dees, that very well supplies the place of Damme-and when dissatisfied with my neighbours, I pronounce him Ambradi merdo. With these two phrases, and a third, Avra Bouro, which signifieth "Get an ass,” I am universally understood to be a person of degree and a master of languages. Cadiz, sweet Cadiz !—it is the first spot in the creation.- The beauty of its streets and mansions is only excelled by the loveli ness of its inhabitants. For, with all national prejudice, I must confess the women of Cadiz are as far superior to the English women in beauty, as the Spaniards are inferior to the English in every quality that dignifies the name of man.- The Spanish women are all alike, their education the same. The wife of a duke is, in information, as the wife of a peasant-the wife of a peasant, in manner, equal to a duchess. Certainly, they are fascinating; but their minds have only one idea, and the business of their lives is intrigue. "You recollect," "that to-morrow Lord Byron wrote me, we sup and see Kean." The supper, to which he here looks forward, took place at Watier's, of which club he had lately become a member; and, as it may convey some idea of his irregular mode of diet, and thus account, in part for the frequent derangement of his health, I shall here attempt, from recollection, a description of his supper on this occasion. We were to have been joined by Lord R, who, however, did not arrive, and the party accordingly consisted but of ourselves. Having taken upon me to order the repast, and knowing that Lord Byron, for the last two days, had done nothing towards sustenance, beyond eating a few biscuits and (to appease appetite) chewing mastic, I desired that we should have a good supper of, at least, two kinds of fish. My companion, however, confined himself to lobsters, and of these finished two or three, to his own share-interposing, sometimes, a small liqueur glass of strong white brandy, sometimes a tumbler of very hot water, and then pure brandy again, to the amount of near half a dozen small glasses of the latter, without which, alternately with the hot water, he appeared to think the lobster could not be digested. After this, we had claret, of which, having VOL. V. D Though at times Lord Byron would drink freely enough of claret, he still adhered to his system of abstinence in food. He appeared, indeed, to have conceived a notion that animal food has some peculiar influence on character; and I remember, one day, as I sat opposite to him, employed, I suppose, rather earnestly over a beef-steak, after watching me for a few seconds, he said, in a grave tone of inquiry-" Moore, don't you find eating beef-steaks makes you ferocious?" The copywright of "Childe Harolde," which was purchased by Mr. Murray for 6007., Lord Byron presented in the most delicate way to Mr. Dallas, saying, at the same time, that he "never would receive money for his writings;" a resolution, the mixed result of generosity and pride, which he afterwards wisely abandoned, though borne out by the example of Swift (in a letter to Pulteney, 12th of May, 1735, Swift says, "I never got a farthing for any thing I writ, except once") and Voltaire, the latter of whom gave away most of his copyrights to Prault and other booksellers, and received books, not money, for those disposed of otherwise. * In reviewing the great names of philosophy and science, we shall find that all who have most distinguished themselves in those walks have, at least, virtually admitted their own unfitness for the marriage tie by remaining in celibacy. Bacon (this great philosopher threw not only his example but his precepts into the scale of celibacy. Wife and children, he tells us in one of his essays, are impediments to great enterprises ;" and adds, "Certainly, the best works, and of the greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men." Lee, with reference to this subject, chapter xviii. of Mr. D'Israeli's work on 66 Literary Character"), Newton, Gassendi, Galileo, Descartes, Bayle, Locke, Leibnitz, Boyle, Hume, and a long list of other illus trious sages, having led single lives. The coincidence is no less striking than saddening that, on the list of married poets who have been unhappy in their homes, there should already be found four such illustrious names as Dante, Milton, Shakspeare, and Dryden; and that we should have to add, as a partner in their destiny, a name worthy of being placed beside the greatest of them-Lord Byron. Milton's first wife, it is well known, ran away from him, within a month after their marriage, disgusted, says Phillips, "with spare diet and hard study;" and it is difficult to conceive a more melancholy picture of domestic life than is disclosed in his nuncupative will, one of the witnesses to which deposes to having heard the great poet himself complain, that his children "were careless of him, being blind, and made nothing of deserting him." By whatever austerity of temper or habits, the poets Dante and Milton may have drawn upon themselves such a fate, it might be expected that, at least, the "gentle Shakspeare" would have stood exempt from the common calamity of his brethren. But, among the very few facts of his life transmitted to us, there is none more clearly proved than the unhappiness of his marriage. The dates of the birth of his children, compared with that of his removal from Stratford-the total omission of his wife's name in the first draft of his will, and the bitter sarcasm of the bequest by which he remembers her afterwards-all prove beyond a doubt both his separation from the lady early in life, and his unfriendly feeling towards her at the close of it. On endeavouring to argue against the conclusion naturally to be deduced from this will, Boswell, with a strange ignorance of human nature, remarks:-"If he had taken offence at any part of his wife's conduct, I cannot believe that he would have taken this petty mode of expressing it." I saw him stand, &c. &c &c. What business had, &c.