Equal to about five feet, two inches, English measure.

long after as the 27th of January, 1763, The correspondence continued sixteen etray an interest of so much curiosity, as to years, during all which time the parties rtain articles, without the penalty of con- only saw each other thrice. Rousseau tuting himself an old fool.. Unfortunately, broke it off in a way, which can only be ie poison, I fear, is stronger than the anti-accounted for by his unhappy malady.

te; and your letter is more calculated to

ake me forget my age, than your almanack
bring it to my recollection. No other
agic had been necessary to Medea, to re-
re to youth old son; and had Aurora
en formed like you, decrepid Tithonus,
aning beneath disease, would have stood
need of no further assistance than the
ht of her, to recover the youth and vigour
had lost. But for me, at such a distance
m you, I gain from all this nothing but
ret and ridicule; and the youthfulness of
heart is but an evil added to many others;
nothing can be more ridiculous than a
ard but twenty years old. In the next
ce, I would not for the world expose
self in future to the view of that face of a
Feet oval; and that is not the part the
t fair of the person to whom it belongs.
ould be in constant dread, that certain
* spots on the grey satin would become
sparent; and that, to be the better judge
the fairness of your face, I might, spite
he chilliness you mention, be tempted to
for objects of comparison through a
sand safeguards. -

ome per aqua o per christallo intiero,
rassa il raggio e n'ol divide o parte;
ntro il chiuso manto osa il pensiero,
enetrar nella vietata parte.*

But let us, madam, for a moment, abanyour face and person, which it ill becomes agination fifty years old to profane, to Gething of the charming physiognomy, cannot fail to acquire you friends among pes of every age, and which is the surest ation that you possess a heart formed ally to preserve them. It will not be ult, if it be not the means of completing your letters had so substantially begun, f I do not entertain for you, during the of my life, an attachment worthy the exare of your character. What satisfacshall I not experience to hear pronounty so pretty a mouth, all the obliging s you have written to me; and to read pair of dark-blue eyes, fringed with eyelashes, the friendship you avow tone? This same friendship imposes on ties I willingly fulfil; and if my age radulation ridiculous, it is no less an

for sincerity. I readily forgive you ising the beautiful hair you describe;

even at this distance, in some measure

of that idolatry: but my approbation ur manner of wearing it, must depend question one dares not put to your sex. . notwithstanding, propose it to you old are you?"

One interesting anecdote occurs in these letters. It is the lady who writes.

"Some time ago two Englishmen of distinction prevailed on M. le Chevalier de Mehegan to accompany them to Montmorenci, to shew them the house you had occupied in that place. (Be it known these Englishmen," as is the custom of their nation, did not first pay a visit to their friend.) The party set out on Sunday, the twenty-fifth of September, and scarcely were they got into the town of Montmorenci, than some of the inhabitants, recollecting they had seen M. Mehegan visit at your house, assembled together some other persons, and he found himself in the midst of these kind-hearted peasants, who gathered round him to inquire eagerly after your health. Ah, sir! how is your friend's health now? said one. We had a great loss in him, said another: he was so charitable, he was a father to us all; he gave us wine when we stood in need of it, and there was no good he did not do us, said a third, Another added, he was our advocate with my lord, the Mareschal; in him we have lost our all! We shall regret him to our latest hour! The worthy creatures then shed tears; and neither M. Mehegan nor his companions could refrain from shedding them also. The emotion of the strangers was, however, soon suspended by a sequel they did not expect; and at which you no doubt will be as much surprised as they were. It is not at all astonishing, said they, that this good M. Rousseau should be so treated, for he told fortunes. All this needs no comment, and well deserves, my friend, the statue mentioned in your letter to the archbishop. But this is not all: when the strangers returned to their inn, M. Mehegan mentioned what they had heard to the landlord, who informed him that the very same thing had happened to every person passing that way, and known to those peasants for your acquaintance; that the love and veneration entertained for you by all the inhabitants was not to be imagined; and that, if you had been inclined to profit by their zeal, there was not one that would not have sacrificed himself for you."

