656 Monthly Review of Literature. 



with those of the British metropolis, we feel that we can scarcely trust our- 

 selves to speak with confidence of Dr. Hooper as a professional writer. He 

 does not speak as a man of authority and as a practitioner having great power 

 over the maladies which surround him. We suspect that he possessed not 

 the advantage of seeing much of what in this country we are apt to call active 

 practice during the period of his education. We can scarcely suppose that a 

 system of treatment which would prove exceedingly and almost uniformly in- 

 efficient for the subduction of certain formidable diseases in this country could 

 be generally depended upon for their successful application in the correspond- 

 ing maladies of Jersey. These remarks, it should be observed, are made in 

 utter personal ignorance of the climate and diseases of that interesting island ; 

 and we close our notice of Dr. Hooper's publication with our sincere recom- 

 mendation of its less professional contents to general perusal, without pre- 

 suming on our right absolutely to disparage the somewhat twaddling contents 

 of the fifth chapter. 



The sixth and last chapter consists of a few general statements, to6 few and 

 too general to be of much use, on the remedial properties of the climate of 

 Jersey. 



MISCELLANEOUS. 



Bertrand, a Tragedy. By S. B. Harper, Esq. 8vo. Fraser. 



IT has seldom been our lot to peruse an imaginative production in which un- 

 questionable beauties and the grossest defects and deformities are so thickly 

 commingled. The author has yet much to study ; and it would have been 

 well if he had submitted his tragedy to the hand of some private and friendly 

 critic, ere he had ventured to encounter a public ordeal. We have said that 

 ' Bertrand ' contains unquestionable beauties ; its author has a rich and rather 

 exuberant fancy, nor is he deficient in the poetical imagination of his charac- 

 ters. Indeed, with the indispensable requisites for successful tragic composi- 

 tion he is better provided than most of his competitors ; and it rests with him 

 to make himself in all respects what he aspires to, by that unsparing lima 

 labor, which is quite necessary to make a finished literary performance. We 

 object very much to the use of coined words ; for they are scarcely endurable 

 even from a Wordsworth or a Coleridge, much less from a very young as- 

 pirant ; and we may also hint at various grammatical solecisms that are to be 

 found in it ; but the introduction of gross and disgusting images is a more 

 serious charge, and we must find room for one at least out of many extracts 

 that might be made in support of it. In it there is nonsense as well as gross- 

 ness : 



How's this, Sir, What doth bring to such a spot 



Such as thy dress proclaims thee ? Why these foot-prints 



Stamped on the thread-bare soil ? Whither, my lord, 



Are fled thy comrades ? Why, the filthy soil, 



Which battens on its browser's excrement, 



Disgorges up the whereabouts of treachery, 



Finds voice and articleth, Traitors meet here 1 



Having given an extract to prove the defects of Bertrand, it is only fair that 

 we should cite a passage that shall convince our readers as well as ourselves, 

 that the work contains real beauties. It shall be taken from the part of 

 Mariana the heroine, a warm-hearted and deeply-impassioned Spanish lady, 

 one of the best drawn characters in the piece, and with this we must take our 

 leave of the author, wishing him all the success which his poetic talents de- 

 serve in the high and ambitious walk that he has chosen. 

 Enter MARIANA in great terror. 



MARIANA. 



Oh, brother dear brother ! my dearest love, 

 Save one ! oh, good, kind Lopez ! That choice one, 



