1830.] 



Domestic and Foreign. 



B5 



is in his own physical soundness. But the 

 truth is, the subject has got to be so enve- 

 loped in technicalities, by the artifices of 

 professional men, that plain persons are de- 

 terred, by a sense not only of the difficulties, 

 but of the presumption, of making any at- 

 tempts to understand as much of themselves, 

 as other people profess exclusively to do. 

 The study of our own frame our brains and 

 our passions through the influences of food, 

 climate, exercise, employment, will, proba- 

 bly, by degrees, come to constitute a lead- 

 ing branch of education or at least the 

 attention will get to be more turned to the 

 subject, and every man will contribute to 

 the general stock, fresh facts from his own 

 idiosyncracies. 



The compilers' ' code of resolutions for 

 declining life,' is excellent, though he may 

 be thought to carry his monitions against 

 excitement to some excess ' except,' says 

 he, ' the reasons for a change be inevitable, 

 live and die in the public profession of the 

 religion in which you were born and bred.' 

 The burden of the song seems to be any 

 tlu'ng for a quiet life or, like Sir Hans 

 Sloane never quarrel with yourself, your 

 wife, or your prince. 



Life on Board of a Man of War, in- 

 cluding a full Account of the Battle of 

 Navarino, by a British Seaman ; 1829. 

 This professes, with all due gravity, to be 

 the genuine narrative of a young sailor, who 

 served his noviciate, before the mast, on 

 board the Genoa, and was present at the 

 battle of Navarino. The volume is dedi- 

 cated to Captain Dickenson, and embracing 

 the full details of the battle, the writer stu- 

 diously arranges his narrative, so as to make 

 each successive incident contribute to the 

 perfect exculpation of the said Captain a 

 very superfluous effort now, and,' at any rate, 

 of no value, unless authenticated. This 

 matter, however, occupies little more than 

 a third of the volume, while the remainder 

 is taken up with the alleged personal ad- 

 ventures of the writer, from his first going 

 on board detailed, professedly, in the be- 

 lief, that no narrative, however faulty, can 

 be uninstructive, which details the trials of 

 an inexperienced youth thrown, by his own 

 caprice, into a state of society entirely new 

 to him ; and especially that whatever tends 

 to illustrate the character, manners, and 

 habits of British sailors, must prove accept- 

 able to the public. The "common par- 

 lance" of sailors is faithfully exhibited, 

 partly in the hope that an exposure of the 

 absurdity inherent in their irreverent words 

 and phrases, " is one of the surest means of 

 their extirpation." 



We quote a morsel for the sake of the 

 concluding remark 



In the cock-pit I heard a weak voice singing the 

 following verse of a sea song : 



" Poor Joe, the marine, was in Portsmouth well 



known, 



No lad in the corps dressed BO smart, 

 In his countenance there ne'er was a frown, 

 And his manliness won every heart." 

 The voice came from a remote corner of th 

 cock-pit, and on going forward, I saw sitting upon 

 the doctor's medicine chest, a marine of the name 

 of Hill. "What," said I, " are you wounded, 

 Hill?" I held up the lantern at the same time t 

 and saw the poor fellow wanted both arms, the 

 one a little above the elbow, and the other a little 

 below the shoulder: "and singing, too," I ex- 

 claimed, "in this state?"" Why," said he, "you 

 know I must learn to sing ballads, and, therefore, 

 I've begun in time ; for d'ye see, since it has 

 pleased God to let the Turks dock r both my fins, 

 I must only thank him that it was not my head." 

 I doubted much that this was an endeavour to 

 re-enact an old story that I had heard years be- 

 fore, and could not help attributing such a piece 

 of wretched affectation to the influence of Dib- 

 din's songs, and of many of the melodramas of 

 our small theatres, which put into the mouths of 

 our sailors so much false heroism and nauseous 

 sentimentalism. 



Studies in Natural History, by William 

 Rhind, of Edinburgh. Here is nothing 

 new ; but striking facts and admitted prin- 

 ciples are skilfully brought together; and 

 though no connected view is aimed at, the 

 whole has an uniform tendency to enlarge 

 the dominions of the naturalist, and con- 

 verge his thoughts to the Author of Nature. 

 The writer describes himself as directing 

 his efforts to excite the student of nature to 

 more expanded investigation, rather than to 

 dive deeper into abstruse points, or specu- 

 late on unexplored subjects. The inevitable 

 effect of a general survey, as he justly re- 

 presents it, is to dispel the perturbed and 

 clouded notions of the " power and wrath 

 and caprice of an unseen, unknown Divinity, 

 and discover to the patient inquirer, a beau- 

 tiful system of order, regularity, and mate- 

 rial harmony the consummate arrangement 

 of an all-powerful, benignant, and merciful 

 God" without conveying the offensive feel- 

 ing, that Mr, Rhind is patronizing the 

 Deity. The author glances over the repro- 

 ductive powers of nature the principles of 

 geology and meteorology the atmosphere 

 and the winds rivers and their formation 

 the ocean and its inhabitants the earth 

 and its vegetables, insects, animals, man, 

 and finally the celestial system moralizing 

 at every turn and topic, very sensibly, if not 

 with much point or novelty ; and making 

 liberal use of Dr. Mason Good and Dr. G. 

 Gregory, and he could scarcely do better. 



Two Funeral Discourses, by John Shep- 

 pard, author of Thoughts on Private De- 

 votion ; 1829. Mr. Sheppard is the au- 

 thor of some publications on devotional sub- 

 jects, and more acceptably of a work on the 

 foreign evidences of the divine origin of 

 Christianity, noticed by ourselves some 

 months ago as a performance of considerable 



