CHAP. XIV.]

educated classes, as they are called. Long's patients were of the moneyed classes—and his rooms were besieged by ladies and gentlemen who supposed that one particular ointment would cure all their various complaints: they adhered to their young doctor, in the face of all the deaths that were taking place under his treatment; and when he died in 1834, the 'secret' of his ointment was sold for several thousand pounds. In September 1830, an inquest was held on the body of a young lady who was one of the victims of his quackery; and in consequence of the verdict, Long was brought to trial, and convicted of manslaughter. Not the less for this do we find him, the next February, on his trial again for the death of a healthy person, who had applied to him on account of a slight and common ailment, and who died in torture under his treatment in a month's time. On this trial the fact came out that Long was making £12,000 a year. His plea in the present case was, the malice of his enemies, by which he was kept away from his patient in her last moments, when he should have recovered her. The jury, evidently not enlightened enough to see the ignorance shewn in the principle of Long's practice, and naturally impressed by the array of gentry of the highest respectability,' who came forward to vindicate his qualifications, returned, after some delay, a verdict of Not Guilty whereupon 'several elegantly dressed ladies went to the prisoner, and shook him cordially by the hand.' The young man, who may have believed in his own specific, had only three years more in which to torture his patients, and let their flatteries and their guineas flow in upon him; but the spirit of quackery did not die with him, nor the propensity to it in his admirers; the ignorant of the educated classes.' Just at the time when Long was laid in his grave, an innkeeper at York was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for manslaughter of an invalid, by administering the Morrison's Pills which have since sent so many to the churchyard before their time. The thing wanted evidently is such an advance of physiological and medical knowledge as shall exalt that knowledge into real science. While the best medical practice is yet but empirical, there will be unqualified as well as educated empirics; and portrait-painters and innkeepers, if they can but lay hold of specific, may number their patients by thousands.

In the midst of the incendiarism of the Carliles and Cobbetts of the time, the popular respect for and trust in the law was enhanced by some incidents, otherwise purely painful, wherein justice was made to visit persons of 'property and standing,' as if they had had neither property nor standing. The never-ceasing and too just complaint, that the friendless and over-tempted are punished with hardness and indifference, while the well-friended and educated, whose intelligence aggravates their offences, are, somehow or other, almost always let off, had been prevalent, as usual, when Captain Moir-'William Moir, gentleman' -was tried in 1830, for the murder of a man whom he had shot for trespass, very wantonly, and after repeated threats of mischief to his victim. Captain Moir was hanged, as simply as his victim would have

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been if the act of aggression had been reversed. In the same year, a lady was convicted for shoplifting, who actually carried on her person, at the moment of the theft, the sum of £8000 in bank-notes and India bonds. She underwent her punishment. In this case, if insanity had existed, it must have been proved. All parties would have been too happy to admit the plea. It was no doubt one of those cases of strong propensity for which neither our education, law, nor justice makes provision. It is a case which makes the heart bleed; but if such are not allowed for among the poor, who have so little advantage of discipline, they cannot be among the rich, whose sin is in outrage of all restraining influences. The wretched woman of wealth suffered as if she had been a hungry mother, snatching a loaf for famishing children at home. In the next year, a Scotch clergyman, 'minister of a Gothic chapel in Edinburgh, in high repute for his evangelical preaching,' was tried on an extensive indictment for book-stealing, found guilty of eleven acts of theft, and transported for fourteen years. To set against these acts of justicein common phrase-were a few which went as far to weaken popular trust in the law as these to strengthen it. In a very gross case of shoplifting in the autumn of 1832, by 'two young ladies of high respectability,' there was such collusion as caused the escape of the culprits: the father was forewarned of the warrant, that he might not be taken by surprise ;' and so much time was given, that the minds of all the prosecuting parties had changed, and no one would attempt to identify the thieves. Far worse, however, were two cases, which happened near together, of erroneous verdicts and hasty sentences -cases so gross as must have made all the poor in the neighbourhood believe that a criminal trial was a sort of lottery, as they had long concluded the punishment of transportation to be. A man was convicted at Salisbury of threatening a neighbour by letter with a fire on his farm; the judge telling him with severity, that his crime was certainly not mitigated by his denial after such evidence-' evidence which must satisfy every reasonable man ’— and passing on him a sentence of transportation for life. Presently, the prisoner's son came forward, and owned himself the writer of the letter, of which his father had no knowledge whatever. As more letters had been sent to neighbours, the sentenced man was tried on another accusation, which enabled him to bring forward the new evidence of his innocence. He was 'pardoned,' as the insulting phrase is; and the son, a mere youth, transported for seven years. The other case occurred only a few weeks afterwards, and was a very serious one. A receiver of stolen goods was convicted of having stolen them by an act of burglary, and sentenced to death, from which he was saved only by great exertions. It was the manifest insufficiency of the evidence which occasioned the efforts of those who saved him; and the whole affair was a disgrace. While such a transaction as this was stimulating the growing disapprobation of capital punishments, on the ground of the tremendous risk to the innocent which they involve, the worthy magistrates of Inverness were taking another ground, in an application to the lord

