The disappearance of the deceased had given rise to enquiry, and the officers of police went to his cottage, where, on examining his son, they learned that his father had gone out to work as usual, a few days before, and had not been seen since. As the officers were continuing their search in the neighbourhood, their attention was excited by observing a dog, lying in a lone place; who seemed to endeavour to attract their notice, by scratching on some newly turned earth. Their curiosity was excited by something peculiar in his action and manner, to examine the spot ;-where they found the body. It would seem that the dog must have been an unobserved witness of his master's murder, and had not forsaken his grave. On returning to the cottage with the body, the son was so struck with the discovery made by the officers by means which be could not divine, that, concluding it must have been by supernatural intimation, he made a full confession of his guilt; that he had beaten out his father's brains with a mallet, at the instiga tion of his mother, that he had dragged him to this bye-place, and there buried him. The mother was condemned to imprisonment for life;-the son to the guillotine. He kept us waiting from ten o'clock to almost three; for the execution is delayed till the culprit is brought to a due state of penitence.

At last the bell rang, the Host was brought from a neighbouring church, that he might receive the last sacrament; and soon afterwards the criminal was led out. Inglese was a passport on this as on other occasions. The guards that formed in a square round the guillotine, made way for me to pass; and I was introduced almost against my will, close to the scaffold.

“A crucifix, and a black banner, with deaths' heads upon it, were borne before the culprit, who advanced between two priests. He mounted the scaffold with a firm step, and did not once flinch till he stooped to put his head into the groove prepared to receive it. This is the trying minute, the rest is the affair of the tenth part of an instant. It appears to be the best of all modes of inflicting the punishment of

death; combining the greatest impression on the spectator, with the least pos sible suffering to the victim. It is so rapid, that I should doubt whether there were any suffering; but from the expression of the countenance, when the executioner held up the head, I am inclined to believe, that sense and consciousness may remain for a few seconds, after the head is off. The eyes seemed to retain speculation for a moment or two, and there was a look in the ghastly stare with which they glared upon the crowd, which implied that the head was aware of its ignominious situation. And indeed there is nothing improbable in this supposition, for in all injuries of the spine, whereby a communication with the sensorium is cut off, it is the parts below the injury which are deprived of sensation, while those above retain their sensibility. And so in the case of decapitation, the muscles and nerves of the face and eyes, may for a short time continue to convey impressions to the brain, in spite of the separation from the trunk."

But guillotining is of little use in a country of thieves. "How do you manage to live here?" said a traveller through the Poutine marshes to some of its livid inhabitants: "we die" was the answer. How are we to prevent robberies? is the enquiry of the Neapolitan government: issue an edict against ransom, is the practical reply: and what is the consequence? of two prisoners who had been kidnapped by banditti, one returned to his friends without ears, because they had not paid enough: the other was sent back 'in eight pieces, because they had not paid any thing.

There are only eight horses in Venice four of brass over the gate of the Cathedral, and four of blood in Lord Byron's stable: we know not how the latter fare, but we should fear badly enough if we judge from the astonishment which one of our geological friends excited in the same city by unadvisedly asking for some hay in which he might pack his minerals.

Mr. Matthews narrowly escaped the inundation of the Val de Bagne; he had dined at the Inn at Martigny two

days only before the calamity occurred; but it required some speed to outrun the water, which travelled at the rate of twenty miles an hour. What would Wilson the painter have said to this rapidity! He stood in speechless admiration for some time over the falls of Ferni, and then broke out in Sir Joshua Reynolds' hearing, with, "Well done, water, by G-!" No description Mr. Matthews says can give a more lively idea of the impression produced by the first sight of this cascade.

But the ecroulement of the Rossberg, in the valley of Goldau, in 1806, was more dreadful than this inundation. The masses which thundered down are described as being a league in length, one thousand feet in breadth, and two hundred feet high; they overwhelmed a party of unhappy travellers, five of the most industrious villages in Switzerland, with many hundred inhabitants, and reduced a cheerful and populous valley to the most shapeless desolation.

