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(p. 107.) Occasional dissentions and attacks of disease would unquestionably occur, under any conceivable system, and the judge and physician would then interpose with benefit. But, if the bodily constitution of any man were radically unsound, the physician ought to withhold his aid, and suffer the patient to die; and the judge should put to death without mercy any vicious and incurable temper which was continually calling for his animadversion and restraint.*

But the possession of a sound body is not the greatest effect which Plato anticipates from this attention to gymnastics. The mental result is his chief object-to create by their means a vehement and hardy temper. But were the bodily exercises to be pursued exclusively, the disposition would become altogether savage and tyrannical, and the intellect would be deadened, so as neither to be desirous or susceptible of farther instruction. Music alone, on the other hand, would relax and enervate the soul. Were the disposition not naturally passionate, music would quickly succeed in emasculating it; if it were, that passion and vehemence would be converted into a touchy and short-lived irritability. But music and gymnastics, if properly united, would temper each other, and give birth to a disposition in which courage and gentleness would be combined. (pp. 115-117.)

For the maintenance of these regulations, superintendants will be requisite, and they are to be selected from the elders of the military caste. Those elders, who have throughout evinced the most faithful attachment to the system and to the city-who shall pass with honour through certain artificial temptations to which they are to be exposed -who can neither be frightened nor cheated out of their patriotismare to be elected commanders, and the rest of the military class are to be styled their assistants. (pp. 117-120.)

(To be continued.)

PETER-PINDARICS.

The Surgeon and the House Painters.
PAINTERS are like the dry-rot, if we let 'em
Fix on our pannels and our planks,
There's no ejectment that can get 'em

Out till they've fairly play'd their pranks.
There is a time, however, when the ghastly
Spectres cease to haunt our vision,

And as my readers, doubtless, would like vastly
To calculate it with precision,

I'll tell them for their ease and comfort
What happen'd t'other day at Romford.

In that great thoroughfare for calves,
Destined to pacify the yearnings
Of Norton-Falgate gormandizing,

There dwelt a Surgeon, who went halves

* Ιατρικην, οιαν ειπομεν, μετα της τοιαυτης δικασικης κατα πολιν νομοθετη σεις, αι των πολιτων σας τις μεν ευφυείς τα σώματα και τας ψυχας θεραπευσασι, με, οσοι μεν κατά σώμα τοιύτοι, αποθνήσκειν εασασι, τας δε κατα την ψυχην κακοφυεις και ανιατές αυτοί αποκτενεσι. (Ρ. 114.)

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† Θυμοειδές.

- Ακρόχολοι και οργίλοι αντι θυμοειδων γεγένηνται, δυσκολίας εμπλεῳ. (Ρ. 116.)

With the apothecary in the earnings
From broken limbs and accidents arising.
But somehow the good Romford drones
Were so confounded careful against harms,
They neither broke their legs nor arms,
Nor even slipp'd their collar bones.
In short he could'nt find one benefactor
Among these cruel calf and pig-herds,
To treat him with a single fracture.
Was ever such a set of niggards!

The fact is, that they never took the road,
Except on vehicles which God bestow'd-
But if with other legs you take a journey,
What wonder if they sometimes overturn ye?
One morn a Patent Safety Coach

Departed from the Swan with the Two Necks,
A sign that seems intended to reproach

Those travellers of either sex,

Who deem one neck sufficient for the risks

Of ditches, drunkards, wheels, and four-legg'd frisks. Just as they enter'd Romford with a dash,

Meaning to pass the Opposition,

The front wheel came in violent collision
With a low post-was shiver'd, smash!

And down the coach came with a horrid crash.

