the pulse and the respiration are both accelerated; more oxygen, it may be presumed, is consumed; more heat is generated; the blood is made to circulate more rapidly, and is sent in larger quantities into the extremities, and where, in consequence, the excess of heat is conveyed and expended, and its accumulation in the central and deep-seated organs prevented, affording another striking example of harmonious adaptation.'

Dr Davy truly observes that the extension of these observations over a greater number of subjects will lead to wider results, from which more particular inferences may be drawn, especially in conjunction with respiration and the heart's action, not without interest to physiology; and they may admit of important practical application to the regulation of clothing, the taking of exercise, the warming of dwelling-rooms-in brief, to various measures conducive to comfort, the prevention of disease, and its cure. A step in advance is made if it is only determined that, in the healthiest condition of the system, there is danger attending either extreme, either of low uniform temperature, or of a high uniform temperature; and that the circumstances which are proper to regulate variability within certain limits, not prevent it, are those which conduce most to health, as well as to agreeable sensation, enjoyment, and length

of life.'

THE WEALTH OF CONTENTMENT. 'Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.'

SHAKSPEARE.

'WE will this morning, if you please, take a walk up the turnpike-road, instead of our accustomed stroll to the beach,' said Mr Vincent, addressing his children. "Why, papa? Do you not think that the beach is much more pleasant?' expostulated the youngest, a spirited boy of twelve.

'Yes, Charles, if I had no other object in view than the pleasure of the walk; but I wish to pay a visit to an old acquaintance-I may say an old friend-who lives in this neighbourhood.'

Oh, that alters the case; I did not think that you knew any one here. Is he known to us?' No; nor do I remember even having mentioned him to you; but I wish you to accompany me, because I hope that the visit may afford you both gratification and profit.' Is he rich, papa? and has he beautiful pleasure-grounds to show us?' Charles eagerly inquired.

'He is rich, and he has beautiful pleasure-grounds; but I shall not tell you anything more concerning him till you have seen him.'

Oh, papa, you have quite excited my curiosity: there must surely be something very peculiar about this gentleman: pray let us go. Does he live far off?'

'Not more than a mile. Do you think that you can walk so far, Lucy?' he asked, addressing a pale delicate girl who stood by his side, attired in her sea-side bonnet and plain muslin dress.

Oh yes, dear papa; I feel so much stronger than I did when we first came here; and we shall, I suppose, have a rest when we reach your friend's house?'

'Certainly; we are sure of a hearty welcome. can promise you that Mr Thompson will be pleased to see you.'

Thompson! Is he any relation to the poet?' Charles interrogated.

'Not that I know of,' Mr Vincent returned with a smile. The father drew the hand of his invalid daughter within his arm, whilst his light-hearted and light-footed son bounded forward, full of anticipations of delight from the coming visit.

'What a beautiful little cottage!' Lucy suddenly exclaimed, as, on turning an angle of the road, a small thatched dwelling, literally overgrown with honeysuckles and jessamine, met their view. The words had scarcely escaped her lips ere a venerable old man, who was leaning over the gate, looking anxiously towards Mr Vincent, as if recognising a familiar face, came forth and grasped the extended hand of that gentleman, who greeted him as his "good friend Thompson.'

This is an unexpected pleasure, my dear young master,' he cried, whilst his intelligent countenance was lighted up

with an expression which testified the truth of his assertion. 'I have brought my children to see you, as we are making a few weeks' stay in the neighbourhood for the benefit of my daughter's health.'

Miss looks very delicate,' the old man compassionately observed; and I am sorry that my dame is not at home to wait upon her. It is only on market days that she goes out: I am very sorry it has so happened.'

'I am sorry that we shall not have the pleasure of seeing your good wife to-day; but we could not foresee that she would be absent: indeed I did not know that you supplied the markets.'

'Oh, my dear master, I have grown quite a farmer of late. I have a cow, and a pig, and a roost of fowls; and my dame takes butter and eggs to the market every week.' I am truly rejoiced to hear that you have been so prosperous, Thompson.'

'Yes,' the old man rejoined; 'I was never in better circumstances, or happier in my life.'

You seem always of a happy contented disposition,' observed Mr Vincent. I never knew you to dwell much upon the dark side of things.'

me.

