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Ave, 1860.

REGISTER.

he expected, varying considerably from the dead-reckoning, had
When he had completed his
not noticed the captain's motions.
calculations, he called out, without looking round,
"I make our latitude and longitude so-and-so. Can that be
right? How is yours?'

Receiving no reply, he repeated his question, glancing over his shoulder and perceiving, as he thought, the captain busy writing on his slate. Still no answer. Thereupon he rose; and, as he fronted the cabin door, the figure he had mistaken for the captain raised its head, and disclosed to the astonished mate the features of an entire stranger.

"Bruce was no coward; but as he met that fixed gaze looking directly at him in grave silence, and became assured that it was no one whom he had ever seen before, it was too much for him; and, instead of stopping to question the seeming intruder, he rushed upon deck in such evident alarm that it instantly attracted the captain's attention. Why, Mr. Bruce,' said the latter, 'what in the world is the matter with you?'

"The matter, sir? Who is that at your desk?' "No one that I know of.'

"But there is, sir: there is a stranger there.' "A stranger! Why, man, you must be dreaming. You must have seen the steward there, or the second mate. Who else would venture down without orders?'

"But, sir, he was sitting in your arm-chair, fronting the door, writing on your slate. Then he looked up full in my face; and, if ever I saw a man plainly and distinctly in this world, I saw him.' "Him! Whom?'

"God knows, sir: I don't. I saw a man, and a man I had never seen in my life before."

**You must be going crazy, Mr. Bruce. A stranger, and we nearly six weeks out!'

"I know, sir; but then I saw him.' "Go down and see who it is." 'I never was a believer in ghosts,' he said; "Bruce hesitated. but, if the truth must be told, sir, I'd rather not face it alone.' "Come, come, man. Go down at once, and don't make a fool of yourself before the crew.'

I hope you've always found me willing to do what's reasonable,' Bruce replied, changing colour; but if it's all the same to you, sir, I'd rather we should both go down together.'

"The captain descended the stairs, and the mate followed him. Nobody in the cabin! They examined the state rooms. soul to be found!

Not a

"Well, Mr. Bruce,' said the captain, 'did not I tell you you had been dreaming?'

"It's all very well to say so, sir; but if I did'nt see that man writing on your slate, may I never see my home and family again!'

"Ah! writing on the slate! Then it should be there still.' And the captain took it up.

"By God!' he exclaimed, here's something, sure enough! that your writing, Mr. Bruce?'

Is

"The mate took the slate; and there, in plain, legible characters, stood the words, 'Steer to the nor'west.'

"Have you been trifling with me, sir?' added the captain in a

stern manner.

"On my word as a man and as a sailor, sir,' replied Bruce, 'I know no more of this matter than you do. I have told you the exact truth.'

"The captain sat down at his desk, the slate before him, in deep thought. At last, turning the slate over and pushing it towards Bruce, he said, 'Write down, "Steer to the nor'west."

"The mate complied; and the captain, after narrowly comparing the two handwritings, said, 'Mr. Bruce, go and tell the second mate to come down here,'

"He came; and at the captain's request he also wrote the same words. So did the steward. So, in succession, did every man of But not one of the various hands the crew who could write at all. resembled in any degree the mysterious writing. "When the crew retired, the captain sat deep in thought. Could any one have been stowed away? at last he said. "The ship must be searched; and if I don't find the fellow he must be a good hand at hide-and-seek. Order up all hands.'

"Every nook and corner of the vessel, from stem to stern, was thoroughly searched, and that with all the eagerness of excited curiosity, for the report had gone out that a stranger had shown himself on board; but not a living soul beyond the crew and officers was found.

"Returning to the cabin after their fruitless search, Mr. Bruce,' said the captain, 'what the devil do you make of all this?' "Can't tell, sir. I saw the man write; yon see the writing.

666

There must be something in it.'
We have the wind free, and I have a
"Well, it would seem so.
great mind to keep her away and see what will come of it.'
"I surely would, sir, if I were in your place. It's only a few
hours lost, at the worst.'
Go on deck and give the course nor'west.
"Well, we'll see.
And, Mr. Bruce,' he added, as the mate rose to go, 'have a look-out
aloft, and let it be a hand you can depend on.'
About three o'clock the look-out
. "His orders were obeyed.
reported an iceberg nearly ahead, and, shortly after, what he
thought was a vessel of some kind close to it.

"As they approached, the captain's glass disclosed the fact that
it was a dismantled ship, apparently frozen to the ice, and with a
good many human beings on it. Shortly after they hove to, and
sent out the boats to the relief of the sufferers.

"It proved to be a vessel from Quebec, bound to Liverpool, with passengers on board. She had got entangled in the ice, and finally frozen fast, and had passed several weeks in a most critical Eituation. She was stove, her decks swept, in fact, a mere wreck; all her provisions and almost all her water gone. Her crew and passengers had lost all hopes of being saved, and their gratitude for the unexpected rescue was proportionately great.

"As one of the men who had been brought away in the third
boat that had reached the wreck was ascending the ship's side, the
mate, catching a glimpse of his face, started back in consternation.
up at him from the captain's desk.
It was the very face he had seen three or four hours before, looking

66

'At first he tried to persuade himself it might be fancy; but the
more he examined the man the more sure he became he was right.
Not only the face, but the person and the dress, exactly corre
"As soon as the exhausted crew and famished passengers were
sponded.
cared for, and the bark on her course again, the mate called the
man's alive.'
captain aside. It seems that was not a ghost I saw to-day, sir: the

"What do you mean? Who's alive?'

