ments, turnery, pins, needles, fish-hooks, painted floor cloths, silk, worsted, and European goods of every description. Our own countrymen supply a cheap kind of rum (the New England) which is much esteemed by the lower classes.

Potteries and breweries have been established at Sidney. The iron ore, of which there is abundance, and of very fine quality, has not yet been worked. This will be another source of wealth and improvements whenever the forward state of the settlement shall admit of its being opened. But the chief hope and promise of New South Wales consists in the tract of country beyond the Blue Mountains, recently explored by the surveyor of the Colony, and afterwards visited by the present Governor himself. It ap pears that a great portion of the land is rich meadow pasture, intersected by rivers abounding with the finest fish, and well adapted for mills and other machinery. It is probable that here, like our extensive and fertile western territory, the future glories of this interesting country will fix their seat; and hence, too, is destined to spring the main impulse of accelerated prosperity to the Colony at large. Already it stands in need of no importation of the necessaries of life: the people are as remote from calamity, or real distress, as any nation upon earth. The spring there is in the month of August. The China fruits, loquates, are then ripe; strawberries, in the latter end of September, and beginning of October; and peaches, apples, peas, oranges, and limes, succeed them. These are planted, of course, in different situations. The grapes ripen in January, and continue to the latter end of February. Potatoes, as well as peas, abound throughout the whole year. In short, all vegetables thrive remarkably well, and are very plentiful. It is in contemplation to try the cultivation of the tea plant. Sugar cane is indigenous to the soil; but has not yet been regularly attended to in plantations; owing chiefly to the high price of labour, which has been exclusively directed, heretofore, to raising more absolute necessaries. Melons, figs, and pomegranates are at all times abundant. In Norfolk Island a state of cultivation exists, equal to that in the West Indies; and there can be no doubt, that every article of tropical culture might be raised in like perfection, as in the Antilles. The want of an enlarged market is severely felt by the settlers. Much advantage might result, if the Colony were allowed to export grain to Bourbon, and the Mauritius, or to any other place that might want it.

In spite of all the precautions adopted by the British Government to prevent persons from going out as free settlers, who do not possess certain qualifications, it is probable that the island will be rapidly peopled by emigrants from various quarters, whom distress, and the many consequences of a superabundant population in old countries, may drive from their native homes, to seek assylums in a foreign land. At present, it is provided, that none shall be allowed to go out unless they can prove themselves to be possessed of sufficient property to establish themselves there, without

the assistance of Government; and can produce the most satisfactory testimonials and recommendations from persons of known respectability. The person allowed to go, is then recommended to the Governor, at whose discretion it is left to make what grant of land he may think expedient. One great bar to the resort of British subjects, is the great distance, and the great expense, of the voyage; two circumstances which, we incline to think, must lead to the ultimate separation of the Colony from the mother country; especially should a vexatious system of restrictions and monopolies continue to be practised. Its remoteness and consequent se curity against hostile attacks, which could only be attended with a very considerable expense on the part of the invading enemy, will, perhaps, some day or other, furnish an argument for independence, which inclination may not be slow to alledge and to act upon.

ART. V.—Essays on Hypochondriacal and other Nervous Affections. By JOHN REID, M. D. Memb. R. Coll. Phy. Lond. &c. London and Philadelphia. 1817,

AN English book, upon what has been called, xar' ox, the

English malady,' was to have been expected before this time; though we know not, that any one expected exactly such a book as this of Dr. Reid's. It is worth reading on many accounts. There are some curious facts and many good practical observations in it; but then the quantity of useful information bears no proportion to the size of the volume; which, though by no means huge, has evidently been blown into a sizeable book, by mere dint of rhetorical elaboration. We have seldom read a more flowery volume. To speak in the Doctor's own metaphorical spirit, the foliage of his language entirely covers up the fruit of his matter. He seems not so much intent on giving us abundance of new ideas, as upon showing us in how many different ways he can express the same idea. First it may be said to be' this or that; then we may liken it to' such and such a thing; next it is' one thing or another; then it may be compared to' this or that;—and thus the series goes on, till, in some instances, we know not what the man is talking about. Take, for example, his observations upon the stoical doctrine of repressing one's emotions. First, we have a confined elastic fluid; then, a pair of stilts; next, a cloke, and armour; fourthly, a feather in one's cap; and, lastly, something which 'glitters' and has a 'slight and superficial gilding.'

