On this page

• Text (2)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    1122 THE LEADER. [Saturday,

  • 

    A SALAD FOE THE SOLITARY. A Salad for th...

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Choleha And Its Treatment. Asiatic Chole...

    and olive oil , both by the mouth and in enema ; tobacco , injecting the veins , & c , were all tried , and without the successful issue that their various English , Continental , or Indian advocates had promised ; sometimes , it is true , in the hands of one or two practitioners , two or three cases would consecutively recover , and then the plan was vaunted and the medicine strongly recommended by a letter in the Lancet or Times ; butin a little while the new remedy was perhaps condemned with the rest , and it was found that a fortuitous run of recovering cases had given the medicine a lustre as false as evanescent . " The reader may perhaps remember that , a few weeks ago ( vide Leader , ~ $ o . 184 ) , we communicated the results of a series of experiments , made by the French physiologist , Brown- Sequard , proving , beyond a doubt , that in . many cases of poisoning the proximate cause of death was the diminution of temperature which ensued : we intimated the connexion of this fact with the recognised necessity of warmth as one mode of treating cholera , and in Mr . BarweU ' s volume there is abundant evidence in favour of that view . Here is one passage : —

    "Stimulants , such as brandy , ammonia , or wine , though decidedly useful m their place , have not such effect in restoring circulation , and exciting the system to greater action , as in collapse from other disease ; indeed , consider ing the difference of its cause in this and in other maladies , it is not to be expected that they would be as beneficial ; for prostration usually occurs in consequence of nervous shock , and consequent loss of nervous power ; therefore , stimuli which act upon that system are naturally in those cases such as would benefit . But in this disease there is comparatively little loss of nervous power ; in fact , with so great disturbance of the circulation , the retention of nervous power is marvellous . Our remedies ought not , therefore , to be directed through that system , but we should , if possible , find some means of acting on and recalling the circulation without exciting the nervous centres ; and the best mode-of doing this is by external heat .

    "This principle of combating the deadly cold collapse was not found or recognised at St . Thomas ' , until after several cases had been treated at the hospital , and the general inefficacy of medicines or of stimulants proved ; and though a certain number under the treatment then adopted recovered , still the whole result was unsatisfactory : thus , of 28 cases of perfect collapse , before external heat was used , but 7 recovered—a very small proportion ; but after this was employed 61 patients were treated by some mode , in which this formed an essential part , and of these 27 recovered , or not very far from half the whole number—a proportion which we may call 9-20 ths of the whole—the application or non-application of external heat making the difference between the recovery of one quarter , or cne Jialf of the whole number of patients . "

    1122 The Leader. [Saturday,

    1122 THE LEADER . [ Saturday ,

    A Salad Foe The Solitary. A Salad For Th...

    A SALAD FOE THE SOLITARY . A Salad for the Solitary . JSj an Epicure . Price 3 s . -6 cl . Bentley . Theee are few light books more entertaining than the gossiping anecdotical collections , of which the elder Disraeli has given the model . Small talk is a tendency of human nature , and such books give us small talk about interesting persons . It would be difficult to compile a thoroughly dull volume of such anecdotes and scraps as those collected by the " Epicure , " in his chapters on Dietetics , the Talkative and Taciturn , Curious and Costly Books , Dying " Words of Distinguished Men , Citations from Cemeteries , the Infelicities of the Intellectual , Pleasures of the Pen , Sleep and its Mysteries , & c . ; nevertheless the " Epicure" has approached as near the standard of dulness , as the anecdotes would let him . The book

    is made up of good , bad , very bad , and indifferent . It is the commonp lace book of a commonplace man ; what the author quotes and compiles is often readable enough , what he brings from out his own stores had better bo skipped lightly over . " When we notify , therefore , that the book may be lounged over , at odd half hours , with amusement , we are not to be understood as implying more thiin the fact of anecdotes and quotations being always acceptable , in such unfilled gaps of time . There seems to have been no attempt at exhausting a topic , and for curiosity and completeness , the series of papers occasionally appearing in the Critic , under the title of " ' . Rambles in the Bye ways of Literature , " is far better worthy of attention . Nevertheless , our readers may not be sorry to have a leaf or two of this " Salad for the Solitary ; " wo will not close the volume without gratifying them . Here is a bit of gossip about the

    MAHUIAUES OF UALZAC AND LAMAKTINE . " M . Balzac , the French novelist , exhibits another example of eccentricity in matrimonial attains . According to a Parisian correspondent , the arrival of this celebrated author from ( Germany caused an immense sensation in certain circles , owing to the romantic oircumntanoes connected with \\ m marriage . When Balzac was in tho zenith of his fame , he was travelling in Switzerland , and had arrived at the inn just at the very moment the Prince and Princess Han . ski were leaving it Balzac was ushered into the room they luid ju . st vacated , and was leaning from the window to observe their departure , when his attention Ava . s arrested by a soft voice at , hm elbow asking {•„ ,- book which had been left behind upon the windowfieat . The lady was certainly fair , but appeared doubly ho in the (( yen of the poor author , when hIio intimated that the book hIks was in quest of was the pocket edition of bin own workn , adding that she never travelled without it , and that without it she could not exist ! { -She drew the volume from beneath Inn elbow and ( low down Htairn , obedient to the screaming . sinmnonH of her husband , a pursy old tlemanwho alreadseated in the carriage