"Why, sir, one of the passengers we have just saved is the same
man I saw writing on your slate at noon. I would swear to it in
"Upon my word, Mr. Bruce,' replied the captain, this gets
a court of justice."
more and more singular. Let us go and see this inan.'

"They found him in conversation with the captain of the rescued
ship. They both came forward, and expressed, in the warmest
terms, their gratitude for deliverance from a horrible fate,-slow-
coming death by exposure and starvation.'

"The captain replied that he had but done what he was certain
they would have done for him under the same circumstances, and
the passenger, he said, I hope, sir, you will not think I am trifling
asked them both to step down into the cabin. Then, turning to
with you; but I would be much obliged to you if you would write
And he handed him the slate, with
'I will dó
a few words on this slate.'
that side up on which the mysterious writing was not.
A few words are all I want. Suppose you write, "Steer to
anything you ask,' replied the passenger; but what shall I write ?'
the nor west."'

"The passenger, evidently puzzled to make out the motive for
took up the slate and examined it closely; then, stepping aside so
such a request, complied, however, with a smile. The captain
gave it to him again with the other up.
as to conceal the slate from the passenger, he turned it over, and

"You say that is your handwriting?" said he.

"I need not say so,' rejoined the other, looking at it, "for saw me write it.'

you

"And this?' said the captain, turning the slate over. "The man looked first at one writing, then at the other, quite confounded. At last, 'What is the meaning of this?' said he. 'I "That's more than I can tell you, sir. My mate here says you only wrote one of these. Who wrote the other ? wrote it, sitting at this desk, at noon to-day.'

"The captain of the wreck and the passenger looked at each other, exchanging glances of intelligence and surprise; and the slate?' former asked the latter, 'Did you dream that you wrote on this

"No, sir, not that I remember.'

"You speak of dreaming,' said the captain of the bark. 'What was this gentleman about at noon to-day?

"Captain,' rejoined the other, 'the whole thing is most mysterious and extraordinary; and I had intended to speak to you about it as soon as we got a little quiet. This gentleman' (pointing to the passenger), being much exhausted, fell into a heavy sleep, or he awoke and said to me, "Captain, we shall be relieved this very When I asked him what reason he had for saying so, he what seemed such, some time before noon. After an hour or more, He described her appearance and day." she was coming to our rescue. replied that he had dreamed that he was on board a bark, and that rig; and, to our utter astonishment, when your vessel hove in not put much faith in what he said; yet still we hoped there might sight she corresponded exactly to his description of her. We had be something in it, for drowning men, you know, will catch at straws. As it has turned out, I cannot doubt that it was all arranged, in some incomprehensible way by an overruling Providence, so that we might be saved. To Him be all thanks for His goodness to us.'

"There is not a doubt,' rejoined the other captain, that the writing on the slate, let it have come there as it may, saved all and I altered my course to nor'west, and had a look out aloft, to your lives. I was steering at the time considerably south of west, see what would come of it. But you say,' he added, turning to the "No, sir. I have no recollection whatever of doing so. I got passenger, that you did not dream of writing on a slate?" rescue us; but how that impression came I cannot tell. the impression that the bark I saw in my dream was coming to on board seems to me quite familiar; and yet I am very sure I another very strange thing about it,' he added. Everything here did your mate see?' never was in your vessel before. It is all a puzzle to me. What

There is

"Thereupon Mr. Bruce related to them all the circumstances above detailed. The conclusion they finally arrived at was, that it was a special interposition of Providence to save them from what seemed a hopeless fate.

"The above narrative was communicated to me by Capt. I. S. Bruce himself. They sailed together for seventeen months, in the Clark, of the schooner Julia Hallock, who had it directly from Mr. years 1836 and 1837; so that Capt. Clark had the story from the sight of him, and does not know whether he is yet alive. All he mate about eight years after the occurrence. He has since lost trade to New Brunswick, that he became the master of the brig has heard of him since they were shipmates is that he continued to Comet, and that she was lost.

"I asked Captain Clark if he knew Bruce well, and what sort of man he was.

"As truthful and as straightforward a man,' he replied, 'as ever men can't be together, shut up for seventeen months in the same I met in all my life. We were as intimate as brothers; and two He always spoke of the circumstance in terms of ship, without getting to know whether they can trust one another's reverence, as of an incident that seemed to bring him nearer to word or not.

God and to another world. I'd stake my life upon it that he told

me no lie."

As might be expected from the nature of the work, it contains a very full account of the origin of those singular phenomena called "spirit-rapping," which originated in America in 1848. It is almost needless to remark that these rappings originated in the first instance in a "haunted house' at Hydesville in the state of New York, and that, as in all similar cases, the noises were heard with wonder, disbelieved during the day, and listened to with something like awe at night. Mr. Fox and his family were by no means given to superstition, and therefore clung throughout several weeks of annoyance to the idea that some natural explanation of these seemingly supernatural noises would at last appear. Nor did they abandon this hope till the night of Friday, the 31st of March, 1848.

