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the dread of water does, in some cases, occur, but not always, as some part of the cases on record do not take notice of that symptom; and I have seen cases, myself, where it did not make its appearance; indeed, I hold any man grossly ignorant of his profession, who boldly declares that a patient is free from the complaint, be cause he does not happen to have that peculiar symptom upon him.

Sometimes the disease commences like a common sore, either daily encreasing, or else immediately healing: if in the first instance, the hydrophobic symptoms which present themselves, are generally, the bitten part becomes painful and uneasy; then appear wandering pains, uneasiness, heaviness, spasms, a love of solitude, frightful dreams, sometimes a great degree of mental alienation; and a dread of water and other liquids, or rather of swallowing them, will also sometimes happen. In the second in stance, the sore will kindly heal up, but previous to the appearance of other symptoms, it will become hard and elevated, and more or less of the ap pearances above described will come on in a little time; a great degree of fever prevails, the spasms increase, a severe delirium often ensues, and death closes the tragical scene.

The best means we can employ is an immediate and complete excision of the wounded part, and we must recollect that this ought to be immediately performed; but should days and even weeks have passed away, still there is hope of success from the knife. After the part has been removed, the wound should have water poured on it in a continual stream, and from a considerable height; or the cavity should be filled with the liquor of ammonia, vinegar, or an alkali; by applying these powerful remedies, the bleeding will soon cease; but when it ap. pears again, suction by capping glasses must be had recourse to. Many other remedies exist, but as the performance of all belongs alone to a surgeon or physician, we do not feel ourselves called on to mention them: we think what we have spoken is sufficient to interest every one, and moreover to convince them that whatever may be thought proper for a patient. to undergo, however terrible may appear, ought to be willingly submitted to; there is no disease which requires more immediate treatment, and the presence of a medical man alone can ensure even a faint chance of success. Of the appearance of a rabid animal it will be necessary next to speak; but I must defer that paper for the present.

W. B.

Driginal Poetry.

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A SKETCH FROM NATURE.

THERE is a most romantic spot,
Which, once beheld, is ne'er forgot;
So lovely, that the place might seem
The fancy of a painter's dream:

I saw it first, when beauteous Spring
Clad Nature in her fairest dress,
And health and joy were on the wing,
Enhancing every loveliness.
Through spreading trees I traced my way,
Whose shadows on the pathway lay-
The sun's soft lustre gently played.
As through that avenue of shade,
But now emerging from the wood,
I looked upon a lonely glen,- ›
So silent, as I gazing stood,

It scarcely seemed the haunts of men.
Save that the soft blue smoke that curled,
Told this was not a painter's world;
But that in this lone spot of ground,
Some trace of life might still be found;

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The hill's steep bank was clothed with green,
Which half concealed the pathway down,
Where glancing through the shade was seen,
A rushing stream come hurrying on;
Whose ripples, glancing in the ray,
Betrayed its current to the day;
Whose murmurs were the only sound,
That broke the stillness reigning round;
'And on the margin of that stream,
One solitary cottage stands ;-

From whose appearance, one may deem,
It was not built by modern hands.;
To form the poet's lone retreat;
It seemed to be the spot most meet,
While shrouded from the world's gay throng,
He roamed these solitudes among,
And gazing on this lovely dell,

He here might frame some simple tale,
Of one who loved, but loved too well,
And sorrowing died in this lone vale.
And as I slowly turned away,
Gilded each lovely object there,
The setting sun's departing ray
And made the scene seem doubly fair.
Lingering, I sought my homeward way,
And wished mine were the painter's art,
To give the semblance of that ray-
But it was painted on my heart.

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M.

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WRITTEN IN AN ALBUM,
YOU bid my wandering thoughts to stray
O'er those few years I've passed away,
That something I may find to say:
But oh! without a sigh of grief,
1 can't resolve to stain this leaf,
To that short life we linger here;
Since it presents a semblance clear,
For thro' the past I've strove in vain,
To find one page without a stain,
And looking forward, still I see
From every taint the future free.
Yet one bright hope we still can find,
To shun those errors left behind.-
But why proceed, for at the last,
This future shall become the past;
And each unsullied leaf receive,
Those stains corrupted natures give.
Correpondents in our next·

LONDON: -WILLIAM CHARLTON WRIGHT, 65, Paternoster Row, and may be had of all Booksellers and Newsmen.

COMPRISING

1. The Flowers of Literature. 2. The Spirit of the Magazines.

3. The Wonders of Nature and Art.

4. The Family Physician and Domestic Guide. 5. The Mechanie's Dracle.

NOTICE.

