing, by this insignificant person. The story reads thus in extenso:-Here are the electors who obeyed the Queen, who sought new representatives to displace the Parliament, who voted with Derby to turn out Palmerston, who vindicated Bowring, who requested Seymour to terrify Yeh, who ordered the policemen, who trampled the flag which covered the lorcha, which carried the man who begot the man, who rebelled against the Emperor of China.

This sorry business has agitated the country, and we are inclined to believe has made our constitution anything else than the admiration or the envy of surrounding natious; because a certain portion of the peace-at any-price party-even at the price of seventy thousand heads in twelvemonths within one city or province-fraternised, by an unavoidable accident, with the simple Derbyites, in the plan devised by the subtle Peelites to eject the Palmerstonians from the Treasury benches, and share the seats with the Russellites. The Derbyites expected to rule in conjunction with Gladstone, Graham, and Herbert. The Russellites cherished a similar expectation in the same conjunction. The Peelites alone knew

M

their game. Being nothing in the present Parliament, these cherished knights of the late Sir Robert's round table could be little less in the Parliament to come; whereas, if they had gained office for twelvemonths, they might have swelled into importance, and done something to arrest that change in the dispensation of ecclesiastical patronage that galls them so that they wince; and they might have crippled the power and lowered the prestige of the empire-which seems to be their ruling passion ever since they landed the army in the Crimea without knapsacks, and left them to pass the winter without clothes, food, or fuel. The Derbyites were misguided as usual. They trust their astute Earl; too quick this year as he was too slow in 1855. They are the natural enemies of the Liberal party; and, therefore, they adopt any plan that may be presented of disorganising them. They have been deceived in this instance, and have disorganised themselves, for they will be fewer by fifty in the next, than in the past Parliament. For the humanitarian party, as some wag has inhumanly dubbed the class of politicians who are erroneously styled the Manchester school, we admit their inability to make any personal gain by change; and their sincerity in apologising for the atrocious Commissioner Yeh, exactly as a year or two since they found excuses for the despotic Emperor of Russia. The phenomenon is unaccountable; but similar phenomena are not uncommon. Able and honest men in every particular except one, are occasionally defective in one. It is a flaw at which the axle breaks, or the cannon bursts.

Lord John Russell and his few friends are less excusable than either of the other classes of atoms which formed the perfectly fortuitous concourse against the Government upon the 3d current. They are not morbid politicians, but men thoroughly versed in the tactics of parliamentary life. They say that hey could not deny the errors charged against Sir John Bowring, and were obliged to vote consistently with their consciences. We do not refuse the word of gentlemen. Their consciences were extremely sharp and troublesome no doubt on that occasion, but consciences will some.. times speak tartly; yet they might have been quieted by a middle course. The forms of the House of Commons admitted an amendment that might have been a salubrious opiate to these consciences. A man might have come with clean hands out of the trial, who believed Commissioner Yeh to be an innocent, and Sir John Bowring a rollicking savage, without voting against or for Mr. Cobden's resolutions.

It is true, we fear, that not many members expected a resignation of the Ministry in consequence of the vote. Lord John Russell described the dissolution as a penal measure. The dissolution was not considered easy. The Court party were reckoned upon to thwart the minister, but if there be a Court party the Queen is not one of its number, and therefore Parliament was dissolved.

Viscount Palmerston will obtain a majority; but it might have been a larger one than any minister has had for twenty-five years if he had evinced reforming purposes, and if he had not opposed Mr. Locke King's bill for the reduction of the County Franchise. The new Parliament will be decidedly favourable to his foreign policy, but determined to extend the franchise at home, and opposed to domestic obstructions.

Sir John Bowring has been abandoned by his personal friends in this country on this subject. He has been assailed in bitter language by Messrs. Cobden and Roebuck, who do not generally run together, but who were both intimate and personal friends of our representative in China. The coarse invectives of political opponents are not remarkable, for they are not unnatural; but the acquaintance of the politicians whom we have named with the gentleman whose proceedings they censure, should have imparted a tone to their criticisms which they do not possess. They both know that Sir John Bowring when resident in this country opposed war, except in the last extremity. He acted, we believe, as Secretary to the Peace Society, and advocated their principles. He opposed the employment of force until kinduess and persuasion were exhausted. Probably he even went farther, and advocated passive obedience, which is the root of slavery. He was connected with all the measures taken to obtain a complete enfranchisement of our own people. He held opinions on some subjects which we reject, but they are principally of a non-political character; but no man who has observed his career would say, up to this Chinese question, that he was addicted to war. His conduct and his principles rebut the charge. If he be liable to the imputations of his friends, a singular alteration in his character and feelings has occurred.

Even since his official residence in the East, he has been charged with leniency to the Chinese. His decisions were opposed to the interests of the British merchants, between whom and the Chinese authorities differences had arisen. He always appeared to give the Chinese the benefit of any doubts. He did not interfere in favour of the revolutionists, whom he might have essentially served. He even has been accused of indirectly aiding the Imperialists. We might ask his late friends with confidence, whether any British official exists whose antecedents would render a charge of cruelty and oppression on a grand scale against him less likely to be true. They say that their charges are supported by the papers produced in Parliament. We think that they are not; ba even if they were, we dislike the condemnation expressed in certain quarters. The crimes o errors of an old friend who has long followed satisfactory course should not be overlooked in silence, but they should be treated in sorrow.

The papers contain all the inculpatory evidenc that exists; for the private information from Chin is in Sir John's favour. He is supported by al