ADDITIONAL NOTES.

NOTE A. Page 31.

THE following eloquent passage, extracted from Dr. Newman's lectures, will be read with interest in connection with the observations of Sir Walter Scott and Sir Humphry Davy, referred to in the text:

Self-educated persons 66 are likely to have more thought, more mind, more philosophy, than those earnest but ill-used persons, who are forced to load their minds with a score of subjects against an examination ; who have too much on their hands to indulge themselves in thinking or investigation; who devour premiss and conclusion together with indiscriminate greediness; who hold science on faith, and commit demonstrations to memory, and who too often, as might be expected, when their period of education is passed, throw up all they have learned in disgust, having gained nothing by their anxious labours except, perhaps, the habit of application.

"Yet such is the bitter specimen of the fruit of that ambitious system, which has of late years been making way among us. But its result on ordinary minds, and on the common run of students, is less satisfactory still.

They leave their place of education simply dissipated and relaxed by the multiplicity of subjects, which they have never really mastered, and so shallow as not even to know their own shallowness. How much better is it for the active and thoughtful intellect, where such is to be found, to eschew the college and the university altogether, than to submit to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious! How much more profitable for the independent mind, after the mere rudiments of education, to range through a library at random, taking down books as they meet with them, and pursuing the trains of thoughts which his mother wit suggests! How much healthier to wander into the fields, and there with the exiled prince to find tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks.' How much more genuine an education is that of the poor boy in the poem, -a poem, whether in conception or execution, one of the most touching in our language, - who, not in the wide world, but ranging day by day round his widowed mother's home, a dexterous gleaner in a narrow field, and with only such slender outfit

"As the village school and books a few supplied,'

"contrived, from the beach, and the quay, and the fisher's boat, and the inn's fireside, and the tradesman's shop, and the shepherd's walk, and the smuggler's hut, and the mossy moor, and the screaming gulls, and the restless waves, to fashion for himself a philosophy and poetry of his own."

NOTE B. Page 39.

THE question referred to in the text has been well stated by an accomplished friend of the author.

"The advocate for an immaterial principle is often unjust to his argument, in his assiduity to rid himself of those facts which attest the close and constant action of matter upon mind. They are too palpable, not only in matters of sense, but also as regards the purely mental processes, to admit of any evasion. His true doctrine lies beyond this; in asserting a principle submitted indeed to these influences, but different from them; capable of independent changes and actions within itself; and, above all, capable of self-regulation in those functions of thought and feeling to which external agents minister in the various processes of life. The ministering agents may become disturbing ones, and such they frequently are to a singular extent. But in this we have no proof of identity. Whatever of reason we can apply to an argument insuperable by human reason is against it; and the record of such instances is wholly comprised within that one great relation, which pervades every part of our present being; but the intimate nature of which is a sealed book to human research."-Medical Notes and Reflections, by Sir HENRY HOLLAND, Bart. M.D. 2nd edit. 461. Those who are curious in inquiries of this nature will

P.

do well to refer to another work by the same author,

66

Chapters on Mental Physiology," especially to the chapters which relate to sleep, dreams, and insanity.

NOTE C. Page 72.

Ir a comparison of the effects produced by various stimulant and narcotic agents on the nervous system be interesting to the physiologist, it ought not to be less so to the moral philosopher and the statesman.

The

At one period opium was much in request among the inferior classes of the metropolis, and there were chemists who disposed of many boxes of opium pills on a Saturday night. Then gin became cheap; the ginpalaces arose, and opium was neglected. This was greatly to the advantage of the revenue. But was it of advantage to society? The effect of opium when taken into the stomach is not to stimulate, but to soothe the nervous system. It may be otherwise in some instances, but these are rare exceptions to the general rule. opium-taker is in a passive state, satisfied with his own dreamy condition while under the influence of the drug. He is useless, but not mischievous. It is quite otherwise with alcoholic liquors. When Bishop and his partner murdered the Italian boy, in order that they might sell his body, it appeared in evidence that they prepared themselves for the task by a plentiful libation of gin. The same course is pursued by housebreakers, and others who engage in desperate criminal undertakings. It is worthy of notice, also, that opium is

much less deleterious to the individual than gin or brandy. Many opium-takers live to a great age, while dram-drinking induces disease of the liver, with its attendant bodily suffering, ill-temper, wretchedness, and premature death.

The effect of malt-liquor, like that of gin, depends on the alcohol which it contains, modified, however, in some degree, by the sedative properties of the hop. But it is much less dangerous. According to Mr. Brande's tables, the proportion of alcohol in gin is as much as 50 per cent., while in London porter it is not much more than 4 per cent. The porter-drinker, therefore, must drink 64 pints of porter to obtain gradually the effect which the gin-drinker obtains at once from half a pint (8 ounces) of gin. Gin-drinking, moreover, is in some other respects better suited to the ill-disposed part of the population. It does not distend the stomach as is the case with the more diluted liquor when taken in large quantity; and therefore does not at the time interfere so much with active exertion. It is also more economical. Eight ounces of the strongest gin (at the present price) costing about onesixth part less than their equivalent in porter.

Tobacco, as it is commonly used, is certainly less mischievous both as to the individual, and as to society at large, than alcohol. At the same time (independently of the unwholesome influence which it has on the digestive organs) there is sufficient evidence that an excessive indulgence in the use of it produces