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is consequently subjected to a painful and tedious course of mercury, for the purpose of eliminating from the system a supposed poison.

The New-York bills of mortality for July contain the following deaths from different diseases.

Abscess, 3; Apoplexy, S; Asthenia, 1; Cancer, 1; Cholera, 15; Colic 2; Consumption, 47; Convulsions, 18; Debility, 1; Diarrhea, 7; Dropsy, 6; Dropsy in the head, 5; Drowned, 5; Dysentery, 13; Fever, 4; Bilious Fever, 1; Inflammatory Fever, 1; Remittent Fever, 2; Typhous Fever, 8; Gravel, 1; Gout, 2; Hæmorrhage, 1; Hives, 4; Jaundice, 2; Inflammation of the Bowels, 8; Inflammation of the Brain, 1; Inflammation of the Chest, 10; Inflammation of the Liver, 5; Intemperance, 2; Locked-jaw, 2; Measles, 1; Marasmus, 4; Mortification, 2; Nervous Diseases, 1 ; Old Age, 6; Palsy, 1; Peripneumony, 1; Pleurisy, 1; Quinsy, 2; Rupture of the Brain, 1;

Scrophula, 1; Sprue, 4; Still Born, 9;
Sudden Death, 1; Suicide, 2; Syphilis,
1; Teething, 5; Ulcer, 3 ; Casualty, S.—
Total 227.

Of whom there died 78 of and under the age of 1 year; 25 between 1 and 2 years; 11 between 2 and 5; 10 between 5 and 10; 15 between 10 and 20; 22 between 20 and 30; 20 between 30 and 40; 23 between 40 and 50; 12 between 50 and 60; 7 between 60 and 70; 6 between 70 and 80; 4 between 80 and 90; 1 between 90 and 100.

It will be seen from this account of deaths, that the month of July has been particularly fatal to children under the age of two years. The number that has died amounts to more than two fifths of the total of deaths of all ages. It is from the great mortality among this class, therefore, that has arisen the numerical augmentation of deaths for this month.

JACOB DYCKMAN, M. D. New-York, July 31, 1817.

ART. 17. CABINET OF VARIETIES.

STEAM BOATS.

pounds on the square inch, and then with OBERT VAUX, Esq. chairman of a force of fifteen pounds per square inch, Rue Committee of the select and com- If it stands this trial, it may reasonably be

mon coun eil of Philadelphia, having addressed a circular on the subject of steam boats to the Corporation of this City, the consideration of it was referred to Samuel Akerly, M. D. T. H. Smith, John Remmey, J. Warren Brackett, and Arthur Burtis, Es qrs. composing the Committee of Arts and Sciences, who made a Report approving of the recommendations therein contained. These recommendations

were:

"First, To adopt and enforce the following regulation, viz. allowing every captain, or owner, to navigate his vessel with steam raised to whatever temperature he thinks most expedient for his own purposes, he should be compelled to permit inspectors, appointed by law, once in every month to prove the strength of his boilers by loading them for the purpose of ascertaining their strength; first with double, and afterwards with once and a half the force of the Steam he proposes permanently to use, by filling them with water, and loading a pipe with the weight necessary to give to the boiler the required pressure. This can be conveniently managed by pressure on Bramah's principle, and need not occupy an hour's time. Thus, if the captain proposes to work with Steam pressing with a force of ten pounds on the square inch, let the boiler be tried with a pressure of twenty

presumed to bear the required pressure
of ten pounds per square inch until the
next monthly period of trial appointed by
law. To make it sure that the Engine
shall not be worked in any intermediate
time, by means of steam affording a high-
er pressure than that required, let a sepa-
rate safety valve be provided, and kept
locked up in a box connected with the
Steam Engine Apparatus, of which box
the Inspector appointed by law ought to
be permitted and required to keep the
key, which box should not be opened till
the next period of inspection.
safety valve should be regulated to the
pressure required, and at which the Steam
Engine is to be actually worked. So that
however high the common exposed safe-
ty valve may be loaded by those who
work the engine, the safety valve locked
up, shall effectually prevent the use of any
higher pressure than that permitted.