OF

то SUCH OF OUR READERS WHO ARE NOT SUBSCRIBERS THE PORTFOLIO, TO WHICH THIS SHEET IS AN ADDITIONAL NUMBER, IT MAY NOT BE IMPROPER TO ADD A FEW WORDS ON ITS GENERAL CHARACTER, THE OBJECT OF THE PORTFOLIO, SINCE IT HAS BECOME THE PROPERTY OF THE PRESENT PROPRIETOR, IS TO COMBINE NOVELTY WITH PERMANENCY, AND AMUSEMENT WITH EDIFICATION: FOR THESE DESIRED ENDS, THE CHOISEST FLOWERS OF LITERATURE ARE PLUCKED FROM THEIR EVER-TEEMING BEDS,-THE Spirit of the MAGAZINES IS CAUGHT BEFORE IT EVAPORATES, AND A NEVER-FAILING SUPPLY OF ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTION, FORM A COMBINATION AT ONCE VARIED, INTERESTING, AND USEFUL. A BETTER IDEA OF THE NATURE OF THIS PUBLICATION, A GLANCE AT THE GENERAL CONTENTS ON THE COVER OF THIS NUMBER, WILL AFFORD.

ON THE WRITINGS OF WASHINGTON IRVING.

THE writings of Mr. Washington Irving have excited in England a very pleasing and powerful sensation, and we believe they are equally admired amongst his countrymen on the other side of the Atlantic. His first appearance "on the town," was under the assumed name of Geoffrey Crayon, and his Sketch Book was admirably adapted to propitiate the good opinion of the reading public. It gave evident proofs not only of his high talents as an author, but of his good sense and amiable disposi tion as a man; and it furnished, besides, the very best specimen of American literature hitherto imported into England: indeed, for delicacy of taste, refined feeling, pathos, and humour, there are few of our native writers can cope with Mr. Irving, and we scarcely know one whose works display an equal elegance of style and versatility of talent. The Sketch Book, notwithstanding its random title, is a work of great care and accuracy: its style and diction are evidently formed on the models of the purest and most polished of our standard writers; and to say that the imitation has been successfully performed, is no mean praise. Mr. Irving appears to have

No. 79.-Price 2d.

studied our language with much care, and there is one very remarkable feature in his various writings, which is, that he seldom or never alludes to what are called Classical subjects, or introduces a quotation from the learned languages. We wish (en passant) that some of our own pedantic writers would follow his example, and that they would, instead of culling out sentences and phrases from Greek and Latin authors, to show their learning, bestow a little more pains in the cultivation of their native tongue. The frequent use of learned quotations on common-place subjects is a silly affectation, from which we are happy to perceive the writer before us is almost entirely free. His style is purely Engfish, and his illustrative passages are taken, as they should be, from the language in which he writes. The Sketch Book has been so widely read, so generally admired, and so often reviewed, that it would be a task of supererogation, at this time of day, to point out its various beauties. As we purpose, however, to devote this entire Number to Mr. Irving's writings, and as many of his principal beauties are to be found in the work which first introduced him to our notice, we shall take a general view of all his writings, in order to afford to our readers a just estimation of his talents. With the Sketch Book, there

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fore, we shall commence our labours, and conclude them with a review of his "Tales of a Traveller," which have just issued from the press. A few remarks on his general style may not be considered inappropriate. There runs through out his various works a tone of gentle. ness and good humour that admirably harmonizes with his light and pensive feelings. His views are so enlightened and liberal, and his reflections so just and appropriate, that we are insensibly led to participate in all his thoughts and feelings: he is never out of temper, either with himself, or his readers; and the consequence is, that we turn from his writings with the best and kindest wishes for their author. If we discover in his works an occasional want of force and vigour of thought and execution, if we seldom meet with bold and original incidents, these higher qualities of genius are well supplied by a more than common degree of humourous description, and of grace and tenderness in subjects of a soft and pensive nature. At times, perhaps, the music of his sentences is apparently more attended to than the subject on which he writes, and there certainly is an appearance of forced effect in some of his essays, and an endeavour at fine writing on sentimental subjects, which ceases to please in proportion as it departs from the natural. His manner of conducting a story, however, is peculiarly his own: it is at once spirited and effective, and it is only when he writes, as he sometimes appears to do, without any fixed design, that his labours to produce effect become apparent.

