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Basil, during this trying period, as may be supposed, is a pretty constant visitor at North Villa, and amuses himself daily in completing the education of his beautiful bride.

The linendraper's confidential clerk (one Mannion), an extraordinary character in his way, has, however, been beforehand in gaining a wonderful ascendancy over Miss Margaret's youthful mind and heart. It appears that he is the son of a man in a respectable position in life, who was hanged for forgery, on evidence furnished by Basil's father. The stigma of felony, attaching disgrace to the son, has compelled him to resort to a variety of expedients to obtain subsistence; hence his present occupation.

THE MYSTERIOUS MAN.

If extraordinary regularity of feature were alone sufficient to make a handsome man, then this confidential clerk of Mr. Sherwin's was assuredly one of the handsomest men I ever beheld. Viewed separately from the head (which was rather large, both in front and behind), his face exhibited throughout an almost perfect symmetry of proportion. His bald forehead was smooth and massive as marble; his high brow and thin eyelid had the firmness and immobility of marble, and seemed as cold; his delicately-formed lips, when he was not speaking, closed habitually, as changelessly still as if no breath of life ever passed them. There was not a wrinkle or line anywhere on his face. But for the baldness in front, and the greyness of the hair at the back and sides of his head, it would have been impossible from his appearance to have guessed his age, even within ten years of what it really was.

Such was his countenance in point of form; but in that which is the outward vindication of our immortality--in expression-it was, as I now beheld it, an utter void. Never had I before seen any human face which baffled all inquiry like his. No mask could have been expressionless enough to resemble it; and yet it looked like a mask. It told you nothing of his thoughts, when he spoke; nothing of his disposition, when he was silent. His light grey eyes gave you no help in trying to study him. They never varied from the steady, straightforward look, which was exactly the same for Margaret as it was for me; for Mrs. Sherwin as for Mr. Sherwin-exactly the same whether he spoke or whether he listened; whether he talked of indifferent or of important matters.

Suffice it to say that he has completely succeeded in winning the confidence of his employers; has devoted many spare hours to the instruction of Margaret, and though he expresses no displeasure at her marriage, which has taken place during his temporary absence abroad, he takes very effectual measures for marring the felicity of Basil, and gratifying the unholy passion he has long secretly nurtured. The prescribed twelve months have at length fleeted by. On the morrow, Basil purposes to carry his virgin wife to a cottage he has prepared for her, where he hopes to enjoy, in tranquillity, the long-desired felicity of his honey

moon.

Margaret, at her father's desire, has accepted an invitation to a party at the house of a rich aunt, whither she proceeds under the escort of

Mannion, on this the last evening of her girlhood. Basil calls to make arrangements for their departure into the country on the next day, and is somewhat annoyed to find that she is not at home. Some hasty expressions are interchanged between the linendraper and his sonin-law, who finally determines to follow his wife to the party, and to bring her home himself. He reaches the door as Mannion and Margaret are coming out, much earlier than the hour of their proposed return: they do not observe him, but proceed together to an hotel of questionable character. Basil, at first unsuspicious, follows in a growing paroxysm of frenzy; enters the house a few moments later; by a bribe, obtains access to a bedroom adjoining the one occupied by the guilty pair, and then ensues—

THE FATAL DISCOVERY.

I listened, and, through the thin partition, I heard voices-her voice, and his voice, I heard and I knew-knew my degradation in all its infamy, knew my wrongs in all their nameless horror. He was exulting in the satanic patience and secresy which had brought success to the foul plot-foully for months on months-foully matured on the very day before I was to have claimed as my loved and honoured wife a wretch as guilty as himself!

I could neither move nor breathe. The blood surged and heaved upward to my brain; my heart strained and writhed in anguish; the life within me raged and tore to get free. Whole years of the direst mental and bodily agony were concentrated in that one moment of dumb, helpless, motionless torment. I never lost the consciousness of suffering. I heard the waiter say, under his breath, "My God! he's dying." I felt him loosen my cravat; I knew that he dashed cold water over me; dragged me out of the room; and, opening a window on the landing, held me firmly where the night-air blew upon my face. I knew all this; and knew when the paroxysm passed, and nothing remained of it but an ague-fit in every muscle, a shivering helplessness in every nerve.

He lies in wait in the street for Mannion; and, as he quits the house in search of a cab, Basil seizes him with all the ferocity of despair, wreaks upon him a fearful vengeance, and leaves him prostrate in the road, his face cut to pieces, and the sight of one eye gone for ever. Margaret escapes to her father. Basil reaches his home he knows not how: a brain fever

supervenes. On his recovery, concealment is no longer possible: the whole sad story is disclosed to the haughty father, who thus replies

THE DENUNCIATION.

