From the Economist.

SMALL POX IN SHEEP.

WITH respect to the sheep small pox, Mr. J. B. Simonds, of the Royal Veterinary College, in a communication to the Board of Trade, says, "I fear it (the disease) may be said to be naturalized in this kingdom. I would recommend that means are taken to obtain correct information, through the magistracy, of the present extent of the malady, as I have reason to believe that great mischief has resulted from the commingling of flocks, the farmer suppressing the true cause of death among his sheep, and not hesitating to send animals for

sale which had been exposed to the contagion. The

infected sheep should be confined to the separate

farms, and none should be allowed to enter a fair or market, if coming from places where the disease prevails; for the malady may have been received, and be incubated in the system, without any evidence of this being shown by the animals." In a subsequent letter, Mr. Simonds says that vaccination cannot be depended on as a preventive of the small pox of sheep; but that it is a wellestablished fact that inoculation gives security against second attacks, and greatly diminishes the severity of the disease. He recommends that lambs should always be inoculated, keeping them separate from the sheep during the progress of the

inoculated disease; and he says, also, that, even after small pox has shown itself in the flock, it is of great value, and "may be said to be our chief means of controlling the virulence of the affection." Col. Hodges, the British consul at Hamburg, says that, in Mecklenburg Schwerin, " a law exists, which directs all owners of flocks not only to acquaint their neighbors when the disease appears among their sheep, but also obliges them to circulate information of its breaking out in the country newspapers." Baron Biel, of Zieron, in Mecklenburg, says, "It is considered to be an epidemic, which, when once it appears, is contagious in the highest degree. Inoculation, however, prevents the danger almost entirely; and where properly attended to, reduces loss amongst flocks to about two per cent." A German correspondent of Col. Hodges thus describes the disease and its treatment:

once in a flock it is contagious, but not so among cattle. During this disease, good hay, and drinks of a decoction of barley, are good, to which a little common salt may be added. At the commencement of the disease the nose and mouth must be kept clean with vinegar and water; the eyelids are to be often washed with warm milk, and an electuary of three parts flower of brimstone, and one part common salt and honey, is a useful remedy. But I am decidedly of opinion that inoculation of the whole flock the moment the disease shows itself, even in one in the neighborhood, is the only preservative.

And the following account of the disease by Mr. G. Warnecke, a veterinary surgeon of great

experience in Hamburg, should be read and re

membered by farmers and all other persons who

have to do with stock:

The first symptoms are, that the animal becomes lame or stiff in the hind legs, is uneasy, will not feed, &c.

After this the fever commences with shivering and trembling, with increased heat of the body, but the ears and tail particularly become very red, the nostrils and gums dry and hot; the animal stands with drooping head, and the feet are close together under the belly; it is lame, or halts, particularly with the hind legs; the ears hang, the eye is blood-shot; the fever increases, as also the difficulty of breathing; the animal feeds and ruminates little, or not

at all; its dry dung passes in very small hard balls.

Soon after the first attack of fever, there appear on all the bare parts of the body, particularly about the mouth, eyes, and on the inner surface of the leg and belly, and the under part of the tail, numerous small spots like flea bites, which in eight or nine days come more out in small pimples, and in forms like the heads of small pox. As the spots become more numerous, the swelling of the head increases, so much so that the animal can but with difficulty open its mouth and eyes: the lumps that have formed fill, in three or four days later, with a pale, clear, white matter. The pustules now formed are of a good sort, and differ in size up to that of a pea. They are found mostly on the parts of the body with no wool on, but they may even be found under the wool. The malignant pustules are found close together, of a red, violet, blue, blackish, or brown red color, with a blue margin; they are broad, flat, and sunk in, and emit an offensive smell.

The animal stands unsteady, with drooping and swollen head, and closed eye; the nostrils are stopped up with a tough viscous matter, smelling like carrion; it breathes very short, and with diffi

and its evacuations emit a very offensive odor: in this latter state a cure is not possible.

On the first attack of the common "variola," the animal must be well taken care of, and must not be exposed to cold or wet, and drinks must be administered to it of salts, bitters and spices.

