IF the literature of the middle ages was principally composed of crude, enormous, indigestible masses, fitted only to monkish appetites, that could gorge iron like ostriches, when iron was cast into the shape of thought, or thought assumed the nature of iron, the literature of the present day is entirely the reverse, and so are all the circumstances connected with it. Then there were few readers and fewer writersnow there are many of both, and among those that really deserve the name of the former, it would be difficult to ascertain the relative proportion of the latter, for most of them in one way or other might be classed with writers.— The vehicles, opportunities, and temptations of publishing are so frequent, so easy, and unexpensive, that a man can scarcely be connected with intelligent society, without being seduced, in some frail moment, to try how his thoughts will look in print; then, for a second or two at least, he feels as the greatest genius in the world feels on the same occasion-“ laudum immensa cupido," a longing after immortality, that mounts into a hope-a hope that becomes a conviction of the power of realizing itself, in all the glory of ideal

reality, than which no actual reality ever afterward is half so enchantingly enjoyed.

Hence the literature of our time is commensurate with the universality of education; nor is it less various than universal to meet capacities of all sizes, minds of all acquirements, and tastes of every degree. Books are multiplied on every subject, on which any thing or nothing can be said, from the most abstruse and recondite to the most simple and puerile; and while the passion of book-jobbers is to make the former as familiar as the latter by royal ways to all the sciences, there is an equally perverse rage among genuine authors to make the latter as august and imposing as the former, by disguising common-place topics with the colouring of imagination, and adorning the most insignificant themes with all the pomp of verse. This degradation of the high, and exaltation of the low, -this dislocation, in fact, of every thing, is one of the most striking proofs of the extraordinary diffusion of knowledge, and of its corruption too, if not a symptom of its declension by being so heterogeneously blended, till all shall be neutralized. Indeed, when millions of intellects, of as many different dimensions and as many different degrees of culture, are perpetually at work, and it is almost as easy to speak as to think, and to write as to speak, there must be a proportionate quantity of thought put into circulation. Meanwhile, public taste, pampered with delicacies even to loathing, and stimulated to stupidity with excessive excitement, is at once ravenous and mawkish-gratified with nothing but novelty, nor with novelty itself for more than an hour. To meet this diseased appetite, in prose not less than in verse, a factitious kind of the marvellous has been invented, consisting not in the exhibition of supernatural incidents or heroes, but in such distortion, high colouring, and exaggeration of natural incidents or ordinary personages, by the artifices of style, and the audacity of sentiment employed upon them, as shall produce that sensation of wonder in which half-instructed minds delight. This preposterous effort at display may be traced through every walk of polite literature, and in every channel of publication; nay, it would hardly be venturing too far to say, that every popular author is occasionally a juggler, rope-dancer, or posture-maker, in this way, to propitiate those of his

readers who will be pleased with no-
thing less than feats of legerdemain in
the exercises of the pen.
Metrop. Mag.

ADVANTAGES OF VEGETABLE

DIET.

I mention this piece of chirurgical history, to show what powers of restoration are comprehended in the tranquillizing effect of abstemiousness in the animal machine.

I do not intend by any means, in what I have said above, to recommend to people in general, a diet of vegetables alone on the contrary, experience has proved that a mixed regimen of animal and vegetable food is best adapted to the human stomach, but in illustrating the nature of the general predisponent causes of disease, it seemed advisable to select some marked cases of the power of abstemious diet to remove them.-Dr. Foster.

BEING during the early part of my life indefatigable in my dissections in comparative anatomy, to pursue which I sat up at night, while my necessary studies took me to the hospital in the day, I found my health declining; and in conformity with a sort of fashion among some distinguished men at St. Bartholomew's, I determined to live entirely on vegetable food. I remember my friend, Mr. Lawrence, during the SAINT ALBAN'S ABBEY-ANCIENT habits of protracted study which he was accustomed to follow, did the same, and I thought with advantage to his health. An entire family, comprehending a large

number of the finest children I ever saw, observed more strictly a similar vegetable regimen, and I found that others who followed it, were some of the most healthy and intellectual of my acquaintance, among whom were Shelley, Byron, and Lambe, and other mathematicians and scholars, high in the Cambridge tripos, whose energies sprung from no source of nutriment, but the simple cibo di latte e frutto, so celebrated by the Italian poet. I determined, from viewing the restoration of broken health in some of my friends, to try the experiment on a complete scale, and I lived during three whole years on the products of the vegetable kingdom, and I was never stronger or more healthy in my life than at this time. It happened towards the close of the period that I am alluding to, that the extensor indicis of my left hand was cut by a splintered wound, and the periosteum below it severely injured: indeed so bad was the place, that when I had got out the fragments left in the wound, a surgeon told me I should never have the use of the fore finger again, and probably never that of the hand. I disregarded what was said, knowing of what severe wounds the Indians, particularly the Lascars, recover, who feed on rice and herbs. I went to the sea-side, doctored my own hand, and still further reduced the quantity of my food, eating chiefly of ripe fruits. Suffice it to say that, contrary to all expectation, the wound healed almost by first attention, an adventitious substance being interposed between the divided ends of the tendon.

