quiesced in these first transactions; but on the next attempts, he demurred, and insisted at least upon a reduction of prices, which of course roused up the dignity of the committee, and they finally, by virtue of their authority, after a long course of petty vexation, suspended Mr. Dawson, appointed one of themselves superintendent, and despatched another to England to be beforehand with Mr. Dawson in telling their own story. On Mr. Dawson's arrival, of course, he, who had but a few months before been extolled by the directors as the most valuable, and upright, and indefatigable of men, was not suffered to utter a word in his defence; and when at last, by dint of importunity, he met these magnanimous directors face to face, it was merely to be brow beaten, and have offensive insinuations thrown in his face. Nothing, we have ourselves often observed, can match the tyranny of a Committee of Directors; what no one member could bring himself to utter singly, is thrown out without hesitation, restraint, or common feeling, in company. The directors confirmed the suspension, and dismissed him without listening to his justification. Of this fact there can be no doubt, and that is enough to make any man of right feelings cry out. Some satisfaction is probably in store for Mr. Dawson. The directors have, it appears not yet for what reason, cut with the Australian committee. What Captain Parry is expected to do is past all conjecture-a man who never ploughed any thing but the waves; but, of course, a salary of 30007. was not to be hastily rejected, if any body could be found silly enough to give it for precarious advantages.

Commentaries on the Use and Necessity of Lavements. By James Scott, Surgeon. 8vo.

Notwithstanding the professional character of this work, we have, unlearned as we are in medi cal lore, perused its pages with increasing interest and believing that our own condition and feelings are but counterparts of those of hundreds and thousands of our fellow beings, we have thought it due to the interests of humanity to notice a publication, which has strongly engaged our own attention, and presents powerful claims to that of the medical profession and of the public. Impressed as every individual must be, from personal experience, with the great importance (to our comfort and health) of a regular and proper exercise of that function, which it is the peculiar office of the stomach and intestines to perform-and experienced as most are in the evils attendant upon its deficiency, it cannot be a question of indifference how its aberrations from health may be best corrected, or most effectually prevented. The author shows not only that the custoin of resorting to the use of aperient medicines prevails almost universally, but that it is a highly injurious practice, exasperating the cause which it is intended to remedy, and ultimately inducing diseases more serions than those which it attempts to obviate. The Lavement, it is contended, is the most suitable and proper remedy for soliciting the bowels to their necessary and regular action, which it accomplishes with great comfort and efficacy, withont inducing the disturbance and injurious consequences which result from the use of drugs. The beneficial effects of this simple remedy, through all the various stages of life, are represented, appa

rently, with much good sense and justice; and to the valetudinarian, the sedentary, and those whose occupation or pursuits render them obnexious to the widely-prevailing evil here discussed, the easy and natural plan recommended for its correction, certainly brings with it a powerful recommendation, presenting an alternative that, if only equally efficacious, few would hesitate in the choice of, viz. warm water, or physic? The French, and other Continental nations, have been long familiar with this mode of practice, and have adopted it as a domestic remedy from which they derive peculiar benefit. Owing, probably, to some prejudices against the custom, the English publie have been slow in receiving it from their foreign neighbours; but if the opinions given in the work before us be founded in experience, which they seem to be, it is due to the interest and welfare of society that unphilosophical objections should yield to the force of necessity and conviction.

Some judicious observations are also made upon the selection of a course of diet necessary in giv ing efficacy to this method of recovering and preserving health; but as the author's views may be easily carried into effect, by whoever may feel sufficiently interested in the subject, we shall close this notice by recommending the work to general attention, leaving it to the public and the profes sion to put its merits to the test.

Recreations of Science.

This little work deserves encomium. It contains a vast deal of useful and important information, in the shape of experiments, receipts, &c. and will be of considerable advantage to those who have no time to glean from more extensive and important works the concentrated knowledge

to be found bére.

A Manual of General Anatomy, &c. By A. L. J. Bayle and H. Holland. Translated by Henry Storer.

A very useful scientific work, developing the cellular, vascular, serous, fibrous, cartilaginous, osseous, nervous, and other systems of the human body. It contains a vast deal of well-arranged, solid information, with little or no extraneous matter, and is indispensable to all professional men, and, indeed, to every one who is curious respecting the structure of the human body. Mr. Storer seems to have executed his task well.

Cromwell, a Poem.

