took place in an obscure corner of this vast con- For Friends' Review. THE CHOLERA. At the present time, when this alarming disease is spreading over the eastern part of Europe, and carrying off great numbers in Petersburgh, Moscow, and some other Russian cities, the following extracts from a discourse delivered by Dr. Croly, giving a short account of its origin and progress, some years ago, will probably be of interest to the readers of the Review. Many entertain the opinion that it may be looked for in England, and perhaps on this side the Atlantic, before the close of the present year. It is well known that though the general progress of the cholera, some 15 or 16 years ago, was to the south and west, yet its precise line of march was eccentric and mysterious. The experience of that day, demonstrated the necessity of every possible precaution, and should Divine Providence again permit its appearance among us, the propriety is manifest, of each one endeavouring to guard his own health, and that of others, with the utmost care. A. "We have no proof of the existence of the Asiatic cholera earlier than the year 1817. There had been vague recollections of an epidemic which burst out in the midst of an assemblage of pilgrims in Central India about the year 1772, destroying thousands, and scattering the rest; but it may have been the plague. Our first exact knowledge of the cholera was in the disease which traversed England fifteen years ago. "In 1819 it divided into two branches; one passing to the eastward through the Burmese empire, and reaching China and the Indian Archipelago in 1820. The other moving westward in 1821, passing along the shores of the Persian Gulf, and in the following year appearing in the interior of Persia, and in Arabia and Syria. In 1823 it first appeared in the Russian empire, in the provinces bordering on the Caspian. It then suddenly stopped, and while all the northern population of the empire were in terror, and Europe was in alarm, it seemed to have ceased; and remained nearly dormant for five years. "But, in 1828, it burst out again, and moved through Orenburg with sudden force, through the western and northern provinces in 1829 and 1830; reaching Moscow in September, 1831. Early in the following year it had traversed the five hundred miles between Moscow and the capital, where it broke out with fearful mortality. "From this point it spread westward with an accelerated velocity, and reached the Polish capital in March, Dantzig in May, Berlin in August, and Hamburg in October. in this country in Sunderland; and soon after "In the same year and month it was first felt reached London and Paris. Still moving westward, it now crossed the Atlantic, and in 1833 had seized on the United States, and gone so far pired. Having thus, in the eastern and western traverse, made the circuit of the globe. as Mexico. On the shores of the Pacific it ex "Its destruction of life must have been immense. Its havoc extended through half a generation. Where it was neither resisted by medical science, nor mitigated by sanitary prethe plague. It killed at the instant. cautions, it was even more suddenly fatal than "If, even in the civilization of England, it destroyed twenty thousand lives; and destroyed the same number in Paris alone; what must have been its massacre in the obscure and helpless barbarism of the east and south—in the tainted hovels, the mephitic swamps, and the marshy shores of vast regions, without government, precaution, or provision, without medical science or religious charity, or even rational alarm? The deaths must have been incalculable." For Friends' Review. "Slowness, regularity of movement, and eccentricity of direction, formed the characteristics of its progress. It commenced in May, One of the great English Universities having 1817, in the Delta of the Ganges, slowly spread-recently proposed to increase the facilities for ing during the remainder of the year through Lower Bengal. In 1818 it moved northward, and travelled the whole of the Peninsula at the rate of a degree a month. Yet it had not the surge-like sweep of the plague, but moved in lines, often parallel for a great distance, and capriciously sparing intermediate districts. the study of the sciences, including Natural History, the Westminster Review has discussed the contemplated changes in an elaborate article, from which we take the following passages. It is far from our wish to promote in our schools a multiplication of studies, which might interfere with thorough instruction in the elements of and this, we must suppose, ought to make motive of preference. learning; neither would we by any means advocate the substitution of Natural Science for classical studies. Yet we apprehend many intervals of leisure which are now wasted, might be very usefully employed by children of both sexes in the pursuit of Natural History-and especially to young persons, who are qualifying themselves for teachers, would we commend the judicious observations of the Reviewer. The expansion of the mind, is the natural result of increased knowledge, and these pursuits may be made to conduce to physical as well as mental health, if not permitted to become, as we must confess they are very liable to become, too en-laboratory operations of testing and analysis, in "There is