on his lips and sensual lusts in his heart; or was it the Dutchman of the "purest Norse blood," too thick to run through his veins till urged by alcohol? Was is not, rather, that out of the mingling of the highest qualities of all these, purged from their defects, those great spirits arose? We hold to this belief. a for Coleridge says, with truth, that " rogue is only a fool with a circumbendibus." And now, at the time when paper has become widely extended in other lands, when honesty is greatly increased, precisely at this time has nature discovered to man large hoards of gold hitherto unknown, and which are probably only the forerunners of masses Throughout all nature, animate and in-yet to be discovered, in quantities to render animate, we seem to recognize two great principles-elasticity and gravity; and without their mutual action and reaction the world could scarcely exist. In man, the principle of elasticity is represented by the Celt, whose elastic energy all boils off in vapor, till controled by the Saxon gravity, or moral force, which holds it down like the weighty valve of a steam-engine-if too tightly, producing dangerous explosions; if too loosely, producing no result; but, at the right degree of pressure, giving world-wide advantage. them applicable to useful purposes in the arts, after their rarity and value as an exchange medium shall be lost. For in this question of gold, if we consider it rightly, there seems to be no reason why it should not be as plentiful in the world as other metals, only it is less accessible. Gold is the only metal that is always found, in the metallic state, not chemically combined with other bodies. Therefore, at the cooling down of the crust of the globe, its mere weight would carry it down into crevices below the surface, precisely as the metal in Had England remained Celtic, she would a smelting-furnace falls through the slag to have been as Ireland-never to thrive till the bottom. The gold found in streams, and gravitated. But she was an open road for all alluvium and diluvium, has been subsequently men; and when, by the process of railways, thrown out by volcanic action; as the spangle Ireland shall become the "jumping-off place" gold of California testifies, and also the lumps for men who go down to the ocean in ships melted in matrices. The traditions of all -the highway to the Far West, then she, South-American gold mines are, that when too, will be resorted to by strong men, the water broke in-the usual mode for nawho will make of her a "boast, a marvel, ture to close a mine-"it was at its richest" and a show." They who grow cotton in -mas riquesas que nunca. Marvellously the Union, will perchance bring it to Ire- has nature timed this Californian discovery. land's western ports; and, beholding wasted The railway of Panama, the first of numer water-power, and delicate Celtic fingers, fit-ous railways through that district, shortented for textile fabrics, also lying waste in close contiguity, will draw the inference that there needs but a mill and machinery to do all the rest. And thus will Ireland become a land of manufactured fabrics, and the reproach of her poverty and misery be removed from us. ing man's transit to the East-the thing talked of and desired for ages, is its first result; and with that railway the reign of law and order commences in that region of stagnant listlessness and active tyranny. A new and improving race is planting progress. When the work shall be done, and civilization rooted, probably more gold will be discovered, if not in the very act of cutting, side by side with the coal beds we are now told of for the first time. If gold and silver can be procured as plentifully as copper, we shall he enabled to use pleasant utensils without risk of thieves. But assuredly men will not coin it into money, when free railway transit over all the earth shall have made honesty not merely the "best policy," but the only practicable policy. The want of communion, of free and cheap intercourse amongst the nations of the earth, has generated want of confidence. Therefore commercial transactions have required a medium of exchange not easy to counterfeit or falsify. This nature provided in the precious metals. The less civilized, the more barbarous the nation, the more essential the metallic currency. A Spanish dollar was said to "speak all languages." As knowledge increased and faith grew-that faith which has removed so many railway Looking back on what we have written mountains," and which faith will grow almost reminds us of the noted book title, again, the Hudsons notwithstanding-paper De omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis.' was substituted for metals. The paper Our excuse must be, that man, being uniwould be universal were honesty universal-versal, all things fall into his category. Meanin other words, were knowledge universal; while we hold to the faith, that what the 66 MY CHILDHOOD'S THOUGHT. THREE fields beyond our dwelling place, a limpid streamlet floweth, O'er that river's shining course with pleasant awe and wonder, And so from spring-head to the vale where many waters meet, I learnt the story page by page, and other lessons sweet. Where the yielding greenest moss gathers o'er the rounded rocks scene. There is a deep and dread abyss, and into it the water leaps- From the Quarterly Review. THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OF DEATH. 1. Recherches Medico-légales sur l'incertitude des signes de la mort, les dangers des inhumations précipitées, les moyens de constater les décès et de rappeler à la vie ceux qui sont état de mort apparente. Par M. JULIA DE FONTENELLE. 8vo. Paris. 2. The Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology. Part VIII. Art. "Death." By J. A. SYMONDS, M. D. London. 1836. 1834. 3. Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort. Par ZAV. BICHAT. Cinquième édition, revue et augmentée de notes pour la deuxième fois par F. Magendie. 8vo. Paris. 