"The day had been cold and stormy, with snow on the ground. In the course of the afternoon, David, a son of Mr. Fox, came to visit them from his farm about three miles distant. His mother then first recounted to him the particulars of the annoyances they had endured: for till now they were very little disposed to communicate these to any one. He heard her with a smile. 'Well, mother,' he said, 'I advise you not to say a word to the neighbours about it, when you find it out it will be one of the simplest things "Wearied out by a succession of sleepless nights and of fruitless attempts to penetrate the mystery, the Fox family retired on that Friday evening very early to rest, hoping for a respite from the disturbances that harassed them. But they were doomed to disappointment. **The parents had had the children's beds removed into their bedroom, and strictly enjoined them not to talk of noises even if they heard them. But scarcely had the mother seen them safely in bed, and was retiring to rest herself, when the children cried out, Here they are again.' The mother chid them, and lay down. Thereupon the noises became louder and more startling. The children sat up in bed. Mrs. Fox called in her husband. The night being windy, it suggested itself to him that it might be the rattling of the sashes. He tried several, shaking them to see if they were loose. Kate, the youngest girl, happened to remark that as often as her father shook a window-sash the noises seemed to reply. Being a lively child, and in a measure accustomed to what was going on, she turned to where the noise was, snapped her fingers, and called out, Here, old Splitfoot, do as I do.' The knocking instantly responded. "That was the very commencement. Who can tell where the

in the world.' And in that belief he returned home.

end will be?"

to be. In these holy raptures, the presentiment is of "a
better world," but of a world still,-a world which is the
abode of human spirits; a world in which there is work to
do, a race to run, a goal to reach; a world in which we shall
find, transplanted from earth to a more genial land, energy,
courage, perseverance, high resolves, benevolent actions, hope
to encourage, mercy to plead, and love, the earth-clog that
dimmed her purity shaken off,-still selecting her chosen
ones, but to be separate from them no more. It is to make
these convictions certain, to bring home, as it were, to the
senses and consciousness of men the facts that life is eternal,
and that the grave is but the matrix of immortality,-that
houses are permitted to be haunted, and that spirits are
allowed to walk the earth, or to be called up from the vasty
deep to move tables, ring bells, play upon musical instru-
ments, or in any other way make known the fact of their
continued existence.
Such, at least, are the conclusions of Mr. Robert Dale
Owen.

THE SEVEN SISTERS OF SLEEP.*

UNDER this title Mr. Cooke has given us what professes to be a popular history of the seven most commonly used narcotics, accompanied by statistics as to the quantity of each article consumed, as well as the number of devotees which each of the drowsy sisters inspires with her love.

There are two things which strike one as strange in reading such a book as this. The first is, that mankind should almost universally seek to drown the little reason they have in habitual semi- or entire intoxication. It would thus appear that the creed of Byron is very generally held :

"Man being rational, must needs get drunk:
The best of life is but intoxication."

And what seems equally wonderful is, that the simple plants
and grasses which we tread under foot, should have folded up
in their unregarded leaves substances holding such tremen-
dous sway over the animal organism. One will rack every
fibre of the body with convulsive tetanus, another will
calm the agonized nerves and smooth every furrow of pain
from the wrinkled brow of care. A few drops only of the juice
of a third will transform the sage into a drivelling idiot.
Tears and laughter, joy and sorrow, reason and madness, life
and death are all there, waiting for the wisdom or the insanity
of mankind to use or abuse them.

It is impossible to follow Mr. Owen throughout, in the brief limits to which this notice must be confined. The marvellous narratives which he relates, the care with which he collects and collates his evidence, and the calm earnestness which pervades the entire work, can only be appreciated by a In the whole vegetable kingdom there is no plant to be careful reading of the whole volume. If Mr. Owen has not ranked with tobacco, as the common favourite of mankind. exhausted, he has at least surveyed the whole field of spiritual America, and a few savages in the West Indies. It was no Four centuries ago its use was confined to the people of phenomena, and the curious inquirer will find in his book a repertory of dreams and visions of the most extraordinary character; sooner introduced into Europe, however, than its use became accounts of haunted houses in almost all parts of Europe and general. Neither the anathema of the Pope, the decrees of America; of spectres that walked the night and of others councils, prohibitory laws, northe Counterblast of King James, that played their pranks in open day; and of how men, women; One may estimate the value set upon the commodity by our had much effect in checking the use of the fascinating weed. children, dogs, horses, and other animals have been frightened forefathers when we find it gravely recorded that, in 1620, by them. There are accounts of some who came with solemn warning and with a noble mission, and of others who amused ninety young Englishwomen were sent from England to themselves with tricks which would be unworthy of the ghost of America and sold to the planters for 1251b. of tobacco each. a street clown;-of some who made noises by beating on invi- But the use of this narcotic has always been moderate with sible drums, or firing imperceptible muskets, knocking on walls us in comparison with its use amongst other peoples; for, or shaking windows;-of others, perhaps the ghosts of uphol-passing from us to the north of Europe, and from thence sterers and undertakers, who removed chairs, tables, beds, to Turkey and Egypt, it has spread over the whole of Asia, and pianos, sideboards, and other articles of furniture, or threw about the empire of China alone is said by Hue to contain at this time not less than three hundred million smokers,-men, and broke open coffins, and in one case raised the hand of a suicide through the half-opened lid;-of the visits of some women, and children being alike addicted to the practice. spirits who seemed to be unable to quit the scenes of their What the precise pleasure is that its devotees derive from the crimes, and who were chained as it were by some divine pipe the initiated must declare. The writer of this paper has Nemesis to the spot where they had forfeited the future to the made at least ten efforts to penetrate the arcanum, and has present;-and of others who were the messengers of retribu- failed miserably every time. To him the pipe is an intoletion, bringing sad and terrible punishment to evil-doers. rable nuisance, and the old savage who first invented it little The book is a record of all this and of much more, but its better than a ghoul. chief value is, that every story carries with it the evidence upon which it rests, and has appended the logical induction of a highly cultivated mind,-a mind, too, as free from prejudice and superstition as it is possible for any mind to be which admits the supernatural as a real existence.