This

A second improvement would be, to separate the Steam Engine Apparatus by strong partitions erected between this and the part of the vessel occupied by the passengers; which partitions should be so constructed as to be decidedly the strongest part exposed to explosion, should such an event take place. Hence the planking of the sides of the vessel near to the Steam Engine Apparatus, and the part of the deck that covers it, should be pur

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posely made somewhat weaker than the partitions, and more liable to be torn or blown away by an explosion, which in such case could not affect the passengers." In the opinion of the Committee such regulations, and nothing short of them, would be efficacious in preventing accidents growing out of the disposition of indiscreet men to accelerate their boats, at any hazard, by adding weights to their safety valves. The Committee condemn the use of cast iron boilers, and in general all the departures from Mr. Fulton's system which have been introduced under the name of improvements. They attest the safety of boats on Fulton's contruction, under such judicious management as has been exhibited by those plying in the North and East rivers. The Corporation not having power to appoint inspectors, the Committee suggest the propriety of applying to the legislature for such authority.

SOUTHEY THE LAUREATE.

The recent publication of a juvenile performance of this gentleman, under the title of Wat Tyler, has given rise to considerable discussion, in England, in regard to his early political principles and Conduct. It seems that whilst at Oxford, in 1792-93, he imbibed the revolutionary spirit, which at that period raged at its height in Europe, and associated himself with some of his collegiate friends in an enterprise characteristic of the times. Mr. Southey, and his fellow commoners, Mr. S. T. Coleridge, and Mr. Lovell, having allied themselves by the bond of fraternization, resolved to emigrate to "America, and to found a colony on the true principles of liberty and equality, on the banks of the Susquehannah. In this Arcadia, all property was to be in common, and all the dreams of perfectibility were to be realized. To carry this project into execution, they actually left college. Other youths of the same standing were animated by a similar ardour. Among those who proposed to accompany the three friends, were a Mr. Allen, and Mr. Burnett, author of the history of Poland. One obstacle was in the way. Southey had fallen in love with a Miss Fricker, he could not prevail with himself to leave her, nor could he hope to persuade her to forsake her family, to share in his romantic expedition. But to make every thing eary, Coleridge and Lovell readily undertook to marry her two sisters,--and their mother, who was a widow, could of course have no reasonable objection to following her children. This scheme so far as concerns the marriages, was actually carried into ef

fect. But the Rev. Mr. Hill, Mr. Southey's maternal uncle, interposing, defeated the voyage. Mr. Southey resides in the romantic vicinity of Keswick, in Cumberland. The house is divided in the centre-one half is occupied by Mr. Southey and his family, the other by Mrs. Coleridge, (sister to Mrs. Southey,) and her two sons; and Mrs. Lovell, the third sister, whose husband is dead, is an inmate of Mr. Southey's. This gentleman is represented as remarkably amiable in private life. His attainments as a poet and a scholar are well known. He is understood to be now engaged in several literary compositions. Among them is an Epic, the hero of which, is a member of the Society of Friends! It is said that he makes it a rule to write 40 lines daily before breakfast. Such idle stories, however, are not to be heeded. Yet we are not without apprehensions of his bringing himself too soon again before the public. He has written already too much for his reputation. Had he produced no poem but Roderick,his fame would have been more enviable.

TO READERS.

E.

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Page 359, col. 1, line 15, for Striatule read Striatule.

AMERICAN MONTHLY MAGAZINE

AND

CRITICAL REVIEW.

No. VI......VOL. I.

OCTOBER, 1817.

The Speeches of Charles Phillips, Esq. delivered at the Bar, and on various public casions, in Ireland and England. Edited by himself. New-York. 8vo. pp. 203. Kirk & Mercein.

AFTER having complained of the un

fairness of reviewers, in criticising a surreptitious publication of his speeches, Mr. Phillips has thought fit to vindicate his reputation and furnish an authentic criterion for estimating his merits, by editing his Speeches himself. In this edition, then, we may look for the measure of his mind and the standard of his desert, without rendering ourselves liable to the charge of being in haste to judge, thereby proving ourselves anxious to condemn. We have waited until the giant has buckled on his armour,-until, with his breast-plate fitted, his sword upon his thigh, and his shield borne before him, he has deliberately come forward, and with vaunting words, offered himself to battle;-and now, having measured his stature as well as we might for the glitter of his harness and the terror of the ranks embattled in his cause, we venture, though haply with only a sling and stone, to question his claims, not fearing his bulk. We do not, however, wish to advance with an acrimonious spirit, nor proceed to the length of slaying him outright and cutting off his head, even if our arm were strong enough and our aim unerring; we only wish,-dropping the allusion, and speaking in the plain way to which we are most used, to examine with candour, and declare our opinions temperately, but plainly.