"Go!" he interrupted, pointing passionately to the door. "Go out from this house, never to return to it again; go out, not as a stranger to me, but as an enemy! I have no faith in a single promise you have made: there is no baseness which I do not believe you will yet be guilty leagued, to take warning. I have wealth, power, and of; but I tell you, and the wretches with whom you are position: and there is no use to which I will not put them against the man or woman who threatens the fair fame of this family. Leave me, remembering that-and leave me for ever!"

Thrown upon the world and his resources, Basil is saved from ruin by the intervention of

his brother; a dreadful death relieves him of his too-dearly loved but faithless wife; and Mannion, who has vowed to pursue him with his vengeance through life, in consequence of the personal injuries inflicted upon him, and the enmity he previously entertained against Basil's family, is cut off by an untimely fate, which no one can for a moment commiserate. Here and there we meet with passages indicative of great power and pathos; but the production, as a whole, in artistic language, "wants nature." We cannot bring ourselves to believe in the existence of such a character as Mannion, nor in the fiendish nature of his revenge a persecution, by the way, which any one, not an absolute fool, would very soon have terminated summarily. Indeed, notwithstanding the purity and sanctity of his passion for Margaret, one cannot help feeling that Basil proves himself, in all his proceedings, too great a simpleton for us to sympathise much with him in his distress

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He might so obviously have avoided all his calamities, by the exercise of a very little prudeuce, that we are half inclined to smile at some of the most disastrous incidents he recounts. Then again, Mr. Collins endeavours too frequently to harrow up the feelings of his readers by minute descriptions of the agri somnia-the outpourings of a disordered mind-and the hallucinations of a perturbed intellect. Allusion to subjects such as these, is always painful, and ought not lightly to be introduced into a work of fiction.

Thus, after the discovery of his dishonour, Basil fills no less than thirty pages with descriptions of the fiends and phantoms that continually appeared to him during his delirium; and again, we have nearly as much space similarly occupied with the wild ravings of Margaret on her death-bed. All this savours much of a

desire to pander to that appetite for the horrible which is the bane of the modern French school, We recommend Mr. Collins in future to avoid the errors we have indicated, because he is evidently capable of greater things; and were not this story marred by these blemishes, we should have assigned it an exalted position among the novels of the past year.

The character of Clara is exquisitely delineated: it is true to life, and cannot fail to charm every reader. That of Ralph, the elder brother, is excellent too. His combination of knowledge of the' world and manly courage, his indomitable resolution to cure evils that have grown past endurance, and the deter mination with which he faces and overcomes successive difficulties for his brother's sake, are drawn by no ordinary hand.

The interview between Ralph and Sherwin is spirited and masterly. We regret that we cannot give more than the following brief speci

men

RALPH LOQUITUR.

I took him down, just as he swore his second oath. "Sir," said I, very politely, "if you mean to make a cursing and swearing conference of this, I think it only fair to inform you beforehand, that you are likely to get the worst of it. When the whole repertory of British oaths is exhausted, I can swear fluently in five foreign languages: I have always made it a principle to pay back abuse at compound interest; and I don't exaggerate in saying, that I am quite capable of swearing you out of your senses, if you persist in setting me the example. And now, if like

you

to go on, pray do-I'm ready to hear you." Sherwin, the mean, sordid shopkeeper, is throughout admirably pourtrayed. The combination of servility and tyranny, obsequiousness and insolence, in this man, are as cleverly depicted as are the shamelessness and utter absence of all moral feeling in the daughter. We fear, too many such are to be met with in the grade of life occupied by the Sher wins.

The Romance of the Forum. By PETER BURKE, Esq. 2 Vols. 8vo. London: Colburn. 1852.

THE only thing good about this book is its title, and for that the public are probably indebted to the publisher's "reader." The Romance of the Forum might have been the name of a valuable work. Entombed in the bulky volumes of the State Trials of England, and in the Causes Celébres of France, lie dramas that, in the hands of a man of talent and research, would fix attention, and excite a lofty interest. Not to recount the better-known trials of historic interest, what a glorious scene of a brave man struggling for his life might be drawn from the trial of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, foiling with un

flinching constancy the brutal judge and furious lawyers hounding him to death, and winning a verdict of acquittal even from the jury that the Crown lawyers had packed to find him guilty! What a story would the sufferings and the constancy of the poor Puritan Udall make! But it is idle to talk of what might have been done while we have these two volumes before us. We open them, and come at once upon a story that has been printed in every jest-book, from the blackletter edition of "Righte Merrie Jestes" downwards. It tells us how one Dun had an animosity to lawyers, and determined to play