much to be said for the power of mathematics in disciplining and cultivating the reason, and in creating habits of precise dealing with all matters that have to be judged, true or false. But processes of the soundest reasoning and judgment are now embodied in many sciences; in general physics, for instance, and to a very remarkable degree in chemistry, where strict quantitative truth is insisted on under all circumstances, and where, in fact, there is a discipline more than merely mathematical. The which every blunder recoils upon the operator, and where his knowledge, ingenuity and watchfulness, are incessantly on the stretch, may be strongly recommended as a discipline of the reasoning and judging faculties; and, in many instances, it would probably be the best training that could be chosen. A flighty, sanguine temperament, that jumped to conclusions, and neglected half the considerations of a case, would find itself in an iron grapple of rigid nationality, if sent to the laboratory of Graham or Liebig. The natural-history sciences also produce very valuable habits of methodical and lucid arrangement, such as no assemblage of details can ever overpower. In fact, every one of the more advanced sciences has the capacity of conferring a valuable mental discipline peculiar to itself; at the same time that they have, one and all, the common tendency to render our judgments and procedure conformable to the reality of things, and to save us from tragic encounters with the irresistible might of nature's laws. "In throwing new weight into the scientific scale, it is to be taken into account, that in their present state of advancement, the subjects in question constitute a very high mental cultivation. By their means, a human being may acquire no ordinary degree of accomplishment. They give the power of comprehending, explaining, and being intensely interested in, the entire framework of nature around, as well as most of the subtle processes of man's designing. They contain the abbreviated statements of the procedure of creation in its grand and in its minute operations ;-in the career of the winds and the launching of the thunder,-in the subtle movements of light and multiform workings of heat, in the transformations of matter and the powers of life, in the ways of the creatures that tread the globe in our company, and in the forms of races long departed from the earth. The human intellect is richly stored, by being filled with thoughts on things such as these; and "It is also worthy of remark, in favour of scithere are perpetual occasions for reproducing entific studies, that they are well fitted to infuse these impressions in the current of waking medi- a healthful and ornamental culture in general tations. The entomologist, as well as the poet, society. They are better subjects for intercomhas at times his eye in fine frenzy rolling.' munication in our social circles, than any of the Nature is ever showing impressive and exciting processes or results of mathematics, or than the instances of her own laws, such as keep the materials of classical literature. They relate to intelligent spectator, as he walks abroad, all alive things that come under the eye of the general with expectation and interest. Moreover, these population; they can make indifferent occursubjects contain a vast amount of important in-rences interesting, and interesting facts still more formation about our own selves and the things interesting. A chemist or a naturalist, of good that effect our well-being. They give us in- acquirements, has numerous opportunities of struction, in language more trustworthy than the repeating his knowledge; he can often commutraditions of unnumbered ages of vulgar experi-nicate a word in season to the excited curiosity ence, regarding the agencies of health and comfort, strength and felicity; they sweep away prejudices, correct false modes of reasoning, and qualify men for understanding their own constitutions, and appreciating the exterior influences of their life. To have a body and a mind like ours, and a world so vast and complex, eternally shedding impressions and influences upon both, is a heavy charge, and such as to make all sound direction and correct information earnestly sought after and prized. One's studies may be a mere gratification of the intellect, or they may, in addition, furnish profitable guidance to the life; of his friends. With his specimens and his apparatus he provokes the inquiries of his visitors, and his acquisitions frequently place him in the centre of an attentive and deferential circle. In his walks, he inspires his companions with his enthusiasm, and makes them wiser in the midst of their frolics. In his family, he sustains a current of interest, and kindles up the love of knowledge. It is hardly possible, in any company, it can never be in order in mixed society, to discuss the foundations of the differential calculus, the Æolic dialect, or the personality of Homer; but most people may be interested in does not receive lights from many subjects. Classical antiquity can be admirably illustrated by natural history, by chemistry, by physics, by political economy, all which contain the necessary conditions, true in every age, of industrial operations and material produce, by physical geography and human anatomy; and