est manner. A sharp instrument is struck into their spine, which ends their existence in an instant. There is some difference in their condition, according to the temper, knowledge, and wealth of the proprietor, but there is now a very great uniformity, in all these respects, throughout the kingdom, and the cow that fares worst may still be said to enjoy a terrestrial paradise. A very small portion of the milk is consumed in its natural state. It is made into cheese and butter, and the residue composes the liquid part of their food. Their cheese is formed into various shapes, sometimes fanciful and imitative; but each mass is always so modelled as to weigh about ten pounds. This is sent to market in bamboo baskets. The colour of this cheese is a bright orange. It is generally dry and firm, and becomes harder by age. It is so hard, before it is eaten, as to endure being ground into powder, and in this state it always comes upon table. Their butter, the greater part of it, is consumed at a distance from the place where it is made, and after being kept for some time. It is consequently seasoned with salt, and formed into masses of ten pounds. This cheese and butter are generally equal to the best which I ever tasted. They are better in some districts than in others, but the food of the cows being the same in all cases, the products are sufficiently alike. There is in their milk, cheese, and butter a peculiar flavour, arising from the use of beel. At first, this property displeased my palate, merely because I was unused to it. In a little time, I began to relish it extremely, and Saxon butter is now insipid to my taste. In their dairies, running water is deemed indispensable. Their vessels are formed of bamboo. Their churn is a hollow cylinder of this wood, in which there is a turning axis, with dashers affixed to it. This axis, when the power is at hand, is turned by a jet of water. A Kotan dairy is a circular space, built round with apartments, suited to the various purposes of making and preserving milk, butter, and cheese. In the centre is a court in which the cattle are folded, and which contains all the necessary means for feeding, watering, and sheltering them. No instrument of tillage is more familiar to us than the plough, and the great business of the ox and the horse is to drag it over the ground. The use of the plough has been suggested by the need there was of economizing labour; and it is so obvious an expedient, that no contrivance is more ancient and general than this. In Kotan, however, the inquisitive traveller looks in vain for a plough. The only instruments of tillage are the hand and the hoe. The preparation of the soil for beel, the planting, the weeding, and the taking up, when mature, are all performed by one instrument, which I call the hoe, because it is used oftener as a hoe than as a spade, though it is so adapted to the handle as to be screwed on in different ways, and to serve either purpose, as occasion requires. The want of the plough appeared to me a very manifest defect in their system. The plough performs the work of a great number of spades, in a shorter time, and sometimes in a more effectual manner. Hence, as there is no business more constantly and generally followed than that of tilling the ground, no invention has done more towards lightening the most necessary of human labours. Finding the use of the hoe or spade universal, I imagined that I had a fine opportunity of improving their art, and took a great deal of pains, on many occasions, to show the great superiority of the plough. I was never eloquent enough, however, to make a convert of any who was worth convincing. Their prejudices as easily found arguments against the plough, as those of European farmers would find them against the exclusive use of the spade. Every particular in our management was such as to shock their established habits. The mutilation of cattle, the devoting of an animal, so sacred as this is in their eyes, to so toilsome a drudgery, were the first ideas that always occurred to their imagination. They likewise denied that the use of the plough occasioned any saving of la bour. The oxen put into the yoke were to be maintained in health and vigour, and the most moderate calculation always makes the subsist ence of a cow or ox equal to the quantity of food consumed by twelve men. The question, therefore, necessarily occurred, whether the strength of two oxen was equal to that of twenty-four men. All nice comparisons, however, between the maintenance and labour of men and oxen were precluded by the notion that the thorough cultivation of the hoe could not be effected by any other instrument, and that the present state of population and tillage did no more than furnish wholesome and agreeable employment to that class who cultivated the ground: more compendious modes are thought pernicious, inasmuch as they would occasion idleness in those who are at present employed in no greater degree than is wholesome and agreeable. open the gate till there is a dozen together of them." For the Literary Magazine. LONDON MANNERS. FEW circumstances