We are ready to admit the correctness of the remark made by Mr. Finlay, who appears in the preface as the friend and apologist of Mr. Phillips, "that some defects are essential to such, and so much labour." Doubtless it would be unfair to require of an orator as much accuracy of syntax, and as complete a developeVOL. NO. VI

ment of his argument, in extemporaneous harangues as in the more leisurely and careful productions of the closet, though most, if not all, the defects attributable to this cause, he might very lawfully correct, if he had the sagacity to detect them, while arranging them for the press. But it is not on account of their occasional defects, whether avoidable. or not, that we object to these speeches; nor is it because Mr. Phillips has failed in the style of eloquence which he has adopted, that we cannot persuade our selves to become his admirers; we dislike the whole system of rhetoric on which they are constructed, and whatever of pleasure we have experienced in the perusal of them has been produced by the general character of the sentiments they contain, and the general tone of feeling in which they are uttered, not by the style in which they are set forth, or by the flights and figures in which they so much abound. Or if we have been gratified at any time with the diction of these speeches, it has been when the ora tor least endeavoured to soar, or when he has indulged, as he has at times, with some felicity, his humorous vein. But these instances are rare, particularly of the former sort. The style is almost uniformly turgid and ambitious, not only so as to be altogether beyond nature, but so as often to become absolute bombast of the most frigid and unintelligible kind. In many places, in the course of the volume, whole sentences, we had almost said whole pages, have exactly that sort of rhythm which constitutes what is commonly called "prose run mad," and if they were divided off into lines like poetry, each one beginning with

F

a capital letter, they would make, so far as the measure might be concerned, very tolerable blank verse. Now we are aware that harsh and ragged sentences do not constitute good prose, any more than simply the requisite number of feet and a jingle at the end of the lines, if it be rhyme, make good versification;-we know there is a melody of prose as well as of verse, but it certainly does not consist in eternally balancing clauses and poising one half of a sentence against the other. The melody, which is so charming in the sentences of those writers who have acquired the authority of standards, will be found, upon examination, to have been produced by words selected, not for their length, but for the ease with which they may be uttered, and arranged, not with a regular return of the same movement, but in such a way as that the organs of speech shall take them up one after another without effort. The most approved writers, too, have ever avoided sameness in the length and number of the clauses and general structure of their periods, and are free from mannerism. Their style is apparently most easy to imitate, because so natural; but, in fact, most difficult to attain, on account of the purity and propriety of the language, and the perpetual, though delicately marked variety of the sentences. But Mr. Phillips's sentences seem all to have been cast after a pattern, they are so uniformly alike in structure and movement. Besides, he often neglects propriety for sound, and sacrifices meaning for the sake of a swelling close. His sentences remind one of the middle style of gardening, which instead of exhibiting "a happy rural seat of various view," paraded its enclosures laid out with tiresome uniformity, where " grove nodded at grove" and "each alley had a brother." And the worst of it is, that this mannerism of Mr. Phillips is not relieved by any profound or striking thoughts, by new views of old principles, recommending them by the power of illustration, or any original contributions of ideas. His ideas are generally commonplace, and the imagination employed in attempting to impress them, is extravagant and rambling, rather than opulent and felicitous, and prurient more than vigorous and fine. Be cause he flies a great deal it is no proof that he is an eagle.

Mr. Phillips's style abounds in affectations and prettinesses, he is very fond of alliteration, and seems to take a pleasure in combinations of words that jingle prettily on the ear. There is another

habit of his which is very bad, both because it argues an incorrect taste, and because it often renders the meaning doubtful. It is that of accumulating in the same sentence a great many short antitheses, and almost universally omitting the object after the verb, in which he seldom exhibits any niceness of discrimination, whilst he leaves the idea loose and undefined. He is very fond, besides his regular antitheses, of a little pretty kind of paradox, in a particular manner of using adjectives and verbs, as for example, "degrading advantages," "outlawed into eminence," and "fetter into fame," and this "literally," "bliss would be joyless," and many instances of a similar kind, which we have not time to enumerate. His similes and comparisons are very often absolute contradictions, or entirely without meaning. In a paroxysm of christian charity and toleration, he thus speaks of the Roman church:"That venerable fabric which has stood for ages, splendid and immutable; which time could not crumble nor persecutions shake, nor revolutions change; which has stood amongst us like some stupendous and majestic Apennine, the earth rocking at its feet, and the heavens roaring round its head, firmly balanced on the base of its eternity; the relic of what was; the solemn and sublime memento of what might be." If this is not rant and nonsense we do not know what is. In the first place it is not true that the Roman Church has stood thus immutable; and in the next place there does appear to be some trifling repugnance between the idea of so huge an establishment which has been so long standing-not on its base, but the eternity of its base, and that of the same establishment being a mere relic of what was, and memento of what must be. He says, also, that he would allow religion "no sustenance but the tears that are exhaled and embellished by the sunbeam." Now this is certainly nonsense.

