conventional civilisation of the world, had built canals, and gathered to the neighborhood of his standard a peaceful, thriving, and happy population. Of the country around, he was the fostering friend and guardian. While evoking the spirit of smiling peace out of the desert, Jacob matured and developed his military plans, studied with care the internal politics of the ill-known but important countries beyond the north-western frontier-throughout the length and breadth of which his name was a word of respect, and of that terror with which the Asiatic views the brave and good Englishman when bravest and best; and-not least of his merits-was unceasing in his denunciations of the state of the Bengal army, which were so vehemently resented at the time, and have been so fearfully verified in the events. Will those who closed their ears to the living voice hear him when speaking from the grave? May it be so."

61. A paragraph appeared lately in different journals announcing the decease of a Monsieur D., at Paris, and fixing the hour for his funeral for six o'clock in the morning. Several persons believed that the printer must have made a mistake and put "six"* instead of dix," and therefore did not go to the residence of the deceased until the latter hour, when they found that all was over. The singularity of the time was, however, the work of the deceased himself. He had, during the last twenty years of his life, spent his money on relatives, friends, and acquaintances, from many of whom he had met with ingratitude, and suspected it in others; and he therefore determined to put them to a singular test. In a special paragraph in his will, he ordered that if he should die between October and March, his funeral should take place at eight o'clock in the morning, but for the other months at six. He also ordered that every person who attended his funeral should sign a book prepared for the purpose, and receive in a week after a legacy of 5000f. for men, and 8000f. for women. He also ordered that the names of those who attended should be published, and that the paragraph in his will should be made known, as a punishment to the forgetful and ungrateful. Out of 400 letters which had been sent, only twenty-nine had been attended to. In a week after the funeral, all the persons who attended, were sent for by the notary of the deceased, and each received the amount of the legacy. It was agreed that each of the legatees should subscribe a sum of 1000f. for a monument to the deceased, and that MM. Renault and Danton should be charged with its erection.

62. "Why is it not made a part of education for every child to learn early to swim?" asks Miss Martineau in Once a Week. "Where is the difficulty? Where is the objection? Many years ago a boy was drowned in bathing in one of the great private schools of the Dissenters. The usher was with the party, but the boy got

* Fir (pron. see), six. † Dix (pron. dee), ten.

beyond his depth, and sank, because he did not know how to keep himself up. Instead of taking measures to show every boy how to do that, the masters forbade bathing altogether; and a more awkward squad than the pupils of that school could not well be seen. They never learnt the proper use of their limbs; and they were consequently timid, where well-trained lads would have been without a thought of fear. A boy who can swim like a fish is pretty sure to do other things well: to row, to bowl, to drive, to ride; and every child ought to swim like a fish. See how this consideration again brings us back to the topic of mortality! Is there ever a summer when we do not see a succession of paragraphs about persons drowned in bathing? Is there ever a tourist season at the Lakes in which every considerable lake has not its victims? A skiff is upset-a bather has got out of his depth-an angler has fallen overboard; and as none of them can swim, they all go to the bottom. So we go on year after year. This year 1859 has been mournfully distinguished by coroners' inquests on this kind of needless death. Oxford and Cambridge have offered up their victims, and seas and rivers have sent their bad news to swell the indignation and shame with which we have to confess that we, a maritime nation, noted for our manly sports, have not yet learned to swim."