The conclusion to which Mr. Owen has arrived, as the result of his thorough investigation of the field of spiritual phenomena, is that so emphatically laid down by Swedenborg,-"A man is a man for ever." What we call "life" is only a small fraction of human existence; yet is it sufficient in its duration, and sufficiently favourable in its conditions, to enable us at times to predicate our future destiny. There are high moments of inspiration common to all good men, when earthliness and selfishness are spell-bound by the divine gift that is within us, and when the soul, sybil-like, may be questioned of the future,-for the divine rage is then upon her, and her foreboding instincts are the earnest of what is

Next to tobacco, opium is the narcotic which holds the highest place in the estimation of mankind. This potent drug is an invaluable agent in the hands of the experienced physician, but when used as an article of daily consumption it holds the most wonderful empire over the human mind. There is no hunger nor thirst to be compared to the craving will not do or suffer in order to obtain his favourite opiate. for this sedative, and there is nothing which the opium toper

Let no one imagine, however, that there are no penalties attached with the use of opium. The haven is no sooner attained than fearful abysses of suffering are opened beyond. It seems as if some demon has cast its spell over the mind, and opened up in it new and infinite capacities to suffer. Formerly every object was clothed with the light of heaven, now they are invested with the attributes of hell; goblins, 1800.

The Seven Sisters of Sleep. By M. C. Cooxx. London: James Blackwood.

AUG. 1860.

REGISTER.

spectres, and every kind of distempered vision haunt the mind, peopling it with dreary and revolting imagery. An opium eater thus narrates his sensations:

"Under the connecting feelings of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought together all creatures-birds, beasts, reptiles; all trees and plants, usages and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and assembled them in China or Hindoostan. From kindred feelings, I brought Egypt and her gods under the same law. I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at by monkeys, by paroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for centuries on the summit, or in some secret rooms. I was the idol-I was the priest-I was worshipped. I was sacrificed. I fled from the wrath of Brama through all the forests of Serva lay in wait for me. I came sudAsia. Vishnu hated me. denly upon Isis, Osiris. I had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile trembled at. Thousands of years I lived, and was buried with mummies and sphinxes in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles, and was laid confounded, with all unutterable abortions, amongst reeds and nilotic mud."

Again he says:—

"Somewhere, but I knew not where-somehow, but I knew not how-by some beings, but I knew not by whom-a battle, a strife, an agony was travelling through all its stages, and was evolving itself like the catastrophe of some mighty drama, with which my sympathy was the more insupportable from deepening confusion as to its local scene, its cause, its nature, and its undecipherable issue. I had the power and yet had not the power to decide it. I had the power if I could raise myself to will it; and yet, again, I had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. Deeper than ever plummet sounded,' I lay inactive. Then, like a chorus, the pasSome greater interest was at stake-some sion deepened. mightier cause than ever yet the sword pleaded, or trumpet proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness or lights; tempests and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me; and but a moment allowed, and clasped hands, with heart-breaking partings, and then everlasting farewells! And with a sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed, when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated-everlastAnd again, and yet again reverberated-ever

ing farewells! lasting farewells!

"And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud, 'I will sleep no

more."

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Next in importance to opium is the Indian hemp (Cumubus Indicus), which has no rival for the strange effects which it produces upon the nervous system. Its mysterious properties have been known for thousands of years, and the favourite preparation from it, the Haschisch of the orientals, is as popular now as it was nearly three thousand years ago, when, under the name of Nepenthes, Homer celebrated its virtues :

"Bright Helen mixed a mirth-inspiring bowl,
Tempered with drugs of sovereign power, to assuage
The boiling bosom of tumultuous rage,
To clear the cloudy front of wrinkled care,
And dry the tearful sluices of despair."

Odyssey,-Pope's Translation.

Our information respecting the operation of this substance upon the human brain is more meagre by far than the information we have respecting opium. This arises from the fact that the drug has been but little used in Europe, and Asiatic accounts of its effects either do not exist, or else have not fallen in the way of European authors. The inexperienced, we are told, on first taking it, are often sonseless for a day; some go mad, others die. One of the properties of this drug is to induce what is generally known to us under the name of clairvoyance; the inebriate becoming conscious of events which are taking place at a distance. The objects which meet his view are all bathed in heavenly light, the skies are all of deep cerulean blue, and the inhabitants of other worlds, only radiant with the glory of immortality, hold converse with the happy dreamer. All this time he is conscious that it an ideal existence which he is undergoing, but it is too delightful to be shaken off. The subtle pleasure has penetrated to the innermost recesses of his body, and the delicious emotions run through the mind in such rapid succession, that an hour is lengthened out into whole centuries of bliss. This state of rapture is succeeded by one of calm content. There are no depressing feelings, but there is no possibility of

sorrow.