The last stage of the disease, when it terminates favorably, is marked by the drying away of the sore, on which a black scurf forms and falls off. The animal has the disease, as with man, only

As a preventive, inoculation with healthy matter, if obtainable, is the best, as thereby the inoculated animal throws out only a few of the pustules, the sickness from which it can easily get over, and

the disease.

Let every one watch for the first sign of the disease in his flock, and then have immediate re

From the London Morning Chronicle. THE CHOLERA.

THE unknown must be blended with the terrible to produce the sublimity of fear; traditionary impressions of bygone horrors grow weak and faint as contemporary witnesses die away; and an entire nation cannot be thrown into a phrenzied state of alarm in 1848, by precisely the same causes, and in precisely the same manner, as in 1832. The threatened approach of the Asiatic cholera is contemplated with the most perfect calmness, almost amounting to indifference, at this time; and we are far from wishing to disturb an equanimity, which may do something to avert, and a great deal to mitigate the evil. But, at the same time, it is best to familiarize ourselves with its features, however loathsome, and be prepared to recognize and grapple with it from the first hour it manifests itself. The East Indies are its birth and resting place. It broke out in the Delta of the Ganges in 1817, and arrived in England in 1831, occupying sixteen years on the journey. Just sixteen years have elapsed since it disappeared from England, and started fresh from the Bengalese. Its comet-like course, therefore, would seem to be subjected to rules, although these have hitherto baffled science. Nothing can be more irregular than its course. It jumps over enormous spaces, and then retraces its steps, as if to repair the omission. It runs down one bank of a river for several hundred miles, and never touches the other bank. It has dealt the same with streets.

In Paris, it has happened that all the inmates in the upper and lower stories of a house lay dying, whilst not a single persons in the middle stories fell ill. "We have on record (says Colonel Rowles, as quoted in Mr. Challice's pamphlet) an instance of one side of a ship, in the Madras roads, being struck by cholera, while the other side was untouched; nor did the men on the side not attacked by it afterwards suffer, although they attended upon their afflicted companions, and buried them, that is, threw them into the sea, as they successively died." This gentleman adds that the cholera is considered by the native Indian doctors to arise from animal miasma, consisting of

worst stage, in order to bring the contagion question to the proof.

The first known case in Great Britain broke out in Sunderland, in October, 1831. The disease was not formally announced in London till February, 1832. The greatest number of deaths was in the densely populated quarters near the river; but the average mortality of the metropolis was not much increased, and the bills of mortality lead to the conclusion that the influenza is as destructive in this country as the cholera. The scene of the most fearful ravages of cholera was France, or rather Paris, which it reached on March the 2d, 1832; passing over the intervening localities, and springing from the English to the French capital at a bound.

Both Italian and English literature have drawn freely on the plague. Boccaccio and Manzoni, Defoe, with his graphic details, and "Eothen," with his mocking pathos, have flung an appalling charm over it. But it remained for a French poet, Barthelemy, to personify and poetize the cholera; and for a French historian, M. Louis Blanc, to commemorate its exploits in the loftiest style of history. The chapter devoted to this subject in "The History of the Ten Years," is one of the most eloquent in a work abounding in eloquence. "Terror at first did not seem to keep pace with the danger. The plague had surprised the Parisians in the midst of the festivities of mid-Lent; and the intrepid gayety of the French character seemed at first to brave the destructive malady. The streets and boulevards were thronged with masks as usual; the promenaders mustered in great numbers. People amused themselves with looking at caricatures in the shop-windows, the subject of which was the cholera morbus. The theatres were filled in the evening. There were young men who, in the extravagance of their fool-hardiness, plunged into unusual excesses. Since we are to die to-morrow, they said, let us exhaust all the joys of life to-day. Most of these rash youth passed from the masked ball to the Hotel Dieu, and died before sunset next day." The higher classes were not spared in Paris; and as many of them as could find conveyances took flight. But the royal family set a noble example by remaining; and the heir-apparent, the lamented Duke of Orleans, made a personal tour of inspection through the hospitals. Casimir Perier (the President of the Council) accompanied him, and "this was an incontestible proof of courage on the part of a man who had long carried the seeds of death within him, whose nerves were irritable to excess, and who shuddered at the mere idea of a coffin." He never recovered from the impression, and he died three weeks afterwards.