advocate. They exhibited their case: that they had discharged their executioner; and that they would be subjected to very serious expense, if a man at present in custody on a charge of murder should be sentenced to be hanged. If this memorial had but been made sufficiently public at the time, who knows but that the abolition of capital punishments might have been much hastened by a general discharge of executioners?

A Chinese advertisement was translated and sent to England at this time which excited a good deal of attention. The steamer King-fa, running between Canton and a northern port, carried cows, a surgeon, a band of music, and had rooms elegantly fitted up for opium-smoking. It was now clear that the eastern seas were to become steam-highways; and it was time that the English were assuming the lead, in this as in other enterprises of world-wide interest. We find therefore trial made at Blackwall, in 1834, of an iron steam-boat, to be used as a towing-vessel on the Ganges; and in the same year, an application from the India merchants to government to establish a regular communication from Malta to Alexandria, in order to facilitate their correspondence with India. In the course of the negotiation, we find that a steamer or a man-of-war was sent from Bombay up the Red Sea 'about once a year;' and their lordships of the Admiralty could not think of going to any expense unless something more was done on the Bombay side. The face of things has changed in the Mediterranean and the eastern seas since that date.

A passion of admiration at the marvels and privileges of railway conveyance runs through the records of this period. We are told of the coaches superseded, of the number of passengers and weight of parcels carried-the speed, the ease, the safety; 'but one fatal accident in eighteen months;' and of a railway opened between Leeds and Selby, in 1834. A singularly interesting passage is found, under the date 1832, in Mr Babbage's Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, wherein we see shadowed forth in one suggestion two of the mightiest enterprises of our time. After indicating the vast increase which might be looked for in epistolary correspondence, if the time and cost of letter-carrying could be reduced, Mr Babbage invites us to imagine a series of high pillars, erected at frequent intervals as nearly as possible in a straight line between two post-townsa wire being carried from post to post, and so fixed as that it might be traversed by a tin cylinder which should carry the letters. The cylinder was to be moved by being attached to a smaller wire-an endless wire which would be wound round a drum by a man placed at each station. We have an anticipation of the convenience of two or three deliveries of letters per day in country-places; of the vast increase of correspondence that would ensue, from the lessening of the cost of conveyance, both in money and time; an exposure of the clumsiness of the then existing method of conveying the mails; and a conception, remarkably expressed, of a possibility of shooting thought through long spaces by wires stretched above the roadside. 'Nor is it impossible,' concludes Mr Babbage, 'that the stretched wire might itself be available for a species of telegraphic com

a near

munication yet more rapid.' This was approach to the machinery, though not glancing at the principle, of the electric telegraph; and it would at that time have startled even Mr Babbage's alert imagination to have known that in fifteen years there would be established, in the broad territories of the United States, a means of communication so rapid as even to invert the order of time, to set at defiance the terrestrial conditions of space and duration; so that, by an electric telegraph between New York and Cincinnati, news is sent of an event which, happening at noon in the one place, is known at five minutes before noon at the other.