it must be of great value to the classical student, to find the principles of these subjects passing as commonplaces in the university, or, at all events, accurately known to his fellow students. The floating intellect of the college atmosphere, the genus loci, would in this way be a mightier influence on all the individual minds." the discoveries of Liebig or Wheatstone, or the | marked, also, that there is no one subject that generalizations of Cuvier or Owen-not to speak of the natural curiosity to know of the subsistence and habits of animals-the haunts of the eagle, the propensities of the elephant, and the life-circle of the insect and the classification and affinities of plants. It is impossible ever to have a well-informed community, unless by an even sprinkling of well-informed individuals, of cultivated address, giving line upon line, here a little and there a little, to the circles where they experience the joys of existence. Books, alone, are very inadequate instructors of the million. Hence, if any studies, good in themselves, are of a kind to be readily communicable to the unstudious throng, in the hours when they meet to sympathize and to talk, they deserve to be specially encouraged :-they are at once intellectual life to the few, and the civilizers of the many. "One other consideration may be urged in favour of the extension of the university field; namely, the additional good that would accrue to the whole body of students, from an university residence. In a place where many distinct branches of study are carried on, and where the scholars mingle freely, there is a double education at work; each one enjoys the fruit of his own application, and also hears and sees many of the proceedings of the entire circle of studentship. The cultivation of the newly proposed branches would give unavoidable instruction to the devotees of the ancient pursuits. Though Homer and Thucydides were a scholar's proper business, yet, in visiting the rooms of his friends, he would hear of the remarkable doctrines and experiments of the lecturer on optics, or the professor of chemistry; he would be shown the plan of the Menai bridge, the track of a hurricane, or the decomposition of water; he would come to know the appearance of trap rock, and get interested in the sutures of a skull. In walking parties, the ornithologist of the company would give his companions an eye for the flight of birds, and the botanist excite their attention to the flowering of plants. It would be impossible for the most determined mathematician, or the most voracious swallower of dictionaries, to leave college in entire ignorance of the ordinary vegetable species, or unable to say wherein a fish differed from a reptile. We have already touched upon the importance of filling up the ranks of society with men of various acquirements; and the principle holds as true of college life as of common life. To have every one studying the same things, or occupying their minds with similar trains, will not produce the highest possible culture, either in the community or in the individual. There should be no distinct branch of the knowable that has not its living oracles; and when a number of people come together, each should have something to impart and something to learn. It is to be re Abridged from the Church of England Quarterly Review. By W. T. BRODERIP, Esq, F. R. S.. &c. After hot contention and fierce fray, sweet and profitable is it to go, like Isaac, and meditate in the fields at eventide. Happy is he who can leave dissensions in towns, and walk forth into the meadows. The aspect of nature helps him to understand nature's God, and to adore with increased fervour, Him whom he had adored before as the God of revelation. And this worship begets worship; for at each footstep, as he advances, the blessed earth sends up incense from her crushed grass; and standing on that which veils the ruins of sixty centuries of mortality here below, and gazing upwards at the veil which hangs before the throne of immortality above, man confesses the imperishable greatness of the one, the passing beauty of the other, and the lessons and the happiness which he derives from both. But the earth and the seasons bring enjoyments only to those who merit them. Recrea tion is for the active man-not for the sluggard. The great original curse has, by immutable benevolence, been converted into a blessing for those who take the yoke willingly; who, condemned to labour, labour with zeal; and who neither doubt the justice of the universal sentence, nor strive to evade it. These, having laboured, are denied neither repose nor pure pleasures; but the idle man, who, seeking to escape labour, labours doubly and unrequitedly in the attemptto him there is no rest in relaxation: it is but a shifting of his burden-no procuring of enjoyment or instruction to his spirit. The active Christian is the best servant of God, and for him are reserved the rewards due to good and faithful followers of their Master. How eloquently and how truthfully, has Dr. Croly pictured that unhappy race, to be found among all classes of life to whom much has been given, and who return nothing, save blank disappointment to sanguine expectation. 