nicious practice of artificially stimulating them in early life. A lady (Miss Elizabeth Seward) met with a fa< mily of poor children, whose pale faces, and emaciated bodies, forcibly attracted her attention. Upon inquiring of the mother how they were fed, she was informed that “ they did not eat much, and what they did eat, was not sufficient to nou"rish them without gin and water. It was scanty vege"table fare." The lady, after stating to the woman the pernicious effects likely to follow from such a regimen, advised her to purchase a little animal food with the money she expended in gin, and to give the children water to drink with their meals. "Lord, Madam, (replied the poor woman,) if I "was to do that, I should never be able to satisfy them in these "hard times. I was used to give them water, but then they were always hungry; and I could not beg or buy victuals enough for them.”—This relation scarcely requires eom ment. The unhappy little victims to such dreadful principles of economy, if their future fate were to be inquired into, would most probably be found to go off consumptive at the consumptive age, or to live nervous and bilious subjects, dependent upon medicine or other cordials, for the maintenance of a miserable existence. And of what would their progeny be likely to consist? But, perhaps, it will be said, that these are caricature, or at least extraordinary accounts. Let us then beg the reader's indulgence for another statement which may perhaps appear to apply more closely to that class of readers, if any, that are likely to be benefited by our present strictures.. Mr. Sandford, surgeon at Worcester, in his useful and entertaining tract on wine and spirits, relates the following observation, which may be confirmed by thousands equally certain, though made with less precision. To A late ingenious surgeon, occupied for a great part of his ' life in experiments equally well conceived and accurately executed, gave to one of his children, a full glass of sherry every day after dinner for a week. The child was then about ( five years old, and had never been accustomed to wine. 'another child, nearly of the same age and under similar circumstances, he gave a large China orange for the same space of time. At the end of the week he found a very material 'difference in the pulse, the heat of the body, the urine and the stools of the two children. In the first, the pulse was quickened, the heat increased, the urine high coloured, and the stools destitute of their usual quantity of bile, while the second had every appearance that indicated high health. He then reversed the experiment: to the first mentioned child he gave the orange, and to the other the wine. The effects followed as before-a striking and demonstrative proof of the pernicious effects of vinous liquors on the constitution of chil'dren in full health.' As to our sentiments on the subject of tea, it cannot be expected that we should be furnished with evidence equally forcible with the foregoing, in proof of its pernicious qualities. The destructive effects of tea, are not indeed to be placed as a parallel to those of spirituous liquors. That its effects, however, are mischievous, and that to a high degree, we feel, to express ourselves in the most moderate manner, a conviction, amounting almost to actual demonstration. Many readers who may foster a sceptical reluctance to go along with us in our condemnation of this article of diet, will perhaps be surprised to learn that experiments, instituted for the purpose of ascertaining the effects of infusion of tea on living animals, have shewn it to be as quickly poisonous as laurel water, opium, or foxglove; and, in some instances, more so. Analogy, then, at least, favours the inference, that a weak infusion of the articles just mentioned, might be introduced into common and daily use, with an impunity equal to tea. At any rate, all substances which, like tea, inordinately stimulate the nerves, produce an artificial exhilaration, and a mere temporary flow of spirits, must, of necessity, prove hurtful to the digestive organs and general frame, of young persons especially, and ought, therefore, to be banished entirely from the catalogue of their dietetic articles. There is another pernicious practice, and which seems daily to be more and more intermingling itself with the habits of domestic life. We mean the having recourse, on every trivial occasion, to drastic drugs, and especially mercurial purgatives. There are none who can be more thoroughly convinced than we are of the absolute necessity of duly preserving a regularity in the functions and evacuations of the bowels: indeed, health cannot be maintained without it. But the too frequent and indiscriminate application to mercurial medicines, in order to effect this purpose, is a practice calculated not only to be destructive of its own intent, but also to injure very materially, the tone of the stomach and biliary organs, upon the healthy condition and orderly action of which, so much depends in respect to general health. A dependence upon medicine, is, indeed, a sort of dependence upon drams, and of the baneful consequences of dram-drinking every one is aware. The habit of flying to the lancet, or cupping instruments, on every occasion of imaginary necessity, is likewise, we are per suaded, one of the means by which that effeminate and de pendent state of existence which we are lamenting, is brought about. We say imaginary necessity, for plethora or fulness of blood-vessels, is often conceived to exist, without the smallest foundation in fact; and it may be proper to observe to those whose feelings are so alive to this source of danger, that no practice is so much calculated to produce plethora as frequently repeated venesections. But our limits warn us to bring this article to a conclusion. We may possibly resume the subject at some future period, and treat of it rather more in detail. At present we shall confine ourselves to a few aphoristic remarks founded on the supposition that modern habits of life produce a feebleness of frame; that this feebleness renders the body more liable than at former periods, to be injuriously affected by the vicissitudes of our climate; and that such irregular exposures to heat and cold, as the customs of this country occasion, in place of hardening the animal frame, at once cause a greater measure of debility, and, by grafting on this debility, irritative