a rich one a trick; how he forged a bond in the lawyer's name, brought an action upon it, and proved the signature; and how the lawyer in the nick of time produced a forged receipt, and thus turned the tables upon the plaintiff. Passing on from this venerable anecdote, we arrive at the story of the "Crusader and his Dog," which, seeing that it has been fully used by Sir Walter Scott, might perhaps have been thought to be sufficiently known. To this succeeds that very curious and quite unknown story of the "Dog of Montargis, or the Forest of Bondy." Then comes the rather noted trial of Savage the poet, for his part in the coffee-house brawl wherein Nuttal was killed. Somewhat sick at the discovery of the sort of stuff we have to deal with, we turn over the leaves, and pass through a series of stories either very stale or very trumpery, until at last the second volume closes with a full account (in 47 pages) of the Praslin murder !

We scarcely know whether the scope of this book, or its execution, is the worse. From a volume of the Newgate Calendar something may be learned: no one could read a page of it without horror at the barbarity of our forefathers, and wonder at the fact, that crowds of men, women, and children were constantly being led away to death for stealing a pocket-handkerchief, or cutting a stick in a squire's plantation; and all went to the gallows submissively, confessing the justice of their sentence. This book, however, is a mere pandering to a raw-head-and-bloodybones taste, and the pandering is badly done. We do hope that the publisher has miscalculated the degree of intelligence in the public of the present day, and that few will be deceived by an alluring title into buying a worthless book. A little discrimination in book buyers would rid our current literature of such trashy book-making as this.

THE PRESENT CONDITION OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.*

MEDICINE is the opprobrium of the human mind. For six thousand years have all the facts that should base a science, been present in prodigious numbers to the observation of our species; for six thousand years, has been offered to us, the highest object, except one, which can engage the human intellect-the alleviation of bodily suffering and the prolongation of the life of man. Yet what have we done? At this very day, medicine is not worthy to be classed as a science. Of chemistry we know something; but of chemistry as applicable to the human frame we know least. Anatomy, so far as regards the more obvious phenomena of this wonderful machine, has been carefully studied, and individuals have acquired a wonderful handicraft dexterity in surgical operations; but the more subtle and occult processes of assimilation are still as little known, as they were in the days of Hippocrates. It is now many centuries since optical science was brought to bear upon astronomy: we are only just beginning to apply the microscope to the minute instruments wherewith death works. Diseases that have killed their annual millions through

*An Essay on the Action of Medicines in the System; being the Prize Essay to which was awarded the Fothergillian Gold Medal for 1852; by Frederick William Headland, B.A., &c. &c. Lond.: Churchill, 1852.

On Rheumatism, Rheumatic Gout, and Sciatica, their Pathology, Symptoms, and Treatment, by Henry William Fuller, M.D. Cantab. Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London, Assistant Physician at St. George's Hospital, &c. &c. Lond. : Churchill, 1852.

all time, have only just become known to the species they destroy; and they are discovered only to be pronounced incurable. The most hideous and frightful maladies-even those that have crowded our hospitals with hopeless wretches since the days when hospitals first were-are still treated as they were in the time of the ancients. The "dirus hydrops" of Horace has indeed, in later times, been said to be but the symptom of some other latent disease; but this is merely saying it is the effect of a cause, so long as the disease is still unstudied and uncured; and so long as surgeons are still content to combat the symptoms by doses of elaterium, or by treating the man like a beer-barrel. There can be no doubt whatever that the disease we call cancer is but a symptom of some irregular action of the processes of assimilation; yet our medical men go on cutting and carving the poor creatures who are thus afflicted, knowing all the time that they are no more curing the disease itself, than they would eradicate horse-radish by digging up a few of the roots, or destroy an ivy-root by pruning its branches. Twenty other instances might easily be adduced, were the subject in need of illustration. The disease which our doctors, with their usual dog-latin pedantry, call

We are told that a hospital has recently been established for the investigation of this fearful malady, and that the inquiry is now made in a philosophical spirit. This does not in any way answer our argument. If it be within the possibility of human science to discover and remove the cause of cancer, it would have been done centuries ago, had medicine been studied as a science.