66 Even in the full light of the purest form of Christianity, are we not often compelled to feel how perversely it is resisted by the wilfulness of man? How vast a class exist who, misinterpreting an exemption from labour into a discharge from duty, cast life away among the triflings of the hour-who, returning nothing to the great ever-open treasury of the happiness and the wisdom of human nature-slaves of self-indulgence and incapable of self-control, feel existence only to avoid all its nobler uses-lavish time, talent, and opulence, in a fruitless pursuit of faded pleasure; and at length, experiencing the vanity of human things without the moral of the lesson, after encumbering the earth, disappear into a forgotten tomb." But to return to our first assertion-unspeakable is the pleasure of exchanging turmoil for tranquillity; the town, made by man, for the country and country things created by God; controversy for content; the hot assertion and the fierce retort for the native wood-notes of our warblers wild, and the soothing music of rippling brooks. How dark and lowering have been the storms which have recently threatened-nay, assailed both church and state, we need not, happily for us, pause here to relate. Thrice happy do we feel that we may escape from them; and, under the frank and pleasant guidance of Mr. Broderip, go forth into the green fields to be silent, to learn, and to enjoy. He has a right to express his happiness who, snatched from the very thickest of a fray, finds himself suddenly afar from strife and malaria, the blue sky above him, the teeming earth beneath, Mr. Broderip at his side, and the Hampden controversy, the Jew bill, the swelling income tax, relations with Rome, and French republics, all unheeded or forgotten. In a magic land will he find himself who, once opening the leaves of "Zoological Recreations," will yield himself to its gentle persuasion. There is no reluctant following through miry ways or thorny paths-the author sets you down in the country at once. The fields sparkle with gladness; the streams fling back in double light, the light flung down upon them from above; the dark woody dells look as though they had here and there golden-barked trees, which, in fact, are only the beeches more closely kissed by the sunshine; and then what harmony accompanying all!-as in truth there must needs be in the happy spring time-when we have entered upon the ten weeks' season of unmatchable song which is annually vouchsafed to us by the loves, desires, fears, or wanton idleness of our wild and feathered choristers. In spring the singing birds take precedence of everything, save the flowers, of which they seem almost a part, giving interpretation to sweet incense by sweet song. To the forest choir, then, Mr. Broderip devotes his opening pages; and as one who loves as deeply as he knows them, does he discourse of plumed harmonists, whether resident or migratory-of the cuckoo, who, like an incipient Hullah-ite, is everlastingly practising his thirds-of owls with whom are midnight gayety, and gravity at noon-and then of the loquacious parrot-of the stately turkey, and, lastly, the graceful swan, wild and tame, with a dissertation on May, close the first part of a volume wherein scenery is depicted with a skilful and a loving hand. The leaves devoted to the singing birds are among the most brilliant and amusing of the book-we may add, among the most instructive; for there is a world of instruction and novelty to be found in the details afforded of the private and public life of the plumy denizens of the woodsof their manners, morals, costume, social relations, their characteristics, language, and architecture. A rivalry reigns in every wood where songsters congregate: there a melodious note of defiance is no sooner sounded than it is accepted, repeated, and excelled, only to have note of acceptance made in return and with increase of gushing sweetness. Rival birds, indeed, have been known to take the challenge, and to carry on the tuneful contest until, of one or both, the delicate vessels of the lungs have burst, and the song of triumph has been but the hymn for the dead. But wonderful, and generally secure, is the organization of the smallest singers with the widest compass of voice. The larynx of the nightingale, which one would sometimes think was about to split asunder, is, in fact, strengthened by the use; it has wear, but not tear-the more it sings the better its organ is adapted for singing; and, though a poetical writer in the Bath Journal has said of it that— -the nightingale sings best When her warm and downy bresst Is bleeding with the thorn;" yet it is matter of simple fact, that excellence with the nightingale is as it is with the striving children of men-it is practice that makes perfect. The parental note is the natural note of the bird; all power and nature of singing are thence derived. Deprive a fledgling of all access to the hearing of that note, and he will adopt the first of which he is permitted to be conscious. Thus, we have heard of a speaking thrush. Some birds have adopted, as far as in them lay, the sounds of animals. But whatever they learn, the birds have the best of it-singing never ruins them. Not so with less perfect humanity; a good voice has been a passport to destruction, and there have been more mothers than Niobe, who have had to bewail that their sons had turned musical. Whether