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palatable-better to eat aloes or colo- | quintida, than violate a primary law of nature, impressed on every heart not imbruted by avarice, than rob one human creature of those eternal rights, of which no law on earth can justly deprive him."

During a visit which Sir W. Jones made to a native of the island of Hinzuan, or Joanna, a Koran was produced for his inspection, and his attention was directed to a passage in a commentary, accusing Christians of blasphemy, in calling our Saviour the Son of God. To this he promptly replied, "The commentator was much to blame for passing so indiscriminate and hasty a censure; the title which gave your legislator, and which gives you, so much offence, was often applied in Judea by a bold figure, agreeably to the Hebrew idiom, though unusual in Arabic, to angels, to holy men, and even to all mankind, who are commanded to call God their Father; and in this large sense, the apostle to the Romans calls the elect the children of God, and the Messiah 'the first-born among many brethren;' but the words 'only begotten' are applied transcendently and incomparably to Him alone; and as for me, who believe the Scriptures you also profess to believe, (though you assert, without proof, that we have altered them,) I cannot refuse him an appellation, which far surpasses our reason, by which he is distinguished in the gospel; and the believers in Mohammed, who expressly name him the Messiah, and pronounce him to have been born of a virgin, (which might fully justify the phrase condemned by this author,) are themselves condemnable, for cavilling at words when they cannot object to the substance of our faith consistently with their own."

On his landing at Calcutta, towards the close of 1783, be entered on his duties as a magistrate of the Supreme Court of Judicature. He had now the opportunity, long ardently desired, of devoting his talents to the service of his native country, and of promoting the welfare of the community in which he resided; while the history, antiquities, natural productions, arts, sciences, and literature of Asia, opened an extensive and almost boundless field to his inquiries.

To devotional exercises he was also habitually attentive; diligent in business,

he was also fervent in spirit. At a time when his health was much affected, his thoughts and affections were peculiarly engaged in matters of religion. The following is a short prayer which he composed at this period:-"O thou Bestower of all good, if it please thee to continue my easy tasks in this life, grant me strength to perform them as a faithful servant; but if thy wisdom hath willed to end them by this thy visitation, admit me-not weighing my unworthiness, but through thy mercy declared in Christinto thy heavenly mansions, that I may continually advance in happiness, by advancing in true knowledge and awful love of Thee. Thy will be done."

Sir W. Jones was restored from this illness, and vigorously pursued his former engagements. His testimony to the verity and authenticity of the Old and New Testament, though often quoted, may here be repeated:-"I have carefully and regularly perused these Holy Scriptures, and am of opinion that the volume, independently of its Divine origin, contains more sublimity, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains of eloquence, than can be collected from all other books, in whatever language they may have been written."

The largest portion of each year was devoted to his professional duties and studies; and all the time that could be saved from these important avocations was dedicated to the cultivation of science and literature. Lady Jones was compelled by impaired health to embark for England in December, 1793. The mere desire of increasing a fortune, which he acknowledged was large enough to satisfy his wishes, would not have induced Sir William to remain alone in Bengal, but he was earnestly desirous to complete a great work on English law, which he had originated. But in the following spring he was attacked by inflammation of the loins, which was quickly followed by death, April 27, 1794. The

66

Digest," to which he had thus sacrificed his life, was completed by Mr. Colebrooke, and published in 1800.

The most extraordinary feature of his character was his facility in learning languages. A list, in his own handwriting, thus classes the twenty-eight in number with which he was in any degree acquainted:" Eight languages studied critically Latin, English, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian,

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Sanscrit; eight studied less perfectly, I were supplied-had been filled
but all intelligible with a dictionary
-Spanish, Portuguese, German, Ru-
nic, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindi, Turk-
ish; twelve studied less perfectly, but
all attainable-Thibetian, Pâli, Pahlair,
Deri, Russian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic,
Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, Chinese."

Due honours were paid to this great man after death. The Court of Directors placed a statue of him in St. Paul's cathedral, of which an engraving is given at the head of this biographical sketch; and Lady Jones erected a monument to him in the ante-chapel of University College, Oxford. In accordance with his own expressed opinion that, "the best monument that could be erected to a man of literary talent, is a good edition of his works," she caused them to be collected and printed in six quarto volumes, in 1799. They have been reprinted in octavo. A life of Sir W. Jones was afterwards written by his intimate friend in India, the late Lord Teignmouth.

"In a word," said the eminent prelate, to whose testimony a reference has already been made, "I can only say of this wonderful man, that he had more virtues and less faults than I ever yet saw in any human being; and that the goodness of his head, admirable as it was, was exceeded by that of his heart. I have never ceased to admire him from the moment I first saw him; and my esteem for his great qualities, and regret for his loss, will only end with my life." AMICUS.