The letters to M. du Peyron include those which were written from England, when Rousseau's derangement seems to have been at its height.

There is nothing in these volumes that can repay the reader for the time spent in perusing them. We have never seen a

rays of light pass through water and crystal without obstruction, so do the thoughts mire the most sceret receptacles, and are by no limits stayed.

more worthless correspondence; still the correspondence of such a man as Kousseau, worthless as in itself it may be, must be regarded as a literary relic. We would not worship the parings of St.

Peter's toe-nail; but if it were ascerta ed that they were genuine, he must be very puritanical collector who w not give them a place in his cabinet.

ART. X. Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin, chiefly during his Residence at 1. field; with Anecdotes of his Friends, and Criticisms on his Writings. By ANNA SER Svo. pp. 430.

A LIFE of Dr. Darwin, by Anna Seward, will excite more expectations than the work itself will gratify. It contains, indeed, something to amuse, and something to interest; but not all that might have been hoped from the celebrity of the subject, and the well known and acknowledged talents of the writer. The preface prepared us for disappointment. Miss Seward professes not to treat at large of that moiety of his professional existence formed by his residence at Lichfield, and merely to give a general view of that which passed at Deiby For a full detail of this latter half, we are referred to Mr. Bilsborrow, or Bilsbury.*

Erasmus Darwin was the son of a private gentleman near Newark, in Nottinghamshire; which sentence, we suppose, implies that he was born there: he came to Lichfield to practise physic at the age of twenty-four, in 1756. Nothing is related of his previous life, except that he had studied at Cambridge and at Edinburgh. The description of his person and manners at this time, though not fice from the eccentricity of style which characterises the whole book, has the great and rare merit of making the reader almost visually acquainted with the personage it introduces.

"He was somewhat above the middle size; his form athletic, and inclined to corpulence; his limbs too heavy for exact proportion; the traces of a severe small-pos: features and

countenance which, when they were not animated by social pleasure, were rather saturnine than sprightly; a stoop in the shoulders, and the then professional appendage, a large full-bottomed wig, gave, at that early period of life, an appearance of nearly twice the years he bore. Florid health, and the earnest of good-humour, a sunny smile on entering a room, and on first accosting his friends, rendered, in his youth, that exterior anerable, to which beauty and symmetry had Lot been propitious.

"He stammered extremely; but whatever

he said, whether gravely or in jest, was always well worth waiting for, though the in

evitable impression it made might net.! be pleasant to individual self-love. Con of great native elevation above the standard of intellect, he became, carlji sore upon opposition, whether in r or conduct; and always revenged it casm of very keen edge. Nor was la impatient of the sallies of egoismunds even when they were in so slizat a that strict politeness would rather than ridicule them. Dr. Darwin but wounding irony. If these ingr failed to present their caricature in of colloquial despotism were discer vanced, fed by an ever growing repre unworn existence, they increased as within and without the pale of medicin.

Extreme was his scepticism to t truth. From that cause, he often dis the accounts his patients gave of ther. and rather chose to collect his informas indirect inquiry, and by cross-es... them, than from their voluntary test. favourable to his skill, in discovering That distrust, and that habit, were gin of diseases, and thence to his pre-e success in effecting their cure; but i pressed his mind, and tinctured his c tion, with an apparent want of ce in mankind, which was apt to woundi genuous and confiding spirit, whethe ing his medical assistance, or his cora friend. Perhaps this proneness to s mingled too much of art in his wist di

Dr. Darwin, during all the first of his medical career, abstained: poetry, prudently preferring the a tages of professional fame; he wast ed by the fate of Armstrong and A side, names which we couple asja sicians, not as men, or moralists, or pag His outset was fortunate: a man ci tune in the neighbourhood was saved him, after he had been given over by able physician: this immediately duced him to extensive practice. now married; and for thirteen years the untimely death of his wife, seits have been a happy and excellent busc Among his friends, at this time, names appear of Kier, Boulton, Wa Day, and Edgeworth, who will all remembered by posterity. The very

