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have known what a caricature was, but they are surely somewhat slender grounds on which to found the reputation of a great comic painter. Aristotle, perhaps, did not perceive the importance which, in a more advanced civilization, the art of caricature might assume, but where is the evidence that Aristophanes was writhing under the pangs of wounded vanity and avenging the wrongs of his distorted features? We may, perhaps conjecture that if Aristophanes, who gibbeted so many more important persons on so small a provocation, had been caricatured, he would not have let off the offender with three insignificant sneers, and that Aristotle did not comprehend the possibilities of the art of caricature, by no means proves that he did not comprehend the possibilities of the art of Pauson. The fact, however, that he is mentioned a century after his death by Aristotle as, in some degree, the representative of a class, may, perhaps, be taken as sufficient proof that he was really a painter of celebrity. Moreover, his name is preserved in the pages of Lucian, Plutarch, and even Elian; though the anecdote which they record of him would go to show him, not so much a caricaturist, as a painter of animals of rather more than the proverbial irritability of his calling. Be this as it may, on the name of Pauson rests as yet the reputation of Greek caricature.

In the pages of Pliny, however, we arrive on land of a somewhat firmer character. Bupalus and Athenis painted the portrait of the poet Hipponax, who was remarkably ugly, and exposed it, by way of joke, to the public. A pupil of Apelles made himself famous by a burlesque painting, in which he represented Jupiter, in female attire, giving birth to Bacchus amid a group of goddesses officiating as monthly nurses. "True caricaturist," says M. Champfleury, "who respects not even the gods." The fame of Clesides depends on a picture of Queen Stratonice, whom, in revenge for some slight which he had received from her, he portrayed as rolling with a fisherman, who was rumored to be her lover. This picture he exposed in the market-place of Ephesus, and fled for his life. The queen, however, was so pleased with the accuracy of the portraits, that she overlooked the insult to her fame. But, except in traditions of this sort, no trace remains to us of anything like personal caricature. Grotesque painting indeed there is,

and of the happiest kind, of which the famous studio of a painter from the walls of Pompeii affords a well-known instance. In this sort of painting the human figure is reduced to the dimensions of a pigmy, while an exaggerated importance is given to the head and upper portion of the body precisely like those distorted elves which do such constant duty in the illustrated fairy tales of modern artists. In the painting to which we have alluded the painter sits at his easel with his colors ranged on a little table at his side. The sitter, on whose portrait he is engaged, has all that expression of gratified vanity and foolish sheepishness which sitters always have. On the left, an attendant prepares the colors in a vase placed over charcoal. Behind him, a pupil leaves the book which he is studying to gaze furtively over his shoulder at what is going on around him. On the right, two dwarf friends of the painter are engaged in a lively criticism of his work, while a most grotesque bird, considerably taller than the human figures, serves at once to represent the customary contents of a studio, and to puzzle the commentators. The drawings of this sort at Herculaneum are still more unreal. There a number of naked little gnomes are engaged in the different pursuits of a country life, all animated by something of the same comic earnestness with which Stothard supplies the fat little children who form the subject of his woodcuts. In another instance, attributed to the time of the Macedonian kingdom, the flight of Eneas with Anchises on his shoulder, and leading the little Ascanius, is travestied by representing the three figures with the heads and tails of dogs. But all the labor and ingenuity of M. Champfleury has not succeeded in producing a single extant painting or drawing which can with propriety be called a caricature. Burlesque painting there is; but, except in the few vague traditions which we have enumerated above, from the pages of Pliny, no proof can be given that any ancient artist ever endeavored to throw ridicule on the actions of a contemporary by the publication during his life of a distorted representation of his features.

It assuredly does not follow, from the fact that they have not reached us among the fragments of ancient art, which alone time has spared to us, that they never in truth existed. But it is hard to attribute such partiality to

so impartial a destroyer, and there may per- | late age. The same qualities must, of course, haps be mechanical reasons why the art of have existed in the human mind from the becaricature was likely to be far less efficacious ginning, of which here and there a trace may in the hands of the satirist then than now. be discovered by the learning, and expanded Now-a-days, the sketch of the artist is mul- by the ingenuity, of the modern inquirer. tiplied a thousand times in a few hours by But even human qualities, need favorable the skill of the printer, and thus his mean- circumstances before they can flourish and ing is easily and cheaply disseminated among multiply and produce a continuous harvest, the multitude. But the original, passed from and of such a harvest in the ancient world hand to hand, would generally have disap- there is not a trace. A few isolated passages peared altogether even before the ephemeral of antiquity have given birth to a fanciful interest attached to it had expired. While, on and graceful essay, and we, who have profthe other hand, satirical verses were easily ited by M. Champfleury's labors, will be conlearned and repeated from mouth to mouth, tent to hope that, as he continues his task, while men's memories, too, were probably he may find arguments which may satisfy more practised before the invention of paper the minds of his readers as well as he has and ink. It may well be doubted whether | already satisfied his own. pictorial satire is not the invention of a very