It (stoicism) may forbid pain from betraying itself in the writhings of the limbs, or in the contortions of the countenance; but feeling, thus forcibly compressed within the heart, will be in danger of bursting it by its clastic force and expansion. A man elevated on the stilts of stoicism, stands higher indeed, but less securely. They lift him above the ground; but, whilst they deduct from his safety, they give no real addition to his stature. Stoicism is a cloke which merely disguises, not an armour which defends and fortifies, our weakness. The vanity of its lofty pretensions may be compared to the feather that

idly floats above the head, not to that solid part of the helmet which encircles and protects it. The glitter of affected magnanimity is apt to be mistaken for what is sterling and substantial, until the repeated rubs of life have worn off the slight and superficial gilding.'

Dr. Reid makes this parade of metaphors-and thinks he is writing like Johnson. Nothing makes an emptier sound in our ears; and nothing, it seems to us, can be more inappropriate to the subject, which the Doctor has undertaken to handle. It is a remark of some of our best metaphysicians, that no one circumstance has so much obstructed the progress of mental philosophy, as the practice, which all writers have fallen into, more or less, of attempting to illustrate the operations of mind, by comparing them to the affections of matter. Almost all our intellectual phraseology is made up of metaphorical allusions: and yet nothing is more certain, we think, than that mind is essentially different from every thing else. To use, therefore, such a merciless profusion of metaphor, in treating of its operations and accidents, as Dr. Reid has employed, seems to be going on a system, which is the very least of all calculated to give us right notions on the subject. If he is a professed materialist, he has some excuse; though, even then, the unconscionable frequency of his thick coming fancies' would be considered as horribly out of taste. A half a dozen indifferent figures is by no means so illustrative as a single good one; and, very frequently, even one is worse than none at all. A writer much addicted to metaphorical language, also, is sometimes incapable of distinguishing between resemblances and realities-between figures and facts. We shall have occasion to point out some of Dr. Reid's mistakes in this particular; and, we hope, his example will be a warning to those American writers, who, like him, think there is nothing so pretty as a new metaphor.

The physican who neglects the mind diseased, and applies all his remediable powers to the body alone, is only tying up one artery, while his patient is bleeding to death at another. We know not how the intellectual and physical parts of our constitution act and react upon each other; but we know, that they do thus act and react; and we have, consequently, done but the half of our duty, if we have only endeavoured to sanify one of the subjects, which are effected by the operation. Many curious instances are recorded of the control which our will has over the diseases of the body. One Dr. Chyne gives an account of a person, who counterfeited death so much better than Falstaff, that himself and several other physicians, after vainly feeling his pulse and holding a mirror to his mouth, were well convinced that he had carried the joke too far, and were about to leave him for dead; when they saw his limbs move; felt his pulse beat; observed his breath return; and, finally, witnessed his complete resusitation. Celsus speaks of a priest 'that could separate himself from his senses when he list, and lie 'like a dead man, void of life and sense. Qui, quoties volebat, 'mortuo similis jacebat, auferens se a sensibus. Cardan brags of

'himself, that he could do as much, and that when he list.'* To these instances, cited by Dr. Reid, we may add that of a person, who, under the name of William Newman, has given so much trouble to the sheriffs and jailors of New Brunswick and of New England. When he was first confined in goal, he so admirably counterfeited a quick consumption, through all its stages of raising blood, and progressive debility, that the doctors in the neighbourhood were completely deceived. He was thrown into jail on the 2nd of August, 1814; but it was not till the 22nd of September, that his dissolution was threatened. Towards evening of that day, the jailor's son entered the prison and found Newman already cold to the knees. The dying man asked for a hot brick to warm them; and, while honest John (that was the name of the jailor's son) went out to get it for him, he leapt out of bed; escaped from the prison, and eluded the vigilance of all his pursuers. These are proofs of the power which the will has over our bodies; and Dr. Reid concludes, that, if, by a determination of the mind, 'it be practicable in some cases to suspend altogether the appearance of life, it is reasonable to believe, that, by the same means, we may put at least a temporary stop to the symptoms of disease.' It cannot be denied, however, that there is some difference between creating, and destroying; and even Dr. Reid does not go so far as to say, that the power of the will in preventing disease is any thing like that which may be exercised in bringing it on. But, whatever may be its efficacy in curing disorders of the body, it certainly has very little in counteracting those of the mind. In all cases of nervous affection, the very seat of disease is on the Will itself; so that to bid one, in hypochondriasis, for example, to get the better of the complaint by resolving to do so, is about equivalent to telling a person confined by paralysis, to make himself well, by walking or running about. This is the only point, at which Dr. Reid arrives, through his two first Essays.