There was a period when the deaths in Paris were calculated at 1300 or 1400 a day. Hearses fell short, and recourse was had to artillery wagons. "These having no springs, the violent jolting burst the coffins, the bodies were thrown out, and the pavement was stained with them." The people went mad with terror, believed the wildest fictions, and indulged in the most dreadful atrocities. It was rumored that the deaths were all owing to poison, and that there was no such thing as cholera at all. "Then you might behold all the horrid secrets of modern civilization displayed in the rolling billows of a seething population. From those darksome quarters where misery hides its forgotten head, the capital was suddenly inundated by multitudes of bare-armed men, whose gloomy faces glared with hate. What sought they? What did they demand? They never told this, only they explored the city with prying eyes, and ran about with ferocious mutterings. Murders soon occurred." A Jew was killed because he laughed in a strange manner and carried a packet of white powder (which turned out to be camphor) in his hand. A young man was butchered for looking into a wine-seller's window, and a coal-porter made his dog tear the dead body. Private subscriptions poured in on all sides; every imaginable precaution was taken by the authorities; the medical men made superhuman efforts; but no common method of treatment having been agreed upon, the most opposite systems were pursued, even in the same hospital or the same ward. "The attendants had to execute directly opposite orders for cases perfectly identical: the patient who was dosed with punch, saw ice given to the man in the next bed, and thinking himself used only as a subject for experiments, he died with rage in his heart."

Although no specific has yet been discovered, it seems agreed that the stimulating mode of treatment is the best. Bad or unwholesome food of every sort is mentioned as a predisposing cause to cholera.

From the Spectator.

MONCKTON MILNES' LIFE OF KEATS.

IF Jeffrey was correct in asserting that the works of Keats are the best test of a reader's relish of ، pure poetry"-that is, as we understand him, poetry in its very essence, apart from the interest of the story, the vivacity of the characters, the weight and force of the maxims, and the embodied wit and humor-then Keats must stand at the very head of all poets, at least of all English poets. It is not the poetry of Chaucer or Spenser that encumbers their works for the general reader, but the minute detail and remote fashion of Chaucer, and the allegory and pedantry of Spencer's age, together with the diffuseness of both writers. They themselves intended to found the interest of their poems on story, characters,

sentiments, or wit; and these predominate when they are most successful as in Chaucer's tales of actual life, and many of the cantos of Spencer where he vivifies allegory. The subject of Beaumont and Fletcher was the drama: their popularity has passed away, not on account of their poetry, which supports their names, but because of the exceptional vices and crimes they selected as subjects for their tragedies; the grossness of incidents, persons, and sentiments in their comedies; and the predominance of temporary fashions and opinions throughout. The only poet who, on the ground assumed by Jeffrey, could rival Keats was Collins; but, except on subjects purely poetical, as in some of his odes, Collins still sought to produce effect by means of things real in themselves as nature, history, or passion; or real in the mind-as popular superstitions.

Keats him

But the assertion is not accurate. self never appears to have dreamed of founding the ideal on anything but the real. He failed, not through his poetry, but through his faults or his defects. His first and most wearying fault was a self-sufficient habit of outpouring. He never seems to have selected his thoughts, or cared for his diction; he labored nothing and finished nothing. The effect of striking pictures, weighty lines, and descriptions at once natural and poetical, is weakened by prosaic expressions, obsolete, half unintelligible words, and silly mannerisms of the Cockney school; or they are overwhelmed by that species of expansion which distinguishes the platform and the pulpit, and consists in running down a theme. Thus, he opens Endymion with a line of power-" A thing of beauty is a joy forever;" and then he fills three-and-twenty lines in expounding the text, without making it clearer after all.