the Morbus Brightii, might have been discovered at any time since that remote and unknown period when the ancients could produce strong magnifying power by means of transparent globes of water. Yet we learn of its existence for the first time in the nineteenth century; and we learn at the same time that medical "science" knows it only as a disease without a remedy. Generations have been occupied in trying to turn base metals into gold, and the sordid object has rendered vast collateral assistance to medicine; but it is only just now that our physicians-or rather what the physicians call the "quacks," for the faculty accepted it after much opposition-have learned that in ether and chloroform, man possesses a specific antidote to the torture of surgical operations. If the medical profession had studied medicine in the spirit of philosophical searchers after truth, and not in the spirit of mere money-getting tradesmen, all these things would have been discovered ages ago, and there would have been no absolutely incurable diseases except extreme malformation and old age. As medical science now stands, the knowledge of the action of medicines is as empirical as that of any old woman in the kingdom: the education of ordinary practitioners is so bad, that we have actually seen a case where a man, in no small practice, salivated a woman for a selfevident inflammation on the lungs; and had nearly killed her, when the ordinary treatment was at length adopted just in time to save her life: the highest reach of the "science" is so humble, that the greatest proficient in it cannot tell you why it is that a dose of salts acts to open the bowels.

These remarks are made in no hostile spirit to the profession of medicine. We have no sympathy with the vulgar sneers at doctors, and little pleasure in seeing the wit of Molière applied to a subject so grave. We set out with saying that the scope and object of their inquiry is the highest that can engage the human intellect, and the most practically important to which a man can devote himself. It is quite time, however, that our M.Ds. and F.R.C.Ses. should understand that the days of mystery and blind confidence are passed: that a prescription is no longer a secret between the half-educated individual who writes it and the druggist's boy who compounds it. Almost every one now a days can read the document; and every commonly-educated man knows pretty well the general operation of the remedies prescribed. We, who in our own respective provinces are searchers after truth, have a right to require that medicine should advance with other sciences; that its professors should cease to be quacks and empirics, and should become the investigators of secret causes. This reform

must come from without: like every other profession, the doctors will not renounce an easy money-getting trade for a philosophical profession, until the lay proportion of the community have given them to understand that all the old humbugs have been thoroughly found out, and are known and despised, even by the populace.

To shew that our object is to exalt, and not to vilify, we have taken, as the text of this article, two of the best medical works which have recently appeared. Mr. Headland's book is that of a scholar and a man of science. We will venture to assert that he will deny nothing we have written, and probably feels it all, even more strongly than we do. If there had been many such men, or a succession of such men, in times past, we should not now be accusing the professors of medicine of having shamefully and sordidly neglected this sacred duty. Mr. Headland, however, is compelled, at the very commencement of his essay, to admit that the empirical treatment (which means old-women's nostrums) is the only system that medicine now teaches; that "in understanding of the action of medicines, and of their agency in the cure of diseases, we do not much excel our ancestors;" that if practitioners would only bestir themselves to remove this ignorance, it might soon be done. This testimony, however, is so important, that we must give the passage in extenso.

There have been, more or less, in all ages, two systems or schools of medical treatment, of which the one prevails among ignorant men, and in rude states of society, but the other requires a higher degree of enlightenment. These are the Empirical and the Rational systems. The first is founded on simple induction. By accident or by experience it is found that a certain medicine is of use in the treatment of a certain disorder; it is henceforth administered in that disorder; and on a number of such

separate data an empirical system is constructed. It naturally requires for its elaboration a comparatively small degree of knowledge.

Now this observation of facts is indispensable as a bebe satisfied with taking them separately, but we must ginning, but something more is required. We must not proceed to compare together a large number of facts, and draw inferences from this comparison. And our plan of treatment will become rational, when on the one hand, from an accurate knowledge of the symptoms of diseases, we are better enabled to meet each by its appropriate remedy, and on the other hand, from some acquaintance with the general action of a medicine, we are fitted to wield it with more skill and effect, and to apply it even in cases where it has not yet been proved beneficial. Thus, for the proper perfection of medicine as a rational science, two things are in the main needed: the first is a right understanding of the causes and symptoms of disease; the second, a correct knowledge of the action of medicines. plete, we should then be able to do all that man could by Should our acquaintance with these two subjects be comany possibility effect in the alleviation of human suffering. This sublime problem is already being unravelled at one end. Diagnosis and Nosology are making rapid strides; and perhaps we shall soon know what we have to cure. But at the other end our medical system is in a less satisfactory condition; and though some impatient men have

essayed, as it were, to cut the Gordian knot, and have declared boldly on subjects of which they are ignorant, yet it must be confessed, that in the understanding of the action of medicines, and of their agency in the cure of diseases, we do not so much excel our ancestors. While other sciences are moving, and other inquiries progressing fast, this subject, so momentous in its applications, has, in spite of the earnest labours of a few talented investigators, made after all but small progress. Let but those who feel this want bestir themselves to remove it, and it will soon be done. Those doubts and difficulties, which are now slowly clearing away before the efforts of a few, will then be finally dispelled by the united energies of all; and instead of our present indecision and uncertainty on many points, we shall find ourselves eminently qualified to wage the conflict with disease, being skilled in that science whose name bespeaks its peculiar importance the science of Therapeutics.