VERULAM.

For the Olio.

marks on the Abbey of St. Alban's, and

In a recent number we made some re

we have since thought that a short history of that Edifice might prove interesting to our readers.

The Church, which is the only remaining part of the Abbey, except the Gateway, was built with materials brought from the ruins of ancient Verulam, and which consist, for the most part, of.broad, flat, square Roman tiles, about one inch and three-quarters thick, baked to an extraordinary degree of hardness. It was founded, and liberally endowed by Offa, King of Mercia, in the year 791, as a reparation for the treacherous murder of Ethelred, King of the East Saxons, by his wife Queen Drida, It does not, however, appear that Offa was himself in any way privy to the murder, as he immediately caused Drida* to be confined, and at the expiration of four years thrown into a well and smothered, that being the fate which she had herself executed on Ethelred.

The first stone was laid by Offa himself, with great solemnity, on the spot where the remains of St. Alban were found, the King pronouncing maledictions against all who should disturb it, and eternal blessings on all who should be its benefactors. The Abbey, with its Church, Offices, and other buildings, was completed in about four years, soon after which Offa died. The remains of St. Alban were richly enshrined, and a guard appointed to watch over them night and day, notwithstanding which precaution, in the year 930, the Danes

* On her coins she is called Cuindreth. See

that engraved in Speed's Chronicle.

suppose such a luxury of a man as he
to be the production of a young repub-
lic. But every stream has its eddies,
and the very intensity of a youthful
people's effort to gain comfortable bed
and board, disgusted the tender tastes
of the stripling bard. He turned from
the unfabled banks of the Hudson to
the storied realms of Europe, and while
his countrymen were chaffering and
girdling, he was walking in "vain sha-
dows."
America was no country for
one of his complexion; he came to
Europe both to indulge his imagination
and to create a reputation.* He has
well succeeded.

it on shore, are such well-bred gentle men as those at New York; but you know we had heard that we should find a difference, and it is so; not that it is particular, although insolence in this country is of an ancient date. Shakspeare, you know, speaks of "the insolence of office" as a common evil in his days, which were before the bush was chopped in Massachusetts.

You told me that I was not likely to find Mr. G. in Greenock; but the letters you procured from him for me have turned out a good spec. One thing about them, however, surprised me, in particular the one addressed to Mr. -, who certainly received me very kindly. The gentleman never called me by my name, and when he introduced me to his friends, it was with a mumble, which led me to conjecture that, as Mr. G. writes a crabbed scrawl, Mr.had never been able to make out my name, or that it is not the fashion among the British to introduce strangers by name to one another. If it be so, it is an invention of great refinement; for in this country, where party spirit runs so high, serious consequences might ensue, were one person of notorious Tory principles introduced by name to a Whig equally violent; they could not avoid taking notice of one another, which might lead to fatal consequences; and I am confirmed in the justCORRESPONDENCE OF COLONEL ness of this opinion by what I have ob

There is no writer who has pleased more generally-though some have caused louder ejaculations of delight. But in the writings of Irving there is that "ensemble" of melodious style, sentimental tenderness, rich association, and perfect placidity of temper, and gentle flow of intelligible thought, which calculates him for the place of a favour ite, from the splendid drawing-room, to the humble cottage parlour. The women, especially, love him, and the men grow mellow as they read, sometimes charmed by his " phantasmagoria of mind," sometimes softened by his gentle, yet glowing pictures, of waning glory.

RICHARD H. HICKORY.

This harbour is very notable for American shipping, and a large pump of a custom-house, with pillars somewhat like the Bowery theatre, in New York; but it ai'nt so handsome, by no means; for the theatre, you well know, is built of white marble, and this custom-house is of coarse sand-stone, which, it must be allowed, is a great difference.

I don't think the officers that came to inspect our baggage, before we got

Washington Irving is now in America, which, though the land of his birth, he had not seen these twenty years. He went in April

last,

served here; for gentlemen with whom I dined one day did not appear to recognise me when I met them next. A cold, distant significance of the heada dinner acquaintance not implying any obligation to further intimacy — is, however, by no means such a comfortable cordial in a cold morning as bitters or cherry-bounce.

I observed here, that the language of the people partakes of the amphibious nature of the place; for, although it is a prime sea-port, the helps are not genteel, and they call their employers skippers-a Dutch term, derived probably from the Hollanders and the fishers of the Netherlands, whom King Charles the Second brought over from Flushing to teach the inhabitants the herring fishery -one of the few patriotic measures of that dissolute king. He established them in a square of the town called the Royal Close, which has long since been demolished; and in the place of the sheds and habitations which he caused to be erected for them, the government have built stacks of warehouses, that now go by the name