Deficiency was the great cause of Keats' imperfect productions and his ill-success. He wanted knowledge of life, of literature, and of poetical art. Some sense of his deficiency, probably, drove him upon mythological subjects for his narrative poems; perhaps on the notion that an exploded superstition, where he could not be tested, would better serve and shield him than any subject that came more within the range of men's experience. But it was a mistake. Mr. Monckton Milnes enforces a common idea, that Keats breathed a new life into classicality: Keats did nothing of the sort, in a classical sense. What he did, and it is deserving of great praise, was to strip heathen mythology of the pedantic formality of poetasters, and endow it with a sort of life by introducing living worshippers, and giving human passions to supernatural beings. The spirit, how. ever, was modern; sometimes of his own age, of rather of his literary school; sometimes imitative of the earlier writers. Spencer is visible in him; the impression of pictures, statues, and we think the conversation of his enthusiastic artist friendsas Haydon-are traceable in his antique descriptions; and in his magic we think we can perceive the influence of the Arabian Nights. But of the These faults were less visible in his later poems; and he was becoming more artistical, as Mr. Milnes remarks, in avoiding the obvious points of gross affectation and frequent verboseness. Still, had these faults been conquered altogether, mythological subjects are too exploded to admit of a wide or a general interest: they must be false, or they must be heavy; the dead and buried cannot be revived; and of the living Keats had not much knowledge, and did not live in a circle adapted for acquiring it.

But though Keats produced no complete poem, he exhibited a high poetical imagination; not, as Jeffrey seems to mean, a sort of poetical essence too ethereal or imaginative to present anything in nature, but founded altogether on reality. There is a wild freshness in his description of the forest of Latmos, which, if it does not carry us thither, removes us from all common landscapes; not by something dreamy, but by images very distinct. The procession of Endymion and the worshippers to the woodland altar, though rather after Poussin or Poussin's French imitators, is wonderfully distinct as a picture. There is a massy primeval grandeur about Saturn and Thea in Hyperion, which, if part of the impression seems to arise from a kind of Egyptian magnitude in size, is unrivalled in its way. Some of his descriptions exhibit great delicacy of touch-as where the smoke of incense from the woodland altar is "a hazy light spread greyly eastward;" some of his sentiments derive truth even from a seeming exaggeration-as when Glaucus, gazing on the Circean transformations, sees "a sight too fearful for the feel of fear;" and we know of nothing in poetry more suggestive of aërial motion than Mercury floating over the woman serpent in Lamia.

As Mr. Milues justly observes, the actual reputation of Keats depends less on what he did than on what he might have done had he lived to develop his genius. It may be doubted whether his constitution or temperament would have admitted of this development. Besides great self-opinion,

that a peculiar, not to say a morbid temperament, influenced all that Keats did. We can indeed suppose what he might have done had he been differently constituted; but that would only be supposing him somebody else.

It is now thirty years since Keats first became conspicuous before the world from the attacks of the Quarterly Review and Blackwood's Magazine; and twenty-seven since he dictated his epitaph from his deathbed-" Here lies one whose name was writ in water." The reputation he has attained has perhaps exceeded his dying hopes, and the ideas of his enemies, though the adventitious circumstance of their attacks has somewhat contributed to it; but, be his fame extensive or limited, permanent or doomed to decay, his Life and Letters have more title to be given to the world than those of many persons that have lately figured in print. Nor. judging from the product, could the subject have been placed in better hands than those of Mr. Monckton Milnes. Mr. Milnes, it is true, had no personal knowledge of Keats, and his work must want those lively delineations of character and manners which can only be derived from actual observation. On the other hand, he has not those temptations to soften the truth into falsehood which personal friendship, hallowed by death, and reminiscences a little dimmed by time, are apt to produce. The best substitute for personal knowledge Mr. Milnes has had in the communications of surviving friends, and in the whole of Keats' extant letters, which those friends have placed at his disposal. But it is his peculiar genius that renders Mr. Milnes so preeminently fitted for a biographer of Keats. His genial goodnature and catholic sympathies enable him to perceive and appreciate the depth of feeling that may lie under weaknesses, affectation, and absurdities of manner, which repel many at the outset. same disposition mingles with his criticism; inducing him to do full and favorable justice to the character and writings of Keats, without blinding him to their faults; though, true to his genial hu

The

large and comprehensive spirit which characterizes it. The poetical power of Mr. Milnes is seen, we think, to more advantage in these memoirs than in his poems. Without the slightest trace of poetizing or rhetorical inflation, there is a depth of thought, a vivacity of imagination, and a largeness of grasp, which give to his prose some of the universal character of poetry, without in any way impairing its nature as prose. How much of pregnant closeness there is in the following introductory view of Keats! Speaking generally, it says all that there is to be said.