-The Dream. This touching picture agrees so closely, in many of its circumstances, with Lord Byron's own prose account of the wedding in his memoranda, that I feel justified in introducing it, historically, here. In that memoir, he described himself as waking, on the morning of his marriage, with the most melancholy reflections, on seeing his wedding-suit spread out before him." In the same mood, he wandered about the grounds alone, till he was summoned for the ceremony, and joined, for the first time on that day, his bride and her family. He knelt down-he repeated the words after the clergyman; but a mist was before his eyes his thoughts were elsewhere; and he was but awakened by the congratulations of the by-standers, to find that he was married. The terms in which Lord Byron speaks of the university, agree in spirit with many passages, both in the " Hours of Idleness," and his early satire, and prove that, while Harrow was remembered by him with more affection, perhaps, than respect, Cambridge had not been able to inspire him with either. This feeling of distaste to his "nursing mother," he entertained in common with some of the most illustrious men of English literature. So great was Milton's hatred to Cambridge, that he even conceived, savs Warton, a dislike to the face of the country -to the fields in the neighbourhood. The poet, Grav, thus speaks of the same university:-" Surely, it was of this place, now Cambridge, but formerly known by the name of Babylon, that the prophet spoke, when he said, the wild beasts of the desert shall dwell there, and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall build there, and satyrs shall dance there,' &c. &c." The bitter recollections which Gibbon retained of Oxford, his own pen has recorded; and the cool contempt by which Locke avenged himself on the bigotry of the same seat of learning, is even still more memorable.† HYDROPHOBIA. A PAPER READ BEFORE THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS. IN the month of June, 1830, Dr. Francis Hawkins read an important paper before the College of Physicians, relative to the prevention and cure of hydrophobia, and the bites of serpents, communicated by Mr. Cæsar Hawkins, Surgeon to St. George's Hospital. He had tried, by desire of the president of the college, the effects of the mikania guaco, which had been brought into notice at a former meeting by Sir Robert Ker Porter; and had also made trial of the veratrum sebadilla, a South American species of hellebore, spoken of as a specific for hydrophobia, by Lieutenant Hardy, in his recently published travels. + See his letter to Anthony Collins, 1703-4, where he speaks of "those sharp heads which were for damning his book, because of discouraging the staple commodity of the place which, in his time, was called spearing." It appeared from these experiments, that like every other remedy which had been found to mitigate the symptoms of hydrophobia, either in man or dogs, the guaco acted on the disease as a sedative, being sufficiently powerful to kill small healthy animals, such as rabbits or birds. The following remarks, however, struck us as curious, and deserving of the notice of medical men, as well as of our unprofessional readers. In estimating the effects of medicine in hydrophobia, two circumstances are not usually taken into account. The first is, that during part of the last twelve or eighteen hours, there is often a remission of the spasms for a considerable time, independent of any medicinal effect, previous to that nausea and vomiting which generally precede death: this was the case in the instance in which the guaco was tried: for at the time when the boy (labouring under the disease) was most violent, and the guaco had least effect, he ate and drank voraciously, notwithstanding the constant nausea from which he was beginning to suffer. The other circumstance is this: the unfortunate patient is tormented during part of the disorder by the viscid saliva which chokes him, and gives occasion to the spasms. The dog is constantly endeavouring to get rid of it with his paws; and the human patient will start in an instant from apparent sleep, and spit it around him, or cram the clothes into his mouth to wipe it away. For the same reason, notwithstanding the awful preparation which is necessary, and the violent and convulsive spasms which attend deglutition, yet the patient will voluntarily submit to this for the sake of the temporary relief which follows the attempt to wash his mouth, or swallow some fluid. He will muster all his resolution, and hold the cup in his extended arm for several minutes, half choked with spasm, and, at last, with a sudden effort, will dash it to his mouth with such violence, as almost to break the vessel or his teeth, and fill his mouth with the liquid, while his whole frame is in the utmost excitement: he will then sink exhausted, but calm, upon his