good of our patients, moral qualities, and the like. On the whole, I do not know what any man can do to get patients, but to qualify himself for business, and then to introduce himself to the notice of those who are likely to employ him. But it is hard to say, on what hinge this matter may turn, as I see men, in great business, of every disposition, or turn of conduct, and with very different degrees of knowledge, and some, I think, with very little, but with great appearance of it. What is very hard, and yet I know two or three instances of it, is, that a man shall be esteemed as a friend, acknowledged to be a man of parts, but none of his friends think of employing him in his profession. This I can hardly explain, unless by the old observation, he is too good a poet to be a good physician.' You have judged very wisely in getting appointed to the charity. It must do some good, though hardly ever so much as is expected from it. I know not why the late Dr. Fothergill said it was a bad thing. With all that can be done, the progress of business must be slow, and may depend upon circumstances which no man can command; but whatever happens, it is a point both of wisdom to the world, and justice to one's self, not to be put out of humour."'-pp. 279, 280.

6

Dr. Parry was a very distinguished contributor to scientific literature, and paid great attention to agriculture.

We come now to the record of a very singular person, whose morbid feelings, induced by natural weakness of body, throw a sort of romantic air about his character. We allude to Dr. Gooch, whose unobtrusive merits as a physician, have only been just brought to our recollection by their loss. He was a native of Yarmouth, and was destined early for the profession. Of his boyhood, he himself has left a desultory account; but the influence of his imagination at that period may be estimated by an anecdote which he relates.

6

From the age of fifteen to twenty-one I was an apprentice to a country surgeon, and when I had nothing else to do, no pills to roll, nor mixtures to compose, I used, by the advice of my master, to go up into my bedroom, and there, with Cheselden before me, learn the anatomy of the bones by the aid of some loose ones, together with a whole articulated skeleton, which hung up in a box at the foot of my bed. It was some time before I overcame the awe with which I used to approach this formidable personage. At first, even by daylight, I liked to have some one in the room during my interviews with him; and at night, when I laid down in my bed and beheld the painted door which inclosed him, I was often obliged to make an effort to think of something else. One summer night, at my usual hour of retiring to rest, I went up to my bed-room, it was in the attic story, and overlooked the sea, not a quarter of a mile off. It was a bright moonlight night, the air was sultry; and after undressing I stood for some time at my window, looking out on the moonlight sea, and watching a white sail which now and then passed. I shall never have such another bed-room, so high up, so airy, and commanding such a prospect; or, probably, even if I had, it would never again look so beautiful, for then was the spring-time of my life, when the gloss of novelty was fresh on all the objects which surrounded me, and I looked with unmingled hope upon the distant world. Now-but I am rambling from

my story. I went to bed, the moonlight which fell bright into my room showed me distinctly the panelled door, behind which hung my silent acquaintance; I could not help thinking of him-I tried to think of something else, but in vain. I shut my eyes, and began to forget myself, when, whether I was awake or asleep, or between both, I cannot tell-but suddenly I felt two bony hands grasp my ancles, and pull me down the bed; if it had been real it could not have been more distinct. For some time, how long I cannot tell, I almost fainted with terror, but when I came to myself, I began to observe how I was placed: if what I had felt had been a reality, I must have been pulled halfway out of the bed, but I found myself lying with my head on my pillow, and my body in the same place and attitude as when I shut my eyes to go to sleep. At this moment this is the only proof which I have that it was not a reality, but a dream. -pp. 306, 307.

Gooch was not long freed from his apprenticeship, when he gave proofs of a constitutional melancholy which pursued him to his grave. He qualified himself, however, for his profession with zeal and diligence, and ultimately set up as a practitioner in Aldermanbury. Being appointed physician to the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, the usual consequence of such a distinction business, followed. His prospects were now cheerful, and he did not allow his fancy to overcast them with shadows.

In 1816, whilst on a professional visit to Ramsgate, he was first seized with a disorder in his stomach which ultimately triumphed over his life. Our author tells us that the stimulus of increasing reputation very much tended to retard the fatal progress of the disease, and in two years afterwards we find Gooch expatiating on the promises that were before him.