1829. Ir was the opinion of Addison that nothing in history was so imposing, nothing so pleasing and affecting, as the accounts of the behavior of eminent persons in their dying hour. Montaigne before him had given expression to the same sentiment. Of all the passages in the annals of mankind, those, he said, which attracted and delighted him most, were the words and gestures of departing men. "If," he adds, "I were a maker of books, I would compile a register, with comments, of various Deaths, for he who should teach men to die would teach them to live." The register would not be difficult to supply. The commentary is a loss-rich as it would have been in the reflections of a shrewd and thoughtful mind, fearless in its confessions, holding up its feelings, in their weakness and their strength, as a mirror in which the readers might behold themselves. But Montaigne, who merely gives a formal adhesion to Christianity, and too generally Iraws both precept and practice from the ode of Epicurus, was not the person to each others to live or die. He had realized beyond most men the terror of death, stulied it incessantly in all its aspects, and done is best to steel himself against the stroke; out the resources of religion are scarcely Ireamt of in his philosophy of mortality. He treats the question almost like a heathen, aises more misgivings than he removes, and loes less to reform the careless and encouage the timid than to offend the pious and listurb the peaceful. He seldom, indeed, Louches upon a sacred subject, without leav ing us in doubt whether he is in earnest or in jest. He seems, in his bantering way, to be striking with one hand while he affects to support with the other; and his attack, though far from formidable, is more powerful than his defence. He would have been an eminent teacher in Greece or Rome, but was no ways fitted to be a master in Christendom. Two or three of Montaigne's countrymen have since attempted to carry out his conception: but, not inheriting his genius with his project, their works are said to be meagre and vapid. More worthless they could not be than the similar compilations which have been published in English; a page from a parish-register would be nearly as edifying. Addison and Montaigne, in their speculations upon Death, had chiefly in view the mental feelings. The physical part of the question had only been treated in detached fragments, until Bichat endeavored to give a connected view of those changes in the system which are immediately concerned in the extinction of life. Even this was only a single branch of an extensive subject; and, far from exhausting it, the state of knowledge obliged him to rest content with a general outline-but it was an outline drawn with a master's hand. A more beautiful piece of scientific writing could nowhere be foundnone more lucid in arrangement, more clear, simple, and concise in style. He had to deal with a mass of tangled threads, and wove them into a vivid and harmonious pattern. A disposition to fanciful system is the principal defect of the celebrated "Researches on Life and Death," which will continue a classic, when, by the progress of discovery, it has ceased to be an authority. Since Bichat led the way, numerous writers have followed in his track-extended his experiments, corrected his errors, and modified his theories. The knowledge is confined at present to professional works which few besides professional men are likely to read, and is too much bound up with general physiology to permit us to enter at large upon the question. What Bichat imperfectly discussed in a volume, we must dismiss in a page. A summary of the newest and best information will be found in the able and philosophical Principles of Medicine by Dr. Williams, or in the Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Medicine by Dr. Watson-a work upon which his own craft have set the seal of their highest approbation, and which it may interest others to be told is not a dry detail of symptoms and remedies, but a luminous account of disease, which he has had the art to make as entertaining as instructive. It was not consistent with the plan of Dr. Williams or Dr. Watson to write a formal treatise upon death. This was done by Dr. Symonds-whose admirable article in the Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology, though a condensed, is the most comprehensive description with which we are acquainted. The entire physical phenomena of natural death are passed in review; the results of original observation are combined with the researches of others; and some portions of the subject, such as the signs of dying, are more elaborately treated than anywhere else. Addressed to medical men, it presumes a degree of acquaintance with their science; yet two-thirds of the essay could hardly be more attractive to general readers if it had been penned for their use. General readers, however, are less inquisitive on the matter than their deep concern in it might lead us to expect, or it would not be confined to the domain of the physician. Addison assumed that the interest was as universal as the lot; but though "Death only is the fate which none can miss," Justice Shallow :-"The mad days that I have spent! and to see how many of mine old acquaintance are dead! Silence. We shall all follow, cousin! Shallow. Certain, 'tis certain; very sure, very sure death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?" He moralizes mechanically upon death, pays it parenthetically the tribute due to an indisputable truth-but the price of oxen has not the less of his thoughts. We persist in thinking death distant because the date is doubtful, and remain unconcerned spectators until we are summoned to be actors in the scene. Yet, however little the majority of men may be tempted to originate inquiry, there can hardly be many to whom an account of the mental and corporal sensations which attend upon death can be a matter of indifference when brought before their eyes. Father Bridaine, a French itinerant of the last century, who in a mixture of eccentricity and fervid eloquence combined the two most powerful agencies by which a vulgar auditory are attracted and moved, once wound up a discourse by the announcement that he would attend each of his hearers to his home,--and putting himself at their head, conducted them to the house appointed for all livinga neighboring churchyard. We deeply feel that we are in many respects little qualified for the subject which we venture to take up: there is in