more strong. ly illustrate the present state of London manners than the mode on which gambling is conducted. About five years ago, a keeper of a gam bling-house became bankrupt. After having cleared himself of all incumbrances by a statute, he immediately opened a subscription gambling-house in Bond-street, on a larger scale than ever, which in a few weeks obtained not less than four hundred subscribers, at twelve guineas per annum each, making an aggregate rental of upwards of five thousand pounds a-year for him to subsist upon, independently of half-a-guinea a night, in addition, from every person who touches a die or card. Much business has since been performed in this elegant circle of accomplished life. Several of the associates had no great reason to bless the luck that has attended them: yet, in every successive year, the business considerably increased. Lord B-h was unfortunate enough, in a single night, to lose not less than one hundred and seventy thousand pounds, and hereby to render himself a beggar for life, or rather, perhaps, to establish himself as a gambler by profession. For the Literary Magazine. MEDICAL ADVICE. WE sometimes meet, among ancient authors, with advice, in giving which it is doubtful whether they were in jest or earnest. This doubt can hardly fail of being entertained, when the substance of the counsel is 9 considered, though other circumstances fully convince us that they were serious. The following passage, for example, occurs in the writings of Hippocrates: "In a fracture of the thigh," says this renowned sage, "the extension ought to be particularly great, the muscles being so strong, that, notwithstanding the bandages, their contraction is apt to shorten the limb. This is a deformity so deplorable, that when there is reason to apprehend it, I advise the patient to suffer the other thigh to be broken also, to have them both of one length." For the Literary Magazine. DEAN SWIFT. SHAKESPEARE and dean Swift are surely memorable instances of the extravagance to which fashion will sometimes carry our veneration for particular writers. The merit of performances in relation to these writers is never considered. The only question is, whether the scrap belongs to them or not. If it be certainly their production, it is immediately admitted to a participation of their divine honours. There was lately an attempt to take advantage of this popular superstition by palming upon Shakespeare an antiquated tragedy called Vortigern. The greatest abilities were immediately called into full action, not to ascertain the merit of the work, and to admit its claim to notice and regard, in proportion to its merit. No. This seems not to have occupied the attention of the mob of critics a moment. Their sole enquiry was whether it was Shakespeare's or not. Had it proved to be his, it would instantly have been multiplied ten thousand fold; all the splendour of painting, paper, and typography would have been lavished upon it; and the subtlest wit and most laborious erudition would have thought themselves lau dably engaged in explaining i puns, illustrating its quibbles, and unveiling its obscenities. Thus have many ingenious people been employed, during the last century, in raking together every thing written by dean Swift. Nonsense, malignity, and filthiness, that would have eternally disgraced a living writer, derive a value from having flowed from the pen of Swift, and are carefully inserted in the splendid and costly editions of his works which are continually issuing from the press. That the dean was a blind fanatic may be proved, if proof were wanting, from the terms of high and fulsome panegyric of which he speaks of the Memoirs of a Captain Chreighton, a Scottish officer of dragoons, employed by the detestable ministry of Charles II, to discover and seize presbyterian preachers among the Highlands. The dean extols this wretched tool of persecution as another Philip de Comines. The first exploit this hero boasts was the seizing, with a party of soldiers, one Stobow, a poor non-con teacher, and the leading him to almost certain death, although his daughter offered him a hundred dollars to let her parent escape. He then tells his readers how he and his comrades lived plentifully a whole year on a contribution raised to recover a horse, which they had literally stolen from a lady who attended a conventicle. Soon after, our Philip de Comines, at the head of twelve dragoons, took a very celebrated preacher, and brought him to the gallows. He now believed himself such a favourite of heaven, that he had revelation after revelation by dreams, and impressions on his mind, to tell him the hidingplaces of the poor, persecuted Scotsmen, who were certainly by no means greater fanatics than himself. These he loads with all the scurrility of a drunken trooper: they are rogues, rascals, rebels," &c. He "rakes hell" to find a soldier that can mimic their clergy men; in short, the whole work, recommended enthusiastically by the dean of St. Patrick's, is the most extraordinary instance of blind fanaticism, both in the writer and in the