In 1820 he lost his son, a boy about five years old, and upon that calamity we have the following affecting letter:

"There is only one subject I can talk to you about, and that is my boy; he is always in our thoughts. Southey, in Roderick,' gives the recipe for grief with a truth which shews he has tried it, and found its efficacy-religion and strenuous exertion. Whoever says, that the latter is the chief, says false, for the former affords support when the mind is incapable of exertion; it tranquillizes in moments which exertion cannot reach, and is not only not the least, but the best of the two. When we went down to Croydon to deposit our dear boy in my little tenement there, you will easily believe that I approached the town and entered the churchyard with strange feelings: ten years back I had visited this spot to lay a wife and a child in the same tomb; since then I have recovered from my grief, and had formed new affections, had had them wounded as bitterly as the former, and was now approaching the same spot again on a similar, and as poignant an occasion. The scene was singularly instructive, it cried out with a voice, which I heard to my centre, of the endurableness and curability of grief-of the insecurity of every thing-the transcience of life-the rapid and inevitable current with which we are all hurrying on; and it asked me, how I could fear to submit to that state into which so many whom I had dearly loved had already passed before me? You

will be interested to know the state of the contents of the tomb after the lapse of so many years; both the coffins looked as if they had been deposited yesterday, as clean, as dry, as firm: if they could have been opened, I have little doubt the bodies would have been found in proper form, though changed. I added my beloved boy to its former inhabitants, and then asked myself, who goes next."

Within ten years,' continues our biographer, he was himself deposited in the same spot. The death of his favourite child and his own ill health naturally directed Gooch's thoughts more and more to the subject of religion. Like many wise and truly pious men, he had at times misgivings with regard to the efficacy of his own faith: one night, soon after the funeral, when he had been harassed by doubts, praying fervently for their removal, and in a very excited state of mind longing for the apparition of his boy, he fell asleep, thinking, that if such a vision should be vouchsafed him, he could never doubt again. The dream which followed is not the less striking because it may be reasonably explained by the state of his mind and body at the time.-He thought his child appeared, and told him, that although his prayers had been heard, and a spirit was allowed to visit him, still, that he would not be satisfied, but would consider it merely as a dream; adding, he who will not believe Moses and the prophets, will not believe though one comes from the dead. Here he awoke, and afterwards related the dream to several of his friends. At this time Gooch read a good deal of theology, and his letters and conversation showed how much his mind was occupied with this subject.'-pp. 327-329.

We conclude with the following just summary of Gooch's merits: 'On the 16th of February, 1830, he breathed his last. Enough has been stated in this brief memoir to show that Robert Gooch was no ordinary man. During a short life, embittered by almost constant illness, he succeeded in attaining to great eminence in his profession, and left behind him valuable contributions to medical knowledge. His Essay on the Plague settled the question of the contagious nature of that disease, at least for the present generation; and, when the same controversy shall be again revived (for medical as well as theological heresies spring up again. after the lapse of a few generations), will furnish facts and arguments for the confutation of future anticontagionists. The paper on Anatomy in the Quarterly Review for January, 1830, which bears internal marks of being his, and must of course, have been dictated from his death-bed, has placed the question in a right point of view, by proving that it is the interest of the public rather than of the medical profession, that the impediments to the study of that science should be removed. His book On the Diseases peculiar to Women, is the most valuable work on that subject in any language; the chapters on puerperal fever and puerperal madness, are probably the most important additions to practical medicine of the present age.'pp. 340, 341.

In our progress through the lives which form the contents of this little book, we have been struck with the uniformity with which benevolence forms a leading feature, sooner or later, in the character of each of these distinguished physicians-a proof how much the virtues and exalted feelings of our nature are the result

of cultivation. The man who for twenty or thirty years bends all the energies of his mind to the alleviation of human suffering, acquires an inveterate habit of sympathizing in the calamities of others, which will more or less govern the chief actions of his life, but will particularly actuate him in that moment when every counter influence springing from worldly views is nearly paralized. Hence, even where a physician does not mark the years of his life with acts of beneficence, he will always be sure to try and expiate this violation of his duty, as he must think it, by the splendour of his posthumous charity. Few of them, too, have played their parts in the domestic world without meriting approbation, and causing their loss to be felt in a very different manner from that in which such casualties are generally regarded. Shall it be said, then, that the lives of such men, represented by the combined judgment, talent, and experience, of one of their own honourable fraternity, are not worthy of being made the subject of perusal by every person who has the laudable ambition to deserve the friendship of his fellow men whilst living, and to deserve their sorrow when he dies?

