The present poem is certainly not without specimens of those talents, of which few have been greater admirers than ourselves, and none have more feelingly lamented the waste and abuse. The following address of Manfred to the "Witch of the Alps," rising beneath the arch of the sun-beam of the torrent, is full of Lord Byron's descriptive vigour. "MAN. Beautiful Spirit! with thy hair of light, Of purer elements; while the hues of youth,- The blush of earth embracing with her heaven,- The beauties of the sunbow which bends o'er thee. The account which Manfred gives of himself, and his early addictions, it is impossible not to admire, notwithstanding it has so much of the mannerism of the poet. "MAN. Well, though it torture me, 'tis but the same; My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men, On the swift whirl of the new breaking wave Of river-stream, or ocean, in their flow. Such as, before me, did the Magi.-" (P. 33-35.) The effect of the Coloseum and surrounding scene of storied ruins, in a starry night, is the passage most laboured, and perhaps most successfully so, in the poem, and it would be scarcely just towards Lord Byron not to give it a place. "SCENE IV.-Interior of the Tower. MANFRED alone. MAN. The stars are forth, the moon above the tops I linger yet with Nature, for the night Hath been to me a more familiar face Than that of man; and in her starry shade Of dim and solitary loveliness, I learn'd the language of another world. Begun and died upon the gentle wind. While Cæsar's chambers, and the Augustan halls, - And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon We trust we have done justice to this little poem, which, as a drama, or as a whole, we cannot praise; as a repetition of the old story of one of Lord Byron's pleasant fellows, full of crime, and yet full of conscious superiority, we cannot but condemn; but which, for its particular passages of poetical excellence, we consider as worthy of the fame of the author. ART. VI.-A Physiological System of Nosology; with a corrected and simplified Nomenclature. By John Mason Good, F. R. S. &c. 8vo. pp. 566. Cox and Son. London, 1817. It is not often that we carry our remarks into the regions of the healing art; but the present work has a claim upon our attention, as well from the sanction under which it appears before the world, being dedicated by permission (which permission is, we understand, never granted but upon examination of the work) to the royal college of physicians of London, as, from the extensive range it takes into the wider and more open tracks of physiology and general science. "The main object of the present attempt is not so much to interfere with any existing system of nosology as to fill up a niche that still seems unoccupied in the great gallery of physiological study. It is that, if it could be accomplished, of connecting the science of diseases more closely with the sister branches of natural knowledge; of giving it a more assimilated and family character; a more obvious and intelligible classification; an arrangement more simple in its principle, but more comprehensive in its compass; of correcting its nomenclature, where correction is called for, and can be accomplished without coercion; of following its distinctive terms as well upwards to their original sources, as downwards to their synonyms in the chief languages of the present day; and thus, not merely of producing a manual for the student, or a text-book for the lecturer, but a book that may stand on the same shelf with, and form a sort of appendix to, our most popular systems of Natural History; and may at the same time be perused by the classical scholar without disgust at that barbarous jargon, with which the language of medicine is so perpetually tesselated; and which every one has complained of for ages, though no one has hitherto endeavoured to remedy it." (P. i. ii.) We cannot help regarding it as somewhat extraordinary that, notwithstanding all the zeal, industry, and success with which the different branches of the medical profession have been prosecuted for so many centuries, no writer or reasoner has hitherto been fortunate enough to devise an arrangement sufficiently wide, and at the same time sufficiently scientific, to be entitled to the character of a general system of diseases. There is not only no popular or pre-eminent plan at this moment which applies to the whole, but no one that can be called complete on any separate department of the profession; and hence, while the order under which the science of surgery is taught is at all times different from that which regulates the study of pathology, almost every teacher has a distinct order for each; is dissatisfied with all others; and scarcely in entire good humour with his own. The most common arrangement of diseases among the Greeks was into acute and chronic. Celsus has, to a certain extent, adopted this arrangement; but, sensible of its insufficiency, has endeavoured to render it more definite by dividing diseases still further, into those affecting the entire frame, which he calls universal, and those limited to particular organs, which he calls partial; thus making the seat of the disease the foundation of its distinction. Jonston, Sennert, and Morgagni carried this principle still further, and classified, or endeavoured to classify, diseases according to the anatomy of the animal frame; a method which was strongly recommended by Dr. Mead; while Boerhaave, Riverius, and Hoffman laid hold of the supposed causes of diseases as determining their peculiar and distinctive character, and upon this basis erected a system which for some time continued popular, and to which they gave the name of etiological; till at length the principle of causes gave way to the principle of symptoms, as supported and taught by Sauvages, Linnéus, Cullen, and all the most celebrated nosologists of our own times. This last is, in effect, the only method in any degree worthy of attention; for it is the only one that will in any degree hold true to itself. Of the seat of diseases we often know but little; of their causes far oftener still less: but there are certain marks or characters in the usual progress of most diseases, which uniformly accompany and distinguish them, and to which, therefore, the epithet pathognomic has been correctly applied. It is not, indeed, to be contended that these distinctive signs are as constant and determinate as many of the distinctive signs that occur in zoology or botany. So complicated is the animal machinery, so perpetually alterable, by habit, climate, idiosyncrasy, and the many accidental circumstances by which life is diversified, that the general rule must admit of a variety of exceptions; and it is here, perhaps, rather than any where else, best established by such exceptions. Yet, after all, every distinct disease, occur where it may, so generally agrees with itself in its progress and developement, and is so generally attended by its own train of symptoms, or coincidents,-which is the literal rendering of symptoms,-that he who steadily attends to these will not often be greatly deceived, and if he should be, he can find no other guide to set him right. And But if the true mode of distinguishing and defining diseases has been discovered, we have hitherto been still as far from any mode of classifying them agreably to any clear natural order, or perspicuous artificial arrangement, as ever. hence Mr. Good, before he enters upon an elucidation of his own system, paves the way for its introduction by a dissertation of considerable length, in which he adverts to the chief nosological systems of the day, the nomenclature in actual use, and the improvements proposed in both respects by the present attempt. After a rapid survey of the earlier methods, the systems principally discussed are those of Plater, Sauvages, Linnéus, Vogel, Sagar, Cullen, Selle, Plouquet, Pinel, Macbride, Crichton, Darwin, Parr, and Young, independently of those laid down by the monographists, or those who have treated in a classific form of a single set or family of diseases alone, among whom are especially enumerated the names of Plenck, Willan, Abernethy, and Bateman. The last have their use, though it is obvious they never can supply the place of a general system; while several of them are so peculiarly constructed, that they cannot, without great force, and a considerable degree of decomposition, be incorporated into general service. Of the former, notwithstanding all the ingenuity and contrivance they exhibit, there is not, per |