may see the foundation of a Divine building. Every face, and every figure, is suggestive. The secret power of form, transcending any thing we can account for or explain, is a proof that matter is assuredly a vehicle of a higher power than its own. This is the answer to the sceptic who denies the unseen Divinity. A new friend entering our house is an era in our true history. Our friends illustrate the course of our conduct. It is the progress of our character that draws them about us. Let us cherish around us whatever has a tendency to bring the character into a finer life. Beauty has a power transcending all philosophy, which if sacredly regarded, would assimilate all natures to itself. Every statue and picture was public in ancient Greece. They considered it absurd and profane to pretend to property in a Work of Art; it being the property of him who could see it. Altho their theory is not the true one, we are yet indebted to the Socialists for many useful hints. Our towns do not fulfil the only object for which men should congregate in masses,namely, the finding for the individual the means of highest convenience and art, which he could not otherwise do for himself. An object or instrument of value becomes more so, the more it is accessible. Every man,-every child,-wishes to see the satellites of Jupiter, or Saturn's rings; but he cannot afford to buy, and he does not want the incumbrance of, a good telescope. It is the same with chemical and electrical apparatus; with books, casts, pictures, statues. This is the rationale of a Museum in every town; because every citizen could contribute something, which would be rendered more valuable than by cach man possessing it himself, its influence is to bring us more together; making us more of neighbors; elevating our views; and giving us united interests. The law prevails for ever and ever, and is capable of exact demonstration, that a part can never equa! the whole. Why should not the same spirit prevail always, as in our best and happiest moments ? The consecration of the Sunday, is the desecration of the rest of the weck. That of the Chapel, is the desecration of the House. True Religion will be found in the bosom of the family, every day in the week, and at any time, if at all; and of all places, Home will constantly be the most sacred. There is nothing more profane than the invasion of trade, and the encroachments of our modern mechanical improvements and ultra utilitarian doctrines, upon the privacy, the duties, and harmony of domestic life. Can the labor of many for one, bring any thing half so good, as the labor of every man for himself? It In these hints and sketches, only the edges of the subject have been touched upon. is one not for description, but for action. If we set about reforming the evils of our social condition one by one, it is but lopping the branches, while others spring up from the root; and we get disheartened at the extent and uselessness of our labor. We must go to the source of the matter. The Gorgon of convention and fashion must be slain by some master mind giving birth to a New Era, when we can live truly without shame. www TWILIGHT. U HE sun withdraws his gaze from field and tree; Of glory, far, far stretching. Thus to be The Inspirer's voice, and feel that he is near, But one vast fane, and tread on haunted, holy ground. A dweller with the Beautiful!—The sight That, ravisht, gazed on glory, turning down Yes, they are beauteous twins of one sweet breast The breast of Heaven-are two, yet one with me, One with that flood of life that flows thrö rock, stream, tree. The birds of twilight pipe across the field, The great old stars are shining in the stream: So shone they when the Future, like a dream Of Beauty, lay before me. Did it yield What youth's flushed hopes had promised? With the shield Returning, we are hailed as Victors: Life Is fitly emblemed by the battle's strife; And many wear the wreaths of victory With inward rankling wounds that make them long to die. So must it be! Our sorrows, as our joy, Serve to enrich our Being-wear away These barriers that have gathered with the clay The soul subdued by anguish we might fear, K. B. THE TEMPERANCE TOPIC. I. THE MEDICAL QUESTION. Temperance and Teetotalism. An Inquiry into the effects of Alcoholic drinks on the Human System in health and disease. Reprinted from No. XLVIII of the British and Foreign Medical Review, edited by JOHN FORBES, M. D., F. R. S., Physician to her Majesty's Household. Churchill, London. 