Our first extract from the Sketch, Book shall be the opening chapter, in which the author gives an account of himself; and we select this paper not only as it offers a very pleasing specimen, of Mr. Irving's style, but because it affords some interesting information of his early history, and his first impres

sions.

"I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town crier. As I grew into boyhood, I extended the range of my observations. My holiday afternoons were spent in rambles about the surrounding country. I made myself familiar with all its places famous in history or fable. I knew every spot where a murder or robbery had been committed, or a ghost seen. I visited the neighbouring villages, and added

greatly to my stock of knowledge, by noting their habits and customs, and conversing with their sages and great men. I even journeyed one long summer's day to the summit of the most distant hill, from whence I ́stretched my eye over many a mile of terra incognita, and was astonished to find how vast a globe I inhabited.

"This rambling propensity strengthened with my years. Books of voyages and travels became my passion, and in devouring their contents, I neglected the regular exercises of the school. How wistfully would I wander about the pier heads in fine weather, and watch the parting ships bound to distant climes; with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth.

"Farther reading and thinking, though they brought this vague inclination inco more reasonable bounds, only served to make it more decided. I visited various parts of my own country; and had I been merely influenced by a love of fine scenery, I should have felt little desire to seek elsewhere its gratification; for on no country have the charms of nature been more prodigally lavished. Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with their bright aërial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; ber broad deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine: no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.

"But Europe held forth all the charms of storied and poetical association. There were to be seen the masterpieces of art, the refinements of highly-cultivated society, the quaint peculiarities of ancient and local custom. My native country was full of youthful promise: Europe was rich in the accumulated treasures of age. Her very ruins told the history of times gone by, and every mouldering stone was a chronicle. 1 longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievement-to tread, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity-to loiter about the ruined castle-to meditate on the falling tower-to escape, in short, from the common-place realities of the present, and lose myself among the shadowy grandeurs of the past.

"I had, besides all this, an earnest

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desire to see the great men of the earth. We have, it is true, our great men in America: not a city but has an ample share of them. I have mingled among them in my time, and been almost withered by the shade into which they cast me; for there is nothing so baleful to a small man as the shade of a great one, particularly the great man of a city. But I was anxious to see the great men of Europe; for I had read in the works of various philosophers, that all the animals degenerated in America, and man among the number. A great man of Europe, thought I, must therefore be as superior to a great man of America, as a peak of the Alps, to a highland of the Hudson; and in this idea I was confirmed, by observing the comparative importance and swelling magnitude of many English travellers among us, who. I was assured, were very little people in their own country. I will visit this land of wonders, thought I, and see the gigantic race from which I am degenerated.

"It has been either my good or evil lot to have my roving passion gratified. I have wandered through different countries, and witnessed many of the shifting stenes of life. I cannot say that I have studied them with the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the sauntering gaze with which the humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window of one print shop to another; caught sometimes by the delineations of beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of landscape. As it is the fashion for modern tourists to travel pencil in hand, and bring home their portfolios filled with sketches, I am disposed to get up a few for the entertainment of my friends. When, however, I look over the hints and memorandums I have taken down for the purpose, my heart almost fails me at finding how my idle humour has led me aside from the great objects studied by every regular traveller who would make a book. I fear I shall give equal disappointment with an unlucky landscape painter, who had travelled on the continent, but following the bent of his vagrant inclination, had sketched in nooks, and corners, and bye places. His sketch book was accordingly crowded with cottages, and landscapes, and ob scure ruins; but he had neglected to paint St. Peter's, or the Coliseum; the cascade of Terni, or the bay of Naples; and had not a single glacier or volcano in his whole collection.'

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This opening of the Sketch Book is followed by thirty-one papers, in which

the author flies from gay to grave, with astonishing facility. We regret that, in a limited paper like our's, our amount of extracts must be necessarily confined, and that, even in those which we purpose to lay before our readers, considerable abridgment must be made, in order to accommodate them to our space, The "Broken Heart," is an exceedingly affecting story. After a beautiful parallel between the relative situations in life of man and woman, particularly as they both stand affected by the passion of love, the story of the "Broken Heart," is thus simply, but eloquently told:

"Every one must recollect the tragical story of young E- the Irish patriot, it was too touching to be soon forgotten. During the troubles in Ireland he was tried, condemned, and executed, on a charge of treason. His fate made a deep impression on public sympathy. He was so young-so intelligent-so brave-so every thing that we are apt to like in a young man. His conduct under trial, too, was so lofty and intrepid. The noble indignation with which he repelled the charge of treason against his country-the eloquent vindication of his name and his pathetic appeal to posterity, in the hopeless hour of condemnation-all these entered deeply into every generous bosom, and even his enemies lamented the stern policy that dictated his execution.