63. The metropolis has for some time been infested with a number of quacks, professing to cure deafness. Not very long ago, a certain John Bennett was formally convicted of fraud and punished accordingly. One of his many aliases* was Dr. Watters. A person calling himself Dr. Watters, and his assistant, were one day brought up before Mr. Norton, charged with defrauding a simple individual out of a guinea. Mr. Thomas Jones, the innocent victim, being troubled with deafness, went to a place named in a printed circular, to consult "Dr. Watters," and at different times paid sundry shillings, amounting in all to twenty-one, for sundry bottles of "stuff," the transcendent virtue of which was to have effected a cure in an astonishingly short space of time, but which did not have that effect, as may be guessed. Several other cases afterwards came up against the prisoners. One of the witnesses against them, narrated the particulars of an encounter she had with the "ear doctors," which created much laughter. She said that her husband had been affected with deafness, and in consequence of an advertisement, she accompanied him to the house of the prisoners, where he had been charged £1 17s. 6d. for medicine of the most worthless description. She afterwards, accompanied by a female friend, paid another visit, and pretended deafness. The person then in attendance desired her to take off her bonnet, "which," said the witness, "I did. He then examined my ears carefully, and after doing so, he placed some instrument in my mouth, and, looking into it, said, 'Oh, I see how it is! an "infemoration" going on in the throat has caused her deafness. I'll soon set that to rights.' 'You will,' says I, 'why I'm no more deaf than you are, nor have I any

*Alias, another name, as alibi, another place.

"infemoration" in my throat. You are an old villain and an impostor, and if you don't give me back my £1 17s. 6d., I'll shake your life out!'" She then gave him a good shaking, and he called for the door-porter to take her down stairs.

64. At the Mansion House, a somewhat novel smuggling case was investigated some time ago by the Lord Mayor. A M. Edouard Roussel was charged with being concerned in the illegal importation of three gallons of spirits into this country. The spirits, it appears, were confined in four large bladders, which were placed in a cask of cider. The cask was sent to the defendant by some friends of his in France, but it did not appear to be absolutely certain that he possessed a guilty knowledge of the contents of the cask. He was, however, fined in the mitigated penalty of £25, or six months' imprisonment.

65. A curious calculation respecting suicides in France has just been published. It shows that the number of suicides committed in France since the beginning of the present century, is not less than 300,000. The returns, however, are not complete, except from the year 1836. From that year to the year 1852, there were 52,126 suicides, being an average of 3,066 yearly. In 1858 there were 3,903 suicides, of which 3,050 were by men, and 853 by women. The last return given is for the year 1859, when there were 3,057 suicides committed by men, and 842 by women.

66. The following is a singular instance of delusion from the effects of a dream. Esther Griggs was charged at the Marylebone Police-court, with the murder of her child. Sergeant Simmonds, on duty in East Street, heard a woman crying, "Oh save my children!" He entered a house, and in an upper room, found a woman in her night-dress repeating the cry. In the meantime, an infant had been thrown from the window, and fatally injured. The woman cried out, "Where's my baby? Have they caught it ?" The woman had, she says, dreamed that the house was on fire, and had jumped up and thrown the baby through the window. The constables were of opinion she would have thrown her two other children into the street, had they not arrived so opportunely. No evidence was given to show any intention to commit murder.

67. Amongst extraordinary recoveries from desperate wounds, Sir Emerson Tennent records an instance which occurred in Ceylon, to a gentleman, while engaged in the chase of elephants, and which, we apprehend, has few parallels in medical experience :-"Lieutenant Gerard Fretz, of the Ceylon Rifle Regiment, whilst shooting at an elephant, in the vicinity of Fort M'Donald, in Oovah, was wounded in the face by the bursting of his fowling-piece, on the 22nd of January, 1828. He was then about thirty-two years of age. On