Again, what can we say of a science which gives a definition of the operation of medicines so little clarior per se as the following?—

Concluding, then, that it is impossible to account clearly for the actions of most medicines on Mechanical or on Chemical principles, we are led to infer that their influence must for the most part be vital in its naturethat it must be such as could only be exerted in the living body. Even then we are unable to fix upon any single rule or formula which shall be capable of accounting for the actions of all at once. So it seems that the only general explanation which we can offer of the modus operandi of medicines in the cure of diseases, is, to say that they operate by various counteractions.

We recommend to educated non-medical men a perusal of Mr. Headland's work, that they may understand how much this mysteryman sort of trade requires a fillip from without. We would ask further, what proportion of the general practitioners of the present day have read one chapter of the book, and what proportion even of these are acting upon its advice, and working as conscientious men ought to work who stand daily between man and death?

In dealing with Dr. Fuller's work, we offer it as a single example illustrative of a general proposition. Dr Fuller has studied a particular and very rife disease very carefully; and doubtless, if we had to confide to the care of a doctor a patient in whom we were interested, and who was suffering from this disease, we should seek the aid of Dr. Fuller; for he probably knows more about it than any of his brethren. Yet we cannot read ten pages of the work without feeling how very little this knowledge is, and how utterly empirical and unphilosophical is the state of medical knowledge upon the subject.

Now there is, perhaps, no disease which is more common than this rheumatism-none

which has offered more cases for study-none which has given more copious materials for induction. There is no disease which offers surer indication to the eye of science that the suffering is caused by the presence, in the body,

of an excess of one of those chemical elements whereof it is composed. There is every reason to believe that a fit of gout or rheumatism

ought to be cured as easily and as immediately as a fit of heartburn. A year or two hence, in all probability, such will be the case; and it ought to have been so, five hundred years ago.

Yet of this common disease Dr. Fuller is obliged to commence his treatise by admitting that he and his brethren know nothing of its origin, its course, or its nature-even of the seat of the disease (p. 44), and very little of its treatment.

Few diseases are more deserving of attention than that common, painful, and obstinate malady which has been recognised under the title of Rheumatism. Whether viewed in relation to the number of its victims, the amount of present suffering it inflicts, or the terrible disease of the heart which it entails, it ranks among the most formidable of human ailments, Its importance, however, in the estimation of the physiologist, is derived not only from its prevalence and severity, but from the mystery in which it has ever been involved. Obscure in its origin, and in its subsequent course uncertain and variable, its source has hitherto remained undiscovered, its phenomena unexplained, its treatment unsatisfactory; and, by common consent, it is ascribed to a cause which affords not the slightest clue to its nature, nor the least explanation of its varied phenomena.

Medicine pompously declares that rheumatism is the result of a specific virus, but there she stops.

A peculiar and specific character is so clearly stamped on this disease, that no one will attempt to question it; few, on due consideration, will deny its dependence on a poisonous matter in the system; all, therefore, ought to agree as to the specific nature of that poison. But, in defiance of those very laws, the due appreciation of which referred to a dozen different causes, and, inferentially at alone makes any study a science, rheumatism has been least, to as many different poisons.

As medicine does not tell us what this virus is, the definition tells us no more than that rheumatism is caused by something or othermedicine does not know what-but she calls it a "virus." She might as well call it a drumstick. Medicine is not even sure whether

the materies morbi is an acid or an alkali.

When Dr. Fuller comes to speak of the treatment of the disease, the whole system of the operation of medicine by blind guesses becomes and Dr. Macleod in England, have adopted the at once apparent. Dr. Bouilland in France, Sangrado system, and bled hundreds to death at the rate of from three to six pints in the first three days," coup sur coup." Dr. Cazenove of Pau, and Dr. Corrigan of Dublin, drugged away the disease with opium, sometimes at the rate of two hundred grains in a fortnight (p. 88). Dr. Chambers adopted the very opposite method of large doses of calomel and other purgatives.

Sweating has had its advocate and professors: persevering practitioners have gone on salivating their unhappy patients, although they

* With what success let the following extract shew:"In modern times, though not so carefully, accinctus ad sudorem,' the unhappy sufferer has been sweated quite

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