"But there was one heart, whose anguish it would be impossible to describe. In happier days and fairer fortunes, he had won the affections of a beautiful and interesting girl, the daughter of a late celebrated Irish barrister. She, loved him with the disinterested fervour of a woman's first and early love. When, every worldly maxim arrayed itself against him; when blasted in fortune, and disgrace and danger darkened around his name, she loved him the more ardently for his very sufferings. If, then, his fate could awaken the sympathy, even of his foes, what must have been, the agony of her, whose whole soul was occupied by his image! Let those tell who have had the portals of the tomb suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved on earth-who have sat at its threshold, as one shut out in a cold and lonely world, from whence ail that was most lovely and loving had departed.

"But then the horrors of such a grave! so frightful, so dishonoured! There was nothing for memory to dwell on, that could soothe the pang of separation none of those tender, though melancholy circumstances that endear

the parting scene-nothing to melt sor row into those blessed tears, sent, like the dews of heaven, to revive the heart in the parching hour of anguish.

"To render her widowed situation more desolate, she had incurred her father's displeasure by her unfortunate attachment, and was an exile from the paternal roof. But could the sympathy and kind offices of friends have reached a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, she would have experienced no want of consolation, for the Irish are a people of quick and generous sensibilities. The most delicate and cherishing attentions were paid her by families of wealth and distinction. She was led into society, and they tried, by all kinds of occupation and amusement, to dissipate her grief, and wean her from the tragical story of her toves. But it was all in vain. There are some strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul that penetrate to the vital seat of happiness and blast it, never again to put forth bud or blossom. She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, but she was as much alone there as in the depths of solitude. She walked about in a sad reverie, apparently unconscions of the world around her. She carried with her an inward woe that mocked at all the blandishments of friendship, and « heeded not the song of the charmer, charm he never so wisely."

"The person who told me her story had seen her at a masquerade. There can be no exhibition of far-gone wretchelness more striking and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre, lonely and joyless, where all around is gay---to see it dressed. out in the trappings of mirth, and look ing so wan and woe-begone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into a momentary forgetfulness of sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with an air of atter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra, and looking about for some time with a vacant air, that shewed her insensibility to the garish scene, she began, with the capri ciousness of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive air. She had an exquisite voice but on this occasion it was 60 simple, so touching, it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness, that she drew a crowd mute and silent around her, and melted every one into tears.

"The story of one sptrue and tender, could not but excite great interest in a country remarkable for enthusiasm. It completely won the heart of a brave officer, who paid his addresses to her,

He

and thought that one so true to the dead, could not but prove affectionate to the living. She declined his attentions, for ber thoughts were irrevocably engrossed by the memory of her former lover. He, however, persisted in his suit. He solicited not her tenderness, but her esteem. was assisted by her conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own destitute nad dependent situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends. In a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the soleinn assurance, that her heart was unalterably another's."

He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene might wear out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable and exemplary wife, and made an effort to be a happy one; but nothing could cure the silent and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very soul. She wasted away in a slow, but hopeless decline, and at length sunk into the grave, the victim of a broken heart.

"It was en her that Moore, the distinguished Irish poet, composed the following lines:

"She is far from the land where her young hero

sleeps,

And lovers around her are sighing : But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps, For her heart in his grave is lying. She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains, Ev'ry note which he lov'd awaking, Ah little they think, who delight in her strains.

How the heart of the minstrel is breaking ! He bad lived for his love for his country he died,

They were all that to life had entwined himNor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,

Nor long will his love stay behind him! Oh? make her a grave where the sunbeams rest, When they promise a glorious morrow; They'll shine o'er her steep, like a smile from the west,

From her own lov'd island of sorrow?" The foregoing pathetic story, it may be requisite to observe, is not from the stores of Mr. Irving's fancy, the circumstances, as he himself premises, are well known in the country where they hap pened. Mr. Robert Emmet, a young irish gentleman of high talents and ardent feelings, was induced, unfortunately, to join the fiery spirits of his native country, with a view to shake off the English yoke. The plot totally miscarried, and the unfortunate young man was appre

ended as a ringleader, and underwent the sentence of the law. He was tenderly attached at the time to Miss Curran, the daughter of the celebrated Irish barrister of that name. Her mélancholy fate, Mr. Irving has feelingly described, and the beautiful and pathetic verses, from the pen of Ireland's first poet and patriot,

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