with facility over the ground; and if he does not supply much amusement, he has taken care not to produce ennui. Mr. Worsley's tale, as far as it respects himself, is rather melancholy; yet, if we peruse the statement of his case with gravity, we cannot resist a smile at some of his periods. Not having visited France in the character of an idle traveller, but for the purpose of devoting himself to the stationary and patience trying situation of a school-master, (in which capacity he had there figured soon after the Revolution,) he was at first encouraged by his friends to believe that the decree issued against the English, at the commencement of hostilities, could not be extended to him. He soon found, however, notwithstanding the French Government had professed to patronize all institutions for education, that he was included with his countrymen in the common arrest, and that his reliance on its generosity was productive of serious embarrassments. According to the advice of his friends, he removed from Dunkirk, where he was settled at the breaking out of the war, to Ardres, an inland town; in which, for the small sum of twelve pounds per annum, he hired a ci-devant abbaye for his new seminary, and obtained numerous pupils: but he was obliged to quit the place, and to repair to Valenciennes. In consequence of a letter from the grand judge, declaring that it was not the intention of Government to disturb the English settlers, he was allowed to return, and his boarders re-occupied the abbaye; yet at the end of three weeks, an absolute order arrived for his being included in the number of British hostages, and conveyed to the depôt. The decree was then executed on him with some rigour. All hope of prosecuting his plan having now vanished, Mr. W. directed the public sale of his effects; and having obtained a passport for the department of Jemappes, he went to Mons. Here he was suddenly arrested, conducted to the prison of the town, and afterward hurried away to Verdun, without being permitted to take leave of his family or prepare for the journey. On this occasion,' he tells us, for the first time in his life, he found himself completely unmanned' but, he adds, the recollection of the virtue and force of fortitude soon restored him to himself.' Mr. W. indeed stood in need not merely of the recollection of fortitude, but of fortitude itself, to support him at this season; for it was not till after five days, by sharp marches and at the expence not only of the moisture of his joints, but also of the skin of his feet, and of the hair of his head, which afterward fell thick around him, that he arrived at the destined post.' F 4 Mr. : Mr. Worsley confirms Mr. Forbes's account of the mild treatment of the English at Verdun; and he mentions in terms of commendation the conduct of General Wirion and Major Courcelles, the one at the head of the gendarmerie stationed at Verdun, and the other the commandant of the town. expiration of three months, he was allowed to return to Mons At the but here he was again arrested; after which he considered himself as released from his parole, and determined on taking the first opportunity of making his escape. This scheme he soon effected, though not without the loss of his property, and reached Holland; where he experienced the kind assistance of the people, sailed from Embden with his wife and family, and arrived safely at Gravesend. This brief history of the wrongs which the author endured, from a government in whose liberal professions he had confided, is followed by the account of the State of France promised in the title. Mr. W.'s means of information were not of an uncommon sort. 'He usually went on foot, or in the public di ligences, and sought every occasion on the road of obtaining a knowlege of the real feelings and sentiments of the people.' In another part of the volume, he tells us that he received some of his intelligence from the gendarme who conducted him to Verdun. On this authority he undertakes a delineation of the manners and customs of the inhabitants, of their sentiments respecting government, and of the minutiae of family life. Most of Mr. W.'s statements confirm the reports of prior travellers, and some are new: but what reliance is to be placed on them we shall not venture to pronounce. That the French are ignorant of the meaning of the word Comfort; that men of low birth have been raised to eminence by the Revolution; that the woods were in a great measure destroyed, and public property much pillaged, &c. are particulars which have been often related; and we are not in need of being told in what manner the conscription operates in recruiting the army, nor in what way the guillotine acts in cutting off heads. We did not know, however, till informed by this writer, that the taxes are so much advanced in France that the price of a pack of cards, which was two pence halfpenny six months ago, is now half a crown; and that every page of the ledger of a man of business must be stamped, if he means to employ it as a document to prove his debts.' The partiality of the French for English manufactures is easily explained; and we are not inclined to question Mr. W.'s accuracy, when he tells us that they ardently desire a treaty of commerce with this country. See Review for June last. In adverting to the Legion of Honour and the state of the French army, the author introduces an account of a singular kind of troops called Leapers, who are trained to the greatest agility and skill in corporeal movements. They accompany a corresponding number of cavalry into the field, whose horses are accustomed to carry double, and not to start when a man leaps up behind them. Their evolutions are made with wonderful rapidity; they gallop to the place at which they are required to act, and immediately the Leapers jump down, form themselves into a line behind the horses, and become a separate army. If this en croupe infantry should meet with a repulse, they are taken off the field in the same way. To the state of religion in the Low Countries, Mr. W. seems to have paid some attention; at least he speaks fully and confidently on the subject. The protestants in the South,' he says, are far more numerous than the catholics, but in the northern departments they are only found scattered up and down. Here the people have the most contemptible notions of protestantism, and converts are not made from the church of Rome, but the number of protestants remain nearly the same, without any apparent accession or diminution.' Yet Mr. W. ventures to assert that, had the chief of the great nation declared decidedly in favour of the protestant religion, and exerted all his influence to establish it, there is little doubt that he might have succeeded.'