The poema rambling dialogue between Cromwell and his favourite daughter, Mrs. Claypole, embracing the whole history of England, we be lieve-though written with the usual shows of poetry, abounding in epithets, figures, involutions, and out-of-the-way words, is yet so totally destitute of vigour, fervour, fancy, music-of any thing, in short, to excite, that read it we could not. But a preface, of some thirty pages, in justification of the views the author has taken of Cromwell's character, will well repay any reader capable of estimating so sound a piece of discussion; and we should, if our experience of such contradictions were not considerable, express our surprise, as others will do, that with the judgment and taste displayed in his apology, he could commit so capital a blunder as to suppose, as he does, that in thus array. ing his thoughts, "he was putting the subject in

account of that portion of ecclesiastical history he was acquainted with. The great modern authority is, of course, Llorente. His critical history of the Inquisition, Dr. M'Crie finds invaluable; and he laments, and with reason, that Llorente received no encouragement, not even from English Prtoestants, to publish at large the trials of those who suffered for the reformed religion in Spain, of which, as Secretary of the Inquisition, he had got possession. Was this delicacy, considering he could not have come fairly by the materials?

Autographs, by J. G. Nichols.

Sweeping away with little ceremony all the nonsense that has been written from the time of Lavater, about the hand-writing marking the characteristics of the writer, till we have some facts that show some tendency towards the point, we shall readily yield as to the utilities, and even the agremens, of such conservatories of autographs as the one before us. An autograph may contribute to identify documents not only of great private, but of great public interest; and the curiosity to know something of the manipulations of eminent personages is not much more illiberal than to get a glance at their features. With these kindly feelings we saw this somewhat splendid publication with pleasure, and we recommend it to the collectors of books, as one of considerable interest and completeness. The autographs collected amount to somewhere about six hundred, and, in the terms of the title-page, embrace those of the royal, noble, learned, and remarkable personages, conspicuons in English history, from the reign of Richard II. to that of Charles II.; including, also, some illustrious foreigners." The autographs are many of them taken from important letters, and passages of them are frequently engraved with the signatures. The biographical sketches which accompany the signatures are of necessity, and with propriety, short, but sufficient for the slight occa

crime, as well as of loyalty and courtly pageantof feast and revelry. The illustrations are in wood, and cut with singular neatness. The portable size of the volume, which no one should visit the Tower and not carry in his hand, is a great recommendation. All the historical facts are reThe gularly arranged, and easy of reference. blunders and fooleries of the Tower guides are exposed. The curious visitor has only to possess a common share of sagacity to discover himself the scenes, and recall on the spot those associations, which are so impressive on the mind, and thus excite those feelings to which men of the coarsest nature can hardly be said to be strangers. This little work, we predict, will meet merited

success.

Remarks on the civil disabilities of British Jews. By Francis Henry Goldsmid.

It will be inferred, and with truth, from the well-known name affixed to this pamphlet, that the writer's "remarks" are conceived in the shape of a plea for those to whom they relate. But, if an interested party, he is only thereby the more entitled to speak on the subject of relief, in a case where the propriety of relief is acquiesced in (as we think it may be safely said) by an immense majority of all who exercise any reflection on the matter. Availing himself of this unquestionable right to the statement of grievances, Mr. Goldsmid has now offered to the public a simple and sensible exposition of the claims possessed by the community of which he is a member, to exoneration from those restrictions which have oppressed them ever since their first settlement in this country. These claims he rests on the past conduct of the Jewish class itself, exemplified generally in their loyalty and love of order, and particularly in the two remarkable facts, "that the Jews never attempt to make a single convert,”-and that " during their residence in England, which has now lasted nearly two centuries, not a single instance has occurred where one of that persuasion has been, I do not say guilty, but even suspected of any offence against the State;"-and again on the total absence of hazard, politically, from so humble a numerical force as that of the party to be relieved;-as well as, finally, on the rational expectations of vast moral benefit to be experienced by the claimants through the indulgence sought. The writer shows both candour and good temper in the course of his arguments. We subjoin the appeal with which he concludes:

"Every member of a large community, though degraded by law, enjoys at least whatever comfort he can derive from the sympathy of many brothers in misfortune. But whither shall the Jew look for consolation? Among one thousand of his countrymen he will see that he alone is marked with the badge of dishonour; that all others are free to follow those paths of creditable ambition which against him alone are closed-I trust I need not say, for ever. These, Christians, are the circumstances which the Jew believes to be as useless to you as they are fertile in evil for him. These, therefore, are the circumstances which he implores you to alter. Surely you will not, you cannot, reject his entreaty."

