656 
‘4 One-half in the ig a and half i in the sea; ‘ 
But his hair alljbegan | to stiffen— _ 
‘For, when he looked where her feet should be, 
She had no more feet than Miss Biffin ! 
But a scaly tail, of ajdolphin’ $s growth, 
In the dabbling brine did soak : 
At last she opened her pearly mouth 
Like an oyster, and thus she spoke :— 
** You crimpt myjfather, who was a skate ; 
_And my sister you sold—a maid : 
So herejremain for a fishery fate, 
For lost you are, and betrayed.” 
And away she went, with a sea-gull’s stream, 
And a splash of her saucy tail : 
In a moment he lost the silvery gleam 
That shone on her splendid mail. 
, The sun went down with a blood-red flame, 
And the sky grew cloudy and black ; 
_And the tumbling billows, like leap-frog, came 
Each over the other's back. 
And still the waters foamed in, like ale, 
In front, and on either flank ; 
He knew that Goodwin and Co. must fail— 
There was such a run on the bank. 
A little more, and a little more, 
The surges came tumbling in;— 
He sang the Evening’ Hymn twice o’er, 
And thought of every sin. 
Each flounder and plaice lay cold at his heart, 
As cold as his marble slab; 
And he thought he felt, in every part, 
The pincers of scalded crab. 
The squealing lobsters that he had tiga 
And the little potted shrimps, 
All the horny prawns he had ever spate 
Gnawed into his soul, like imps. 
Atlast, his lingering hopes to buoy; 
He saw.a sail and a mast, 
And called ‘* ahoy !’—but it was nota hoy, 
And so the vessel went past. 
And with saucy wing, that flapped in his face, 
The wild bird about him flew, 
With a shrilly scream, that twitted his case,— 
«* Why, thou art.asea-gull, too!” + 
But just as his body was all afloat, 
And the surges above him broke, 
He was saved from the hungry deep by a boat, 
Of Deal (but builded of oak), 
The skipper gave him a dram as he lay, 
And chafed his shivering skin ; 
And the angel returned that was flying away 
With the spirit of Peter Fin. 
Inquiry. concerning Constitutional Irrita- 
tion, by B. Travers, Senior Surgeon to St. 
Thomas’s Hospital, 1826. — Mr. Travers’ 
book concerns a subject which medical men 
consider as very difficult, and one very im- 
perfectly understood. It is an interesting 
subject, and we can give our readers some 
notion of it in a yery few words. If two 
persons are employed in opening a body, 
and both prick their fingers, one shall be 
affected with severe constitutional derange- 
ment, occasionally even to the destruction 
of life,—and the other be totally unaffected. 
Why should one escape, while the other 
suffers from the poison? The answer is— 
Constitutional predisposition—which says 
Monthly Review of Literature, 
EDre. 
xy fi halkictab ow yhat 
nothing for in: what this» predisposition: 
consists, we know nothing: ‘The effect pro 
duced is different from inflammation; as re~ 
peta the local disease—and’ different from 
x: The arm), ne 
te nanel 
difficulty of acoset and, as the.\doctors 
call it, a mortal anxiety, generally with little 
affection of the pulse.” This state, for want 
of a better name, is called “irritation”? Tt 
is supposed by Mr. Travers to consist ‘€s- 
sentially in an impression made “upon the 
brain and neryes, in such a manner as to 
weaken their functions, and thus prevent 
them from supplying the different parts with 
the energy necessary. to. their. vigorous. 
action. This of course is speculation, and 
must go for what it will prove to be worth. 
Mr. Travers has collected numerous exam- 
ples of this disease, and has’ endeavoured 
to make some distinctions, which” will 
scarcely be deemed very satisfactory. The 
yalue of the work consists indisputably i in. 
the mass of facts collected and collated. The 
reasoning upon them is obscure—is. in- 
complete, and avowedly unfinished—as, he 
purposes publishing another ae on 
“ Reflected Irritation.” | 
German Stories, selected from the Works 
of Hoffman, De la Motte Fouqué, Pichler, 
Krase, and others ; by R. P. ante? Esq.; 
1826.—The recent. success of the transla. 
tors of German tales, it might, be expected, 
would be quickly followed by. others. .,. The 
present volumes contain eleven stories, 
taken chiefly from the minor novelists of 
Germany. They are of unequal merit, and 
of very different character—none of them 
without interest, though too much, depend- 
ing upon the complications and, detections 
and reyenans, to suit our taste. - ree 
or four of them the names of the authors 
are not given—they- are known, .y we sup- 
pose—for our ‘anonymous ”. ‘ affectation i is, 
we believe, unknown in Germany ; we 
remember the same concealment in Mr. 
Soane’s collection. It is not every English- 
man who will know the authors by. apie 4 
and we are among those who would, not be 
offended by the information. iq 
Of each of the stories in the three yo- 
lumes before us the translator—who, by 
the way, has executed the labours of, trans- 
lation with great ability—has himself, given 
a brief character in his preface; and after 
running through the. tales ourselves’ with 
no little interest, and. finding’ no».reason 
whatever to dissent from him, ,weepresent 
our readers with his own, judiciousraccount 
of them. hart anal polity 
The first narrative in this collection, “ Matemoi- 
selle de Scuderi,’ is one of the few examples afforded 
by Hoffman of a plain, historical style,’ in opposition 
tothe wildness and bizarrerie in which he usually in- 
dulged. The repulsive. crimes .of Brenvilliass (the 
