loss of the right hand, as if it had occurred in curia regis. The bridge had its own bridgemaster, estates, and rental, its own arms and seal, (on which the bridge itself was represented, with the legend: "Sigillvm gloriosi pontis Ratisponensis;") and for many years the citizens of Ratisbon dated their documents, "Anno a Christo nato et

a ponte lapideo exstructo." The bridge partook, and still partakes, of all the faults attached to similar monuments of civil architecture erected in the middle ages, such as the acclivity of the passage, the number of the arches, the size of the piers, and their dangerous vicinity, &c.; and there is no doubt but that the increase of commerce will, in a few years, compel the citizens of Ratisbon to replace the venerable foundation of Henry Superbus by a structure of proportions more adapted to the exigencies of our age.

THE SKELETON-ACTOR.

In the second act of "Der Freischütz" (the scene of the wolf's glen and the casting of the bullets) our readers will recollect that the figure of a human skeleton is introduced on the stage. In the representation of this terrific episode at the Paris Opera, an actual human skeleton is used; and the history of this skeleton is somewhat curious. In the year 1787, a young man, eighteen years of age, Boismaison, a figurant belonging to the corps d'opera, fell desperately in love with Nanine Dorival, then a favourite danseuse in the same corps de ballet. She gave him some encouragement at first, but eventually bestowed her preference on the serjeant-major in command of the sixty mousquetaires, who nightly mounted guard at the Opera-house. Boismaison quickly perceived his misfortune, looked upon the case as hopeless, and thought only of revenge. One night, after the close of the performance, he challenged his more successful rival in due form, but could obtain from him no sort of satisfaction; the serjeant-major, on the contrary, had him bound hand and foot, ordered him to be conveyed to the vestibule of the house, and there left him to pass the night alone, and in that helpless condition. Early on the following morning, the watchman of the house discovered him in the woful plight above narrated; and having learned from him the particulars of his mishap, he told the story to the whole of the corps drama tique; amongst whom the adventure soon became the subject of general gossip, and a current joke. Poor Boismaison, unable to bear the jeering condolences of his associates and fellow comedians, fell sick, and died boken hearted, having first, however, made an extraordinary will, by which he bequeathed his body to M. Lamairan, the

physician to the Opera; and requested him to preserve his skeleton in the theatre itself, so that, even in death, he might still remain in the proximity of her whom living he had so dearly loved. The last will of the young figurant has hitherto been faithfully observed; and his skeleton has continued to form part of the materiel or" property" of the Opera Français. Of late years, the Freischütz has afforded the opportunity of imparting a new life to his ghastly remains. G. M.

New Books.

Life, Health, and Disease. By Edward Johnson, Surgeon.

THE object of this treatise is to explain, in common language, the nature of the animal economy-the mechanics of the internal man-the mechanism of life, detailing, step by step, what actually takes place in the performance of each of the functions concerned in the preservation of life and health, and by what causes life is sustained.

The author appears to be a man of considerable talent. His description of the nature of nutrition is elaborately argumentative; but he brings the subject to the level of the humblest capacity by a lucid and simple style. We would willingly transfer it to our columns, but its length forbids; to take a portion of it would be unsatisfactory to our readers and unjust to the author, as it would present a mutilated fragment of what is so logically knit together. But the following quotation, containing some of his remarks on the necessity of exercise to retain the body in health, is not objectionable on those grounds, and may serve as a specimen of his style :

"As we breathe for the purpose of oxidizing the black blood, then the oftener we are compelled to breathe, the better; because every time we breathe, a portion of black blood becomes oxidized, and fit for

use.

The increased rapidity of breathing consequent upon exertion is an increased rapidity in the function of oxidizing the blood,-one of the most important of all the living actions. During exertion, we drink, as it were, oxygen from the air. And this oxygen is the only stimulating drink which we can take, with advantage to ourselves, for the purpose of invigorating our strength, and elevating our animal spirits. It is the wine and spirit of life-the true eau de vie, with an abundance of which Nature has supplied us ready made, and it is the only one proper to man. If you be thirsty, drink water-if low-spirited, drink oxygen

that is to say, take active exercise, during which you will inhale it.

"Besides all this, every time the blood has completed its circle of circulation, a part of

the great office of nutrition has been accomplished. The more rapidly the blood, therefore, is, by natural means, circulated through the body, the more rapidly does the process of nutrition go on.

