MISERIES OF SEMI-STAKVATION. 3 



and what a miserable creature do you make him ! 

 Stunted in his physical organisation, his mental pow- 

 ers share in the resulting debility ; and how readily 

 our moral perceptions sympathise with our bodily 

 condition, we all of us occasionally know, when dis- 

 ordered health tries our temper and obscures our judg- 

 ment. We therefore assent to this characteristic de- 

 claration in one of the earliest productions of the 

 benevolent Dr Chalmers : " Let it be remembered that 

 Philosophy is never more usefully, and never more 

 honourably, directed, than when multiplying the stores 

 of human comfort ; than when enlightening the hum- 

 blest departments of industry ; than when she descends 

 to the walks of business, to the dark and dismal recep- 

 tacles of misery; to the hospitals of disease, to the 

 putrid houses of our great cities, where Poverty sits in 

 lonely and ragged wretchedness, agonised with pain, 

 faint with hunger, and shivering in a frail and un- 

 sheltered tenement. Count Eumford deserves the gra- 

 titude of mankind." This panegyric on Count Rumford, 

 better known to the scientific world under his English 

 title of Sir Benjamin Thomson, is abundantly merited. 

 His Essays are full of important experiments in nutri- 

 tion, and from them are derived almost all our so-called 

 novelties in modes of heating and ventilation, as well 

 as in the construction of cooking utensils of every kind. 

 From them the philanthropist will learn with delight how, 

 on New-year's Day, the philosophic Count captured all 

 the swarming beggars of Munich, introduced them into 

 a military workhouse, and soon made them fat, happy, 

 and industrious. From them also the careful housewife 

 will learn with surprise how truly says the poet, 



"Man needs but little here below ; " 



for the Bavarian soldier, who is very fond of eating, 

 and whose situation is as comfortable as that of any 

 soldier in Europe, lives, we are told, on twopence 

 a-day ; so skilled is he in the science of cookery. 