We cannot pass by the reflections which Ferney suggested to Mr. Matthews.

"He built the church of Ferney close to his own gate, as if he had a mind to illustrate the old saying, the nearer the church the further from God; "So much for Voltaire, whose merits as an author seem to have been overrated. Johnson's praise of Goldsmith might with some limitation be applied to him, nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit, nullum quod tetiget non ornavit; but though he sparkled in every kind of writing, he did not perhaps shine pre-eminently in more than one. He had more wit than genius, and his forte rather lay in cooking up the thoughts of others with his own sauce piquante, than in producing new sources of knowledge. He is perhaps only maximus in minimis; an exquisite writer of a satiric tale; unrivalled in wit, raillery, and sarcasm ;—and inimitable in 'exposing knaves and painting fools.' Beyond this there is little to say. His epic poetry, his tragedies, and his histories are only extraordinary in their combination. Separately considered, his epic poetry would be placed by all but Frenchmen, in the very lowest class

of epic poems, all that lord Chesterfield says to the contrary notwithstanding; his tragedies are inferior in force and grandeur to those of Corneille, and in sensibility and pathos to those of Racine. Of his history much is romantic, and the age of Louis XIV. upon which his claims as an historian are founded, is rather the materials for a history, than an historical work. On many subjects it is plain he had but a smattering. Perhaps a stronger instance could not be given of the difference between a mouthful and a belly-full of knowledge, than would be afforded by a comparison of Voltaire's preface to Edipe, with Johnson's preface to Shakspeare.

"His physiognomy, which is said to have been a combination of the eagle and the monkey, was illustrative of the character of his mind. If the soaring wing and piercing eye of the eagle opened to him all the regions of knowledge, it was only to collect materials for the gratification of that apish disposition, which seems to have delighted in grinning, with a malicious spirit of mockery, at the detected weaknesses and infirmities of human nature. Though a man may often rise the wiser, yet I believe none ever rose the better, from the perusal of Voltaire. The short but admirable epitaph on him may well conclude his character,

“Ci git l'enfant gâté du monde qu'il gatâ.”

On most objects, whether of nature or of art, Mr. Matthews has singular facility of good expression. Speaking of the Forum at Rome, he says,

"The walk from the Capitol to the Coliseum comprises the history of ages. The broken pillars that remain of the Temple of Concord,―the Temple of Jupiter Tonans,-and the Comitium,tell the tale of former times, in language the most pathetic and intelligible ;-it is a mute eloquence, surpassing all the powers of description. It would seem as if the destroying angel had a taste for the picturesque ;-for the ruins are left just as the painter would most wish to have them."

And again of a sunrise at sea,

"The wind died away last night. A dead calm.-Got up to see the sun

rise. Much has been said of the splendour of this sight at sea; but I confess I think it inferior to the same scene on land. There is indeed plenty of the dread magnificence of Heaven,' but it is all over in a moment. The sun braves the east, and carries the heavens by a coup-de-main; instead of approaching gradually, as he does on land, preceded by a troop of rosy messengers that prepare you for his arrival. One misses the charming variety of the terrestial scene ;-the wood and water;the hill and dale ;-the babbling brook ;'-the 'pomp of groves and garniture of fields.' At sea, too, all is in

WE

E have made "YOUR TEETH" our Head, for the sake of attracting peculiar attention to the very generally interesting book whose title we have partially extracted in a note. Yet, truly, this may seem needless, since they must be young indeed who are not aware of the importance of the subject, and extremely old who do not care for it. To all who come within the pale of life, from nine months to ninety years; to all who stand between that period, when time itself is toothless, and that epoch when the devouring jaws of eternity are gaping for their final crash, this work must present much for rumination.

Quackery apart, Monsieur J. R. Duval is a very extraordinary person, as the following analysis "shall fructify unto you.'