'No, sir; I always thought that it was not only more pleasant, but also more profitable, to look on the bright side; for a man cannot work when he is downhearted. Besides, we may always find blessings in our path if we only look for them; and I would rather thank God for his mercies, than murmur at the troubles he sees fit to lay on But,' he added with a half-repressed sigh, we have had a sore trial since I saw you last, which is, I think, sir, nearly fourteen years ago-a very sore trial,' and he dashed a glistening drop from his furrowed cheek with the sleeve of his coat. Our poor daughter and her husband both died in one week of a fever which was raging in these parts; and they left two children-babies you might have called them, for the eldest was not three years old-with no other provision than the workhouse.'

"That was indeed an affliction,' exclaimed Mr Vincent; 'one which needed no small exercise of Christian fortitude to sustain. And what has become of the little orphans ?" he asked.

Why, sir, my dame says to me, says she, "Well, John, we've lived together for these five-and-twenty years, and never wanted bread, and let us trust to Providence that we may not want it in our old age, and share our crust with the poor darlings." That's just like her, sir; she has a true woman's heart, and she's always the first in every good work.'

'But I will venture to say that you were nothing loath to second the proposal?' Mr Vincent rejoined.

"That I wasn't, sir; though, to be sure, we had a hard matter at first to fill their little mouths, and my old woman had a good deal of extra labour and trouble; but God has made these trials the means of a blessing; for of all the good grateful boys that ever lived, my little Sam is the best. He's a stout healthy lad now, and takes all the heavy work off my shoulders: he's gone to-day with his grandmother and sister to carry the basket. Then, sir, Polly is the cleverest little maid you ever saw; she's my dame's right hand: I don't know what we should do without either of them.' The old man had by this time conducted his visitors into the sitting-room of the cottage, which was in perfect keeping with the exterior. Lucy was delighted with everything she beheld, but Charles stood by with an air of evident disappointment.

It is often the case that, by doing a generous or kind action without any hope of reward, we find a distant and altogether unexpected good result to ourselves,' Mr Vincent remarked, in connexion with the old man's last observation.

"That I take, sir, to be the meaning of the Scripture proverb, "Cast thy bread upon the waters, and thou shalt find it after many days."

True; and I think I may apply that proverb with equal appropriateness to a lesson which you taught me when a boy, and which you did not expect perhaps that I should remember and profit by to this day."

'I, sir?'

'Yes; it was when you were in my father's service as gardener. I came running one evening to you whilst you were at work, in order to vent my ill-humour in fretful murmurs against some individual who had caused me a trifling disappointment. You listened with patience to my complaints, and then very quietly said, "Master Vincent,

I have myself had a very heavy disappointment to-day. I have lost a sum of money which I have for years looked forward towards possessing, intending with it to set up in business as a market gardener: it was a severe blow, young gentleman; but I said to myself, it's no use fretting about what can't be altered; my best way will be to go cheerfully on with my duties, and think of the blessings I still possess, instead of spending my time in vain regrets. Perhaps this money might not have done me the service which I thought it would, if I had had it; and I may be happier after all if I obtain an independence by my own industry. So I have comforted myself in this manner, Mr Vincent, and I am resolved to be satisfied with such things as I have." You said no more on the subject, my friend,' Mr Vincent continued; you made no attempt to apply the lesson to my case; but my conscience did it for you; and I was so thoroughly ashamed of my fretfulness and discontent, that I have never, I hope, given way to such feelings since that hour.'

Their venerable host only smiled on this reminiscence of his early days, and apologising for his awkwardness, proceeded to perform the rights of hospitality, by spreading before his guest the best fare his humble home afforded. This consisted of milk, home-made bread and butter, and fruit.

'Oh, papa, how could you say that Mr. Thompson was a friend of yours, when he was only a servant, and that he was a rich man, and had beautiful pleasure-grounds?' Charles almost angrily exclaimed, when they had left the garden gate to return home.

And may not a servant be a friend?' Mr Vincent asked. Many a servant,' he proceeded, ' has been a true friend to his master; and I think that I have proved to you, by the little anecdote I related, that Thompson was such to me.' 'But how could you call him rich?' Charles interrogated.

'He is rich, my son.'

'How, papa?"

'I think that I can guess in what his riches consist,' Lucy interposed; 'papa means that he is rich in content

ment,'

'I do, my dear girl; and that is the most valuable riches a man can possess; without it, he is poor and miserable, though he may be surrounded by everything which could otherwise administer to his comfort and happiness.'