"Zooks!" cried the coachman, as he swore and cursed, "That rascal Jack will get to Chelmsford first:

We might have had worse luck on't, for I sees
None of the horses has'nt broke their knees,"

As to his fare-or any human limb,

Had ten been broken, 'twas all one to him.
Luckily for the passengers, the master
Of the Plough Inn, who witness'd the disaster,
Ran with his men, and maids, and spouse,
Th' imprison'd sufferers unpounded,
Convey'd the frighten'd, sick, and wounded
Into his house;

Then hied himself into the town, to urge on
The speed of the aforesaid Surgeon.

He came inquired the wounds and spasms
Of all the mistresses and masters;

Applied

lint-poultice-balsams-plasters,
And cataplasms,

Bandaging some, and letting others blood,
And then ran home to tell how matters stood.

Like Garrick 'twixt Thalia and Melpomene
His wife put on her tragi-comic features:-
She had a heart-but also an uncommon eye

To the main chance, and so she cried-"Poor creatures!
Dear me, how shocking to be wounded thus!-
A famous God-send certainly for us!

Don't tell me any more, my dear Cathartic;
The horrid story really makes my heart ach.
One broken rib-an ancle sprain'd-that's worse,
I mean that's better, for it lasts the longer;
Those careless coachmen are the traveller's curse,
How lucky that they hadn't got to Ongar!
Two bad contusions-several ugly wounds,
Why this should be a job of fifty pounds!--

So now there's no excuse for being stingy;
'Tis full twelve years-no matter when it was
At all events, the parlour's horrid dingy,

And now it shall be painted-that is poz!-"

The Painters come-two summer-days they give
To scrape acquaintance with each pannel,
Then mix the deadly stuff by which they live,
(The smell's enough to make the stoutest man ill,)
And now, in all their deleterious glory,

They fall upon the wainscot con amore.

The parlour's done-you wouldn't know the room,
It looks four times as large, and eight times lighter,
But most unluckily, as that grew whiter,

The hall look'd less, and put on tenfold gloom.
"There's no use doing things by halves, my dear,
We must just titivate the hall, that's clear."
"Well, be it so, you've my consent, my love,
But when that's done, the painters go, by Jove!"
They heard him, and began. All hurry-scurry
They set to work instanter,

But presently they slacken'd from their hurry
Into a species of snail's canter.

The Surgeon, who had had his fill

Of stench, and trembled for his bill,

Saw day by day with aggravated loathing,
That they were only dabbling, paddling,
Twiddling, and fiddle-faddling,

And helping one another to do nothing,
So call'd the foreman in, and begg'd to know,
As a great favour, when they meant to go.

"Why," quoth the honest man, scratching his nob,
“Not afore master gets another job.”—

The Surgeon storm'd and swore, but took the hint,
Laid in a double stock of lint,

And to his patients at the Plough dispenses,
Week after week, new pills and plasters,
Looks very grave on their disasters,
And will not answer for the consequences,
If they presume to use their arms or feet,
Before their cure is quite complete.
"No, no," he mutters, "they shall be
Served as the painters treated me;
And if my slowness they reproach,
I'll tell them they shall leave the place
The moment there's another race
Run by the Patent Safety Coach."

Н.

THE NIGHTMARE.

Somnia fallaci ludunt temeraria nocte,

Et pavidas mentes falsa timere jubent.

CATULLUS.

THE various phenomena of dreams have hitherto baffled the speculations of all the physiologists, from Wolfius down to Spurzheim. Visions arising in sleep, and floating over the surface of the mind, are still as unaccounted for as the congregated vapours which hover in the heavens. They are analogous to them in other respects as well, for they often present us the brightest and most fantastic imagery, and pour over our senses a dew, as refreshing as that which falls on earth "from the bosom of a dropping cloud." But were the illusory wonderings of the brain, during its demi-collapsed state-or when the nervous fluid ceases to communicate with it or when our mental lethargy is broken by the excitement of some organ of sensation-or when, in short, (to quit the jargon of theory, and speak plainly,) we are asleep were they but one continuous chain of pleasure, an article would never have been written "on the Nightmare." Passing, then, from those exquisite illusions of slumber, when "delighted thought in Fancy's maze runs mad," and forgetting the still more delicious waking dreams, those

-noontide trances, hung

With gorgeous tapestries of pictured joys,

we must now turn to the dreadful visitings of that demon, who comes upon us at times, "making night hideous."