APPLE-GREEN papers in bedrooms have long Ir may not perhaps be generally known that been anathema to nervous men; but it seems all the diplomatic correspondence of the empire now that they wield but the positive degree of down to the accession of George III. has been arsenical menace; the green of artificial leaves transferred to the new Record Office, Chancery and flowers threatens the comparative, and the Lane, in consequence of the intention of the Schweinfurt green tarlatane ball-dresses the su- Government to pull down the present Stato perlative, danger to human life. The papers on Paper Office to make room for the new buildthe wall at least stand still, and do not shake ings to be erected by Mr. Scott. All the papers their poisonous atoms into the atmosphere; the from which Mr. Motley, Mr. Froude, and others green wreath, on the contrary, is always fanning have derived the most valuable materials for the air, and the ball-dress is always rustling their respective histories are now made accessiagainst positive obstacles, and so distributing its ble to the public. A room has been fitted up particles to every eddying current of the waltz. for readers, and the greatest consideration is An ordinary ball-dress of green tarlatane, meas-paid to the wants of students. In their comuring twenty yards, is calculated to contain nine hundreds grains of arsenic, loosely laid on with starch; and a learned German professor tells us that at least sixty of these grains will be pow-them.-Spectator. dered off in a single evening's dance, floating round the moving beauties:

"At Venus obscuro gradientes aëre sepsit

Et multo nebulæ circum dea fudit amictu." But the modern deity and her cloud are actively maleficent, though avenging with a certain justice the pangs of the unhappy manufacturers who fall early victims to the slow poison they imbibe-Examiner.

ILLINOIS.-Illinois formed her present State Constitution in 1820, with a population of 54,000. She is now forming a new Constitution, her inhabitants having increased to 1,711,000, and far outgrown the old fixtures of government. The "Garden State" has in forty-one years multiplied her people thirty-one times-a more rapid growth than any other American State can show.

pleteness, the documents registered here have no parallel, and certainly none in the freshness and value of the information to be derived from

Ir is said that Dr. Forbes, the Bishop of Brechin, has discovered the long-lost Scotch Missal of the tenth century, in the library at Drummond Castle, the seat of Lady Willoughby d'Eresby, which has been so long desiderated by antiquaries. This work is probably the most interesting liturgical work that has come down to us, with the exception of the Stowe MS., now in Lord Ashburnham's collection. The calendar is perfect and very curious, and is enriched with a Gaelic rubric and two Gaelic collects. The bishop proposes to give a minute account of it in the preface to the " Arbuthnot Missal," the printing of which is now nearly completed. This discovery will henceforth be coupled with the printing of the beautiful copy of the "Sarum Missal," in 8vo., pp. 325, so much welcomed by ritual and liturgical

students.

From The Examiner.

An Inquiry into the Medicinal Value of the
Excreta of Reptiles, in Phthisis and some
other Diseases. By John Hastings, M.D.
Longman and Co.

Dr. Hastings tells us that he considers the animal world as a source of remedies against disease to have been too much neglected. For our own parts, we do not think that the people of this country have the character abroad of failing in endeavor to keep themselves alive by help of beef and mutton; lamb chops and chickens are pretty freely prescribed by the faculty; but it is true that except a few peculiar animal products, there has not been much got hitherto from the animal world that is a medicine without being a food. Upon this fact Dr. Hastings dwelt. He says:

a

"It occurred to me-and if the idea is not

new one I am at a loss to imagine why it has not been worked out before now-that here there was an unexplored and interesting field for inquiry.