THE PANTOMIMES.

"Look here upon this picture, and on this," is the invitation which the two great theatres now, by their double-breasted bills, hold out to the lovers of pantomime. Instead of a brisk succession of tricks, changes, thumps, jumps, and petty larce nies, we have groves, icebergs, temples, palaces, ruins, fairy cities, lakes sacred to royal diversion, and a cataract with thirty tuns of undissembled water! No more of "bloody noses and crack'd crowns;" no more feats of pudding-eating, or picking pockets; Pantaloon's nose hangs unpulled; Harlequin has sobered down into a discreet showman; and Columbine, with her spangled petticoat, is only the girl outside the caravan who invites the passengers to feast their eyes on its wonders. For ourselves, we "don't care," as the naughty boys in the spelling-book say; we never had any violent passion for the practical jests of pantomime; and, therefore, we look with more charity than some of our sentimental contemporaries on the splendid sins of Messrs. Roberts and Stanfield. Neither Pantomime, this year, has much to boast, except its pictures. To make out the story of the introductory scenes of the Drury-lane pageantry, called "Harlequin Jack in the Box, or the Princess of the Hidden Island," is beyond all analytical power; it is as if the cross-reading of a fairy tale and nursery horn-book should be painted; but it has two very amiable Brobdignagian figures, and a young scion of giant royalty, whose wayward tricks are an amusing amplification of its diminutive prototypes abroad. As to fun, there is scarcely any, except a dance of fishes, and three scenes in which young Wieland plays three different parts with extraordinary cleverness. He is first the great baby, sitting up at dinner, and playing a hundred antics at once infantine and regal; next he appears in dirty corderoy trowsers buttoned over a greasy jacket, as a great lubberly schoolboy-a prodigious piece of unpleasant truth-in which his manner of stripping up his sleeves, and dealing out his fists with impotent self-will, evinces singular power of observation and mimickry; last, he and Chikini, joined together, dance a ludicrous dance as the Siamese boys, in which a similitude of that painful monstrosity is turned to favour, and if not" to prettiness," to fun. The rest is all scenery and certainly, if not the most wonderful, beyond comparison the most delicious ever exhibited on the stage. Stanfield's moving picture of Windsor, Eton, and Virginia Water, is a succession

of views of the freshest grass, trees, banks, and water-seen under every variety of light-" from morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve, a summer's day." There is a clump of tall trees touched by the western sun, and a reach of the Thames, full and clear between its verdant banks, which are as like Nature as a description of Sir Walter Scott or Miss Mitford. To these succeed the more garish voluptuousness of the Virginia Water, with its sketch from the highest life,in which the shoulders and hat of a stout gentleman seated in a boat throw the audience into a paroxysm of rapture, which shows how groundless those apprehensions were which led Mr. Alexander "to give that fatal privy counsel which withheld the royal countenance from the theatres!"

At Covent-Garden, the opening of the pantomime-embodying the tragical death of poor Cock Robin by the archery of the wicked Sparrow-would be very good if it were not unaccountably mixed up with mythological trash about Vulcan and Venus. The murder itself we have so often shuddered at, is very neatly conducted, for master Sparrow is a genteel assassin ; the Fish catches the blood, like a mute policeman, "in his little dish;" the Bull tolls the bell with appropriate gravity; and the funeral procession, with the reverend Rook at its head, is duly impressive. Nor must we omit to praise the decorum of the Court of Birds sitting in judgment on the meek murderer, and taking care that "the ceremony of conviction is decently performed upon him." But here our praise must end;-for no sooner does the star of Venus gradually advance and expand, as stars do on the stage, than the dull business of harlequinade begins. Except the sticking up of the Clown against the wall as the Spread Eagle, there is hardly an attempt at joke, and so little dancing, that, in case of need, the goodhumoured stage-manager, Bartley, might go on for Harlequin. Here is a diorama, too, by Roberts, but woefully inferior to that of Stanfield at Drury-lane. It is very poor in point of execution, and, were it better, its subject-a voyage to the North Pole-is sadly out of season this Christmas, when the North Pole has come in chilling reality to us! The only pleasant fiction connected with this pantomime is to be found in the play-bills, which announce that "it is received with as great applause as any ever produced at this theatre;" which, recollecting many glorious pantomimes at this house, and none so little applauded, we are ready to admit is as poetical an announcement as ever