the result, though fondly contemplated by Mr. Johnson-it will never "supply the place of the Pickwick and Nickleby literature of the present day," whatever be the morsels of substantial food which the author promises to furnish; for these must be comparatively dry, even although he had the power and taste to render them rich, sound, and highly flavoured.

NOTICE S.

ART. XVI.-The Second Funeral of Napoleon; in Three Letters to Miss Smith, of London. And the Chronicle of the Drum. By Mr. M. A. TITMARSH. London: Cunningham.

OUR serio-satirical friend Titmarsh has here, by pen and pencil, given a good yet sarcastic account, of the theatrical pageant that so recently turned the heads of the French at the re-interment of Bonaparte's bones. His narrative of the event is historically correct, in the first place, beginning at St. Helena, and ending at Paris. But, secondly, his mode of moralizing, and the matter of his comments, are new and philosophic, although not always extremely happy. Touches and bits, however, are excellently well pointed; -his taste, his feelings, and principles, prevent him from ever giving offence by a mockery of the real solemnities of death and the tomb, or of natural grief and decent mourning. We must give samples of these letters, where it only on account of the celebrated Miss Smith, of London, whose name we delight to keep before the public. Take some Titmarshish remarks on history:

"It is no easy task in this world to distinguish between what is great in it, and what is mean; and many and many is the puzzle that I have had in reading history, (or the works of fiction which go by that name,) to know whether I should laud up to the skies, and endeavour, to the best of my small capabilities, to imitate the remarkable character about him whom I was reading, or whether I should fling aside the book and the hero of it, as things altogether base, unworthy, laughable, and get a novel, or a game of billiards, or a pipe of tobacco, or the report of the last debate in the House, or any other employment which would leave the mind in a state of easy vacuity, rather than pester it with a vain set of dates relating to actions which are in themselves not worth a fig, or with a parcel of names of people whom it could do one no earthly good to remember."

His reflections upon history and humbug are not limited to what we have now quoted; and they are too sage and original to be summarily dismissed:

"Madam, historians for the most part know very little; and, secondly, only tell a little of what they know. As for those Greeks and Romans whom you have read of in sheep-skin, were you to know really what those monsters were, you would blush all over as red as a hollyhock, and put down the history-book in a fury. Many of our English worthies are no

better. You are not in a situation to know the real characters of any one of them. They appear before you in their public capacities, but the individuals you know not. Suppose, for instance, your mamma had purchased her tea in the Borough, from a grocer living there by the name of Greenacre suppose you had been asked out to dinner, and the gentleman of the house had said, 'Ho! François; a glass of champagne for Miss Smith;' Courvoisier would have served you just as any other footman would; you would never have known that there was anything extraordinary in these individuals, but would have thought of them only in their respective public characters of grocer and footman. This, madam, is history; in which a man always appears dealing with the world in his apron, or his laced livery, but which has not the power, or the leisure, or, perhaps, is too high and mighty, to condescend to follow and study him in his privacy. Ah, my dear, when big and little men come to be measured rightly, and great and small actions to be weighed properly, and people to be stripped of their royal robes, beggars' rags, generals' uniforms, seedy out-at-elbowed coats, and the like, or the contrary,-nay, when souls come to be stripped of their wicked, deceiving bodies, and turned out stark-naked as they were before they were born, what a strange startling sight shall we see, and what a pretty figure shall some of us cut. Fancy how we shall see Pride, with his Stultz clothes and padding pulled off, and dwindled down to a forked radish! Fancy some angelic virtue, whose white raiment is suddenly whisked over his head, shewing us cloven feet and a tail. Fancy humility, eased of its sad load of cares, and want, and scorn, walking up to the very highest place of all, and blushing as he takes it. Fancy-but we must not fancy such a scene at all, which would be an outrage on public decency. Should we be any better than our neighbours? No, certainly; and as we can't be virtuous, let us be decent. Fig-leaves are a very decent, becoming wear, and have been now in fashion for four thousand years. And so, my dear, history is written on fig-leaves: would you have anything further? O fie! Yes, four thousand years ago that famous tree was planted. At their very first lie, our first parents made for it, and there it is still, the great HUMBUG PLANT, stretching its wide arms, and sheltering beneath its leavess, as broad and green as ever, all the generations of men. Thus, my dear, coquettes of your fascinating sex cover their persons with figgery, fantastically arranged, and call their masquerading modesty. Cowards fig themselves out fiercely as salvage men,' and make us believe that they are warriors; fools look very solemnly out from the dusk of the leaves, and we fancy in the gloom that they are sages; and many a man sets a great wreath about his pate, and struts abroad a hero, whose claims we would all of us laugh at, could we but remove the ornament, and see his numskull bare."