"You may compare the living actions to the actions of a hand corn-mill, the heart representing the first wheel, which puts into motion all the other wheels: and bodily exertion may represent the man who turns the crank attached to the first wheel. Now, the more rapidly the man turns the crank, the more rapid will be the motion of the first, second, third, and all the other wheels; and the more rapidly will the corn be ground. At the same time, if the crank be turned with inconsiderate fury, the machinery may be deranged, and the mill broken. So, bodily exertion is not to be furious. A horse may be ridden to death; and, therefore, bodily exertion may be carried too far. But there is no danger of a man undergoing too much exertion voluntarily, and for his health's sake. Pain and fatigue will always operate as sufficient, nay, even irresistible restraints.

"I have said, that persons of sedentary habits become frequently sensible of a feeling of want-a sinking at the stomach, as they express it, which they seek to relieve by eating or drinking. I have said, too, that although these persons require the excitement of a stimulus, yet food or wine does not furnish the stimulus required, but, on the contrary, only adds to the evil. What they want is oxygen.

"You know I have all along mentioned four things as necessary to life; one of which you cannot have forgotten is STIMULI. But I shall disuse the word "stimuli;" because, being used in the plural, it is awkward to introduce it correctly without periphrasis; and I will use the word 'excitement' instead.

The exciting properties of arterial, that is, oxidized blood, I have just been describing to you, while shewing you how rapid exercise produces its exhilarating effects; viz., by increasing the quantity of arterial blood, and driving it, in rapid currents, through all the countless avenues of the brain and body. It is to the lively leaping of the living current, pregnant as it is with the exhilarating wine of life-oxygen, that we owe all the bounding buoyancy, the elastic light-heartedness, which rapid motion and rapid exercise impart. In one of the volumes of Byron's works is the following note:A young French renegado confessed to Châteaubriand, that he never found himself alone galloping in the desert without a sensation almost approaching to rapture which was indescribable.' The circumstance of this man being alone in a desert had little to do with his rapturous sensations: he owed them to the rapid circulation and

oxidation of his blood, produced as the joint effects of rapid exercise and rapid motion. The fox-hunter owes his pleasure to the same causes; and also the impunity with which he breakfasts on ale and brandy, and sleeps on half-a-dozen bottles of wine, and rises without a headache.

66

"I cannot help inserting here a short extract from a very grateful letter I lately received from Stourbridge:-'It is with gratitude,' says the writer, 'that I send these few lines to shew that you have not written in vain. Before I read your work I had generally bad health-ever since, my health has been excellent, and I feel a happiness within me which I cannot describe. My employment is sedentary, 'chaffering behind a counter' from seven in the morning till eight at night, yet I manage to get a run or a walk of seven or eight miles before business, and can walk fourteen miles before breakfast with ease, which gives me good appetite, good humour, and good health.' Excitement, therefore, my dear John, is necessary; we cannot be healthy without it and you and I only quarrel about the kind of excitement. This natural necessity for and craving after excitement is evinced in the numberless habits to which we addict ourselves in order to obtain it. The habits of drinking, snuff-taking, smoking, all owe their favour to the temporary excitement they afford. The reason why we crave after these unnatural kinds of excitement is because we have lost a part of the excitement which is natural and necessary to us. It results from a languid and lazy circulation-a deficiency of oxygen-a gorged state of the venous system with black, devitalizing blood, and a deficiency of that stimulating and vivifying blood, whose colour is vermilion, and which is proper to the arteries. Those distressing sensations of sinking, and want, and languor, and lowspiritedness, of which dyspeptics complain, accrue to them from the same causes. They are deficient in excitement-they want excitement; they want to have their brains, and heart, and whole system, stimulated, spurred, by the exciting properties of vermilion oxidized blood, driven merrily and forcibly to every point of the universal tissue.

"We require a stimulant, then, certainly; but the only stimulant which will serve our purpose is arterial blood in energetic circulation: and the only means to procure this is bodily exertion."

eluding the vaults. The latter consist of two large chambers and a smaller one, with a coved termination at the east, and a deeplyrecessed arch at the opposite extremity. Light is admitted to this gloomy chamber by four semicircular-headed loopholes. At the north is a cell ten feet long by eight wide, formed in the thickness of the wall, and receiving no light except from the doorway. Here tradition affirms that Sir Walter Raleigh was confined, and composed his History of the World.