every winged thing, whose nomenclature was fixed in Paradise by our great father, was also a thing of winged melody, is a question we may leave to be discussed and answered both affirmatively and negatively, (as they do always,) by the Jewish rabbis. However this may be, there is one bird of prey, at least, which retains a fulness of primeval power | circumstances and necessity, abandon their of song. This is the savage but musical hawk young to starvation and death in their nests; and or falcon of Africa, whose song is as sweet and he recounts a story of the old birds, on returnfascinating as its nature is fierce, and its appetite ing to their nest, trying to eject the dead bodies unappeasable. In Britain we have nothing like of their little ones; and, not succeeding, resortthis; indeed, with us, the sweetest of our singing ing to the process of covering them with clay, birds are elegant visitors from Italy; and, like and thus building them a sepulchre ! But the their human prototypes, who visit us about the contrivance was worthy commendation, however same period, and sojourn with us for about the impelled; nor can we peruse any of the charmsame extent of time, they come only for the ing descriptions in Mr. Broderip's pages without profit to be derived from their sojourn. The being reminded through these simple birdsuccelli resort hither for better food; the signore without having brought close to our hearts the for something equally moving-the means of renewed conviction of the wisdom and benevo procuring it. The most costly, executes least lence of the Creator. efficient service-the birds rid us of our devastating slugs and snails-the human singers rid us of our guineas. The more we peruse Mr. Broderip's admirable book, the more we are struck with the analogy that may be drawn between birds and men. We despair to convey to our readers an idea of the sweetness which pervades the pages devoted to the nightingales. Due honour is done to the Germans for their love of these matchless songsters. We have ourselves witnessed this; we have seen a crowd of Bonn students hushed into silent ecstacy by one nightingale, which, in 1840, used to make a mile of wood ring with her nightly melody. It is not long since-we believe it was in the same year-that the Prus trees around Cologne to be felled and sold. The whole ancient city of Agrippina was alive with terror; the trees abounded with nightingales which the Kölnische burghers adored, and they actually bought the trees standing, and thus preserved them for the nightingales, and the night ingale music for Cologne! It may be thought that we are travelling something out of our record by noticing these matters; but, in themselves, they are curious; and man may be legitimately treated of in asian authorities, in want of money, ordered the paper touching on and discussing "Zoological Recreations;" for man is an animal. He has been even senatorially declared so to be in the old French chamber of deputies. A somewhat timid speaker, whose name has fallen from the tablets of our memory, once commenced a speech before that critical and exemplary assembly, with the words, "L'homme est un animal!" Like the blushing English borough member, who thrice uttered the words, "I conceive- -," and then, incapable of delivering his ideas by expression, sat down in confusion-so the French speaker, having three times pronounced the undisputed fact, "L'homme est un animal!" [Man is an animal] retired from the tribune, ashamed of his attempt. The attempt, however, if not witty in itself, was the cause of wit in others; for a member present immediately arose and proposed that their honorable colleague's speech should be printed for circulation, with a portrait of the author annexed! Both birds and men have achieved good reputations from no better cause than misapprehensions of action. Poets and zoologists have wasted a world of rhyme and hypothesis upon the piety of those pretty swallows which are known, or which are supposed, to bury their dead; but we believe this arises from selfishness. We are afraid that even the robbins who performed their maimed rites over the bodies of our lamented young friends, the Children in the Wood, were impelled more by offence conveyed to their sensations, than pity for the victims of that wicked uncle near Norwich! However this may be, it is clear that the swallows are by no means worthy of the reputation they have achieved for pity or parental affection. Mr. Broderip shows that they will, under certain We may balance the nightingales with the prolific sky-larks-those multipliers who are slain annually by thousands and tens of thousands, and who never seem to suffer diminution. Some of Mr. Broderip's details would seem incredible were they not notorious or well authenticated. Their procreant power is astounding. Before leaving our winged friends we will notice, with satisfaction, that Mr. Broderip advocates the cause of the much maligned cuckoo, who, we fear, is after all but a sorry fellow; but he has his use, as may be seen in the fact of his being employed to regulate the balance between the insects and insect devourers; the former would be exterminated but for our ancient friend, who has been known, in one season, to destroy not less than 3,500,000 of the eggs of insectivorous birds. |