One use early made of the invention of waterproof cloth was for diving purposes. In 1832, some expert divers at Yarmouth, the crew of a small cutter there, discovered for themselves, and to their great amazement, that they could carry enormous weights under water, almost without being sensible of them, and perform feats of what would be strength in an atmospheric medium, which they could themselves hardly believe. The diver went down in three dresses, the uppermost one being of India-rubber cloth, with a tube inserted at the back of the neck, through which air was pumped from above to meet the consumption by his lungs. The copper helmet he wore, with its three glass windows, pressed with a weight of 50 lbs. upon his shoulders; and he carried down in bags 120 lbs. of lead; yet he felt perfectly unencumbered as he walked under the green water, and leisurely surveyed the wreck which he had come to pillage. There he discovered that the large iron crow-bar which he took down with him-a tough instrument enough on board the cutter-could be bent by him, on board the wreck, till its ends met. By a set of signals he obtained what he wanted from his comrades overhead; and when they sent him down baskets, he returned them full of wine.-A diver at Portsmouth was, during the same summer, exploring the wreck of the Boyne, which had sunk thirty-seven years before. He was to deliver over the copper he found to the dockyard, and to keep everything else. One part of his treasure was wine-twenty-one bottles of port and claret, from the captain's store. As the bottles, crusted with large barnacles, came up from the deep where they had lain for thirty-seven years, persons were eager to purchase; but the owner refused twenty shillings a bottle, which was offered on deck. The Portsmouth diver wore a lighter dress than the Yarmouth crew. When his simple leather hood and Mackintosh dress were seen, men of enterprise began to think of walking round the coasts of our islands, under the waves, to measure the inequalities of the submarine hills and valleys, picking up, as they roved over hill and dale in the dim green light, the treasures of the wrecks which lie strewn there, from the days of Julius Cæsar to our own time.

Before these adventurers descended into the depths, a philosopher had been on certain heights of our islands, whence he had brought down a discovery which dazzled men's eyes, both literally and metaphorically. Lieutenant Drummond has since been known and honoured in the world of politics; but when he became Lord Althorp's secretary, at the

CHAP. XIV.]

urgent desire of the whole cabinet, he said decidedly and repeatedly that his true vocation was the pursuit of physical science in connection with his profession, and that he should return to it after a certain term of service in political life. He did not live to return to the pursuit of science, but died worn-out in devotedness to Ireland. Before accepting any political office, he was engaged in a trigonometrical survey in Ireland; and, being anxious to obtain as large a base for his triangle as possible, he pondered means of establishing signals between two distant mountain summits. This desire led him to the discovery and use of the brightest light at that time ever knownthe Drummond-light, as it was then called. It was obtained by directing a stream of oxygen, and another of hydrogen, under certain conditions, upon lime. The doubt was whether steadiness and permanence could be insured. No time was lost, however, in attempting practical applications of it to purposes the most vast and the most minute. We find records of trials of new lenses with this light, by which the mariner's star, the beacon, would brighten to an ever-increasing magnitude; and of microscopic application of a light penetrating enough to shew the whole interior organisation of a flea, and of animalcules of the ditch, which presented themselves as transparent monsters of the deep.

Captain Ross and his comrades returned from the North Pole, and landed at Hull in 1833. They had discovered the Gulf of Boothia, and the continent and isthmus of Boothia Felix, and many islands, rivers, and lakes. They brought home also a store of valuable observations, particularly on the magnet. What remained to be discovered in connection with the North-west Passage was now brought within such compass that no one doubted that a few years would witness the completion of the survey.

In the last month of 1833, we find an announcement of an enterprise of a spirited individual, named Perkins, who had expended £100,000 in erecting a cattle-market at Islington, covering 22 acres of ground, and ready to receive 4000 beasts, 40,000 sheep, and calves and pigs in proportion. The projector, and many other persons, were simple enough to believe that the nuisance of Smithfield Market would now be abated; that there would soon be an end of the danger to passengers in London streets from over-driven cattle; and of the pollution of the cattle-market in a crowded district; and of the inevitable cruelty used towards the animals in a space so crowded and inconvenient; and of the badness of the meat, in consequence of the suffering condition of the animals. All this had been true for many years; and it had been represented again and again, and with great urgency, to parliament; but the trustees of various trusts, the inhabitants of Smithfield, and the cattle-salesmen, had always hitherto been too strong to permit a change; and they have been so to this day. It should not be forgotten, however, that as early as 1833, an opportunity was afforded for abating the nuisance of Smithfield Market.

