they had power to do, that it should be built 180 feet to the westward. He thought the original plan best: he believed he had said so: but it was not his business to remonstrate or to ask reasons: he had nothing to do but to carry the decision into effect. They had asked if it was practicable to build the new bridge 180 feet to the westward: he had answered that it was: they had exercised their own discretion, and he had obeyed them. In the original plan there was no arch over Thamesstreet. He did not know whether any other plan, which included an arch, had been rejected on the score of the expense. His attention was confined to his own plan. The arch-way would get rid of the cross traffic of Thames-street. Waggons from Thames-street, to cross the bridge, would have to go round, undoubtedly. Persons from Billingsgate market, and from the fruit-warehouses in that line, crossing the bridge with loads on their heads, a good number certainly, (the question said " an immense number") would find it not so convenient to ascend the steep and narrow stairs, which will be the only approach for them. It would be not so convenient: it would be very inconvenient, certainly. The old bridge was in a very precarious state: it had been so for half a century and more: it had been made much worse by the throwing of four arches into two: he had done this in obedience to the committee: they had asked if it was practicable: he had said that it was practicable; but that he would not be responsible; and he was not responsible. He had obeyed orders: it was not his business to make representations. In one of the new arches, the low water had deepened from four feet to twenty-three, and the entire superstructure had been in danger of falling down. This had been prevented by throwing in rubbish. The alterations had cost nearly as much as the temporary bridge would have done. The expense of the temporary bridge had not been saved by the departure from the original plan. He did not know that the Act of Parliament prescribed Fish-street-hill as the avenue to the new bridge. He had nothing to do with Acts of Parliament, and had really not looked into it. Fish-street-hill would certainly not be the main avenue. He had altered the plan of the approaches on the authority of the Corporation Committee. He did not know that they had no authority to alter the plan of the approaches. He did not know that they had only authority to carry the Act into effect. He knew nothing of their authority. He had never thought of inquiring into it. He knew they were connected with the Treasury. He thought the letting of the dry arches, and the increased frontage of the streets, would pay

for contingencies, but he was not sure. He would not say that a still further sum of money would not be required.

All this was in the form of costive answers to questions. Our limits have compelled us to deprive it of its dramatic effect, which is great; but it is altogether a very pretty story. A commission of lunacy would not sit very long on any individual who had managed his private affairs as this public affair has been managed. But by whom? By the Parliament? By the Treasury? By the Corporation Committee? Nobody is responsible. We do not blame Mr. Rennie. He has taken the only course to bear himself harmless. But this Corporation Committee makes an exquisite figure, fixing the site of the new bridge without thinking of the approaches; ordering the alterations of the old one without thinking of the consequences; violating the provisions of the Act which they were empowered to carry into execution; spending all the money they had in getting their job half-finished, and proposing to raise more by taxing all consumers of sea-borne coal who happen to dwell westward, and who have no more to do with the bridge than the man in the moon.

In 1821, the estimated expense of this job was 600,000l. In 1823, it was 900,000l. In 1829, it was 1,740,000l. At a mean of these rates of progression, it will have grown to 2,600,0002. in 1832. The plan of approaches has, while we are writing, been altered again, after an immense destruction of property according to the plan of 1829. There will be much more demolition (including the old church of St. Michael, which is to be abolished utterly); and what with this, with making and paving the new roads, with clearing away the old bridge, and with all the contingencies of so complicated a mass of operations, we have not the slightest doubt that the entire expenditure will be THREE MILLIONS.

The whole affair is an instructive specimen of the way in which public business is done, and public money expended, Evidence is collected, and conclusions are drawn in the teeth of it. Plans are collected, and it has been predetermined whose plan shall be adopted. Tenders are called for, and the contractors have been already chosen. Estimates are prepared, and the expense doubles, triples, quadruples, in the progress of the work. Millions are thrown away in buildings, in colonies, in baubles and incumbrances of all kinds, in order to put a few thousands into the pockets of favoured individuals.

And what if the low ebbs and the high floods should create a clamour for restoring the dam, and on that clamour should be

founded a new job for contracting the waterway of the new bridge? Nobody will be responsible. Successively, from the sagacious engineer, to the discerning Corporation Committee, to the enlightened Treasury, to the scrutinising Treasury-bench, to the wise and incorruptible Parliament, to its free and independent constituents, Responsibility, in this, as in all other cases, like a shallow stream descending from a lofty mountain, bounds with decreasing force from ledge to ledge, and is lost in vapour before it reaches the bottom.

We have not touched the question as a matter of sentiment. But, even on this ground, we do not like these sweeping changes, which give to the metropolis the appearance of a thing of yesterday, and obliterate every visible sign that connects the present generation with the ages that are gone.

ART. XI.-Remarks on the Disease called Hydrophobia, Prophylactic and Curative. 12mo. 4s.