Now that the polite world is wearying of hydropathy and homeopathy, and quite ready to open its mouth to a new sensation remedy, here is Dr. John Hastings,-to be famous hereafter, perhaps, as founder of the Ordure-Cure, ready to heal the chief diseases of the English with the ghost of a taste of reptiles' dung. Dr. Hastings, does not recommend water of coprolite, but an infusion of the fresh-laid ordure of tortoises, lizards, and snakes; a treasure which the keeper at the Zoological Gardens, and the dealers in reptiles, Jamrach and Rice of the Ratcliffe Highway, are in future to lay by, bearing in mind, and believing if they can, "It would be foreign to my purpose to that the two-hundredth part of a grain of detail here the various animals I put in the stool of a chameleon taken three times requisition in the course of this investigaa day will save a consumptive patient from tion, or the animal products I examined the grave. Dr. Hastings assures us that his during a prolonged inquiry. It is enough to state that I found in the excreta of repnew remedy is far from being nasty, except tiles agents of great medicinal value in to the imagination, for it has neither taste, numerous diseases where much help was color, smell, nor chemical constituent, to needed. Although not wholly unprepared speak of. Indeed complaint, he tells us, was for some useful results, I must confess to a made to the College of Physicians by the feeling of profound astonishment that these brother of a patient who had submitted a bot- secrets of nature should have remained so tle of his medicine to an analyst, and had it long hidden from man, although they were at all times before his eyes, and always reported empty of anything except a little within his reach. My earliest trials were lime. The doctor was accused of adminis-made with the excreta of the boa-constrictering aqua fontis, but the College of Phy-tor; which I employed in the first instance sicians knew better than to entertain such a charge against a brother, who would, perhaps, only have shown a beneficent sense of the value of life, had he in truth taken his fee for doing nothing. There is no better payment than the fee to a wise physician who knows when to let nature alone. He is not doing nothing when he prescribes his innocent placebo. By keeping out a meddler it may be that he saves life. Meanwhile, when Dr. Hastings has established reptiles' dungs as potent additions to the pharmacopoeia, we must have crabs' eyes restored, pound oyster-shell again, and restore to our surgeries the skins of crocodiles and salamanders. Will somebody also revive the medicinal preciousness of rubies, or, vindicating the faith of our forefathers in potable gold, gratify the fashionable world with a remedy of its own, wholly beyond reach of the vulgar?

dissolved simply in water. A gallon of water will not dissolve two grains, and yet, strange as the statement may appear, half a teaspoonful of this solution rubbed over the chest of a consumptive patient will give instantaneous relief to his breathing. I have, to some extent, investigated the properties of the excreta from the following reptiles :

"Chilabothrus inornatus-(yellow snake of Jamaica). "Naja haje-(African cobra). Coryphodon blumenbachii-(Indian rat

66

snake).

"Hoplocephalus superbus-(yellow-bellied Australian snake).

"Tropidonotus viperinus-(viperine snake, North Africa).

"Pseudechis porphyriacus-(black Australian viper).

"Coluber guttatus-(corn snake, North America).

"Tropidonotus quincunciatus-(common river snake of India).

"Cenchris piscivorus-(the water viper, Yet a solution of the pure urate of ammonia North America). he has tried, he says, without advantage.

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"In three cases of phthisis I employed it both externally and internally at the same time. In two out of the three the patients were made considerably worse on the third day of its use, whilst in the third-a little girl of eleven years of age-the unfavorable symptoms, after an apparent improvement which lasted for a week, rapidly returned under its continued employment. I then substituted for this treatment an external application of the excreta of the boa-constrictor, and the three patients quickly recovered their lost ground. My employment of the pure urate of ammonia was attended with the same unsatisfactory results in asthma. In every case it caused the respiration to be more difficult and made the cough harder, and I was, consequently, compelled to discontinue its use. I may add that the urate of ammonia is about as

insoluble as the excreta of reptiles, and that tion of it which was not stronger than the in all my trials I employed a watery solutwo-hundredth part of a grain to a tablespoonful of water."

We can only surmise the variety of animal substances which Dr. Hastings has, as he says, examined during a prolonged inquiry. There is hair for example. The medicinal use of hair is suggested in the popular prescription for a bitten man, that Dr. Hastings gives a collection of wonhe should take a hair of the dog that bit derful cases of consumption, asthma, etc., him. To how many people may not Dr. apparently cured with these excretions. Hastings have administered experimentally When the excretions of the boa gave headthe hair of a dog, comparing the virtues of ache or even failed, he perhaps finished the the hair about the tail with those of the hair cure at a trot by determining to have reunder the ear, or of a hair from the back. course to the Coryphodon blumenbachii (InThen, why only a dog's hair? So inquisi-dian rat snake). Of one patient he says:tive a philosopher must have administered a cat's bristle to somebody. Then, again, if hair, why not feathers? Has the effect been tried of a gruel of goose feathers-an internal administration of feather bed, as a remedy for sleeplessness? Of course the field of investigation is vast, and Dr. Hastings must have travelled very far through it before he thought of asking the chameleon for his dung. The analysis of the boa-constrictor's excrement shows it to consist, the doctor says, of an impure urate of ammonia, and this seems to be usually the chief constituent of his new remedy; it is very One judicious patient, who is being cured slightly soluble in water, but the ingenious of a cavity in the left lung by the dung of physician adds a little bromine as a solvent a lizard, says that he "misses the dose as when he wishes to produce a strong solution. much as he does a meal."

