termittent fevers. As well might posterity argue, a thousand years hence, that an annual summer pestilence drove their Dandy progenitors to Brighton and Ramsgate, or to the joys of partridge-shooting and the moors, because their scanty coats were of Mr Stultz's cut, and their trimmings and slips from Madame Triaud's shop. It was natural that those who could avoid the fevers of summer should leave the city, the fremum strepitumque Romæ,' of which Horace expresses his detestation, even had they not possessed additional inducements, in the luxuries of their villas, the beauties of the more distant parts of Italy, or that love of a country life which the Romans seem for a long period to have preserved. Those who could not go from home, were of course compelled to remain; and if some thousands of the slaves, artisans, or poorer citizens of Rome, died in the months of August and September, a circumstance so universal and habitual would scarcely excite the remarks of historians; particularly in a population eternally crowded, and perpetually replaced by the influx of inhabitants from all parts.

While the population of the city was as great as it could contain during the times of the Empire, even to a late date, we are also aware, that even that of the Campagna was considerable in the reigns of the Cæsars, since the thirty-one country tribes were dispersed in this district. All this our author considers a proof, not that the country was free from malaria, but that the dress of the inhabitants counteracted its bad effects. As the luxuries and habits of the upper ranks spread to the lower, and then gradually from the city to the country, he imagines the depopulation of the latter commenced, and the complaints of the writers respecting the insalubrity of the former increased. To us, on the contrary, little more appears to be proved by the observations of Horace, Columella, Varro, Strabo, Martial, Seneca, and Galen, than that writers were then more numerous; that the people were more enlightened; and that subjects connected with economy and health, were objects of greater attention to a luxurious people, enjoying leisure, wealth and knowledge, than to their barbarous predecessors, eternally occupied in war, and little concerned about any thing but the recruiting of their armies and the annoyance of all independent states which they could any where reach.

Our opinion respecting the value of the author's historical conclusions is now easily collected; since, even on this point, he has by no means made out a case. We shall soon show, that we do not mean to assert that the salubrity of this part of Italy has not varied; but Signor Brocchi would do well to consider,

whether there were not circumstances in the political condition of ancient Rome which rendered the effects of the malaria less objects of attention, even independently of the causes which we have just stated. These were of a nature to preserve a crowded population in the town, and a busy and numerous one in the country, in spite of a certain portion of disease. Were Egypt what it once was, in government, commerce, arts, and industry, all the plagues to which it is subject would make no sensible impression on the population. It is not from fevers and dysenteries that Northern Africa is cursed, and Carthage a desert, or that Palestine is reduced to one-sixth and less of its former population, Misrule, and its accumulating consequences, will account for these, and far greater revolutions. Austria is the true malaria of Venice-and Turkey is that of Greece.

As little do we think that the medical part of our author's views is well founded. We have already given reasons for doubting that the miasma is received through the skin,—though we are far from meaning to deny that, to a certain degree, warm and woollen clothing, non-conducting coverings, in short, of any kind, are fitted to resist the impressions of many diseases; perhaps, in a degree, even of this one, by its effect on the predisposing causes. We dare not, however, expatiate on these medical details; but we would desire our author to recollect, that the ancient Egyptians, and many of their neighbours, wore linen; that, from time out of mind, the Hindoos and Chinese are clothed in cotton, and the Negroes often in nothing at all; without being from that cause particular sufferers from the peculiar and virulent malarias of their own regions. regions. A greasy Russian boor claims no particular exemption from the agues of the Don and the Crimea.

Signor Brocchi is very severe on those satirical travellers, as he considers them, who occupy themselves in childish declamations on the decay of agriculture, the indolence of the inhabitants, and the defects of the Roman government, and find in these a solution of the difficulties in question. He says, and truly enough, as far as this particular tract goes, that these opinions are refuted by the excellent cultivation of the Alban and Tusculan Hills, which are surrounded by an abandoned and pestiferous plain. Long ago, indeed as long since as the 15th century, laws were enacted to promote agriculture, with the hopes of preventing the increase of the malaria. By a law of Sixtus V, in 1480, it was forbidden to all proprietors, whether lay or ecclesiastic, to prevent their tenants from following a system of agriculture, it having been the practice with many of these to throw their lands into pasture. This law was confirm

ed by the Popes Julius the II., Clement the VII., and Pius V.: and, at a later period, it was recommended to extirpate all brush and underwoods as a means of meliorating the air.

The whole of this question, as far as relates to the present and former state of the Campagna,-to the influence of agriculture on its salubrity,-and to the effects which have been at different times produced by the neglect of agriculture, by regulations respecting it, or by attempts at cultivation and drainage, is, we are well aware, one of great difficulty. Those who have paid the greatest attention to it are by no means agreed; while, whatever the causes may have been, it seems a prevalent opinion, that the country round Rome is, in reality, less salubrious than in ancient times, although, being assuredly drier than in the earliest periods of the city, it is held that it ought to be more healthy. To say no more of Brocchi's peculiar theory respecting dress, we doubt if his reasoning, with respect to the condition of the soil, is correct; and are rather inclined to consider that the land is more productive of miasma, principally because it is less incumbered with lakes, and apparently drier.

