84 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[JAN. 



of shifting. Here and there probably sticking 

 at nothing he has made a happy hit in con- 

 versation where matters seldom go beyond 

 a retort, and this occasional success has, in 

 an evil hour, betrayed him into attempting 

 the ludicrous upon paper, and perpetuating 

 his fooleries through three volumes of foolscap, 

 of which if he be not seared and scarred to 

 insensibility, he must by this time be tho- 

 roughly ashamed. He has heard something 

 of indefinite improvements in science, and 

 boundless expectations in practice and of 

 the apprehensions of some from the extension 

 of knowledge among mechanics and the poor ; 

 and he has no other notion of ridiciding the 

 one, than by talking of stage balloons, and 

 travelling houses, and cannon-shot posts, and 

 tunnels under the Atlantic ; and of the other 

 than by representing cooks, and scullions, 

 and grooms, as universal linguists and phi- 

 losophers. 



To analyse the paltry volumes is beyond 

 the patience of mortality. But here is a 

 glimpse. The chronology of England is ad- 

 vanced to the year 2126, at which epoch its 

 government has arrived at despotism, and its 

 religion settled quietly down into Catholicism. 

 The throne is accessible only to women, and 

 the queen is not allowed to marry. Two 

 famiLes are introduced, one of them the 

 duke's, allied to the possessor of the crown, 

 the other, the knight's, connected by friend, 

 ship and a project of intermarriages. The 

 duke has two daughters, and the knight two 

 sons. Of the knight's sons, one is a soldier, 

 a conqueror, and the favourite of the queen ; 

 the other a philosopher though philosophy 

 has long been out of fashion among the upper 

 classes, being become the common possession 

 of the lowest canaille. This youth has a sud- 

 den passion for insti uting inquiries into the 

 reali ty of the union of soul and body, and his 

 tutor, the representative of philosophy, in its 

 loftiest aspirations, encourages him in his 

 projects. The philosopher's opinion is, that 

 organization is all in all set it in motion 

 and you have life. If a body, therefore, has 

 been dead thousands of years, and the orga- 

 nisation undestroyed, life may be restored. 

 If a sound mummy, therefore, could be 

 found, the experiment might be made easily 

 and successfully he has a galvanic battery 

 of fifcy-surgeon power. The resolution is 

 accordingly taken to visit the pyramids, and 

 practice on the body of Cheops because the 

 Egyptian kings were known not to have been 

 eviscerated. The doctor produces a bottle of 

 caoutchouc, which he expands to the size of 

 a balloon balloons were as common as stage 

 coaches, but the doctor had pocket-machinery 

 of all sorts and away they go, with a bag of 

 their own wind too. Arrived at the tomb of 

 Cheops, the battery is forthwith applied, and 

 the mummy starts into life frightens the 

 doctor to death breaks from the pyramid 

 leaps into the balloon, and reaches London at 

 the moment of some grand festival, when the 

 air is full of balloons dashes in amongst 



them, spreads universal dismay, and then 

 alights in perfect safety. But now, what is 

 to be done with the mummy ? Why intrigues 

 are concocting at court the queen is poi- 

 soned the two cousins of the duke's family 

 are rival candidates for the throne one is 

 chosen and the other immediately cabals . 

 jealousies, treacheries, rebellions, murders, 

 follow thick and threefold and in all and 

 every thing is Cheops the prime agent, behind 

 the curtain. He is invested with infernal 

 powers the juggling fiend that lures only 

 to betray and he does delude and betray all 

 parties by turns. In the meanwhile the doc- 

 tor and his pupil escape from Egypt with dif- 

 ficulty, and arriving in Spain, they join the 

 king of Ireland a great conqueror an Alex- 

 ander and Orlando in one who is besieging 

 and battling without any object but the mere 

 fun of encountering perils. The doctor gets 

 into numerous scrapes, and narrowly escapes 

 broiling a new lady is introduced for special 

 purposes and the young philosopher rescues 

 the king from destruction, and is himself res- 

 cued by him and all this over and over again 

 and Cheops as busy with every body's con- 

 cerns here, as he is at the same moment, in 

 England. Matters being settled at last in 

 Spain, the king, accompanied by his new 

 friends, sets out for Ireland, through the tun- 

 nel, and meets a deputation from the exiled 

 queen of England, whose cause he imme- 

 diately adopts and English affairs come 

 again upon the stage. But our patience fails. 



A Practical Treatise on Architectural 

 Jurisprudence, by James Elmes, M.R.I. A. y 

 Architect. 1827 The respectable compiler 

 of this volume has spared no pains to accom- 

 plish his purpose that of producing not pre- 

 cisely a book of reference though the work 

 will itself frequently furnish the most satis- 

 factory information but one which will at 

 least tell us, where to refer for farther intelli- 

 gence on the actual state of the law relative 

 to buildings, private and public the code or 

 digest, of, as he somewhat quaintly phrases 

 it, architectural jurisprudence. The sub- 

 stance is thrown into alphabetical form, and 

 under the name of titles is given the several 

 subjects of which he has to speak supporting 

 his statements very carefully by a reference to 

 the best authorities, and the most recent de- 

 cisions of the courts. The whole is prefixed 

 by a sort of historical sketch of the subject 

 from the days of Moses, and pursuing it 

 through the Roman history to our own times 

 enlarging on matters more particularly rela- 

 tive to ecclesiastical buildings ; adding, 

 moreover, an account, not of the " provin- 

 cial constitutions" themselves, but of the au- 

 thors of them, the fourteen archbishops from 

 Langtonto Chicheley, who each of them, more 

 or less, contributed to their construction. 



The author labours hard, and very unne- 

 cessarily, to justify his opinion, that archi- 

 tects should know something of the rules of 

 law, as well as those of architecture. Sir 