The preface is not remarkable for any great discovery, except it be that "Attention to the teeth is necessary at every age; and even when we have been deprived of some, still it is of very great importance to be able to preserve those which remain.” Our readers will therefore observe, that, however few the number of their remaining grinders may

But our author does not rest his claim to universal interest on the simple appeal to the personal feelings of every individual; he sustains himself on the highest classical authorities; and with all that philosophy and astonishing erudition so bappily illustrated by French writers, lays deep the foundations of his theory; and, accordingly, commences with a chapter containing the "Advice of the Ancient Poets on the Preservation of the Teeth." This, it will be allowed, even by national jealousy, is a genuine, and an original mode of setting out with a treatise on teething and tooth-powders. It would bave been long before so brilliant an idea entered the mind of a native of our land of fogs and stupidity.

But to return to Mr. Duval and the ancient poets. Lucretius was, it seems, quite wrong in supposing

acumen and sagacity by further informing us, that "The teeth are found in most animals which live upon solid food, and they serve naturalists for the purpose of classing them into herbivorous, graminivorous, and carnivorous; and as a man is endowed with all these different kinds, he is called omnivorous, that is, he is intended to eat of all"!!

The Ogre Man, thus felicitously defined by his edacious qualities, is fitted, as our readers who are concerned in the fact will be happy to learn, for his devouring purposes, in the following

manner:

"When the mouth is opened the teeth exhibit themselves under the form of two semicircular rows of little white bodies, hard and shining; in the adult they are thirty-two in number, sixteen for each jaw the four in the middle are flat and cutting, they are therefore called inscisores or cutting teeth; from their connection with the four others of the lower jaw, which have the same name, there can be no doubt, that they are intended to cut, when they come in contact, like a pair of scissors. Upon the sides of these in each jaw are two teeth, which are more round and sharp, and which seem made to tear the aliment, like those of dogs, from which they borrow their name (canine); they are also called eye teeth, because their root being exceedingly long, approaches the eye nearer than those of any other tooth; they do not however communicate with that organ, and the involuntary tears which are observed to flow when one of them is drawn, are also seen upon the extraction of one of the grinders; they are also called angular teeth, either on account of their form, or because being placed at each angle of the mouth, they regulate its extent: more backward, and on each side of these teeth, are five others called molares or grinders, two small, and three large, whose office it is to grind the food, and have the same effect in mastication as the mill stones have in a mill."

So provided with cutters, tearers, and grinders, including the wisdom teeth, it is strange that men should have fallen

into such a blunder about these members, as to have regarded them as inorganic bodies without life, which Mr. Doval assures us has been the case; drawing, at the same time, this very obvious inference from it (for he is literally savant jusqu'aux dents) viz. “From this circumstance arose no doubt the ingenious fable, which represents Cadmus as giving birth to men, by sowing the teeth of the dragon which he had slain"!!

Not being quite sure that men were born from teeth, we are, at all events, certain that teeth are exceedingly serviceable appendages to them, after they have been born. In this Mr. Duval bears us out: "If (says he) the orator to whom Rome had the honour of giving birth, compared the teeth to the chords of a musical instrument for the purpose of modifying the sound of the voice; if, in order to speak the Jewish tongue with more grace, St. Jerom caused his teeth to be filed; if they serve physiognomists with the means of calculating the probable longevity and moral character of man, and if they form one of the greatest ornaments of beauty, the parasite in his turn only esteems them for one function more important, in which he puts those organs into action for the purpose of dividing and grinding his aliment, which forms the object of his delight; the freshness of his appearance announces his having masticated well, and consequently the digestion has been perfect; which seems to verify an adage used by the Arabian physicians, "he who does not masticate well is an enemy to his own life." And this admirable axiom is immediately clenched by a quotation from the Arabic!" Illum gui non benè masticaverit, animam suam odisse constat."

The next branch handled by our author is that of the first dentition, or milk teeth; and here again, if he mountsinto the third heavens, it will be acknowledged that he has the excuse of some connection with the Via Lactea, or Milky Way. His exordium is in a style worthy of him, or of his translator. Although," says he, "in general den