"Charm'd with that virtuous draught, the exalted mind,
All sense of woe delivers to the wind;
Though on the blazing pile his parent lay,
Cloved brother groaned his life away,
Cr darling son oppress'd by ruffian force,
Fell breathless at its feet a mangled corse;
From moin to ere, impassive and serene,

The man entra, would view the dreadful scene."

Homer.

"The haschisch eater is happy," says De Morean, "not appetite; but like him who hears tidings which fill him with like the gourmand, or the famished man when satisfying his joy; or like the miser, counting his treasures, the gambler who is successful at play, or the ambitious man who is intoxicated with success.'

وو

up;

But it is not all gold that glitters, even with the haschisch eater, as the writer of this knows from sad experience. Being idle and whimsical one morning, I swallowed a tolerably large dose of the hemp, and about an hour afterwards was seized with piercing and racking pains in the brain, cold shudderings, and jerking pains all over the body, and a semiconsciousness that I was two persons. I was quite conscious of being in my study, sad and unwell; and I also seemed to be some other person travelling some desolate country in a state of wrath, which made me long to scarify the whole and after this swallowed a strong glass of whisky and water. creation. Anxious to get relief, I took a large dose of opium, In the course of an hour all the unpleasant symptoms were gone, and I spent the day as usual, without any inconvenience, and should perhaps have taken no further notice of the matter, if on going to sleep my dreams had not been of the most strange and frightful kind. I was scarcely in bed when I slept to dream that I was a mortal of superhuman power; a magician who, by some tremendous enchantment, had overthrown the most sacred dynasty of earth, all sentient beings standing aghast at my impiety. But I was overcome I knew well, and yet could not at last, and had spent years in a cold, damp, solitary prison. Those who had bound me demanded the secret of my power, and I could not give it utter the dread secret. The tormentors came; I saw them enter my cell. They were giants, horrible, cruel, mocking wretches; there was no pity in their eyes. I recollect well that the thing which struck me most forcibly was that their finger nails were of red hot iron, which glowed and burnt fiercely. They had come to drag my secret from me; would gladly have given it to them, but had no power to utter the words. The taller one of the two said with a fiendish leer, "Let me shake hands with him." I gave him my hand, I could not help it; and actually believed that I heard the fibres of my hand hiss and crack in his burning grip. I spent whole years with these monsters. They crushed, mangled, and, more horrible than all, kissed me. I got away. I wanI went on board a sperm whale ship; and dered along all the coast of South America, from Cape Horn to Panama. was a man again, cool, daring, and powerful. I was in the boat; we neared the huge creature as he lay sleeping upon the water; with unerring accuracy I sent the harpoon into the it descended like a stone hundreds of fathoms, and monster's heart; the whale was what the sailors termed carried me with it entangled in the line. I was at the bottom sinker;" of the Pacific, the feeding ground of all the monsters of the deep; I was entangled in the arms of slimy cuttle fish, and crawled over by all manner of abominable things. I was roused from this horrible sleep by a person coming I had been in bed only ten minutes, though into the room. the experiences I had undergone seemed to have occupied a thousand years. This was my first and last experiment with haschisch.

I

a

We must pass briefly over the remaining sisters of sleep, not simply the half-dozen others which are treated of fully in this book, but also the great number which are only mentioned in it, but which nevertheless are in pretty extensive use as medicinal agents. There are scores of narcotics known to medical practitioners, and new ones are being constantly Those principally in use, in addition to those added to our Materia Medica by the medical botanists of America. already mentioned, are the cava, in the Ionian Islands; the betel nut, chewed in Burmah, Manilla, and other portions of the East; and the coca, which is used extensively in South many parts of the world, either mixed with or as a substituto America. The stramonium, or thern-apple, is also used in for tobacco. The fly mushroom (Amanita muscaria) is a great favourite with the people of Siberia and Kamtschatdale. Neither are belladonna and henbane without their devotees In every country in the world mankind have a craving for narcotics, and nature in her munificence affords them a bountiful supply.

ther, we can recommend Mr. Cooke as an instructive and To those who desire to study this interesting subject furamusing author. His style is rather cumbrous, and his wit somewhat forced, but the book contains a great amount of information, spreading itself over nearly the whole history of man. After a chapter of fable, he treats us to a chapter on the narcotics of the ancients, which is followed by one on the "wond'rous weed," treating of its history and distr bution over the globe. Then come "Cloud Land,"-" Pipeology,"-"Smithing and Sneezing,"-"Quid Pro Quo," ce.

etc., on through twenty-four chapters. The author evidently believes that narcotics are a source of great happiness to mankind, and in this most people will agree with him. Narcotics are, however, doubly armed, and he who will suck the comb and extract the honey, must expect to find the sting of the bee imbedded in it. Our advice to all is, Avoid them.

EMINENT LIVING ARTISTS.-MR. HOLMAN

HUNT.

notorious for kid glove morality and the falsest and most meretricious sentiment. It was entitled the Vow of Rienzi to avenge his Brother's Death. So far it was an advance, how. ever, that it showed more earnestness and intensity of feeling. The first picture had been merely picturesque and unmeaning; the second was more daring and imaginative; the third, we see, aims straight at the heart, and shows us the poor dead boy, when the insolent chivalry of the Roman nobles has trampled and speared him, and left him wan, and gasping to die. It was, however, probably thought highly of at the time, for it was bought by Mr. Gibbons, a great picture collector; and habitual picture collectors, unless very crotchetty, generally like their value for their money.