Amongst other half-obliterated inscriptions carved on the arched doorway of this dungeon are these: HE THAT INDVRETH TO THE ENDE SHALL BE SAVID. M. 10. R. RVDSTON. DAR. KENT. AN°. 1553. –Be feithful VNTO THE DETH AND I WIL GIVE THE A CROWN OF LIFE. T. FANE. 1554. Above stands Saint John's Chapel, and the upper story is occupied by the council-chamber and the rooms adjoining. A narrow vaulted gallery, formed in the thickness of the wall, communicating with the turret stairs, and pierced with semicircular-headed openings for the admission of light to the interior, surrounds this story. The roof is covered with lead, and crowned with four lofty turrets, three angular and one square, surmounted with leaden cupolas, each terminated with a vane and crown.

We have spoken elsewhere, and shall have to speak again of the secret and subterranean passages, as well as of the dungeons of the Tower-those horrible and noisome receptacles, deprived of light and air, infested by legions of rats, and flooded with water, into which the wretched captives were thrust to perish by famine, or by more expeditious means; and those dreadful contrivances, the Little Ease, and the Pit, -the latter a dark and gloomy excavation sunk to the depth of twenty feet.

To the foregoing hasty sketch, in which we have endeavoured to make the reader acquainted with the general outline of the fortress, we would willingly, did space permit, append a history of the principal occurrences that have happened within its walls. We would tell how, in 1234, Griffith, Prince of Wales, in attempting to escape from the White Tower, by a line made of hangings, sheets, and table-cloths, tied together, being a stout, heavy man, broke the rope, and falling from a great height, perished miserably-his head and neck being driven into his breast between the shoulders. How Edward the Third first established a Mint within the Tower, coining florences of gold. How, in the reign of the same monarch, three sovereigns were prisoners there-namely, John, King of France, his son Philip, and David, King of Scotland. How, in the fourth year of the reign of Richard the Second, during the rebellion of Wat Tyler, the insurgents, having possessed

themselves of the fortress, though it was guarded by six hundred valiant persons, expert in arms, and the like number of archers, conducted themselves with extraordinary licence, bursting into the king's chamber, and that of his mother, to both of whom they offered divers outrages and indignities; and finally dragged forth Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, and hurrying him to Tower Hill, hewed off his head at eight strokes, and fixed it on a pole on London Bridge, where it was shortly afterwards replaced by that of Wat Tyler.

was

How, in 1458, jousts were held on the Tower green by the Duke of Somerset and five others, before Queen Margaret of Anjou. How, in 1471, Henry the Sixth, at that time a prisoner, was said to be murdered within the Tower; how, seven years later, George, Duke of Clarence, drowned in a butt of malmsey in the Bowyer Tower; and how, five years after that, the youthful Edward the Fifth, and the infant Duke of York, were also said (for the tradition is more than doubtful) to be smothered in the Bloody Tower. How, in 1483, by command of the Duke of Gloucester, who had sworn he would not dine till he had seen his head off, Lord Hastings was brought forth to the green before the chapel, and after a short shrift, "for a longer could not be suffered, the protector made so much haste to dinner, which he might not go to until this were done, for saving of his oath," his head was laid down upon a large log of timber, and stricken off.

How, in 1512, the woodwork and decorations of St. John's chapel in the White Tower were burnt. How, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, the prisons were constantly filled, and the scaffold deluged with blood. How Sir Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley, the father of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, were beheaded. How the like fate attended the Duke of Buckingham, destroyed by Wolsey, the martyred John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, the wise and witty Sir Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, her brother Lord Rochford, Norris, Smeaton, and others; the Marquis of Exeter, Lord Montacute, and Sir Edward Neville; Thomas, Lord Cromwell, the counsellor of the dissolution of the monasteries; the venerable and courageous Countess of Salisbury; Lord Leonard Grey; Catherine Howard, and Lady Rochford; and Henry, Earl of Surrey.

How, in the reign of Edward the Sixth, his two uncles, Thomas Seymour, Baron Sudley, and Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, were brought to the block; the latter, as has been before related, by the machinations of Northumberland.