raising him, it was found that part of the breech of the gun, and about two inches of the barrel, had been driven through the frontal sinus,* at the junction of the nose and forehead, It had sunk almost perpendicularly, till the iron plate called the tail-pin,' by which the barrel is made fast to the stock by a screw, had descended through the palate, carrying with it the screw, one extremity of which had forced itself into the right nostril, where it was discernible externally, whilst the headed end lay in contact with his tongue. To extract the jagged mass of iron thus sunk in the ethmoidal and sphenoidal cells was found hopelessly impracticable; but, strange to tell, after the inflammation subsided, Mr. Fretz recovered rapidly, his general health was unimpaired, and he returned to his regiment with this singular appendage firmly embedded behind the bones of his face. He took his turn of duty as usual, attained the command of his company, participated in all the enjoyments of the mess-room, and died eight years afterwards, on the 1st of April, 1836, not from any consequences of this fearful wound, but from fever and inflammation brought on by other causes. So little was he apparently inconvenienced by the influence of the strange body in his palate, that he was accustomed with his finger partially to undo the screw, which, but for its extreme length, he might altogether have withdrawn. To enable this to be done, and possibly to assist by this means the extraction of the breech itself through the original orifice (which never entirely closed), an attempt was made in 1835 to take off a portion of the screw with a file, but, after having cut it three parts through, the operation was interrupted, chiefly owing to the carelessness and indifference of Captain Fretz, whose decease occurred before the attempt could be resumed. The piece of iron, on being removed after death, was found to measure two and three-quarter inches in length, and weighed two scruples more than two ounces and three-quarters. A cast of the breech and screw now forms No. 2,790 amongst the deposits in the medical museum of Chatham."

68. Much scandal was lately caused in New York by a great "sale of pews " in the church of that popular preacher, the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, pastor of the Plymouth church, New York. A certain

scale of upset prices was affixed to the pews, according to their situation and comfort, and those who offered the greatest amount of premium on that price were declared their owners for a year. The sale was a scene of great excitement; extravagant sums were given for the best pews, and the amount realised was 25,000 dollars. The chapel will hold about 3000 people. The numbers who seek to enter it every Sunday are estimated at 6000, and one of the results of this mode of disposing of the pews is that 500 of the members of the church are excluded altogether. In reply to remonstrances which were made, Mr. Beecher wrote:-"A church, when it deals with material things, is subject to just the same commercial law as any other body. Buying and selling in a church are just the same as in a store. Both should be honest and equitable; and if they are, it is

all sham to talk of the church being too sacred for worldly things. Whenever a church comes to that part of its business which is secular, and requires commercial wisdom, then it must stand just like any other honest concern, subject to all the equitable laws of matter and money. The pews must be sold and taxed, or rented every year; and this must be done publicly, that all may have a chance. And if the pews are not much sought after, there will be but little trouble or complaint. But if the pews are fewer than the applicants; if ten men want seats when but one can be accommodated, how are we to select which shall have them? Shall there be a perpetual scramble? Then the strongest will get them. Shall they be rented privately? Then the alert and shrewd will get them. Shall they be rented openly and in fair competition? Then, inevitably, they must follow the cominercial law, and the man who wants them most, and has the means of paying the most, must have them."

69. "The only general geological change which has taken place in Scotland since it has been inhabited by man," says a writer in the Literary Gazette, "is an elevation of the whole country to a height of from 15 to 30 feet above its previous level. Traces of this upheaval occur all round Scotland and its islands. From the present coast-line stretches inland in many places a strip of land representing the old sea-beach, terminated by the ancient coast-line, now a grassy bank, but retaining the general outlines impressed upon it by the action of the waves. This was only the last stage of a long course of upheaval by which Scotland was gradually raised from the icy sea which nearly covered it, during the pleistocene period; a time whose records are written chiefly in the characteristic Scottish scaurs, or precipices of clay, enclosing boulders or masses of rock of all the earlier formations."

70. The Paris journals have recorded the following singular fact: -A physician, on his return from visiting a patient, ignited a lucifer match for the purpose of lighting his pipe. In doing this a spark fell upon his finger, stuck there, and burnt it. In an instant the pain increased to such a degree that he seized his incision knife, cut out the burnt part, and squeezed as much blood from it as he could. The pain continued to increase, and it was found necessary to amputate the finger. Some hours after, the pain seized the whole hand with great violence, and he was obliged to lose that member. But it did not end there. The arm was next seized with the same agony, and that was also obliged to be amputated, The following day the doctor died. On contemplating these circumstances the question naturally arises-Is it possible the mere burn of the phosphorus could have produced such a derangement of the system? How often has such a casualty happened without serious results? Is it not more probable that the knife, being in a foul state, may have poisoned the limb?

Henderson, Rait, and Fenton, General Printers.