The biography of a poet can be little better than a comment on his poems, even when itself of long duration, and chequered with strange and various adventures: but these pages concern one whose whole story may be summed up in the composition of three small volumes of verse, some earnest friendships, one passion, and a premature death. As men die, so they walk among posterity; and our impression of Keats can only be that of a noble nature perseveringly testing its own powers, of a manly heart bravely surmounting its first hard experience, and of an imagination ready to inundate the world, yet learning to flow within regulated channels and abating its violence without lessening its strength.

came intimate. There is some slight obscurity in chronology in this period, Mr. Milnes not being always attentive to dates; but it would seem that about 1817 Keats resolved to abandon his profession, (if he ever practised it,) for poetry. The reason assigned was, that the sense of responsibility in a surgical operation oppressed him: but it is likely his own tastes and the example of his new friends had as much influence as the dread of doing harm to his patients.

About this time, (1817,) Keats, having written verses from boyhood, published his volume of miscellaneous poems; which "dropped still-born from the press." Notwithstanding the equanimity which he claims for himself, and which Mr. Milnes concedes to him, Keats seems to have been sore upon the subject; he attributed the failure to the "inactivity" of his publisher, Mr. Ollier, and thereupon quarrelled with him. Henceforth his life passed (to expand the terms of Mr. Milnes' half sentence) in the enjoyment of friendship, the composition of Endymion, Lamia, Hyperion, and some minor or unpublished poems that appear in the present work; and in the one passion, that, having begun apparently at the first development of his illness, only terminated with his life.

end, like that of Chatterton, (of whom he ever speaks with a sort of prescient sympathy,) has in some degree stood him instead of a fulfilled poetical existence. Ever improving in his art, he gave no reason to believe that his marvellous faculty had anything in common with that lyrical facility which many men have inanifested in boyhood or in youth, but which has grown torpid or disappeared altogether with the advance of mature life: in him no one doubts that a true genius was suddenly arrested; and they who will not allow him to have won his place in the first ranks of English poets will not deny the promise of his candidature.

The life of John Keats, as Mr. Milnes has indicated, was uneventful. The future poet was born in 1795; his father was in the employ of Mr. Jennings, a livery-stable-keeper of Moorfields, and attained the romance of industry, by marrying his master's daughter. At about the usual age, John was sent to a school at Enfield, kept by Mr. Clarke, the father of Charles Cowden Clarke. On leaving school, in 1810, he was apprenticed to Mr. Hammond, a surgeon of Edmonton. He remained with him for the usual period of five years; regularly walked the hospitals in London; and, much to the surprise of his medical-student friends, who knew his habits of verse-making and desultory reading, passed his examination at Apothecaries Hall with considerable credit. Keats' old friend, Cowden Clarke, with whom he used to read poetry at school and during his apprenticeship, had introduced him to several literary acquaintances, and in

been preserved in the communications of Mr. Severn the artist, who accompanied him to Rome, attended him day and night through an illness whose symptoms were trying alike to the patience and the feelings, and that too while the anxieties of the artist's own position were pressing heavily upon him. One or two points of the biography are obscure. In addition to Keats' share of his father's property, which amounted to 2000l., he received 400l. on the death of his brother Thomas; and this capital need only have been diminished by the expenses of his medical education; yet, though he lived, to appearance, on a frugal scale, in lodgings, it vanished unaccountably, and he soon got into pecuniary difficulties. He lived but six years altogether after his apprenticeship; by 1819, he determined to resort to periodical writing, which he abhorred, as a means of subsistence; and but for the kindness of the present Sir James Clark (then practising as a physician at Rome) and the devoted friendship of Mr. Severn, the author of Hyperion must have shared the fate of many other sons of genius, and died in a hospital. It seems only to have been an oppor tune remittance (and not the only one) from Mr. Taylor the publisher, that relieved Keats, or rather Severn, from the apprehensions expressed in the following extract.

Torlonia, the banker, has refused us any more money; the bill is returned unaccepted; and tomorrow I must pay my last crown for this cursed