Passing over, for obvious reasons, the reign of Mary, and proceeding to that of

Elizabeth, we might relate how Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, was beheaded; how the dungeons were crowded with recusants and seminary priests; amongst others, by the famous Jesuits, fathers Campion and Persons; how Lord Stourton, whose case seems to have resembled the more recent one of Lord Ferrers, was executed for the murder of the Hartgills; how Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, shot himself in his chamber, declaring that the jade Elizabeth should not have his estate; and how the long catalogue was closed by the death of the Earl of Essex.

How, in the reign of James the First, Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded, and Sir Thomas Overbury poisoned. How, in that of Charles the First, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, and Archbishop Laud, underwent a similar fate. How, in 1656, Miles Sunderland, having been condemned for high treason, poisoned himself; notwithstanding which, his body, stripped of all apparel, was dragged at the horse's tail to Tower Hill, where a hole had been digged under the scaffold, into which it was thrust, and a stake driven through it. How, in 1661, Lord Monson and Sir Henry Mildmay suffered, and in the year following, Sir Henry Vane. How, in the same reign, Blood attempted to steal the crown; and how Algernon Percy and Lord William Russell were executed.

How, under James the Second, the rash and unfortunate Duke of Monmouth perished. How, after the rebellion of 1715, Lords Derwentwater and Kenmure were decapitated; and after that of 1745, Lords Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat. How, in 1760, Lord Ferrers was committed to the Tower for the murder of his steward, and expiated his offence at Tyburn. How Wilkes was imprisoned there for a libel in 1762; and Lord George Gordon for instigating the riots of 1780. How, to come to our own times, Sir Francis Burdett was conveyed thither in April 1810; and how, to close the list, the Cato-street conspirators, Thistlewood, Ings, and others, were confined there in 1820.

The chief officer appointed to the custody of the royal fortress is termed the Constable of the Tower-a place, in the words of Stowe, of "high honour and reputation, as well as of great trust, many earls and one duke having been constable of the Tower." Without enumerating all those who have filled this important post, it may be sufficient to state, that the first constable was Geoffrey de Mandeville, appointed by William the Conqueror; the last, Arthur, Duke of Wellington. Next in command is the lieutenant; after whom come the deputy-lieutenant, and major, or resident governor. The civil establishment consists of a chaplain, gentleman-porter, physician, surgeon, and apo

thecary; gentleman-jailor, yeoman porter, and forty yeomen warders. In addition to these, though in no way connected with the government or custody of the Tower, there are the various officers belonging to the ordnance department; the keepers of the records; the keeper of the regalia; and formerly there were the different officers of the Mint.

The lions of the Tower-once its chief attraction with the many-have disappeared. Since the establishment of the Zoological Gardens, curiosity having been drawn in that direction, the dens of the old menagerie are deserted, and the sullen echoes of the fortress are no longer awakened by savage yells and howling. With another and more important attraction-the armories-it is not our province to meddle.

*

Viewed from the summit of the White Tower, especially on the west, the fortress still offers a striking picture. In the middle of the sixteenth century, when its outer ramparts were strongly fortified-when the gleam of corslet and pike was reflected upon the dark waters of its moat—when the inner ballium walls were entire and unbroken, and its thirteen towers reared their embattled fronts-when within each of those towers state prisoners were immured -when its drawbridges were constantly raised, and its gates closed—when its palace still lodged a sovereign-when councils were held within its chambers-when its secret dungeons were crowded-when Tower Hill boasted a scaffold, and its soil was dyed with the richest and best blood of the land

when it numbered among its inferior officers, jailors, torturers, and an executioner—when all its terrible machinery was in readiness, and could be called into play at a moment's notice-when the steps of Traitor's Gate were worn by the feet of those who ascended them-when, on whichever side the gazer looked, the same stern prospect was presented the palace, the fortress, the prison, a triple conjunction of fearful significance-when each structure had dark secrets to conceal-when beneath all these ramparts, towers, and bulwarks, were subterranean passages and dungeons

then, indeed, it presented a striking picture both to the eye and mind.-Abridged from Harrison Ainsworth's popular Romance.

BIRTH OF THE PRINCE. November 9th, 1841.

A FRAGMENT.

*

OLD happy England's Royal house hath won
A boon from Heaven-VICTORIA bears a son!
And to her breast, if suffering, yet in joy
Doth press the likeness of a princely boy!