"This case is interesting, from the fact that I gave her the excreta of every serpent I have yet examined, and they all, without exception, after a few days' use, occasioned headache or sickness, with diarrhoea to such their use. an extent that I was obliged to relinquish

From the excreta of the lizards

she experienced no inconvenience. She is now taking the excreta of the Chameleo vulgaris (common chameleon) with great advantage, and is better than she has been at any one period during the last three years."

From The Spectator. DR. MILMAN ON LORD MACAULAY.*

ety, in which Macaulay first distinguished. himself, and the House of Commons, in We regret to say that our readers will which he so soon after distinguished himbe much disappointed with this biography. self, is now broken. The old aristocratic Every competent person expected much from system of parliamentary representation ocit. Dean Milman is an accomplished narcasionally, far more rarely than is often rator; a great historian himself, an old said, but still sometimes selected attractive friend of the greater historian of whom he young men without money, but with tongues writes. Delineative power, congeniality of and brains and presence, to embellish the occupation, long personal intercourse, would House of Commons. A collegiate reputaappear to have been here combined; they tion was then a parliamentary introduction. would seem to have given us a perfect biog- But it would not answer to try it on Mr. rapher on a perfect subject. We regret to say Brand now. He is the most courteous of that the real result is nearly zero. Few edumen to persons of liberal sentiments, but he cated persons will learn much from this me- would say: "Sir, I am sure your literary atmoir of Lord Macaulay: they will not know tainments will give you the greatest pleasmore of him than before, either as a states-ure, and I am also sure that your literary man, an author, or a man. It is difficult, honors indicate great ability. But business doubtless, for an old friend to speak out, as is business. You said you were from Linto an old friend; it is difficult (though it is coln, I think? Do you know any one at not generally known) for a great historian, Lincoln-I mean, any one who is any good? used to speak in rather courteous language I regret to say that boroughs in general like of men whom he has never known, to speak persons of advanced opinions and large the simple graphic truth of a great man means. Your opinions are cultivated, eduwhom he has known. But, as a contempo-cated—not advanced (it is all the same), and rary statesman well observed, "A difficulty your means, I regret to hear, are limited. I is a thing to be overcome." Dean Milman am sorry to say, unless you have any local should not have published a memoir of Lord interest anywhere, I can't do much for you." Macaulay unless he felt really able effectuStanding up: "The local people are tyranally to tell the public something about him. nical now. The small attorneys and the As matters stand, he unquestionably must large grocers give away political life." know that he has told very little, and that "Thirty years ago," says Dean Milman, "a what he has told, he has told very ineffecyoung Whig, of high and blameless charactually. ter, popular with his friends, with the reputation of oratorical power in the Debating Rooms at Cambridge (he delivered one speech in London, we believe, at an antiand the acknowledged author of such artislavery meeting, which made some noise), cles in one of the two popular journals of the day, could not but command the attention, and awaken the hopes of his party." A great nobleman" offered a seat in Parliament to the author of the admirable articles in the Edinburgh Review." It is like a romance of political intellect to read of such things. How many splendid articles-how many speeches at Exeter Hall or Cambridge Practical men know that a lifetime might be -are now equal to a seat in Parliament? spent in such things, and yet the object sought for be no nearer.

A real narrative of Lord Macaulay's career is a matter of great public importance, for he was not only a remarkable man, but the very last of a remarkable race. Dean Milman tells us that to the very end of his life Lord Macaulay used to "dwell with pride" on his success in gaining a Fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge: "On the inestimable advantages of such fellowships to young men of high promise and ability but of scanty means, he always insisted with great earnestness, and deprecated any change in the academical system which should diminish the number of such foundations, held, as he would recount with his unfailing memory, by so many of our first public men."

The connection between college and public life, between the Union Debating Soci

Brief Memoir of Lord Macaulay. By the Very Rev. the Dean of St. Paul's. With Portrait from Rechman's picture.

Lord Macaulay had a vision of what he was doing during the great Reform debates. The opposition cried out unceasingly that the breed of young aspirants, of academical debaters, was in danger. But he replied:

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