Another sample will enhance the reader's admiration of Mr. Michael Angelo Titmarsh's humour. It is upon the armorial bearings of Napoleon's generals, displayed in the Courch of the Invalides ::

"Ventreblue, Madam! what need have they of coats of arms and coronets, and wretched imitations of old, exploded, aristocratic gewgaws, that they had flung out of the country, with the heads of the owners in them sometimes,-for, indeed, they were not particular, a score of years before? What business, forsooth, had they to be meddling with gentility, and aping its

ways, who had courage, merit, daring, genius sometimes, and a pride of their own to support, if proud they were inclined to be? A clever young man, (who was not of a high family himself, but he had been bred up genteelly at Eton, and the university,) young Mr. George Canning, at the commencement of the French revolution, sneered at 'Roland the Just with ribbons in his shoes;' and the dandies, who then wore buckles, voted the sarcasm monstrous killing. It was a joke, my dear, worthy of a lacky, or of a silly, smart, parvenu, not knowing the society into which his luck had cast him, (God bless him; in later years they taught him what they were!) and fancying in his silly intoxication that simplicity was ludicrous, and fashion respectable. See, now, fifty years are gone, and where are shoe-buckles? Extinct, defunct, kicked into the irrevocable past off the toes of all Europe! How fatal to the parvenu throughout history has been this respect for shoebuckles! Where, for instance, would the empire of Napoleon have been, if Ney and Lannes had never sported such a thing as a coat of arms, and had only written their simple names on their shields, after the fashion of Desaix's scutcheon yonder! The bold republican who led the crowning charge at Marengo, and sent the best blood of the holy Roman empire to the right-about, died before the wretched, misbegotten, imperial heraldry was born that was to prove so fatal to the father of it. It has always been so ; they won't amalgamate. A country must be governed by the one principle or the other; but give in a republic an aristocracy ever so little chance, and it works, and plots, and sneaks, and bullies, and sneers itself into place, and you find democracy out of doors. Is it good that the aristocracy should so triumph? That is a question that you may settle according to your own notions and taste; and, permit me to say, I do not care twopence how you settle it. Large books have been written upon the subject in a variety of languages, and coming to a variety of conclusions. Great statesmen are there in our country, from Lord Londonderry down to Mr. Vincent, each in his degree maintaining his different opinion. But here, in the matter of Napoleon, is a simple fact: he founded a great, glorious, strong, potent republic, able to cope with the best aristocracies in the world, and perhaps to beat them all; he converts his republic into a monarchy, and surrounds his monarchy with what he calls aristocratic institutions,-and you know what becomes of him. The people estranged, the aristocracy faithless, (when did they ever pardon one who was not of themselves?) the imperial fabric tumbles to the ground. If it teaches nothing else, my dear, it teaches one a great point of policy, namely, to stick by one's party."

We have given it as our opinion in another article, that there is a great deal of nonsense, cant and humbug constantly uttered relative to our alliance with the French, and are glad to have such high authority to back us as that of a Michael Angelo. He says:

"The French hate us. They hate us, my dear, profoundly and desperately; and there never was such a hollow humbug in the world as the French alliance. Men get a character for patriotism in France merely by hating England. Directly they go into strong opposition (where, you know, people are always more patriotic than on the ministerial side), they appeal. to the people, and have their hold on their people by hating England in common with them. Why? It is a long story; and the hatred may be

accounted for by many reasons, both political and social. Any time these eight hundred years this ill-will has been going on, and has been transmitted, on the French side, from father to son: on the French side, not on ours; we have had no (or few) defeats to complain of,-no invasions to make us angry. But you see that to discuss such a period of time would demand a considerable number of pages; and for the present we will avoid the examination of the question. But they hate us,—that is the long and short of it."