The name is spelt both ways in this volume.

plar domestic history of Thomas Day, rms the most interesting part of the lume. Miss Seward says, that it has en unaccountably omitted by the gen man who wrote his life: we can acfor the omission. There is a want delicacy, and even of decorum, in pubhing so much of the private history of living as appears in this narrative; it gratifying public curiosity at the exace of private feeling. What woman there who does not feel a natural and per indignation, if she knows that the ret history of her life, her courtship &ler marriage, and her distresses, has n made the subject of tea-table tittle? but to publish such anecdotes in authenticated form is violating the redness of private life. It is easier to y Mr. Kier for having omitted this tory, in a work whereof it would have made an important part, than to The Miss Seward for unnecessarily inting it among the memoirs of Dr.

core characteristic anecdotes of Dr. win are now recorded. He once ight inoculation for the measles ght materially soften the disease, and, er the example of lady Wortley, he de the trial in his own family upon of his children. Each had the disbe so severely, that he never repeated experiment. His eldest son had conced from the father a habit of stamg: he sent him abroad, believing , in the pronunciation of a foreign Sage, he would be less likely to hesi, than in speaking those words and terces at which he was accustomed able. The remedy was success

Dr. Darwin was conversing with a bro-
'alist, concerning the plant kalmia,
a just imported stranger in our green-
and gardens.
A lady, who was pre-
concluding he had seen it, which in

"Dr. Darwin, I seek you, not as a physi cian, but as a belle esprit. I make this husband of mine," and she looked down with a side glance upon the animal, "treat me every summer with a tour through one it contains worth the attention of ingeniof the British counties, to explore whatever ous people. On arriving at the several inns in our route, I always search out the man of the vicinity who is most distinguished for his genius and taste, and introduce myself, that he may direct, as the objects of our examination, whatever is curious in nature, art, or science. Lichfield will be Come, doctor, whither must we go? What our head-quarters during several days. must we investigate to-morrow, and the next day, and the next? here are my tablets and pencil."

"You arrive, madam, at a fortunate juncture. To-morrow you will have an oppor tunity of surveying an annual exhibition perfectly worth your attention. To-morrow, madam, you will go to Tatbury bullrunning."

“The satiric laugh with which he stammered out the last word, inore keenly pointed this sly, yet broad, rebuke to the vanity of her speech. She had been up amongst the boughs, and little expected they would break under her so suddenly, and with so litthe mercy. Her large features swelled, and her eyes flashed with anger I was recominsolent and ill bred."-Then, gathering up mended to a man of genius, and I find him her meek and alarmed husband, whom she had loosed when she first spoke, under the shadow of her broad arm and shoulder, she strutted ont of the room.

"After the departure of this curious couple, his guests fold their host he had been very unmerciful. I chose, replied he, to avenge the cause of the little man, whose nothingness was so ostentatiously displayed by his lady-wife. Her vanity has had a smart emetic. If it abates the symptoms, she will have reason to thank her physician, who administered without hope of a fee."

On one occasion Dr. Darwin was inclined to try the transfusion of blood. Lady Northesk, who was supposed to be dying of hemorrhage, was to have been he had not, asked the doctor what were ours of the plant. He replied, "Mathe subject; and Miss Seward offered to te kalmia has precisely the colours of supply the blood from her own veins : rah's wing." So fancifully did he exthe whole account is exceedingly intes want of consciousness, respecting resting. Darwin did not make the experiappearance of a flower whose naine and ment: "if she die," said he, "the world will say I killed lady Northesk, thou Dr. Darwin had a large company at tea. the London and Bath physicians have servant announced a stranger lady and pronounced her case hopeless, and sent man. The female was a conspicuous her home to expire." The experiment ruddy, corpulent, and tall. She held e arm a little, meek-looking, pale, effe- was, indeed, too hazardous, from the difman, who, from his close adherence ficulty of constructing a machine, except de of the lady, seemed to consider in extreme cases; and he saved his pa alfas under her protection. tient, by changing the system of nutri

es were all he knew of the matter.