ter and early in this spring in Europe.-1829. I have thus brought the catalogue up to the beginning of the present year. We have still the remains of the Gibraltar fever, and the epidemics in regions situ ated in its periphery.

The great Comet called Halley's, which will appear in 1833 and 1834, is now expected with great additional interest, not only from its having appeared so often before, but from its appearance having been accompanied with some remarkable atmospherical commotions, and with great pestilence. Whether this was the effect of accidental coincidence, or of some natural connexion, remains still in doubt, and will receive additional illustration by the sort of phenomena which may be found to attend its re-appearance. It appeared before in the years 1456, 1607, 1682, and 1759;-the first a year of earthquake in Italy, which destroyed 40,000 people; the second, a time of great atmospherical commotions, and swell of the ocean and rivers, and a winter of uncommon severity all over the world. In 1682, the plague was actually sporadic in Europe; and in the last year marked above, a great meteor made its appearance at Bombay, there was an earthquake at Damascus, and, with general pestilence, a mortal scurvy prevailed in Canada, and typhus in Bethlem.

It is recorded', continues our Author, that about 500 comets have appeared since the Christian era, and above 100 are noticed before it. No doubt many small ones have at all periods passed unnoticed, and others have escaped observation from their position. It is certain that the most unhealthy periods have been those when comets of some size have re-appeared, and they have been accompanied by earthquakes, volcanoes, and atmospherical commotions, while healthy periods have been those when none of these phenomena have occurred. I have made out the above catalogue from curiosity, and with a desire to see, if possible, how far the opinions of the ancients, and of Mead, Sydenham, and Webster, among the moderns, respecting the influence of these phenomena, might be found correct; and though I am by no means prepared to make any positive assertion on the subject, yet, no one who dispassionately compares facts, can, I think, deny the coincidence to which I have alluded, however much he may doubt any theory of causation founded thereon. At all events, I have established it as certain, that epidemics depend immediately on atmospherical causes, whatever may be their remote origins; and have confuted, I trust, the idle tales about contagion being the source of pestilence, which seem calculated to produce mischief, by leading to erroneous, and oftentimes to unjust modes of practice.'

Were the Government of this country equally convinced with our Author of the rectitude of this last opinion,-or, more properly speaking, were the opinion absolutely proved to be established in verity,-much of annual expenditure might be saved by the abolition of quarantine enactments. But, although, with Dr. Forster and other anti-contagionists, we are inclined to go a great way, we hesitate in accompanying them to the full length of their inferences. Our sentiments on this interesting question are rather intermediate, and more nearly

allied to those broached some three or four years since in an elaborate work by Dr. Hancock; a work, by the way, which has not been sufficiently appreciated by the public,-probably because it refuses unqualified subscription to the creed of either party.

In that part of Dr. Forster's publication which is devoted to the consideration of electric influences acting more obviously and immediately upon the brain and nerves, he takes occasion to go considerably into the theory of spectral illusions. While he subscribes generally to the opinion of Ferrier and others respecting their explicable nature on the grounds of physiology, he seems to mix up a little of mysticism with his sentiments on the question of coincidence between prediction and fulfilment.

'How,' he asks, shall we account for the spectra which are so accurately recorded as the forewarnings of death and other momentous events? The spectre which appeared to Lord Lyttleton,* and foretold the hour of his death; the warning voice heard by Quarreus; the vision of Achilles; the shade of Brutus; the curious relations of Cardan, Koller, and of numerous other writers in every country of the world, will furnish ample instances of the cases I allude to. The same obscurity overhangs prophetic dreams as well as visions, and, indeed, belongs to all those events which seem related to each other by some hidden law of coincidence, without having any apparent natural connection. All reasoning on this subject,' he adds, be rendered futile by our want of knowledge of the relations that may subsist between all the coincident and consecutive phenomena of the universe, regarded as constituting a whole, of which our imperfect perception of its parts renders us incapable of comprehending the harmony that pervades it.'

must

We are rather surprised that Dr. Forster should have overlooked the pathological law which often obtains in reference to mental impressions; viz. that they are as it were the accomplishers of their own predictions. This fact may be admitted without at all interfering with the still unsettled question of actual visits from the world of shadows.' Whatever may have been the nature or the providential design of the first conception or vision, the individual who shall have been the subject of it, and is fully convinced of its reality, has such an effect operated upon his physical organization through the medium of the sentient part of the frame, as to produce the effect either desired or dreaded. A very curious and instructive example illustrative of this principle, has been copied from a German work into the Pantalogia, the Quarterly Review, and the London Encyclopædia; in which instance, there is every reason to

This story is now well ascertained to have been a mere fiction. His Lordship's death took place under very different circumstances.

suppose the event of dissolution would have proved actually coincident in point of time and circumstance with the imaginary announcement of it, had it not been for the skill and address of Dr. Hufeland, who, by giving the patient opiates, so as to throw him asleep till the critical period had passed, thus prevented death, which he saw visibly approaching. On waking from sleep, the narrator says, the youth eagerly inquired the time of day; and finding that the destined hour had passed, he immediately lost his hallucination, and his life was thus saved.