it, however, a mysterious awfulness which may probably carry on our readers in spite of our imperfections. But the profit will be to those who remember, as they read, that we describe or attempt to describe the road which they themselves must travel, and, like Bridaine, are conducting them to their home. John Hunter called the blood the moving material of life. Elaborated from the food we eat, it carries nutriment and stimulus to every part of the body; and while in its progress it replenishes the waste going on in the frame, it receives and throws off much of the effete and worn-out matter which would otherwise clog and encumber the machinery. The moment the blood is reduced below a certain standard, the functions languish; the moment it is restored, the functions revive. The brain, in general bleeding, is the first another poet has said with almost equal truth to feel the loss; and a mere change of posi that tion, by affecting the amount of blood in the head, will make the difference between un“All men think all men mortal but themselves." consciousness and sense. Where the object is to bring down the circulation to the lowest Most feel about it much the same as did point, the safeguard against carrying the de intense, to paralyze the heart in a moment, or even to burst it by the agitation they create. A lady, overjoyed to hear that her son had returned from India, died with the news in her ears; another, prostrate with grief at parting with a son who was bound for Turkey, expired in the attempt to bid him farewell. Physical causes, in like manner, put an immediate and lasting stop to the heart. It may be done by a blow on the stomach, by the fall from a height, by too violent an exertion. pletion too far is to make the patient sit up; and when faintness ensues, sensibility returns by laying him backward, which immediately sends a current of blood to the brain. The effect of the circulation on a limb is seen in the operation for an aneurism of the leg a disease in which the artery, unable to resist the force of the blood, continues to distend, until, if left to itself, it usually bursts, and the patient bleeds to death. To prevent this result, the main artery itself is often tied above the tumor, and thus the blood is stopped short of the place where it The lungs are no less essential to the cirwas gradually working a fatal outlet. The culation. The entire blood of the system lower part of the leg, cut off from its supply, passes along their innumerable vessels on its at once turns cold, and, unless nature were return to the heart, and ejecting through the ready with a new provision, would quickly pores the foul matter collected in its circuit, perish; but if, by the disease, man is shown receives in exchange a fresh supply of air. to be fearfully, the remedial contrivance The process is stopped in drowning, when proves him wonderfully made. The trunk there is no oxygen from without to inhale; artery sends out numerous tributaries, which in hanging, when the communication is cut again rejoin it further on in its course, and off with the lungs; in the morbid effusions those above the aneurism gradually dilate to which prevent the air from reaching the receive the obstructed circulation, and, car- blood; in the pressure which holds down rying it past the break in the channel, restore the chest and abdomen and will not permit warmth and vigor to the drooping limb. them to play; and in injuries of the portion What is true of the leg and brain is true of of the spinal cord whence the nerves are deevery portion of the body. Not an organ rived, by which the muscular movements of can subsist deprived of a due and healthy respiration are sustained. A vast variety of circulation; and when the blood is brought accidents and diseases operate in one or other to a stand in its career, or is in a particular of these ways, and with the uniform consedegree deficient in quantity or corrupted in quence that the unpurified blood becomes quality, then is death inevitable. "We are stagnant in the lungs and stops the road. born," says Seneca, "by a single method-Breathing is indispensable to life, because we die by many." But though mortal dis- the blood will barely move an inch without eases are legion in their seat and nature, it; and though it did, would carry corrupthey may all be resolved into the destruction of the circulation, like the radii of a circle which come from an infinity of directions and meet in a point. The heart is the agent for propelling the blood. It acts the part of a pump to the system, plays without our aid at the rate of four thousand strokes an hour, and sometimes continues in operation a century; but no organ, however marvellous in its construction and performances, can be beyond the reach of injury and disease in a body created mortal by design. The heart is the seat of numerous disorders which destroy its powers of contraction and expansion, and when its action ceases the blood must stop; but extreme cases are the clearest illustration of principles, and the effects of arresting its pulsations are seen best when the event is sudden. This is no uncommon occurrence. The passions of rage, joy, grief, and fear, make themselves felt in the centre of circulation; and these all have the power, when tion in its round instead of sustenance and health. The brain is the centre of nervous power, and without its agency we are unable to think, move, or feel; but the immediate effect of mortal injuries is to paralyze the action of the heart or the lungs. The apoplexies, in which the blood escapes with force into the brain, and breaks up its substance, kill through the first; the congestion, which is less violent, acts by impeding, and ultimately arresting, the movements of the last. In either case the circulation stops, and with it life. Whatever is the locality of a disease, the heart and lungs are either implicated themselves, or through the nerves and brain ; and in the majority of disorders the whole are enfeebled together, till it is difficult to determine which is failing most. In some diseases the blood itself is utterly corrupted, and every organ it touches feels its deadly influence. In others, the stomach is incapable of discharging its office, and the fountain |