'But I thought that I should see a gentleman, and have a delightful walk in the pleasure-grounds you spoke of. I am certainly disappointed, papa.'

named had appeared as a candidate, wrote three letters to the academy in his favour, designating the piece only by the motto, without giving the author's name. The academy, fancying from this that the king himself (Louis XVIII.) was among the candidates, and that the queen was eager for his success, accorded him the prize, or at least thought they had done so; but, on opening the capsule, they were not a little astonished to find, in lieu of the august name of Leopold's brother, the name of a common officer of the queen.

A fashionable authoress complimented Frederick the Great very extravagantly, saying that he was covered with glory, was the paragon of Europe, and, in short, the greatest monarch and man on earth.' The king, rather distressed at this fulsomeness, replied, 'Madam, you are as handsome as an angel, witty, elegant, and agreeable; in short, you possess all the amiable qualities; but you paint.' Louis XIV. was weak enough to relish flattery. He found delight in singing the most fulsome passages of songs written in his own praise. Even at the public suppers, when the band played the airs to which they were set, the monarch delighted his courtiers by humming the same passages. What sort of courtiers he had about him may be inferred from the fact that one of them, when dying, begged pardon of the king for the ugly faces' which the acuteness of his suffering compelled him to make.

This vice of flattery and fawning sycophancy is sometimes practised even by reverend authors. Thus, in some very adulatory doggrel on our present sovereign, written by a minor canon of Windsor, we are assured that there is none so fair, so pure as she.'

Although the poet Young could complain that
The flowers of eloquence, profusely poured
O'er spotted vice, fill half the lettered world,'

and elsewhere exclaims,

'Shall funeral eloquence her colours spread,
And scatter roses on the wealthy dead?
Shall authors smile on such illustrious days,
And satirise with nothing-but their praise?'

yet he himself disgraced his talents, and lowered his repu-
tation, by the mean flattery with which he stuffed his
This foible of his character is
dedications to great men.
thus cleverly touched on by Swift :--

'And Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.' Sometimes authors heap the most outrageously absurd measured way of praising, Jasper Mayne has no hesitation In this reckless and unlaudation upon one another. in saying of Master Cartwright,' author of some tolerable

'Yes, thou to nature hadst joined art and skill;

LITERARY SYCOPHANCY.

6

HORACE WALPOLE, in his 'Letters,' relates that the Abbé Giustiniani, a noble Genoese, wrote a panegyric in verse on the empress queen. 'She rewarded him with a gold snuff-box set with diamonds, and a patent of theologian. Finding the trade so lucrative, he wrote another on the king of Prussia, who sent him a horn box, telling him that he knew his vow of poverty would not let him touch gold; and that, having no theologians, he had sent him a patent to be captain of horse in those very troops that he had commended so much in his verses! I am persuaded that the saving the gold and brilliants was not the part which pleased his majesty the least.'

In August 1787, the prize of poetry, proposed by the Comte d'Artois, for an eulogy on Prince Leopold of Brunswick, was granted to M. Terasse de Marseilles, an officer in the queen's household, although the public thought his production inferior to that of M. Noel, professor in the college of Louis le Grand, who obtained the first accessit; but the queen, on being informed that her officer above

In thee Ben Jonson still held Shakspeare's quill.' Mrs Thrale relates that Hannah More, on being introduced to Dr Johnson, began singing his praise in the warmest manner, and talking of the pleasure and the instruction she had received from his writings with the highest encomiums. For some time he heard her with that quietness which a long use of praise had given him; she then redoubled her strokes, and, as Mr Seward calls it, peppered still more highly, till at length he turned suddenly to her, with a stern and angry countenance, and said, Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth having.'

AFFECTION.

We sometimes meet with men who seem to think that any indulgence in an affectionate feeling is weakness. They will return from a journey and greet their families with a distant dignity, and move among their children with the cold and lofty splendour of an iceberg, surrounded by its broken fragments. There is hardly a more unnatural sight on earth than one of those families without a heart. A father had better extinguish his boy's eyes than take away his heart. Who that has experienced the joys of friendship, and values sympathy and affection, would not rather lose all that is beautiful in nature's scenery, than be robbed of the hidden treasure of his heart? Who would not rather bury his wife than bury his love for her? Who would not rather follow his child to the grave, than entomb

EDINBURGH

JOURNAL

No. 159. NEW SERIES.

CURIOSITY.