BY WALTER THORNBURY, AUTHOR OF "LIFE IN SPAIN." MR. W. HOLMAN HUNT, the leader of the Pre-Raphaelite school of painting, was born in London, 1827, and is therefore now thirty-three years old,-an age at which great imaginationsgress of a new set of young painters calling themselves P.R.B.'s, have produced their greatest works; an age when Shakspeare and Scott and Byron were fast ascending to the great climax of their genius; an age that must be admitted by most to be verging on that "prime of life," about the exact moment of which people at different periods of their existence have such strangely different opinions.

Not being myself a lounger at any club, nor a scurrilous tittle-tattler of any clique, I am not called upon to rake up the nursery anecdotes of a contemporary's childhood. Suffice it to say, that I believe Mr. Hunt is sprung from that great middle class of England which, neither so over rich as to be inane or idle, nor so over poor as to be coarse and narrow in its aims, has produced nearly all the noblest and wisest of Great Britain's great men,-her Shakspeare, for example, her Scott and Watt, her Reynolds and her Johnson, her Nelson and her Havelock. I cannot trace him up from his slate battles to his early frescoes on white-washed walls; but I find him, after, I suppose, much hard-bought experience and much life-modelling, etc., exhibiting in 1846, at the precocious age of nineteen, his first picture at the Royal Academy in the square Nelson died to give a Spanish name to.

At this moment of sunrise, I presume Mr. Hunt, I believe not unfairly, amid probably many struggling thoughts and honest and bold aspirations, to have been floating in a muddy sea of stale conventions,-floating to and fro amid shipwrecked shreds and drift and dim memories of Tresham and Smirke, of Mortimer and poor mad Newton, of shavings of Keats and fragments of Scott: in fact, of whatever would please or arrest the art world, the bulk of which is as foolish as any other world.

In 1850, a year in which the Athenæum lamented the prohis first original picture, a Converted British Family sheltering and condemners of all art since Raphael,-Mr. Hunt exhibited a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids, which a certain snappish, dogmatic paper allowed had some novelty of arrangement and expression, and a certain enthusiasm, "though wrongly directed." This was the year of Mr. Millais's clever, but wilful and eccentric, Christ in the Carpenter's Shop, which the same paper called “a pictorial blasphemy," not the least discerning its promise as the true critic should have done. Mr. Hunt's picture,-I know it from a drawing,-was original and well thought out, and deserving far more attention than it received; but who is generous enough to care for a rising man when there are rich and risen men to praise?

In 1852, Mr. Hunt appeared for the first time as a thoughtful realist and a great colourist. The Hireling Shepherd was a triumph, and with a certain religious mysticism about it. though few cared to crack its kernel. This was the year of Everflayem, speaks of the pre-Raphaelite pictures as perplexMillais's Ophelia and Huguenots; and that severe paper, the ing and attacking every one. Beautifully painted and gorgeous as this picture was, it proved to some of the critics a sad stumbling block. They said that Mr. Hunt carried anti-eclecthat, in fact, his rustics were of the coarsest breed, illticism to the absurd, and, like Swift, revelled in the repulsive, favoured, ill fed, and ill washed,-that the woman's feet were red hot, and that the man seemed to have fed on madder. The fact is, the picture was real as real can be; but the shepherd and his sweetheart were rather ill-favoured, and the sheep were tinged with rather too many prismatic colours. Photography and Puseyism had set men thinking about art with more minuteness and more faith; and Young England was now going to revolutionize art, as Tieck and Schlegel and Overbeck and Cornelius had done in Germany. There was a want of that metaphysical analysis and detail in art, which Tennyson had superadded to the Lake School in poetry. Already, in 1852, that watch of the age, the Athenæum, evidently saw that the revolution would be triumphant.

Of course, at first the P.R.B.'s revelled in excesses, despised the divine laws of perspective, and disregarded selection. Even now they neglect the charm of light and shade and selection. From wilful neglect of well understood composition, there are hasty blots in Millais's Huguenots and Brunswickers,-companion pictures; and even now there is among this school a difficulty of describing distance, and a marked and hardened preference of the awkward and ugly, arising partly from a serious, unworldly intentness on one object, and an insensibility to the ludicrous, without possessing which faculty no man can be said to abound in common sense, though he may be the king of a clique, and what is more, a genius.

Mr. Hunt's early pictures were illustrations of popular books, and not imaginations standing on their own legs at all. It was not till 1850, that Mr. Hunt stood forward, and art people threw up their hats and said, "Here at last is a ruler of men; let the crown be got ready, let the gold for it be melted in the furnace." Slowly, by quiet marches, Mr. Hunt, -observing perpetually,-digesting gradually,-planting and not reaping, sowing oaks for centuries, not mustard and cress for to-morrow,-made his way up from subaltern to emperor. In 1847 came his not very promising or original subject, Dr. Rochecliffe performing Divine Service in the Cottage of Jocelyn Joliffe, the Woodstock Keeper, from Scott's excellent but conventional-cavalier novel of Woodstock, where Cromwell, that good great men, is warmly caricatured by Tory prejudice, and where Wildrate is drawn more drunken and debauched than any of Goring's or Rupert's men In this picture, perhaps, two of Mr. Hunt's faults may ever could have been. I have er seen the picture, but be discerned already in the bud,--first, a tendency to mysticism, can imagine it, though I may be wrong, a light, flippant, not always intelligible; secondly, a deficient sense of the ladi Frith picture, painted to introduce the contrast of a super-crous, not unusual in deep and serious natures, and which good old man, some pretty soubrettes, and rough, hearty we greatly lament both in Shelley and Wordsworth, in Keats Jocelyn, in a picturesque cottage. and Spencer. This shepherd was the hireling shepherd of the parable; but funny, ill-natured people would connect him with the nursery rhyme of "The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn." No doubt, with many beauties, there was something wilfully eccentric about the hind who warningly holds up an allegorical, piebald death's-head moth to his mistress's face. The picture was sold out of the Exhibition, to Mr. Broderip, for 350 guineas; and it was well worth the money, even as a bit of beautiful mechanism, and for the rich rose brown of the rustic faces.