A new choir, of great beauty, was erected in Peterborough Cathedral during this period, and the church was made once more what it was before it was devastated by the puritans. The expense was

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defrayed by a subscription within the diocese, and the work was superintended by the dean, Dr Monk, who had become Bishop of Gloucester before it was finished.

The opening of the new London Bridge by their majesties, in August of 1831, was kept as a holiday throughout London; and the occasion was truly a great one. This was a farewell to the old bridge, with its memories of a thousand years; and here was a far surpassing work, which might carry on the mind to a thousand years more. Here it was, in its strength and grace, bestriding the flood with its five wide elliptical arches, without obstructing the stream; and here it was likely to stand, perhaps, till bridges should be wanted no more. The king was in an enthusiasm; so exhilarating did he find the grandeur of the scene and the beauty of the day. He told the gentlemen of the bridge committee, as he stepped out of his barge, that he was most happy to see them on London Bridge; that it was certainly a most beautiful edifice; and that the spectacle was in every way the grandest and the most delightful that he ever had the pleasure to witness. It was towards the end of 1832 that the last stone of the last arch of old London Bridge dropped into the river; and as the circles on the water were effaced, a historical scroll of many centuries seemed to be closed for

ever.

London University was by this time advancing to a condition to receive its charter; and King's College, London, was in a prosperous state, as to credit, funds, students, and the number of schools in London-now seven-in connection with it. A university being clearly wanted in the north of England, that of Durham was projected, and its plan made known in 1831.

In 1831 took place the first meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science-an institution of the time which, though not involving all the benefit which the sanguine expected from it at first, has yet been the occasion of too many advantages not to be noted in its origin. In a few years it became evident that while the less-qualified members of the scientific world were delighted to run to these meetings, with their notions and their self-importance, and their admiration of the eminent, many of the greatest found it inconvenient, and, from the throng of the idle and unscientific, even irksome to attend; and that a great deal of mere talk, and boast, and quackery, must be put up with ; and especially that once a year was much too often for the convenience of real hard students to leave home for such meetings. But yet it was a noble thing for the wise in various departments of human knowledge to congregate and compare their discoveries and their views, and unite their efforts, and support one another's undertakings, and indicate to governments the scientific aims which it rests with the rulers of the globe to see fulfilled. At a later period it will fall in our way to note the influences and enterprises of this association. Here it is necessary only to record that its origin is referrible to this period.

A statement of suicides in Westminster was drawn up from official documents in 1833, from which some

instructive results were obtained. It appeared that the number of men who destroyed themselves were nearly three to one in comparison with women; a fact which was accounted for by another of great importance that a very large proportion of suicides was occasioned by that state of the brain induced by intoxication. Some surprise was felt at the proof that the smallest number of suicides occurred in the month of November, which had hitherto borne the opprobrium of this kind of slaughter.-A sensible check was, from this time, given to the practice of duelling, by the disgust excited at a fatal duel between Sir John Jeffcott, chief-justice of Sierra Leone, and Dr Hennis of Exeter. Sir J. Jeffcott had received his appointment and knighthood, and was on the eve of embarking for Africa, when some tattling took place at night, over brandy-and-water and cigars, which occasioned a challenge to Dr Hennis. He denied the words imputed to him, but was called by his antagonist 'a calumniating scoundrel,' forced out to fight, in spite of strenuous efforts on the part of friends, and shot dead, at the moment before the departure of his antagonist. Sir J. Jeffcott was tried in his unavoidable absence, and acquitted, as gentlemen always are in duelling cases; but he was necessarily displaced from his judicial post. He was drowned a few months afterwards by the upsetting of a boat off the coast of Africa. The vulgar, brawling character of the whole transaction, and the force put upon Dr Hennis, sickened a multitude with the barbarous character of the ordeal of the duel, who had before regarded it in the light of an older time.