encomiast, that any age ever produced. WO. For the Literary Magazine. USE OF ASTRONOMY, THERE are few pursuits which have less practical connection with the common offices and avocations of human life than astronomy. It seems impossible to bring into domestic application the most profound or various knowledge of the heavens. One of the greatest efforts of astronomical sagacity is the discovery of a new planet; but though the exist ence of a planet be of the greatest importance in the scheme of the universe, the discovery of its existence seems altogether useless to the regulation of our own private affairs, either as goers to market, as superintendants of the kitchen, or as presidents of the parlour. The ancients have left us a good story of Thales of Miletus, by which the insufficency of these celestial speculations to save us from the most common mischances of life is familiarly illustrated. A girl, of dubious character, seeing him gazing at the heavens, as he walked along, and perhaps piqued at his not casting an eye at her attractions, put a stool in his path, over which he tumbled and broke his shins. The excuse she made was, that she meant to teach him to look at home, before he indulged himself in star-gazing. For the Literary Magazine. SERIOUS PARODY. LABORIOUS dulness, in modern times, has never been more indefa tigably employed than in writing Latin verses. These compositions are, in general, a sort of mosaic, in which innumerable fragments are put together, so as to form a whole, entirely different from those entires, of which these fragments originally contributed to the formation. But one of the principal freaks of dulness, and, it must be owned, one of the most amusing and least dull of her freaks consists in parody. Of facetious parody there are numerous; examples, and there are not wanting instances of serious parody.Thus the Iliad and the Æneid have been, more than once, by an ingenious and elaborate process of substitution, converted into histories of our Saviour's life and death. What dulness has often attempted, genius, allied with patience, has One of sometimes not disdained. the most extraordinary specimens of serious parody is the production of a learned professor in a Saxon university, who has, with infinite labour, transformed the odes and epodes of Horace into pious hymns, preserving the original measure, and, as far as possible, the words of the Roman poet. The classical reader will, at one glance, comprehend the amazing difficulties which such a parodist must undergo, and will be surprised to find these he terodox productions not wanting in pure Latinity; however, that he may judge for himself, a specimen or two we will give him. Ad Pyrrham. Ode V. Lib. I. Ad Mariam Deiparam. Parodia V. Ipoon Christi ad Peccatorem. Ulla si juris tibi pejerati Plauderem-Sed tu, simul obligasti In Bacchum. Ode 23. Lib. 3. secondly, in adapting the language, imagery, and taste of Roman lyric poetry to christian topics and allusions. This arduous task he has performed with illustrious success; and what renders this success still more wonderful, is the situation in which the undertaking was accomplished. Buchanan fell, perhaps deservedly, under the suspicion of infidelity, and was condemned to make this version of the Psalms as a penance, by the Portuguese inquisition, in a dungeon at Lisbon. How strenuous, how well-stored must be the mind, who could execute such a task, with such success, in such circumstances! I confess I feel no small complacency for that pope of the last century, who, smitten with classical enthusiasm, meditated, for a while, the introduction of Buchanan's Psalms Plenum, Quæ in nemora, aut quod agor into religious worship. When we These samples will suffice. They are certainly remarkable proofs of human ingenuity; and as they have merit independent of their prototype, it is but justice to assign them the additional, though less honourable praise, to which they are entitled as parodies. Buchanan's version of the Psalms, into Horatian language and metre, is the most extraordinary effort of genius and learning, in this way, with which the world is acquainted. The task which the poet assigned to himself consisted, first, in giving a christian form to the topics and allusions of the royal psalmist; and, consider the sanctity ascribed by catholics to the Latin language, by the scholar to true classical Latinity, and by all christians to the hymns of David, we shall see the powerful recommendations which such a scheme possessed. The scheme, indeed, as soon as it was conceived, was abandoned as impracticable and chimerical, but the greater is the pity. For the Literary Magazine. CRITICISM. The Guilt, Folly, and Sources of Suicide: tavo discourses, preached in the city of New York, February, 1805. By Samuel Miller, D. D., one of the pastors of the united presbyterian churches in said city. New York: T. & J. Swords. 1805. THE author builds the reasonings and exhortations of these pages on the well-known counsel given to Job by his wife. After some judicious remarks on the conduct and character of Job, he proceeds to define the |