1847. T is with Medical, as with all other Corporations and Monopolies of 'Mystery Men': give them privileges, and their pretensions will far exceed their performances: you will have removed the natural stimulus to individual scientific culture and advancement, and, as Lord Bacon has shown in his Novum Organon, you will have raised up an interest hostile to the progress of Truth, and in favor of notions as they are. Hence almost every great Reform in Medicine, and every important discovery in Therapeutics and Physiology, have had to be forced upon the Faculty,' by the Intelligence from without; indeed the Faculty has ceased to be such in its proper sense of 'power,' and its science become little else than a mill-horse round of recipes, and a parade of incompatible prescriptions-an obstruction in the path of progress, or a pioneer in the pernicious rotations of effete prejudices. The world knows the history and reception of Harvey's great discovery,-of Jenner's world-blessing antidote to that once fearful scourge, the small pock,-of many minor discoveries in medicine,—and, in our time, the treatment which the grand revelations in organic and physiologic Chemistry have met with from the ideal 'Faculty' and the real 'Profession.' Similarly was Teetotalism received sixteen, ten, nay five years ago, by 'the Faculty '—and such the treatment which Hydropathy and Homœopathy, with results so vastly superior to the accredited system of Allopathy, are now receiving. We recollect some twelve years ago, being required, in public argument, to furnish an extemporaneous refutation of as subtle an apology for the use of alcoholic drink as we ever yet heard,— a plea advanced, with all professional pomp and authority, by a late leading physician of Leeds; and we remember, in a discussion in the same year, predicting that in ten years more, 'the Profession,' or at least the wiser part of it, would have its education more nearly completed on that topic, when like Paul, it would advocate the Faith which it once sought to destroy. The issue has verified our anticipations, and shown, that a profession which ought to be the first to illustrate, is, in fact, the last to learn, the great medical and dietetic discoveries of the age. a The writers in the Medical Review, the chief organ of the Faculty' in Britain, have formed no exception from the ways and wisdom of their professional ancestors. For several years they were profoundly silent on the Temperance Doctrine as advocated by the Teetotalers, until the earnest and youthful spirits of the age in Britain, and the heavenly hearted Apostle of Temperance in Ireland, had made the movement a national one, fraught with momentous and unmistakeable results. Then both the major and minor of the Medical periodicals condescended to give passing notices of the question, tho rather in the way of ridicule than reasoning. Still the temperance cause went forth 'conquering and to conquer': Of course there were a few honorable individual exceptions: but not many great.' still its physiological principle found recipients in every rank and profession of life, while pamphlets and periodicals, tracts and treatises, were regularly issued from the press, declaring and demonstrating its truth. In vain did the Profession attempt to stem the rising tide of opinion, by the publication of alleged facts (facts not genuine but forged, not real but fancied, representing water-drinking as productive of ague and heart-disease, etc.); the temperance press demolished the frail fallacies and foolish inferences as fast as they were fabricated, until they sank abashed into oblivion: in vain, also, did 'the Faculty' substitute bad authority for good argument,-the living, daily experience of millions of men confuted the verbal theories of the Collegians, and at last Teetotalism became acknowleged as A GREAT FACT. In 1842 the grand discoveries of the Philosopher of Giessen were systematically announced; and, while the purely medical press received them with a degree of suspicion and scepticism naturally arising from its incompetency to perceive and appreciate their true value, we at once hailed them with a hearty welcome, as filling up a felt deficiency in the proofs of a doctrine previously affirmed on a priori ground, and as completing the scientific perfection of our principles. While the Medical Review was teaching the Medical Profession, that Liebig's Physiology evinced the 'folly' of absolute Teetotalism, the Advocate of Temperance, both thrö the platform and the press, was demonstrating to the people THE HARMONY OF THE NEW DISCOVERIES WITH THE OLD DOCTRINE OF TEETOTALISM. b Six years have elapsed since we assumed that position; and while time has served to augment our proofs and confirm our principles, it has also allowed both 'Young Physic' and 'Old Physic' (to borrow Dr. Forbes's distinction, and another well known phrase) to be 'ground up' somewhat nearer to the science of the day. We do not, however, think that the education of the profession on this point, is either complete or universal; but it is, we are happy to perceive, very much improved. Dark places indeed there yet are, where the old prejudices—the Idols of the Den, as Bacon terms them—are worshipt; where either the light of modern intelligence has not penetrated at all, or its rays have fallen on filmy or sightless orbs. An instance of this even occurs in the Newcastle-on-Tyne Medical School, where one of the teachers-a Mr. Glover, it is said, writing under the signature of 'Juste Milieu'—gravely contends (1) that Alcohol composes fat!—(2) that it is yet innocently de-composed in, and thereby cheaply warms, the human body!!