HOW

OW does it happen, that in these enlightened days, when the mists are dispelled which clouded the vision of our forefathers, and men have begun to look at, and to examine things for themselves, that there is still one subject which retains all its tremendous power over every class of societywomen and children, heroes and statesmen, the most illiterate and the most learned, all are filled with terror when the name is introduced of that most terrific of diseases, Hydrophobia. Upon it hangs universal panic; and it seems as if contagion were to be feared even from an examination into the real nature of so formidable an enemy.

But let us meet the terrific spectre, and see if a little common sense can be brought to bear upon a huge mass of folly and superstition; a few remarks will suffice, at all events, to make this universal bugbear somewhat less appalling should they be successful in removing the prejudices which have hitherto attached to it, not only will it be divested of half its horror, but men will wonder how they should so long have shut their eyes, reverentially listening to, and believing all the stories of their venerable grandmothers.

It may appear not a little presumptuous, at once to declare our conviction, that the disease called hydrophobia in the dog has nothing to do with the disease of the same name in the human species; in other words, that the madness of the biter has no effect on the madness of the bitten, and that a man who has been bitten by a dog in perfect health, is just as likely to have

all the symptoms of hydrophobia as if he had been bitten by a mad one. And these are the reasons.

The saliva of the rabid animal has been always supposed to possess the virulent property which occasions hydrophobia. As one proof that it has this poisonous quality, it is remarked, that a bite inflicted on the naked flesh is more often followed by disease than when any part of the clothing has intervened, because the saliva is then absorbed, and does not pass into the wound. The simple fact being that the bite will be less severe, because of the additional resistance of the clothing.

The effects of all poisons with which we are acquainted are certain and determinate: it never happens that a known poison can be received into the animal system with impunity; the time is also specific at which its operation begins and ends. But assuming that the saliva of the mad dog is poisonous, the real truth is, that it has no effect at all on by far the greater number of those who have been subjected to its influence; and even on those who have been supposed to have been affected by it, the time at which the symptoms appear, is altogether undetermined. We speak now of its effects on the human species; for what is called hydrophobia in them, is attended with many symptoms very different from those which accompany the disease of the same name in quadrupeds.

Is it to be imagined that a poison injected into a wound will retain peaceable possession there for months, and even years, and then suddenly disturb the whole system? The interval between the bite, and the supposed effects, has been sometimes so long, that, literally speaking, it may be said to be not the same individual who pays the penalty for the bite for the animal frame has, in the course of so many years, undergone a complete change: every atom of the former self has been decomposed, and the poisonous matter supposed to have been left in the wound at the time of the bite, must also have disappeared.

It is no answer to this observation, to affirm that other diseases are given to the human subject, by the introduction of virous matter; the small-pox, for instance, by inoculation, which also remains locally dormant for some time, and then affects the whole system. The certainty of the symptoms, and the time when they will appear, in the one case, and the capricious uncertainty, as it regards the when and the where, in the other, are circumstances which show most decidedly, that the two cases are not governed by the same laws. If the saliva had the invariable effects that the variolous matter has, there would be no more mystery in the one case than in the other.

In what infection consists, and what is the first effect which constitutes the reception of disease, are curious and puzzling inquiries. Some organic change must take place at the moment disease is communicated, or what is meant by taking infection? The symptoms of the disorder do not appear till after a certain number of days; but the disease must be received somewhere in the system at a stated time before it shows itself.

Hydrophobia in man is of rare occurrence. During the last thirty years only six or eight cases have been known at Bartholomew's hospital; and among twenty persons, who at one time were bitten, only one had the disease; so that the exceptions from the effects of this supposed virulent poison, here seem to form the rule, whilst the observance of the usual laws of cause and effect, if the received theory of hydrophobia be a true one, are very rare; not more frequent than one in twenty!

It is said, that there are ten animals besides the human species that are susceptible of this disease. They are the dog, wolf, fox, and cat; the horse, ass, mule, cow, sheep, and pig. The first four only, as it is pretended, have the power of communicating it.

The mysterious and capricious agency with which, among the human species, hydrophobia has hitherto appeared to select its victims, has been one fearful adjunct in the catalogue of its horrors. It has set at defiance all the laws by which we reason, either from experience or analogy. By some unknown spell it has seemed to seize upon its unhappy choice, and to have exerted its baneful influence peculiarly over the powers of his mind. But on a short examination, the solution of the enigma presented itself. As far as we know, it has never occurred to any one to suppose, that the cause of this direful malady originates in the nature and shape of the wound, and not from any virulent matter injected into it.

A wound made with a pointed instrument, a nail for instance, the hand or foot, has not unfrequently been followed by tetanus; and the same consequences have succeeded a wound where the nerve has been injured, without being divided.

It deserves particular notice, that the only four animals that are said to have the power of communicating this malady have teeth of a similar form. They would make a deeply-punctured wound; which is precisely the kind of wound which more often than any other is the herald of tetanus.

Though the symptoms of hydrophobia have hitherto been considered somewhat to differ from tetanus, they agree in their principal characteristics; in being spasmodic, in peculiarly affecting the muscles of the throat, and, in short, in producing