-Education is represented as still cramped by religious prejudices; and though he speaks of attempts being made to revive the college of Louvaine, and of the increase of the number of students, he tells us that an esteemed professor in the college of Mons, when asked not long ago by one of his scholars a question relative to the antipodes, replied, "we never talk of that, it is an heretical notion." If this be a serious anecdote, and such professors have much influence, Protestantism cannot promise herself many converts in the Belgic provinces, A reader of these pages will meet with some singularities of expression, viz. Woods and other trees' flax and hemp and other seeds for the extracting of oils' a man of an ill-favored mind;'-' the chateaux have lost the appearance of attack and defence,' &c. Mr. Worsley's volume, however, is unostentatious, and he appears to have no inclination to misrepresent and mislead. ART. ART. IX. Observations on the Nature and Cure of Gout; on Nodes of the Joints; and on the Influence of certain Articles of Diet, in Gout, Rheumatism, and Gravel. By James Parkinson, Hoxton. 8vo. 58. Boards. Symonds, &c. IN N a former number, we gave an account of Dr. Kinglake's treatise on gout, and expressed rather fully our opinion of the dangerous tendency of his doctrines respecting its cure. The author of the work before us appears to have viewed the subject in the same light, and it is principally to this consideration that we are indebted for its publication. After a concise description of the leading symptoms of this disease, we enter on an investigation of its proximate cause, which is stated to be a peculiar saline acrimony existing in the blood, in such a proportion, as to irritate and excite to morbid action, the minate terminations of the arteries, in certain parts of the body. The writer labors, with much assiduity and considerable ability, to defend this hypothesis; and he principally rests on the experiments of Dr. Wollaston, who found that the concretions which are occasionally formed on the joints of gouty persons are composed of the lithiate of soda. It does not, however, necessarily follow that the lithiate of soda must exist in the blood, because it is excreted from the joints: yet it seems fair to infer that this fluid must be in an unnatural state, in order to admit of the formation of this peculiar substance; and without precisely determining in what that state consists, Mr. Parkinson contents himself with pointing out the fact and maintaining its existence. Many practical writers have noticed the connection between gout and calculus; the discovery of Dr. Wollaston confirms the fact, and also tends to illustrate it by shewing that the same subtance forms the basis both of the urinary and the arthritic concretions. After having rendered the existence of this saline acrimony in the blood at least not improbable, the author next speculates concerning its origin. He imagines that it proceeds from the acid, which, in certain constitutions, and from the operation of peculiar kinds of diet, is generated in the stomach; and which, though without any decisive evidence, has been vaguely conceived to be the acetous. As a farther proof of an acid state of the fluids, or rather of their tendency to produce or secrete an acid matter, Mr. P. adduces the red sediment of the urine, and the sour perspirations, which are occasionally observed in some diseases :-but, even supposing that we were to admit the existence of the lithic acid in the mass of the See Rev. Vol. xlix. N. S. p. 123. blood, blood, it still remains to shew by what means it becomes united. to the soda, and why the resulting compound has a peculiar tendency to deposition on the joints. In these respects, the hypothesis is certainly incomplete: but the determination of them does not materially affect the former position, viz. the existence of the saline acrimony in the blood, on which the practical part of this treatise principally depends. The remote causes of gout are sufficiently ascertained; and among them intoxicating liquors, when taken to excess, have been placed in the first class. The author examines their effects on the stomach, and the constitution at large; and he inclines to the opinion that wine, particularly such as is weak and acid, has an especial tendency to produce gout distilled spirits seem rather to generate dropsical complaints. He was led to this conclusion from observing the diseases of the different orders of people who principally use these liquors; the lower classes, who are perhaps at least as much addicted to intoxication as their superiors, principally drink spirits, and rarely have the gout; which complaint attaches itself almost solely to the wine-drinker. Malt liquors, when of good quality, appear to Mr. Parkinson the most salubrious beverage: but he justly remarks that the state, in which they are generally procured, renders them by no means harmless to stomachs which are disposed to acidity. Some good remarks are made on diagnosis, in which the author points out the difficulty of discriminating between the primary complaints of a part and the symptoms produced in it by a gouty diathesis: he then proceeds, in the fifth chapter, to give an account of a disease which, until very lately, has not been treated in a separate form, the nodosity of the joints. It was slightly noticed by Dr. Heberden in his Commentaries, but Dr. Haygarth first described it as a distinct disease, different from rheumatism, with which it had hitherto been confounded. Mr. Parkinson's detail must, however, be considered as equally original, for we are informed that, by a singular coincidence, it was in the press at the time when Dr. Haygarth's work was published. The accounts given by these authors agree in the most essential points: but there are two particulars in which they differ. Dr. Haygarth states that the complaint is confined to the middle and higher classes, and that it very seldom occurs in men; while Mr. Parkinson has found it 'exceedingly frequent among the Parish aged poor,' and has also seen it in several males:' indeed his attention was first directed to it by having been himself a sufferer from it. His theory respecting this malady is that it depends on the şame saline acrimony with the gout, but that it does not exist in |