IRELAND-ITS INTEMPERANCE AND

TEMPERANCE.

THE following extracts are taken from a work on Ireland, now in course of publication, by Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall :

INTEMPERANCE.

"A manifest improvement had of late years taken place among the higher classes. We are ourselves old enough to recollect, when a host would have been scouted as mean and inhospitable, who had suffered one of his guests to leave his table sober. Ingenious devices were invented for compelling intoxication: glasses and bottles so formed that they could not stand, and must be emptied before they could be laid upon the table -the object being to pass the wine rapidly round-were in frequent use. We dined once with a large party where the tea-kettle-from which the tumblers

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heated whisky; the partakers of th
'cheer' being too far gone' to perceiv
they were strengthening their puncl
instead of making it weaker. If a gue
were able to mount his horse withou
assistance in the good old times,' h
was presented with a deoch and durrass
glass, which he was forced, seldon
against his will, to drink at the door.
This glass usually held a quart; it wa
terminated by a globe, which, of itself
contained a drop' sufficient to complete
the business of the night. The degrada-
tion was looked upon as a distinction:
and an Irishman drunk, was an Irishman
all in his glory;' and a 'strong head’
was considered an enviable possession.
Many years ago we were acquainted with
a gentleman at Ross-Carbery, whose
daily 'stint' was five-and-twenty tumb-
lers of whisky punch of the ordinary
strength; and we knew another, whose
frequent boast it was, that in a long life
he had drunk enough to float a seventy-
four gun ship.

"All attempts to check the progress of
intemperance were fruitless: it had long
been customary, indeed, to take oaths to
abstain from drink for a season; but if
kept, they produced no permanent good,
and the tricks and shifts to evade them
were generally successful. We recollect
a man swearing he would not drink for
a month; he soaked bread in spirits, and
ate it: another, who swore he would not
touch liquor while he stood on earth,'
got drunk amid the branches of a tree:
another, who vowed not to touch a drop
' in doors or out,' strode across his thresh-
old, placing one leg inside, and the
other outside, and so persuading himself
he did not break his oath, drank until he
fell: another, who bound himself not to
'touch liquor in the parish,' brought a
sod of turf from a distance, and placed
his feet upon it, when he resolved to
drink. We knew one who was kept
sober thus: he was always willing to
take an oath against whisky for six
weeks, but no longer; his master in-
variably watched the day on which 'his
time' expired, and compelled him to re-
peat his oath; which he would readily
do after swallowing two glasses. To
make the Irish abstain, even to a moder-
ate extent, was therefore considered a
hopeless task; and he would have been a
visionary indeed who foretold a time
when a drunken Irishman would be a
far greater rarity than a sober one.

IRELAND-ITS INTEMPERANCE AND TEMPERANCE.

TEMPERANCE.

"We entered, one day, a cottage in a suburb of Cork: a woman was knitting stockings at the door; it was as neat and comfortable as any in the most prosperous district of England. We tell her brief story in her own words, as nearly as we can recall them. My husband is a wheelwright, and always earned his guinea a week; he was a good workman, and neither a bad man, nor a bad husband; but the love for the drink was strong in him, and it wasn't often he brought me home more than five shillings out of his one-pound-one on a Saturday night; and it broke my heart to see the poor children too ragged to send to school, to say nothing of the starved look they had out of the little I could give them. Well, God be praised, he took the pledge; and the next Saturday he laid twenty-one shillings upon the chair you sit upon. Oh! didn't I give thanks on my bended knees that night? Still, I was fearful it wouldn't last, and I spent no more than the five shillings I was used to, saying to myself, Maybe the money will be more wanted than it is now. Well, the next week he brought me the same, and the next, and the next, until eight weeks passed; and there was no change for the bad in my husband; and all the while he never asked me why there was nothing better for him out of his hard earnings: so I felt there was no fear of him; and the ninth week, when he came home to me, I had this table bought, and these six chairs, one for myself, four for the children, and one for himself. And I was dressed in a new gown, and the children all had new clothes, and shoes and stockings, and upon his own chair I put a bran-new suit; and upon his plate I put the bill and resate for them all-just the eight sixteen shillings they cost that I'd saved out of his wages, not knowing what might happen, and that always before went for drink. And he cried, good lady and good gentleman, he cried like a babby-but 'twas with thanks to God: and now where's the healthier man than my husband in the county of Cork, or a happier wife than myself, or dacenter or better-fed children than our own four?' It is most unlikely that such a family will again sink into poverty and wretchedness. We might add largely to these cases, not only from what we have heard, but from what we have seen.