It has been supposed and asserted, that fearful dreams are the consequences of evil thoughts. It is true that they are often so; and, if the dreadful punishment of Incubus were to fall only on the doers of bad deeds, its retributive inflictions might be considered endurable. But we know that the preceding frame of mind has no positive influence on the victims of this inexorable fiend, who often passes by the breast"the deepliest stained with sin," to fix on the bosom of innocence and beauty: for

Oft on his nightmare through the evening fog

Flits the squab fiend o'er fen, and lake, and bog,
Seeks some love-wildered maid by sleep opprest,
Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast.

Nor is sanctity itself a safeguard from the encounters of this evil spirit, call it by what name, or imagine it under what figure we may:

Saint Withold footed thrice the would,

He met the nightmare, and her name he told;
Bade her alight, and her troth plight.

We find in these two last quoted passages a rather puzzling distinction in their respective personifications of the spirit, arising from the absurdity of the compound word which designates it in the English language, and which comes from Night, and, according to Temple, from Mara, the name of a spirit, that in the northern mythology was related to torment or suffocate sleepers. It would be hard to find an instance of a simple derivation more absurdly mismanaged than in the formation of our word, which has led Shakspeare to make the night-demon a mare, and Darwin, to convert it into a fiend mounted on a mare. The latter bold supposition is certainly the more tolerable of the two, and is daringly embodied in Fuseli's picture; which, though in itself the

essence of caricature, serves seriously to illustrate Burke's remark, as to the ludicrous effect produced by painting, whenever it attempts to bring before us the palpable forms of those phantoms which poetry makes forcible and grand.

This demon has been, from the earliest times, the privileged tormentor of mankind, and a favourite subject with poets. The nocturni le mures of every age have been honoured with many a painful celebration; but probably the finest description of the morbid oppression in which all this phantasma originates, is that of Eliphaz, in the fourth chapter of the book of Job. "In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, fear came upon me and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. An image was before mine eyes; it stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof."

Compared with the sublimity of this vague but appalling passage, all succeeding attempts seem feeble. The vision of Pompey, in Lucan's Pharsalia, is powerless beside it. Clarence's and Caliban's well-specified imaginings produce nothing of the same effect; and the details of Athalie's terrific dream, when her mother Jezabel appears before her, require the acting of Mademoiselle Duchesnois to make a legitimate horror rise superior to disgust.

-En achevant ces mots épouvantables,

Son ombre vers mon lit a paru se baisser;

Et moi, je lui tendois les mains pour l'embrasser;
Mais je n'ai plus trouvé qu'un horrible melange

D'os et de chair meurtris et traînés dans la fange.

These instances are but a proof of the many efforts to produce a vivid image of the horrors of sleep, by means of spectral agency in its most revolting aspects. Other poets have traced the persecuting fancies which oppress the dreamer, unmixed with the personal terrors of those just cited. Thus Young

-My soul fantastic measures trod

O'er fairy fields, or mourn'd along the gloom
Of pathless woods, or down the craggy steep

Hurl'd headlong, swam with pain the mantled pool,

Or scaled the cliff, or danced on hollow winds

And Coleridge, who, in the following powerful lines, seems to have been strongly imbued with the vague intensity that distinguishes the passage from holy writ above quoted:

But yesternight I pray'd aloud

In anguish and in agony,

Up-starting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:

A lurid light, a trampling throng,

Sense of intolerable wrong,

And whom I scorn'd, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mix'd,
On wild and hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! madd'ning brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which, all confused, I could not know,
Whether I suffer'd or I did:

For all seem'd guilt, remorse, or wo;

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