and irregular, in the place of due and orderly actions, frequently come at length to be productive of genuine and confirmed consump tion. To parents, then, who are anxious for the health and wellbeing of their offspring, we would shortly address ourselves in the following manner. As consumption is the child of scrophula, so is scrophula engendered, or, at the least, fostered by the denial of nutritious, and the substitution, in its stead, of stimulating and mere exhilarating articles of diet. Let young persons then be prohibited the use of tea, and every kind of vinous and spirituous liquors. Milk, with flour or bread wellbaked, is all that ought to be given, in the way of food, for the first seven or eight months of a child's existence; and good wholesome animal and vegetable food, still with milk, morning and evening, ought to be continued, to the exclusion of any thing spirituous, during the whole period of the growth and evolution of their organs. Let mothers not indulge apprehensions, which we think the productions of some modern authors have too much tendency to excite, respecting the hurtful nature of a full supply of food to children. Infants especially, we think, can scarcely be fed too copiously, provided the materials of their diet are bland, unirritating, and nutritious. Let calomel be banished the list of domestic drugs. Regularity in intestinal action is better secured by exercise and air, than by medicines of any kind, and a little castor or common oil is a preferable purgative, in the general way, to mercurial or other more violent cathartics. Let us not be understood to conceive any undue antipathy against medicines of the class now alluded to, for, on the contrary, we are convinced of their frequent necessity, and, occasionally, of their great utility. They are, however, much more proper for professional than parental hands; and ought to be regarded, at least, as necessary evils. Young persons cannot be too much in the open and pure air, provided they are furnished with clothing, and are permitted the enjoyment of exercise sufficient for the preservation of a genial and equable warmth. But to expose them to cold, illdefended by covering against its painful operation, with a view to create hardiness, is acting upon an erroneous and destructive principle. Preservation of warmth in the feet, to the puny especially, is particularly desirable. Let even apparently trifling coughs in the consumptively disposed, ever be viewed with a watchful and fearful observation, and that in a more than ordinary measure, at the period of life when the constitution is about to undergo those important changes which are connected with the development of several peculiarities, and which fix for life the physical character of the individual. This caution is especially requisite in relation to the female. It is for mothers to insist upon a full disclosure of what shall take place at this period of life. A concealment, founded on false delicacy, may, in a few months, lay the foundation of irreparable injury to the lungs. Lastly, let us urge the subordinate interest that should be taken in youthful accomplishments, when placed in competition with youthful health and vigour. It is proper and necessary to pay due regard to the culture of the mind, yet parental anxiety for the inordinate exercise and shewy display of precocious talent, is, upon every principle, reprehensible. Let the two melancholy examples of Beattie and White, serve as warnings against such an excessive measure of intellectual cultivation, as may possibly insure mental acquirements at the expense of bodily destruction. Art. VII. Jephthah: a Poem. By Edward Smedley, Jun. 8vo. pp. 27. Price 3s. Murray. 1814. THE Seatonian Prize for the past year was adjudged to this poem; and if the average character of Prize Poems partook of the vigorous conception and originality which distinguish Mr. Smedley's production, we should soon cease to consider these compositions as deserving only of an ephemeral existence. It requires, indeed, talents somewhat above mediocrity, to surmount, in any degree, the disadvantageous circumstances under which the candidate for the Academic laurels is called upon to exert his fancy. To say nothing of the ungenial atmosphere which envelops the gloomy halls, and formal squares and alleys where tutors and proctors reign, and where the genius of the triangle triumphs over all other forms of beauty and of grace; to say nothing of the flat, naked dreariness of the banks through which the lazy Cam rolls his sullen stream, the dismal willows, and helpless pollards which, to borrow the expression of a friend, look as if nature were making signals of distress; there is in the very appointment of a subject for poetical composition, something which fetters the imagination, and renders it peculiarly difficult to interest by novelty, or to please by the play of creative fancy. This difficulty is increased by the subjects being selected from Scripture. If it be one respecting which we are presented with any circumstantial particulars, it is obvious that little room is left to the poet for the display of any thing more than the powers of versification; the attempt to add to the outline more than a slight shade of colouring, would infallibly destroy the effect of the original. If, as in the present ease, there is an obscure abruptness in the scriptural narrative, which leaves the poet at liberty to introduce characters purely ideal, there ceases to be any propriety in borrowing the names and the bare facts from the sacred volume, and designating it as a scriptural poem. It becomes difficult to avoid deviating into representations improbable in themselves, or incongruous with the early associations connected with the narrative. Mr. Smedley remarks, as an apology for his manner of treating the subject of Jephthah, that there can be but little doubt that for all poetical purposes it is far more sublime to consider that Jephthah offered his daughter as a living victim on the altar, than that he devoted her to perpetual virginity.' We should have entertained a different opinion, if the Author had not so well justified his choice by the happy execution of his subject. It cannot, however, be considered either as a religious, or an historical poem; but as an effort of genius it certainly merits high encomium. The opening of the poem is in a splendid style. From the dim east no vermeil tint was flung, |