"In reference to the extent to which

5

sobriety has spread, it will be almost sufficient to state, that during our recent stay in Ireland, from the 10th June to the 6th September 1840, we saw but six persons intoxicated; and that for the first thirty days we had not encountered one. In the course of that month, we had travelled from Cork to Killarney, round the coast; returning by the inland route, not along mail-coach roads, but on a 'jaunting car,' through byways as well as highways; visiting small villages and populous towns, driving through fairs, attending wakes and funerals (returning from one of which, between Glengariff and Kenmare, at nightfall, we met at least a hundred substantial farmers mounted ;) in short, wherever crowds were assembled, and we considered it likely we might gather information as to the state of the country and the character of its people. We repeat, we did not meet a single individual who appeared to have tasted spirits; and we do not hesitate to express our conviction, that two years ago, in the same places, and during the same time, we should have encountered many thousand drunken men. From first to last, we employed, perhaps, fifty car-drivers; we never found one to accept a drink; the boatmen of Killarney, proverbial for drunkenness, insubordination, and recklessness of life, declined the whisky we had taken with us for the bugle player, who was not 'pledged,' and after hours of hard labour, dipped a can into the lake, and refreshed themselves from its waters. It was amusing, as well as gratifying, to hear their new reading of the address to the famous echo-Paddy Blake, plase yer honour, the gintleman promises ye some coffee whin ye get home;' and on the Blackwater, a muddy river, as its name denotes, our boat's crew put into shore, midway between Youghal and Lismore, to visit a clear spring, with the whereabouts of which they were familiar. The whisky shops are closed, or converted into coffee houses; the distilleries have, for the most part, ceased to work; and the breweries are barely able to maintain a trade sufficient to prevent entire stoppage. Of the extent of the change, therefore, we have had ample experience; and it is borne out by the assurances of so many who live in towns, as well as in the country, that we can have no hesitation in describing sobriety to be almost universal throughout Ireland.

"We may, perhaps, interest our readers by giving them some details of our visit to Mr. Mathew. The room in which members are received is large, and furnished with a desk and wooden benches. When we entered it, the President' was not there; but there were men and women of all ages, waiting to take the pledge. Among them was a sturdy mountaineer from Kerry; a fine athletic fellow, who had led his 'faction' for a quarter of a century, whose head was scarred in at least a dozen places, and who had been renowned throughout the country for his prowess at every fair within twenty miles of his home. He had long been a member of this society, and had brought a few of his 'friends' to follow his example. He described to us, with natural and forcible eloquence, the effect of temperance in producing peace between man and man, in his own immediate neighbourhood; in terminating the brutal fights between two notorious and numerous factions, the Cooleens and the Lawlors, whose names had figured in every criminal calendar for a century back. 'No matter what was doing, it was left undone,' he said, 'if any one of either party chose to call up the rest. They'd leave the hay half cut, or the oats to be shelled by the four winds of heaven; and, taking the hay fork, the reaping hook, and the scythe in their hands, they'd rush out to massacre each other. Tubs of potheen would be drunk hot from the mountain stills; and then, whooping and hallooing like wild Indians, they'd mingle in the unnatural war of Irishmen against Irishmen. I've known them fight so on the sea shore, that the sea has come in and drowned those that had fallen drunk in the fray. How is it now? At the last fair at Tralee, there wasn't a stick lifted. There was peace between the factions; and the Cooleens and the Lawlors met, for the first time in the memory of man, without laving a dead 'boy' to be carried home to the widow's cabin."

ON THE MEDICINAL LEECH. (Hirudo medicinalis.) Or the utility of the medicinal leech, (Hirudo medicinalis,) nothing need be said;

all are familiar with it, and there are many of our number who have been subjected to its operation. It is one of those creatures, of the instincts and habits of

which man has availed himself for his personal benefit; and thousands are annually collected and distributed throughout the whole of Europe, to be kept in readiness for his service. It is common in many of the still waters of our own island; but is especially abundant in certain districts of France, where many persons make the collecting of it a trade. Well known, however, as the leech is, and acquainted as all are with its powers of drawing blood, there are numbers totally ignorant of its structure and organization, and who therefore look at it with no other interest than that derived from its use: but who, were they to gain even a general knowledge of its anatomy, would perceive with pleasure how admirably it is adapted to the purpose for which it is applied by man; and that though in its natural state, it may never have the opportunity of drawing one drop of blood, how palpably its structure accords with an instinct to satiate itself with blood, whenever an opportunity is presented. It is to this point that our attention is directed. The general figure of the leech need not be described. It belongs to the class annelida, or redblooded worms, whose body, always elongated and destitute of true limbs, consists of a series of rings or segments, often furnished with short spines or bristle-like appendages, available for the purpose of locomotion. The blood circulates through a double system of arteries and veins, and is aerated either in an internal laboratory, or by means of external tuft-like appendages or vascular branchia. Some of the annelida are, however, not only destitute of external branchial tufts, but also of setæ, or spines, on the rings of the body, and such is the leech, placed by Cuvier as a family by itself in the abranchious section ("des abranches sans soies") of the annelida.* The external investment of the leech may be described as a muscular tunic, with a coloured pigment on its surface, the whole being covered with a delicately thin cuticular membrane, lubricated with a mucous fluid, secreted in considerable abundance. It is to the arrangement of the muscular fibres of the investing tissue, which, like the finger of a glove, encloses the internal organs, that the external ringed or annulated character of the body is owing,