Another transaction between two men, who had not even the ground of friendship for their generosity, deeply touched those hearts which felt most the horror of the Exeter duel. In no crisis of human life are men put more severely to the proof than in shipwreck. The most awful shipwreck of this period, or that which was most generally impressive, was that of the Rothesay Castle, in August 1831. The Rothesay Castle was a battered, leaky old steamer, which plied between Liverpool and Beaumaris; and at this time she had a captain who appears to have been unworthy of the command of any vessel. He started in rough weather, and silenced the remonstrances of all on board who implored him to put into a port of safety. She drifted and went to pieces in the night, from the failure of the coal through her excessive leakage; and all her pleasure-parties, her groups of tourists, her band of music, and her crew, were plunged into the deep at midnight. The captain denied that she was aground, when her cabins were filling with water-swore that there was no dangerhung out no lights-refused to fire a gun, though the lights of Beaumaris were visible in the distance-and was himself one of the first to perish. Only twentytwo persons were saved out of nearly a hundred and fifty who left Liverpool. Two men, strangers to each other, found themselves holding on to the same plank, which, it soon appeared, could support only one. Each desired the other to hold on-the one, because his companion was old; the other, because his companion was young-and they quitted their grasp at the same moment. By extraordinary

accidents both were saved, without the knowledge of either, and they met on shore in great surprise. Few greetings in the course of human life can be so sweet and moving as must have been that of these two heroes. Its contrast with that on the Exeter race-course shews like a glimpse into heaven and hell.

In the summer of 1833, a terrific fire consumed the bonded stores connected with the Dublin customhouse, and occasioned a vast destruction of property; though little in comparison with what might have been, if, as was for some time apprehended, the quays and the shipping had been involved in the conflagration, and if much valuable merchandise had not been stored in fire-proof vaults. The sugar-puncheons flared up like great torches in quick succession; the tallow sent columns of flame up into the night; while fiery floods of whisky rushed over the quay, pouring over the wall into the Liffey, which presented a sheet of blue flame over half its breadth, threatening the coal-vessels that were drawn to the other side. The origin of the fire was never discovered; though large rewards were offered by government and the magistrates, from a suspicion of incendiarism. Men thought that they had now witnessed the most remarkable fire that would be seen in their generation; but they were mistaken; for in the next year, a conflagration occurred in which that of the Dublin custom-house stores was forgotten.

In

In course of centuries, the power of the Commons had increased till their House had become a dignified spectacle in the eyes of the world; yet the members sat, a closely packed assembly of businesslike men, in the old St Stephen's Chapel-a dingy, contracted apartment, whose sides had been drawn in by wainscotting, to hide the pictures of the old Catholic times, and whose height was lessened by a floor above, and a ceiling below, the old ones. such a chamber as this were the British Commons found by wondering strangers till the end of the year 1834. At that time, the tally-room of the exchequer was wanted for the temporary accommodation of the Court of Bankruptcy; and it was necessary to get rid of an accumulation of the old exchequer tallies— about two cart-loads in quantity. These tallies were used for firewood, but this method of clearance was too slow; and there had once been a bonfire of them in Tothill Fields. There was some talk now of burning them in the open air; but the plan was given up, in the fear of alarming the neighbours. The burning was ordered to be done, carefully and gradually, in the stoves of the House of Lords; but the common workmen, to whom the business was intrusted, did it in rashness and hurry, nearly filling the furnaces, and creating a vast blaze, which overheated the flues. Many times in the course of that day-Thursday, October 16-the housekeeper of the House of Lords sent to the men, to complain of the smoke and heat; but they believed in no danger. At four in the afternoon two strangers were admitted to view the House. At that time, the throne could not be seen from the bar; the visitors had to feel the tapestry, to know that it was tapestry-found the heat so stifling in one corner as to be led to examine the floor, when it appeared that the floor-cloth was