MEDICAL JISX. 



determined upon giving him a suc- 

 cessor in the person of Balzac. It 

 is needless to state that the de- 

 lighted author waited not a second 

 summons ; they were forthwith 

 united in wedlock, at her chateau 

 on the Bhine, and a succession of 

 splendid fetes celebrated the auspi- 

 cious event. The story of the mar- 

 riage of Lamartine is also one of 

 romantic interest. The lady, whose 

 maiden name was Birch, was pos- 

 sessed of considerable property, and 

 when past the bloom of youth, 



she became passionately enamoured 

 of the poet, from the perusal of his 

 'Meditations;' for some tune she 

 nursed this sentiment in secret, 

 and being apprised of the embar- 

 rassed state of his affairs, she wrote 

 him, tendering him the bulk of her 

 fortune. Touched with this re- 

 markable proof of her generosity, 

 and supposing it could only be 

 caused by a preference for himself, 

 he at once made an offer of his hand 

 and heart. lie judged rightly, and 

 the poet was promptly accepted." 



MECHANICAL TRIUMPHS, 



Contributing, as they do, to our 

 most immediate and pressing wants 

 appealing to the eye by their 

 magnitude, and often by their gran- 

 deur, and associated in many cases 

 with the warmer impulses of hu- 

 manity and personal safety the 

 labours of the mechanist and engi- 

 neer acquire a contemporary cele- 

 brity, which is not vouchsafed to the 

 results of scientific research, or to 

 the productions of literature and the 

 fine arts. The gigantic steam-vessel, 

 which expedites and facilitates the 

 intercourse of nations the canal, 



which unites two distant seas the 

 bridge and the aqueduct, which span 

 an impassable valley the harbour 

 and the breakwater, which shelter 

 our vessels of peace and of war the 

 railway, which hurries us along on 

 the wings of mechanism, and the 

 light beacon which throws its di- 

 recting beams over the deep ad- 

 dress themselves to the secular in- 

 terests of every individual, and 

 obtain for the engineer who invented 

 or who planned them a high and 

 well-merited popular reputation. 

 (Macaulay.) 



MEDICAL MEN; 



HARVEY. 



After Harvey had made the great 

 discovery of the circulation of the 

 blood, he durst not for many years 

 even drop a hint upon the subject in 

 his comparatively private lectures, 

 and it was not until nearly thirty 

 years had elapsed that he ventured 

 to publish to the world, not in his 

 own country, but at Frankfort, the 

 results of his experiments. And then 

 nothing could exceed the contempt 

 and ridicule with which it was re- 

 ceived. Had he lived in a country 

 unblessed with the light of the Ee- 



formation, he would probably have 

 shai'ed the fate of Galileo. As it 

 was, he was accused of propagating 

 doctrines tending to subvert the 

 authority of Holy Scripture; the 

 epithet circulator, in its Latin in- 

 vidious signification (quack), was 

 applied to him ; it was given out 

 that he was " crack-brained,' 1 and 

 his practice as a physician sensibly 

 declined. In a quarter of a cen- 

 tury more his system was re- 

 ceived in all the universities of 

 the world, and Harvey lived to 

 enjoy the reputation he so justly 

 merited. 