The "Chronicle of the Drum" is in verse that sounds and beats as if it had been written during a roll-call. It is spirited and pithy. The Chronicler relates the feats that have been achieved to the rattle of his drum, from Henry of Navarre's time down to those of the re-intombed Emperor. Here are specimens:

"Brought up in the art military

666

For four generations we are ;

My ancestors drummed for King Harry,
The Huguenot lad of Navarre.
And as each man in life has his station
According as Fortune may fix,
While Condé was waving the baton,

My grandsire was trolling the sticks.
Ah! those were the days for commanders!
What glories my grandfather won,
Ere bigots, and lackeys, and panders,

The fortunes of France had undone!
In Germany, Flanders, and Holland,-
What foeman resisted us then?
No; my grandsire was ever victorious,
My grandsire and Monsieur Turenne.
He died, and our noble battalions

The jade, fickle Fortune, forsook ;
And at Blenheim, in spite of our valiance,
The victory lay with Malbrook.

The news it was brought to King Louis;
Corbleu! how his majesty swore,

When he heard they had taken my grandsire,
And twelve thousand gentlemen more!

*

I looked when the drumming was o'er,
I looked, but our hero was gone;

We were destined to see him once more,

When we fought on the Mount of St. John.

The Emperor rode through our files;

"Twas June, and a fair Sunday morn ;

The lines of our warriors for miles

Stretched wide through the Waterloo corn.

In thousands we stood on the plain,

The red coats were crowning the height; 'Go scatter yon English,' he said;

'We'll sup, lads, at Brussels to-night.'
We answered his voice with a shout!

Our eagles were bright in the sun;
Our drums and our cannon spoke out,
And the thundering battle begun.
One charge to another succeeds,

Like waves that a hurricane bears;
All day do our galloping steeds
Dash fierce on the enemy's squares.
At noon we began the fell onset,

We charged up the Englishman's hill;
And madly we charged it at sunset.-
His banners were floating there still.
Go to! I will tell you no more;

You know how the battle was lost.
Ho! fetch me a beaker of wine,

And, comrades, I'll give out a toast.
I'll give you a curse on all traitors,
Who plotted our Emperor's ruin ;
And a curse on those red-coated English,
Whose bayonets helped our undoing.'

ART. XVII.-The Domestic Management of the Sick Room, necessary in Aid of Medical Treatment for the Cure of Diseases. By A. T. THOMSON, M.D.

Longman.

DR. THOMSON has brought the results of extensive observation to bear upon certain philosophic or scientific principles in this important work: so as to teach nurses and others who have not any regular medical knowledge how to second the prescriptions of the physician, by regulations and treatment in respect of air, aliment, light and darkness of the sick chamber, exercise, &c., the patient himself, in many cases, having the power of self-management. The doctor communicates valuable information and throws out striking suggestions with regard to the regulation of the mind and its passions; while his observations relative to the training of the young from their birth to puberty, so as to invigorate the constitution, are not less important and sensible. Many directions are given, too, respecting specific diseases; and when it is understood that Dr. Thomson's subject embraces everything which it seems needful to say concerning the furniture proper for a sick room, cleanliness, the application of leeches, &c., the preparation of poultices, &c., the use and kinds of baths, the choice of nurses, and many such means of cure, it will be at once perceived that the subject of his book is broad, varied, and interesting; and that it admits of learned as well as copious elucidation.

Having in a former paper called attention to the subject of Medical Reform, we shall here quote a passage to show how inoperative and practically deficient may be all the improvements suggested by Dr. Sinclair, Mr. Hawes, or Mr. Warburton, unless great care be taken in the matter of treatment in the sick room.