We have already attempted to show, that the circumstances under which miasma is produced from certain soils, are very little understood. It appears at times to arise from clear waters, where it would not be suspected; and even from ordinary grass meadows, where nothing like putrefaction exists, In a thousand instances, neither marshes nor wet woods produce it in some cases, it is the produce of peat bogs; in o thers, not. In many places, it is peculiar to salt marshes: in others again, the occasional influx of the sea is a preventive. It sometimes falls with rains and dews, as in Africa; in others, it rises from the ground. The driest east winds waft it from distant regions: the hot steam of the slave coast carries it far out to sea. If in Holland and Batavia, it is the produce of canals; in many parts of Italy, it is generated in dry land. Under such difficulties, if we can prove nothing positive respecting its generation and progress, neither can we form a negative decision. We think it, therefore, very possible, that notwithstanding the differences between the condition of the former and present Roman district, it may actually have been less productive of malaria in ancient times. The pools, or lakes, or marshes, of the Rutuli and Volsci, of the thirty-one rustic classes, and of the Velabra, might easily, for aught we can prove to the contrary by any reasoning or experience, have been more salubrious than the same land in its present state; when, these cavities having been filled up by the gradual increase of their subaqueous soil, or partially drained by artificial means, it retains beneath the surface that water which was once

exposed to view. Nor shall we be surprised if this should in reality be the true solution of all these difficulties. But we must think of drawing this article to a conclusion.

To what other causes but this we are to attribute the rapid progress which the malaria is now annually making through the city, we can scarcely conjecture; unless it may partly be accounted for by the very fact itself, by the depopulation and desertion of certain parts of the town which it is producing. If its progress is resisted by the effects of a dense population, and by the peculiar state of the atmosphere which this produces, it must necessarily gain ground in an accelerating ratio as the inhabitants retire before it. Should it go on long as it is now doing, the time cannot be very far distant when the Eternal City shall be no more; when the modern Babylon, the place of her who sitteth on the Seven Hills, shall be what Babylon the great now is, a den for all unclean and creeping things.

That it is actually so spreading, that it every year reaches some part of Rome where it was before unknown, is certain; while, at the same time, there is a peculiarity in the lines on which it marches, and in the mode of its progress, which the inhabitants have not succeeded in explaining. Appearing to enter by the Porta del Popolo, it reaches to a certain distance along the Corso, the banks of the Tiber, and the west side of the Pincio. Here it creeps along the base of this elevation by the church of the Trinitá de Monti, and thus round the foot of the Quirinal and Viminal Hills to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. In its further progress, it reaches the church of San Pietro in Vencoli, diverging towards the Campo Vaccino, and proceeding onwards to the eastward of the Colosseum. On the east side of the city, it is also entering by the quarter of the Porta Maggiore and that of San Giovanni; occupying, to a very severe degree, the district of St John Lateran, and hold ing its course over the Coelian hill towards the church of St Gregory, where it spreads to the southward of the Palatine, towards the ancient seat of the great Velabrum and the river. Thus we see that its chief source seems to lie to the northward and eastward; or rather, that it is by means of the peculiar property of these winds, that the miasma is conducted. But the political vitality of Rome is far from exhausted; it possesses an elastic force which may long resist destruction. Should that, however, be materially impaired,—should it diminish in a ratio similar to that in which the malaria increases,-it will be in vain that the name of Eternal has been conferred on it; and Rome, the mistress of the world, will at length be blotted out from her place among the nations.

ART. X. Draft of an Act for the better Establishment and Regulation of the Free Grammar School of Sir Andrew Judd, in the Town of Tonbridge, in the County of Kent, and for disposing of the Revenues thereof; with Preliminary Observations and Appendix: Addressed to the County of Kent. By C. R. PRINSEP, M. A. London. Ridgway, 1822.

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UR readers will recollect that, nearly three years ago, we directed their attention to the results of the Inquiry which the Commissioners under Mr Brougham's Act had instituted into the affairs of Tonbridge School. It then appeared very manifest, for the reasons which we stated from the Report, that the Skinners' Company had, for a series of years, appropriated to other uses a large revenue, belonging, of right, to the school: but this position was contested, and the discussion was carried on in the Court of Chancery. Early in 1820, the Vice-Chancellor made a decree against the Company; an appeal was prosecuted to the Lord Chancellor; and, after the fullest hearing, every step of which only threw a stronger light upon the fallacy of the arguments maintained by the Company, the decree was affirmed by his Lordship last Michaelmas term. The result is, that the charity is found to be possessed of between four and five thousand pounds a year of present revenue, certain to be greatly increased upon the falling in of building leases, from which it chiefly arises; and also arrears of post rents, amounting at the least to nearly twenty thousand pounds. The practical question, therefore, which suggests itself upon this case, and to which Mr Prinsep directs his view, is, How this fund shall be applied?

One thing is quite clear-and it is perhaps the only point which will admit of no dispute the funds have so far outgrown their original destination, that they can no longer be applied as the founder intended. The master and usher of the school indeed filed a Bill, the prayer of which was, that the whole revenues of the endowment should be applied to their support, and the repair of the buildings in other words, that one of them should have a sinecure of three thousand a year, and the other a place of one thousand, with almost as little work as he chose to do. But this proposal, Mr Prinsep observes, was 'too preposterous to be entertained for a moment.' Let us here pause to remark, that, absurd as the notion appears to be, it proceeds upon the very same principles which are so pertinaciously clung to by all the defenders of the notorious abuses in grammar school endowments. The vast increase of the revenues,