NOTICES.

ART. XI.-Reflections on the Nullity of the Elective Franchise. a Freeholder. pp. 24. London: Gilbert and Rivington. 1830. OUR author seems to be firmly persuaded that the actual government of this country is neither in the possession of King, Lords, or Commons, but that it is clandestinely wielded by an oligarchical party, described by him with something like the periphrastic ambiguity of the Apocalypse. However, without entering into the question, as to the existence or omnipotence of such a party, we are very well satisfied that his remedy will do no harm --and, as he confines himself to a strong admonition, addressed to the electors of Great Britain, to be most scrupulously vigilant in selecting none but proper persons to fill the office of member of parliament, we heartily join the author in his appeal, and wish it may succeed.

ART. XII.-Anti Draco: or Reasons for abolishing the Punishment of Death in Cases of Forgery.-By a Barrister of the Middle Temple.pp. 49. London: Ridgway. 1830.

THE arguments which a sound judgment and a humane mind would suggest for the abolition of capital punishment in cases of Forgery, are in this excellent pamphlet urged with great force and eloquence. Upon all impartial persons this brief but pithy piece of reasoning must make a powerful impression and we shall be much surprised if the more active portion of the philanthropic body who have been labouring in the same vineyard with our author, will not see the policy of assisting in the diffusion of sentiments so temperately, yet so strikingly expressed.

ART. XIII.-A Guide and Pocket Companion through Italy, &c. By W. Cathcart Boyd, M.D.

MR. BOYD was induced to prepare this volume, he says, from having practically experienced the defects of all former works, which purport to be guides to Italy. The present performance excludes much of those descriptions of architectural and pictorial beauty, which our author declares are not only imperfect, but useless; since catalogues, to be had for a trifle, are always to be obtained in the towns where those treasures are to be seen. Mr. Boyd, perhaps, has not calculated how much the aggregate of these trifles would amount to in the end, and therefore he leaves the question still open as to the convenience of making a guide book so complete as that it will supersede the necessity, on the part of the traveller, of purchasing catalogues, or other local registers. This work, however, seems compiled with great care, and will be found to embrace a most useful collection of practical information for the service of the tourist.

ART. XIV.—The Suttee, or the Hindoo Converts; a Novel. By Mrs. General Mainwaring, author of Moscow, &c. 3 vols. Newman and Co.

1830.

THE very amiable object of this animated and graceful writer in composing these volumes, would at once disarm criticism, if she were in a condition to stand in need of indulgence. Many as have been the public efforts to rouse the immediate Government of India to interpose and save the Hindoo population from the horrors of a savage superstition, we do not know that any great permanent amelioration has yet been attained. The East India Company have done no more, we believe, than modify the dreadful ceremony itself; but they have hitherto succeeded to a very trifling extent indeed, in impressing the Hindoos with a sense of the wickedness of the immolation. Perhaps before any important step shall be taken for this purpose, public opinion here must be strongly expressed, and before that is the case, opinion must be strongly felt. We have some expectation that works like the one before us, carrying impressive scenes and affecting incidents into the bosom of society, will do much towards the formation of that great moral revolution which, when once it has ripened in a nation on any question, becomes absolutely irresistible. Those who do not anticipate that their sympathies will be so powerfully interested in the Hindoo population by these volumes, may count on finding in them all the attractions of an original romance.

ART. XV.-Donoghue, Prince of Killarney, a Poem in Seven Cantos. By Hannah Maria Bourke. pp. 284. Dublin: Curry and Co. 1830. An obvious votary of the poetical school of Sir Walter Scott, Miss Bourke seeks by the plan, the machinery and metre of the Lady of the Lake, to celebrate the exquisite beauties of the Lakes of Killarney. An interesting tale forms the plot of her poem, which affords numerous opportunities for our authoress to indulge her vivid fancy and to display her power of copious expression. Those who know how to enjoy happy representations of picturesque scenery, and the contemplation of ancient and simple manners, will find a treat in this little work.