6

He begins the third with telling us, that an undue fear of death is the chief symptom of hypocondriasis; and then attempts to account for the well known fact, that those persons are the most fond of living, who have enjoyed life the least. We have two or three pages of metaphor on the subject; but Dr. Reid gives us no new explanation of the circumstance. It strikes us, that there are two obvious causes of such a paradoxical attachment. In the first place, a man whose past life has been miserable, very naturally would live to see the time when hope tells him he shall be happy. And, in the second place, death is considered, by all, as the last degree of that bodily suffering, of which every pain is, more or less, a modification. A being, therefore, who never has experi* Burton, Anat. Melan.

+ Memoirs of Henry More Smith, alias William Newman. New York, 1816. No man, who has read the book, can have the least doubt, as to the authenticity of the marvellous facts which it contains. It is written by Walter Bates, the sheriff, who had the most to do with the prisoner.

enced pain, can have no idea of what death is, or of what is meant by the phrase King of Terrors. A babe cannot be said to fear death; and grown persons can only fear it, in proportion to their experience of the sort of suffering of which death is the superlative degree. Fear is the offspring of danger; and every instance of suffering puts us more or less in danger of death, and makes us more or less afraid of it. A man who has been in great misery all the days of his life-and yet is conscious, that there is still one misery, which is greater than all the rest, will naturally have greater fear of that misery, than he who has suffered very little of the ills which we are heirs to; and who, consequently, can only look upon death as the last degree of what, to him, has been, by no means, intolerably afflicting. It is all a matter of self-comparison. The King of Terrors is no bugbear to the person, who has never learned, by experience, what terror is.

The remainder of this Essay is taken up with an enumeration of instances, in which men have died through the fear of death. Lord Littleton expired exactly at the stroke of the clock, which, he had become possessed of an idea, would be the signal of his dissolution. A man who was sentenced to be bled to death, is said to have departed this life, by having his eyes blinded, while water was made to trickle down his arm. Another who had been condemned to decapitation, e'n left the world on the block, before the first accents of his reprieve could reach his ear. And, in the Sandwich Islands, there is said to be religious sect, who have such influence over the natives, that, when they send notice to any one, who has displeased them, that they are about to pray for his death, he frequently dies without further ceremony. We disagree with Dr. Reid in considering all these catastrophes as the simple and immediate effect of fear. It seems to be a general principle of our constitution, that a full, strong, intense, and exclusive conception of an object or event, is about equivalent to the actual and present sensation of it. A man, who is sick at the stomach, to take a very familiar example, is as incapable of containing, if he thinks of a sumptuous table, as if a sumptuous table were actually before his eyes. It seems to be an essential part of this disorder to keep the mind fixed upon the very thing, with which the stomach is most disgusted; insomuch, that, with the most painful exertion, we are incapable of conceiving any thing but a good dinner;-and it is this rivetted and excluse conception of the object, which, we have no doubt, produces the same effects as its actual presence and sensation. The same is the case with fear. It is defined to be the effect of apprehended or real danger. Danger cannot, by any definition of the thing, be said to contain the elements of death; and consequently, cannot, through the fear it excites, be the cause or means of death. Fear operates, by rivetting our minds to the thing feared, till we have such a strong and intense conception of it, that the effect, as in the other case, is the same as that of the actual sensation. This we take to be the metaphysics of the thing.