—and (3) that corn given to a horse, owes its refreshing power to being brewed (and of course first malted) in the stomach of the poor brute!!! c Viewing the Temperance Cause in relation to the Professors of Medicine, it is evident that they cannot, in their scientific character, claim to have conferred any benefits on that important movement in the day of its necessity; while, on the other hand, both in Great Britain and Ireland, the unwise, incautious, and in most cases utterly needless, recommendation of alcoholic drinks as medicine, has induced the relapse, and effected the ruin, of thousands of our Reclaimed Drunkards. Clearly, therefore, the Medical Profession has no right to expect that any extraordinary deference will be paid to its opinions and productions by the sound, genuine, and thinking members of the Temperance body. Simple justice is all which it rightfully deserves or can reasonably demand. Such were the views with which we opened the tractate before us; willing nevertheless, as we perused paragraph after paragraph, to find it all that we could desire, and to pay to b See Dr. Lees's Discussion with Mr. Jeaffreson, Surgeon, and Illustrated History of Alcohol, No. 1, (1843); also Dr. Edward Johnson's Lecture on the Water Cure, published shortly afterwards. • See Teetotal Topic, 1847. p. 49. its author the warmest tribute of our praise. It is with proportionate regret, that, as honest critics, we have to pronounce an unfavorable judgment upon its character and its tendency. As an article in the pages of the Medical Review, it might, and probably in some respects would, do good among the class to whom it was primarily addrest, inasmuch as its leading doctrines are in advance of the mass of medical Professors, and hence, if it do not serve to draw many of them onwards in the right path, it may induce them (by the 'virtue' of its 'authority') to regard the temperance principles with less disrespect or indifference. As a Reprint for the Public, however, we view this essay with less cordiality, since, while it falls short in the full development of temperance truth, and certainly does not come up to the complete philosophy and facts of the question, is yet, in that ex cathedra style which so frequently characterizes the productions of privileged 'professions,' presumes to lecture the very men that have so long been in advance of its author, and who at last have brought him up to low water-mark. The strictures of the Reviewer upon teetotalers are not remarkable for great modesty or great merit, and are equally unsound and unnecessary. Undoubtedly the article enunciates many important physiologic principles and facts, evincing the utter uselessness of intoxicating beverages in every condition, climate, and occupation in which Man has been found; but these principles and facts are neither more philosophically nor more forcibly expressed than in temperance works published long before. On the other hand, the writer betrays a timidity, an over-cautiousness, and a hesitancy in announcing certain conclusions, that indicate an absence of that mental power in the conception of principles and their consequences, which ever distinguishes the genuine philosopher. As examples of what we mean, take the doubtfulness with which the writer refers to the possibility (or rather, impossibility) of alcohol, a volatile fluid, becoming congealed or converted into solid nervous matter! (p. 14)—the admission of facts demonstrating the superior health of water-drinkers, conjoined to the doubt of alcohol being 'nothing else than a poison'! (p. 11)—and the hypothesis of the medical use of alcohol as promotive of digestion, where alcohol as a dynamic, is confounded with alcohol as a digestive, agent! (p. 31). The most objectionable parts of this essay, however, are of a more positive character, and occur in connection with the discussion of the alleged Medical uses of Alcohol.' The condemnation pronounced upon a few honest but probably illiterate Reformed Drunkards for having rejected alcohol as a medicine altogether, rather than endanger their safety by the temptation which it presents to a relapse to their former habits (thus erring, if at all, on the better side), are, in our judgment, quite uncalled for, and would be unreasonably severe, were they not absolutely absurd. Were a 'rebuke' in this case really needed, the Professional men are not the most seemly parties to administer it. 'Old Physic,' as Dr. Forbes has himself shown, has never reached the certainty of Science, but simply of verbal system, and needs 'Young Physic' to reform it. Old Physic' has been a system of pretence and prophecy, of imposture and quackery, for ages; and 'Young Physic' is only yet groping its way to truer light. As an instance in point, take this admission of the Reviewer. "Medical men have assured staunch teetotalers, that they would die unless they admitted alcohol into their system-but the patients did neither; thus falsifying the prediction, and proving that the experience of doctors is not more infallible than that of the public.'-P. 35. Now what wonder, that some temperance people, after witnessing examples of such shecr Quackery, should experience a re-action, and lose all faith in the false prophets? Who has the doctor to blame but himself? Our tractarian, however, pitilessly condemns the poor, abused patient, for this quite natural result! He even goes the whole way into absurdity in order to reipove him, and tells him, in no round-about manner, that to refuse alcohol is to COM N |