In 1818 Mr. Hunt, added another flower to his great bouquet of art by exhibiting his Flight of Madelaine and Porphyro, from Keats's rich-coloured and wonderful poem of the "Eve of St. Agnes,"-a subject which sketching clubs have since boiled to rags, and rendered as trite and hopeless as scenes from "Don Quixote," or the much-tormented "Babes in the Wood," who really now ought to be sent to school or left alone. Keats, with astonishing, almost morbid sensuousness, writing not only for the eyes, but for the taste and touch, has scarcely rede med his plagiarism of Romeo and Juliet, which has neither costume nor locality, nor definite reality of any kind. Nothing but stage-dress and tricks of colour ever came out of this poem of Keats's, or ever will.

Nor was 1819 much more conspicuous for the originality of Mr. Hunt's subject, which, though historical, was still conventional, consisting of an incident in the Life of Rienzi, a ry which has been rendered familiar by a popular writer,

But we forgot to mention, in due course, in 1851, Mr. Hunt's Valentine rescuing Silvia from Proteys,-a subject taken from one of Shakspeare's earliest, most tame, most quibbling, and most jarring plays, the "Two Gentlemen of Verona,"--a story that, for want of probability and deficien moral purpose, must be classed with leasure for Measure.' the most painful and dark-toned wor our great sunshinehearted poet ever penned. I saw this picture at Manchester,

and remember being charmed with the tender expression of the faces and the wonderful detail, and yet vexed at the awkward attitudes and straggling composition. The lady dressed in white as a page was admirable, and taken altogether, the picture was one that Keats would have desired to paint, so sensuous, and full, and poetic was it: the faults, even, were like the faults of Keats, affectations and experi

ments.

In 1858 Mr. Hunt exhibited a brilliant, sunny landscape, entitled Our English Coasts, in which was also introduced a group of lost sheep. It affords a singular instance of the mode in which genius, born for higher flights, can triumph over the difficulties of a simple and even obstinate subject.

picture! it was worth ten thousand sermons, and all the noisy
dust ever beaten out of the red velvet of certain pulpit
cushions.
In the year 1858, I think, at the French Exhibition, ap-
peared a little landscape of Mr. Hunt's, entitled Fairlight
Downs, a view from the Hastings cliffs, of which a critic
said it seemed painted with the "dust of jewels," so luminous
and brilliant was the emeraldine sea, the sky, and the little
bosses of bushes.

All this time Mr. Hunt, we have seen, has been progress. ing. He first breaks away from the prison of old convention, the valley of dead bones that never stir. He has mastered technical detail; he has shown a taste for history, but more for allegory and high subjects; he has grappled sucoriginal and daring way; he has succeeded in a Miss Brontë sort of scene from modern life. He is the friendly rival of Mr. Millais, a gorgeous colourist, and one of the acknowledged heads of the Pre-Raphaelite school.

He now determined on a tour to the Holy Land, to be able to paint future sacred subjects with more truth to nature. No more Devonshire shepherds for the parables; no more English orchards, and old haunted, ivied summer-houses for allegories.

After this, which we may term an episode of the Hireling Shepherd having for its moral, "Look after your own mut-cessfully with Shakspeare; he has treated landscape in an tons, and don't trust servants,"-Mr. Hunt returned to Shakspeare, and, singularly enough, to Claudio and Isabella, to that painful and perplexing play," Measure for Measure," where virtue is placed in a position that renders it almost detestable, so that we dislike Isabella and detest Claudio, disregard the sneaking duke, and abhor the hitherto good man. The scene is a dungeon, through the grating of which we see an apple bough in flower. Claudio, a rather spoony, frightened young man, with hair cropped in sufficiently prim, medieval style, -is listening with failing heart to his brave but disagreeable sister's exhortations, at the same time holding up his leg like Master Slender when he bruised his shin in fencing, or as if Isabella had just, with spiteful virtue, trod upon his toe. Really, one might fancy that the painter meant to make him trying to relieve the pain and drag off the fetter; be this as it may, the effect was ludicrous. Nevertheless, in spite of this crying fault, there was great poetry and sentiment in the picture, though we could not tell whether the painter was for Claudio or against him, for in fact, here the poet painted the true but not the pleasing.

Mr. Hunt, who had carried off two prizes at Liverpool and one at Birmingham, in which towns, with Manchester, the real patrons of art now live, for English noblemen never did patronize or care for English art, but neglected Turner, and let Wilson starve, now burst forth "twenty thousand strong," and with matchless power produced, in 1854, two great pictures, one of which at least should have been bought for the nation. This year appeared his Light of the World and his Awakened Conscience, the one a scripture allegory, ⚫ the other a scene of modern life, both much appreciated by a rather puzzled public, to whom Mr. Ruskin expounded them in long but not prosy letters in the Times. The Light of the World, which has since been exhibited throughout England, was a commission from Mr. Combe, of Oxford, who had bought the British Family. The consummate execution and depth of sentiment in it were admitted even by the most obtuse, and by those who most disliked allegory.