CURIOSITY, or the desire of knowing, is an instinct not peculiar to the human race, although in the lower animals, as in some of our own species, it is bounded by the general narrowness of the intellect. An ape, for instance, is satisfied with his examination of a particular object; and although addicted more to the analytical than the synthetical process, he contemplates wisely its parts, and recognises them again when he meets them as a whole. But this study leads to no results beyond fun or mischief. The step in knowledge he has gained does not conduct him onwards. His inquiry terminates when the immediate question is answered; and his vagrant curiosity flits away to other objects.

In some portions of the human species we observe nearly the same thing. The curiosity, for instance, which pries into the domestic affairs of other people, which pants to know the price of a bonnet, or the arrangement of a dinner, is the same natural instinct neutralised for all good purposes by the same intellectual weakness. If it were capable of going further-of being led on, step by step, from specialities to generals of theorising an individual character from the minute details of life -and ascending thence to speculations on the moral status and destiny of the species-then would this kind of curiosity, however annoying and vexatious in its exercise, be taken out of the category of vulgar instincts common to men and animals, and become one of the great agents in the progress of the human race.

I do not complain of people for seeking to learn even the most trifling particulars of my domestic economy; but I wish to know what they mean to do with them when obtained. Of what use are the scraps of information they collect with so much trouble? Have they displayed in the pursuit anything more than the unreflecting ingenuity of the ape? Are they capable of turning their acquisitions to any wiser or more useful account? But the parallel is closer still; for in nine cases out of ten the proceedings of the two animals, higher and lower, tend to mischief. The same weakness of character which leads people to waste their minds in such paltry inquisitiveness, prevents them from keeping to themselves what they may have gained. They are afflicted with an incontinence of knowledge, and to such an extent, that its acquisition would give little pleasure but for the prospect of retailing it. Hence gossip, scandal, slander, are the usual attendants upon idle curiosity; and an imbecility becomes formidable which would otherwise be only pitied or despised.

Ascending from this limited curiosity, we arrive, a degree higher perhaps, at passive curiosity-a passion, or rather habit, which abstracts itself from the things and persons of life, to fix upon imaginary beings, and

PRICE 1d.

trace with eager interest the thread of a fictitious narrative. It happens, fortunately, that this taste is not always inconsistent with a proper attention to the real business of society; for all students of the kind do not imagine, with the poet Gray, that supreme beatitude consists in lounging upon a sofa morning, noon, and night, and reading eternal new romances. Some study such productions as works of art; others peruse them for occasional recreation; and a few have recourse to them, as a more innocent kind of dram-drinking, in those pauses of the world when their jaded minds would otherwise prey upon themselves. Still, there is no doubt that vast numbers of weak minds, in all civilised countries, look to them for nearly their sole intellectual food. In France, England, Germany-the most literary and enlightened nations in Europe-the press teems with the fantastic brood; and in China, where one-third part of mankind read, if they do not speak, one universal language, fiction is the grand staple of the national literature.

This passive curiosity, like the limited curiosity already described, is confined by the general weakness of the character of which it forms a part. Were it otherwise, it would infallibly lead to the study of history, which is still only narrative, although of a higher kind, unfolding the destinies of men, not in little groups, but in large aggregates, and describing the action and reaction of individuals and masses. I am not sure, however, that a distaste for history is the result of romance reading. The distaste already exists in the weakness of the character, and romances serve only to fill a mind which is of too confined a calibre to admit history.

As we ascend higher, we find the same instinct assuming a more and more important character. No longer confined to the investigation of a neighbour's domestic affairs, or fixed to the sofa in the lazy paradise of the poet, it is busying itself with the courses of the stars, tracing the affinities of earthly bodies, or plunging into the depths of the human understanding. This moral chameleon takes its hue from the mind in which it lives. The sciences had probably all their origin in mere curiosity, and often curiosity of a kind quite irrespective of eventual advantage. The great men whose genius has enlightened the world did not set about their task like one of the advertisers of British plate, who kindly took the trouble the other day of 'discovering' this substitute for silver on complaints reaching his ears of the frequency of thefts of the real metal! Attracted at first by accident to a pursuit consonant to their genius, they ascended, stage by stage, by unwearied perseverance; and thus the little seeker of daisies and buttercups became in time a distinguished botanist; and the juvenile rabbit-keeper extended gradually his care over the whole animal kingdom, and enlightened the world on the classifications of zoology. In such