Speaking of the corruption of the court and the danger of bringing religion into temptation by contact with it, he says: "It directly violates his special mandate, who took his birth from the manger, and his disciples from the fishing boat." Here, for the sake of preserving the pretty balance of the sentence, Mr. Phillips has violated sense as well as taste; the use of "from," in the first instance is absurd, and even if it were not, it is nothing but affectation to use, as Mr. Phillips so often does, the same form of expression and the same preposition to signify two relations so very different as

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are the relations signified by the two froms. The poor old Pope, too, has been made, not an Apennine, but an Ararat, and in the very incarceration of his confinement, to make a humble attempt at an imitation, that is to say, while he was "mid the damps of the dungeon," he" towered sublime like the last mountain in the deluge, majestic not less in his elevation, than in his solitude, immutable amid change, magnificent amid ruin, the last remnant of earth's beauty, the last resting-place of heaven's light." Now if Pius VII. had, amid the turmoil of revolution and war, sustained his authority, and, by the extent of his power and influence, been enabled to yield protection to those, who might flee to him, the comparison might have been proper enough, in point of fact; but to apply it to one who was completely reduced,-overwhelmed, among the first, by the surging billows of revolution,-whose power became "less than nothing and vanity," is to make an application, which either contradicts history, or has no meaning. Besides, if it were figuratively true, it is not well said. To say of a mountain, that it is majestic not less in his elevation, than in his solitude," is to misplace words, and wholly destroy the force of the illustration. Elevation, is the universal attribute of mountains; solitude, is an adventitious one: "elevation," and "solitude," therefore, should change place, in the comparison, for it could not have been the design of the author, to fix attention chiefly on what is common to all mountains, at least all that we have seen, and neglect the very quality, which gives individuality and force to the comparison. But when Mr. Phillips starts a comparison, he immediately loses himself among the new images that come associated with that which first furnished the resemblance, and he dashes through the description of the whole heterogeneous train, with the eagerness of a boy, who, sent on an errand, turns aside to chase butterflies, entirely forgetting that the object of a comparison is simply to illustrate or exemplify, not to furnish a topographical account of the object from which it is drawn, or give a history of all the author or speaker may know concerning it. In reading these speeches, the following lines from the Essay on Criticism have often come to our recollection, and though we would soften a little the application of the first couplet, yet we know not where the remaining lines could be more appositely exemplified than in the volume before us.

Words are like leaves; and where they most
abound,
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
Its gaudy colours spreads on every place;
The face of nature we no more survey,

All glares alike without distinction gay.

We do not deny Mr. Phillips talents, nor his speeches argument, but he sometimes certainly forgets the decorum of prose, and the restraints of good sense, and indulges himself in a strain of ranting bombast, which is no otherwise prose, than in not being poetry, and is so empty of meaning, as, in our view, to degrade his subject, and bring himself into ridicule. He is much fonder of pretty turns of phrase, and that delectable sort of sentiment and language that belong to lisping ladies, who write love stories, than becomes the man who is engaged in the support of civil rights, and by whom "the violated law speaks out its thunder;" or, than consists with the dignity of one, who undertakes to vindicate the rights of a nation, and deter by his eloquence, the encroachments of power. Among the fopperies in which the style of Mr. Phillips abounds, are the use of the possessive case, with its governing noun, instead of using the preposition "of," the perpetual and nauseating use of alliterations, and the use of words, ending in "less;" of the latter, if he cannot find any, he makes them. Thus, these speeches are full of such phrases as "world's vanity," "world's decoration," "world's wealth," "world's frown," " friend's perfidy," "nature's loveliness,” “heaven's melody," "altar's pledge," "world's chivalry." His alliterations are innumerable: we will quote a few. "The venal and the vulgar and the vile;" "the merciless murderer, may have manliness to plead;" "shame, sin, and sorrow;" "the frightful form of vice, phantom of infirmity" "though all that the venom of a venal turpitude could pour upon the patriot, must with their alternate apparition, afflict, affright, and," &c.; "in solitude a solace;" "glorying in the garland that only decorates him for death;" and these are not the thousandth part of them. Of words ending in "less," we have store, some of which are erroneously applied, and others are fresh from Mr. Phillips's mint, to the introduction of which into the republic of letters, as much resistance ought to be made, as was made to the introduction of Wood's half-pence, into Ireland, and for a similar reason, both are base, and destitute of the genuine stamp that should entitle them to universal circulation. We have in one place, one aftør

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