The common earth-worm (Lumbricus terrestris) is one of the abranchious annelida with bristles, one of the "abranches sétigères" of Cuvier.

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and upon which its movements, whether | preys; this, at all events, if not absocontractile or expansive, depend. lutely proved, is probable. For a long time, the leech was supposed to be destitute of eyes, but this is ascertained to be erroneous; the existence of such organs has been demonstrated by Professor Carena, in his monograph on the genus Hirudo, in Mém. R. Acad. Sc. Turin, vol. xxv. p. 281. These in the medicinal leech are ten in number; and are seated in a semicircular row upon the sucking surface of the oral disc, where they appear as minute black points, not however to be seen without the aid of a lens. According to Professor Müller, these eyes are of the simplest structure, being merely the expansion of the extremity of minute nervous fibrils, covered by a delicate transparent convex

This muscular tissue is found to consist of three distinct layers of fibres, each layer having its peculiar direction. The outer layer consists of annular fibres, or of fibres forming bands running round transversely to the body of the animal, and very distinguishable. The second layer consists of a system of fibres arranged in a spiral manner, round the animal, but in such directions as to cross each other, while the innermost, or third distinct layer is composed of longitudinal fibres, running in a straight direction from one extremity of the animal to the other. Such, then, is the structure of the muscular tunic of the leech; but at the caudal extremity its fibres enter into the structure of a suck-cornea, derived from the epidermis, and ing disc, and some there assume a ra- lined posteriorly with a layer of black diating, others a circular, course. The pigment, to which their appearance as same observation applies to their ar- black specks is to be attributed. As rangement on the expansive moveable no crystalline lens, nor aqueous, or lips which encircle the oral aperture, vitreous humours for the refraction or and which also form another sucking the condensation of rays of light have disc, capable of being attached to objects been detected, their situation, and the over which the leech is proceeding. simplicity of their structure, prove that These suckers, namely, the caudal and their use is restricted to the close and the oral, are the principal agents of loco- exclusive examination of food or obmotion on solid surfaces; the caudal jects on which the animal is about to sucker, for example, being fixed, the ani-seize, or to which it is about to apply mal elongates its body to the utmost, and then fixes its oral sucker; this done, the caudal sucker is disengaged, the body drawn up, and the sucker fixed again, while the oral sucker is disengaged, the body again elongated, and this sucker once more attached, and so on alternately. By this simple process, the leech can crawl along with considerable expedition, and even proceed up the smooth sides of a glass vessel, or it can there fix itself and rest. This crawling mode of progression is, however, not the only one with which the leech is endowed; it swims both rapidly and gracefully. In the performance of this act, the body assumes the form of a ribband, being both flattened and elongated; and it makes its way through the water by a series of serpentine or undulatory movements, executed with the utmost ease and celerity. With respect to the senses with which the leech may be endowed, there is much to be ascertained; the oral sucker, or lip, evidently enjoys a more refined sense of touch than any other part, and may even appreciate the flavour or the scent of blood, or of the animals on which it

the oral sucker. Of the distinctness of vision resulting from such an apparatus no idea can be formed: it is probably at a low ratio. The mouth (or disc-like lips) of the leech forms, as already stated, an efficient sucker, and, in this respect, may be compared to a cupping glass; but it is one containing lancets for making, when fixed on the skin, three superficial, yet sufficient incisions. Around the oral orifice, which leads into the stomach, are arranged three minute cartilaginous teeth, so situated as to form the three points of a triangle. Each tooth, which is somewhat semicircular in its figure, is surrounded by circular muscular fibres, by which it is acted upon; and its free edge, instead of being smooth, is found, when examined by means of a good microscope, to be serrated, or finely

to

be proved, not only by the refusal of them to bite

*That leeches enjoy the faculty of tasting, seems

the skin, which has been rubbed or anointed with any oleaginous or acrid embrocation, until it be well washed and cleaned; but by their turning away from such a part, without even fixing their oral disc upon it, as if from disgust. It is, moreover, well known, that a little milk, or milk and sugar, smeared on a part which they have refused to bite, will often induce them to attack it eagerly.

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