pillow, appearing as if under the influence of a powerful narcotic, while, in reality, the repose he enjoys can be procured by any cooling fluid. Taking these circumstances into the account, Mr. Hawkins thought that the relief experienced by a boy to whom the guaco was given, was much less than he had seen in another instance obtained from prussic acid, and less than he expected from its effects upon a rabid dog, to which the same medicine had before been administered. The result of the experiment upon the dog was, that it was a powerful palliative, completely removing for a time (nearly thirty-six hours) many of the symptoms. Mr. Hawkins said, that there are several other medicines, the alisma plantago, or water plantain, the knowledge of which the Russian government bought at a high price; the scutellaria, or scull-cap; and especially the belladonna, all of which will mitigate the disease; but from neither of them had such decided and long-continued an amendmert been observed as from the guaco. It failed then as a cure; but its effects as a palliative were such, that Mr. Hawkins expressed a great desire to obtain some more of the medicine, so as to try its efficacy at an earlier period of the disease, i. e. before those peculiar spasms occur which give rise to hydrophobia in man (for it is only in man that this symptom exists); and he further suggested that the only probable way to obtain a cure would be by a minute attention for the future to those precursory symptoms which take place for three or four days before the spasms in the throat commence, of which little more is known at present, than that there is some pain usually in the bitten part, and some undefined general indisposition. If the changes in the constitution which attend the action of the long latent poison were better understood, and more accurately compared with those which take place in other animals, some clue might, at last, he thought, be obtained towards the cure of the complaint. With regard to the other South American remedy for hydrophobia, the veratrum sebadilla, Mr. Hawkins did not find that it justified the lavish encomiums which had been bestowed upon it; for it produced very little effect upon the disease; less than belladonna, and far less than the decided influence of the guaco. We are tempted, as so much alarm has of late been created with regard to hydrophobia, to state at some length what Mr. Hawkins advanced, as to the prevention of hydrophobia. After some medical discussion upon this question, which we omit, he proceeded to say, that very numerous experiments must be made before the surgeon can be justified in not having recourse to excision and the caustic, as the only means which analogy would point out as likely to be effectual, and which experience also justifies to an extent which ought to diminish materially the periodical alarm which is felt throughout the country with regard to hydrophobia. One half at least of those who are bitten by dogs receive no inoculation of the poison, and of the number of those who are injured by decidedly rabid animals, few indeed become affected, if the means alluded to have been adopted within a reasonable period after the wound has been inflicted. Mr. Youatt has kept a record of four hundred persons who have had recourse to his assistance, after having heen bitten by really rabid animals; and, although one died of fright, not one had hydrophobia; a number which, if confirmed by other documents, leaves little ground for apprehension to those who have had early recourse to surgical assistance. It is probable, however, that much more might be done towards preventing the occurrence of the disease in dogs, from which animal it is most frequently communicated to man, if the public were better acquainted with the early symptoms of the disease. To show how vague and erroneous are the notions usually entertained of the nature of rabies in dogs, we need only instance two examples. Every newspaper speaks of the application of a supposed test in a suspected dog; and if the animal attempts to lap water, he is allowed to go at large without apprehension; while, in fact, the only comfort of the rabid dog is to have plenty of water, in which he may attempt, ineffectually indeed, to assuage his thirst. And again, every poor hunted animal which tries to defend itself against its murderous pursuers, is set down as raging mad; while the placid quiet spaniel, or house-dog, is allowed to lick its master's fingers, or snarl and bite at its companions, without a consciousness of the hidden danger, because, forsooth, it does not rush furiously at every thing within its reach. Mr. Hawkins observed, that what is called the dumb madness is equally dangerous with those cases in which the dog is furiously disposed; and expressed his opinion, that there was probably a corresponding difference in the disease in man; and that in both it arose in great measure from the previous habits and disposition: so that he had seen a quiet boy lie for hours in the last stage of the disease, smiling, and apparently engaged in a pleasing kind of delirium, while another was furious and unmanageable, and actually drove the attendants in terror from the room, till he dropped on the floor, insensible and exhausted by his own efforts. The one was well educated and amiable; the other afforded a striking moral lesson-as the very bite, which caused the horrid death he suffered, appeared to have been