The Light of the World represented our Saviour coming suddenly at night, and knocking at the door of the sinner. He comes clad as prophet, priest, and king, with a kingly robe studded with jewels, and he bears in his hand a mystic lanthorn which shoots forth expiring rays. The sinner's door, like the sinner's heart, is closed and locked; it is clamped with long, hairy tendrils of ivy, woody strings that grow up and muffle it; long, dry weeds seed and wither on the threshold; the stars are in the sky,-glow-worms, methinks too, phosphorescent on the ground, like fragments of fallen jewels shed from Christ's robe,-the red streaked apples half hidden in the orchard grass,--the conflict of lamplight, starlight, and glow-worm-light flickering over the dew, were matchlessly beautiful. But there was much conflicting criticism upon the wrung sadness of our Saviour's face, and about the truth of the different effects of light. Perhaps our Saviour was rather too effeminate, while Mr. Ruskin was in raptures about the thirteenth speck of red on the seventeenth jewel of the right-hand border of the royal mantle. Beside such rubbish as West's, this picture was as a chapter of John Bunyan compared to the religious title-tattle of Tupper.

The Awakened Conscience was also a beautiful picture, but, unlike its allegorical companion, it was a painful one, and read our "fast men," treading the primrose path, a terrible lesson. It represented the first pang of awakening remorse in a mistress of some young guardsman. The scene is at some Brompton cottage, where the furniture is hard, and bright, and new, and though everything is smart, there is no feeling of home-love, perpetuity of domestic happiness, or sober certainty of waking bliss anywhere. Amidst all the false gaiety, and wild revelry, and lavish wealth, a thought of the irreparable loss of virtue and happiness, of parents' love, and home joys, has burst from the poor girl's heart, and she leans back from the piso, which has some of Moore's tinsel sentiment, which has just been sung by her lover, spread upon it, with anguish on her face. Oh, that picture,-that

The result of Mr. Hunt's five years' labour, and eighteen months' residence in Jerusalem, may lead to many pictures; at present it has only produced two,-the Scapegoat, and his great crowning work, the Finding of Christ in the Temple. The Scapegoat was not a very interesting picture, though not without a certain thoughtful solemnity. It was difficult to make the scapegoat more interesting than any other dying goat, except by a background of the rich, red, purple mountains thet border the salt, bone-strewn shore of the Dead Sea. But the Finding of Christ, now exhibiting in Bond-street, and sold for £5,500, to be engraved and re-sold at an advanced price, should be the nation's, if we are ever to have an historical and sequent collection of English pictures. Mr. Hunt's picture represents the first manifestation Christ gave of his divinity upon earth, at least, the first instance of such manifestation recorded in the Bible. The scene is laid in the Jewish portion of the Temple. There is all its Herodean splendour, half Egyptian, half Assyrian, the tout ensemble of which the artist has hypothetically, but learnedly and very cleverly, restored. The moment chosen is that in which Joseph and Mary, having long sought the child Jesus, sorrowing, at last discover him, on the third day, disputing with the doctors. The picture represents a circle of rabbis and doctors, from whom the boy Saviour turns toward his fond mother, who presses her lips toward his cheek.

She is clad in a sober pale-gray robe, with a red fringed girdle, and an under robe of white,-typical of sorrow and purity, I suppose, for Mr. Hunt means everything in this picture as a type. She has one hand fondly placed on her Son's shoulder, and one hand of Jesus is tenderly, yet half unconsciously, placed on his mother's arm, as with the other, full of his great mission, he buckles tighter (as an Eastern traveller bent on a journey would do) his broad red leather belt, as a sign that he has higher things than even a mother's love to think of. Behind, observing both with anxious concern, stands Joseph, a string of dried figs hung at his belt, and Mary's dusty shoes slung over his shoulder. Beyond, at the threshold, a clamorous blind cripple sits shouting out his petition for alms. This type of the baser Jewish nature is clad in a roughgrained, sackcloth tunic, tough as a coat of mail, and he balances his thick crutch upon his knees. Beyond are some masons in the court- yard, shaping the "head stone of the corner," while beyond the cloister of Corinthian pillars and the cypresses rises the hill country of Judea, glowing with mellow evening light.

Our Saviour, represented as a boy of some twelve years, displays a vigorous, healthy youth, and a beauty as unusual as it is divine. His blue, fearless, pure eyes look out from a halo of auburn hair; his well-knit limbs are glowing with life and health. The face is noble, and full of a high sense of resolve. Henceforward, we trust, the mean, meagre, ascetic type of head, with its peevish ill health and effeminacy, will be banished from our English studios.

Revelling in colour, and a master of it in more than Venetian richness, Mr. Hunt has indicated the royal birth of our Saviour and his kingly priesthood by clothing him in a purple robe, which, intensely radiant and luminous, is an exquisite and almost perfect piece of painting; and scarcely less wonderful are the tiger-skin marble on which our Saviour stands, the wonderful oriental lattice work that forms part of the background of the picture, the gold-plated doors, the gilded banded columns, and the jewelled apertures for light.

The semicircle of rabbis to the left of the picture are admi

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