It will be obvious to our readers, that this explanation is offered of some thoroughly attested facts, not with a view of encouraging that scepticism which would deny and deride occasional interposition out of the natural order of things,-but for the purpose of discountenancing that disposition which some persons manifest to believe every idle tale which superstition or knavery may invent, and to serve as a reply to what otherwise might be considered as an unanswerable appeal to actual observation and fact. It is even said, that an individual died not long since, on the very day of Mr. Abernethy's prediction, which was announced somewhat after the following manner: "Leave of absence for a month, friend!-why this day fortnight you will be a dead man!" Now we should be glad to hear from any person the most disposed to put faith in prescience, whether the announcer meant any thing more in this case-or knew any thing more about it,-than that, from his appearance, the probability was, the man whose death-warrant was thus signed, would not survive above a week or two.

But we find ourselves compelled to bring this article to a conclusion, having no space for further expansion of the notes we made in perusing the rather interesting, although not very well written volume which has elicited these remarks. Its Author, we must just add, is a strenuous defender of the fasting practice; so much so, that he almost unhesitatingly avows his desire for the return of Roman rites and Catholic ordinances, because the practice of periodical fasting is a wholesome injunction! The expression of this desire will be taken by some persons as a fearful sign of the present times. For ourselves, however, we continue fearless. Wellington may unrivet their chains; Cobbett may defend their Church; and Dr. Forster may approve their diet and regimen ;-but neither Pope nor Pagan shall prevail !

VOL. II.-N.S.

P

Art. IV. Aids to Developement; or Mental and Moral Instruction exemplified in Conversations between a Mother and her Children. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 572. Price 12s. London, 1829.

OUR

UR ancestors believed, that the great object of education was the formation of character. Whatever faculties existed in man, bodily or mental, they considered it as their duty to cultivate. In their schools, they provided for the body, manly exercises; for the understanding, the studies of logic and mathematics; for the creative powers, the study of that which is the greatest manifestation of them, language; for the will, the study of religion. The spirits who threw such glory over the fifteenth, sixteenth, and one large moiety of the seventeenth century, were trained upon this principle. And in whatever other merits their descendants have excelled them, for strength of sinew, for energy of thought, and energy of action, we certainly have never since looked upon their like.

The next period to this, however, was a very important one. As the age preceding the Reformation, the age of the Reformation itself, and that which immediately followed it, were destined, in the counsels of Divine providence, to be eminent in spiritual energy, so, the eighteenth century was to be that which should bring to light innumerable improvements in mechanism.

It would be more than ridiculous, it would be impious, to complain of the age, because this task was allotted to it, rather than those more noble and glorious ones which the foregone times had achieved. It was most desirable that circuitous routes to important ends should be exchanged for shorter ones; that simple and convenient methods should be exchanged for clumsy methods. But out of this good came forth an evil. As men are much more apt to be vain of that which they invent, than of that which they discover, the men of the eighteenth century became eminently more self-conceited and contemptuous, than those were who preceded them. Instead of admiring their predecessors for accomplishing such wonderful feats with so few advantages, against such a tremendous resistance; --instead of seeing what a vast spiritual power must have carried them forward when they had so little help from mechanical appliances; instead of coveting their energy to direct their own skill, they laughed at those giants for the heaviness of the swords with which they hewed down so many opposers, and actually exulted in being unable to wield them. Pride brought its own punishment. The new and improved methods were worthless in themselves; they were useful only by bringing great ends sooner to pass; and when the ends were forgotten, they became converted into instruments for promoting mere selfish

and sordid interests,-absolutely insufficient for the higher object of cultivating the soul.

When men began to consider mechanism as all-important, and spirit as nothing, Education became a synonime of Instruction. How to classify and arrange,-how to cram the greatest quantity into the mind in the shortest time,-how to get over a given portion of ground in a certain number of hours;-these became the great problems, which were solved by a thousand empirical system-mongers, all equally plausible in their means, and all about equally careless of the end.

The public endowed schools which our ancestors bequeathed to us, were still witnesses in favour of the true principle; but they were not faithful witnesses. The mechanical fever of the age had seized them also; and under its influence, they lost nearly all recollection of the ends of their institution. Only there was this peculiarity in their symptoms, that they clung to the old methods, merely because they were old, when better might have been formed; while the empirical innovators proposed to change them and the objects of education together.

This evil state of things has lasted in England till the present moment. Its existence has been protracted by a discovery which we must still regard as immeasurably important, though the fruits of it as yet have been feeble, and though it has produced this accidental evil consequence. We mean the discovery, that the poorer classes have a right to be educated. This persuasion took hold of men's minds at the time when the evil system we have been describing was in its highest and rankest state; and it is not perhaps surprising, that, in the vanity of benevolence, they should have declined asking themselves too curiously, what that education was worth, of which they were about to extend the benefits. Certain it is, that, in the works of Joseph Lancaster, the principle of substituting for true education,-the culture of the soul,-mere instruction or discipline, is carried to a height which it cannot easily go beyond.

Meanwhile, however, an important change had taken place in another country, Switzerland. Every body has heard the name of Pestalozzi; and it has been hawked about of late on all booksellers' counters, and in all newspapers; but we apprehend, that very erroneous notions are entertained of him and of what he achieved. He was not the inventor of a system; he was not the discoverer of any new truth. To suppose that he was the first, is the error of some quacks who have prostituted his name in this country to suppose that he was even the second, is an exaggeration of his merit, which has proceeded from the affection of his foreign disciples. His great glory was, to revive the truth which animated our forefathers, and which had so long slept in our minds; that the business of education is to educe