occasioned by his cruel and depraved habits. Mr. Hawkins believes that there can be little doubt that rabies at present never originates spontaneously, even in dogs, but arises only from inoculation with saliva. He suggested, therefore, that if every dog which had been bitten by another, were carefully secluded for four months (which exceeds the common period at which the disease commences after the injury), and if every dog which shows the least symptom of any indispostion, were prevented from communicating the disease, should it prove to be labouring under rabies, much might be done towards the diminution of this alarming malady. And still more, perhaps, if the law were enforced with greater severity against those who keep these animals only for illegal or brutal purposes; for it is asserted by Mr. Youatt, that in nineteen cases out of twenty the disease is propagated by the fighting dog in town, and by the cur and lurcher in the country. The second part of Mr. Hawkins's paper related to the power of preventing or curing the bites of poisonous serpents by means of the guaco. His experiments demonstrated the error of the accounts, that it would act as a preventive; but he had not been able to satisfy himself whether the guaco would cure the effects of the poison. He expressed a belief, however, that this part also of the account which had been given was exaggerated, and thought the bites of these reptiles ought to be treated by the use of the cupping-glass or ligature, to prevent the absorption of the poison, till incisions are made to evacuate some of that poison with the infected blood, and caustic applied to neutralize what remains. On the same principle, said Mr. Hawkins, though in a ruder manner, the hunters of Montpelier, when their dogs are bitten by the vipers of that country, are accustomed to make incisions in the wound, and fill them with gunpowder, which they afterwards explode. DESCRIPTION OF A LOST FRIEND, Lost-near the 'Change in the city (I saw there a girl that seemed pretty), Even when he's filled his glass, I don't remember his saying Of the taxes and the king, He should like to live under, if we To say something bitter and bad And his short legs were shrunk in his hose- He took it amiss that I The defect of his form should spy. That is frightful, of church and of state, How the pretty girls once used to grieve When they missed me amongst them-Oh! no, 1 can have no friend equal to Joe! I miss his round, red, surly face I miss his short legs from their place I miss him-I'm growing quite sad; I think my old port is turned bad I miss him, and draw this conclusion (Though others may think it delusion), That, with all their worst faults at their back (And I'm sure poor Joe Steel had a pack), Though they never can alter or mend, There's no friend like a very old friend! The Undying One. REDUCTION IN THE COST OF PRINTING APPARATUS.+ It is well known, by those who have considered the subject, that printing is a power that governs the destinies of mankind: and, therefore, those who can control the printingpress can control their fellow-creatures. While men continue the practice of interfering with the persons and property of each other, it is to be expected that each, in his own defence, will make use of all the means within his control to increase his own power, and to diminish that of others. At this time, 1830, the means of printing are so expensive, that the great mass of the people are almost totally deprived of their use while the wealthy few (by their capital, or influence) wield this mighty engine, to increase their own power, and to weaken that of others and while the ignorance of mankind shall permit them to disregard the happiness of each other, and to limit their mutual encroachments, only by their power, it appears that the equality of power will be the only guarantee for the enjoyment of equal rights. The fundamental importance of these considerations, induces the subscriber to make known, in the most effectual manner, the results of a series of experiments, instituted with the hope of bringing the printing-press equally within the reach of all. Preparations for casting types have been made with the expense of about twenty days' labour, with the use of white-smiths' tools, and about five dollars in money. In this department, labour and money-expenses have been diminished, in many particulars; the most important of which is, the substituting matrices of lead, stamped with types-instead of matrices of copper, stamped with steel punches; whereby the difficult and expensive business of cutting steel punches is avoided, and the casting of types, which is now monopolized by monied capital, can be effected by almost any person of common intelligence, without apprenticeship, and without dependence on capitalists. A printingpress has been constructed of a stone platform, and a roller of sufficient weight to give the impression, supported at the ends by bearers which keep it at a proper height above the types, to admit the paper and clothing between. The necessary cost of this press is about five days' simple labour; while it requires an experienced workman to make the common press, and it costs from two to three hundred dollars. Labour and expense have been diminished in other particulars, which cannot easily be described +From the British Co-operator-No. III., into which the article appears to have been copied from the American "Free Enquirer." |