    gen , was y . , railing in ,, l ( m d V ( , j ( . () „ ,, ,- ;« oh t dilatory habits of women in general , and his own spouse in particular ; ami the emblazoned vehicle drove ; ofr , leaving the novelist , in a , stato of . self-complacency the most enviable to be conceived . Thin was the only oeeasion upon which Halzac and the 1 'rineesH llanski had met , till his recent visit to ( Germany , when he presented himself —an her accepted IiuhIhumI . During those long ilifcoi ' veiiing iifteen yearn , however , a literary correspondence was nteadily kept up between the parties , till a , t length , instead of a hitter containing literary utrietums upon lnH writings , n missive of another kind having a still more directly personal tendency reached him from the fair hand of the Princess . It contained the announcement of the deiniHe of her husband the Prince , •¦¦ -that he had bequeathed to li , ' . Ihh domains au < l hin great wealth , and consequently , that she foil , bound to requite him in Home measure for his liberality , and had determined upon giving hijii a HueeeflNor---in the person of Bal / . ao . It in needleHH to Htato that the delighted author waited not a second HummoiiH ; they were forthwith united in wedlock , at her ch . 1 te . -iu on the Khino , stud a mu : eennion of uplendid IVUoh celebrated tho

    auHpiciouH event . " The . htory of tho marriage of fjamii . rl . iiio is also one of romantic ; interest . Tim lady , wJiohu maiden name was Birch , wan possessed of considerable propert y , and when pant Iho bloom of youth , . she became pmniou » toly ona uourcil of tho poet

    from the perusal of his ' Meditations . For some time she nursed this sentiment in secret , and being apprised of the embarrassed state of his affairs , she wrote him , tendering him the bulk of her fortune . Touched with this remarkable proof of her generosity , and supposing it could only be caused by a preference for himself , he at once made an offer of Ms hand and heart . He judged rightly , and the poet was promptly accepted . " The following might have been indefinitely extended , but it suffices to indicate the

    VOLtTMINOirSNESS OF AUTHORS . " Our forefathers , however , must have had their patience pretty severely taxed by the prolixity of some of the early scribes . What should we think of twentyone huge folios ?—yet we find , in 1651 , a writer of such interminable dimensions while another , Peter D'Alva , even extended his learned lucubrations to no less than forty-eight , in an abortive attempt to expound a mystery unfathomable , and which his labyrinth of words but rendered the more mysterious . While , not to name Confucius or the reputed six hundred volumes by the French bishop , Du Bellay , we might remind the reader of the astounding intimation given by St . Jerome , to the effect that he had perused six thousand books written bv Origen , who ' daily wearied seven notaries , and as many boys , in writing after him ! ' It ought not to have amazed his friends * therefore , to have learned of the

    sickness of that multifarious writer , Sir John Hill ( the author of the Vegetable System ) , when he confessed it was in consequence of overworking himself on seven productions at once ! We read of Hans Sachs , a Nuremlmrg shoemaker , who lived about the close of the fifteenth century , and who seems to have apportioned his labours eqtially between boots and books , the praiseworthy arts of making poetry and pumps , sonnets and shoes , to the 77 th year of his age ; when he took an inventory of his poetical stock in trade , and found , according to his own calculation , that his works filled thirty folio volumes , all written with his own hand . They comprised 4200 songs ; 208 comedies , tragedies , and farces ; 1700 fables , miscellaneous poems , and tales , and 73 military and love songs—forming a grand

    total of 6048 pieces , small and great ; out of which he culled as many as filled three great folios , which were published in the year 1558-61 . How strangely the early scribes seern to have coveted the ambition of being voluminous writers , not remembering that Persius became immortal from the transmission of but two sheets of paper inscribed by hi * pen . " We presume it will be hypercritical to suggest that Persius had neither pen nor sheets of paper , and that his works would have covered a vaster area than two sheets , had the two sheets been there . While on this topic of voluminousness we will add the epitaph suggested for Tiraqueau , " who , although a water-drinker , was the father of twenty works and twenty children : had he been a drinker of wine he * would have peopled the whole world with books and men . " Hicjacetqui aquam bibendo vigniti libcrossuscejnt , vignitilibros edidit . Si merum bibisset totum orbem implessit I -We conclude our notice with this extract of VEBBAL CURIOSITIES . "A very learned Frenchman , in conversation with Dr . Wallace , of Oxford , about the year 1650 , and author of a grammar of the English language written in Latin , after expatiating with the Doctor on the copiousness of the French , language , and its richness in derivations and synonyms , produced , by way of illustration , the following four lines on rope-making : — "' Quand un corclier , eordant , veult corder un corde ; Pour sa corde corder , trois cordons il accord ; Mais , si un < les cordons do la eorde deeorde , Xic cordon decord 6 fait decorder la corde . ' "To show that the English language was at least equally rich and copious , Dr . Wallace immediately translated the French into as many lines of English , word for word , using the word twist to express the French corde : —

    "' When a twister a-t \ visting , will twist him a twist : For the twisting his twist , lie three twines doth entwist ; But if one of the twines of tho twist do untwist , The twine that untwisteth , untvisteth the twist . ' " Here were verbs , nouns , participles , and synonyms to match the French . To show further the power and versatility of tho English , the doct or added the four following lines , which continue the subject : — " 'Untwisting the twine that untwisted between , Ho twirls with his twister tho two in a twine ; Then twice having twisted the twines of tho twino , lie twisteth the twine he had twined in twain . ' " Tho French funds had been exhausted at tlie outset . . Not ho with tho English , for Dr . Wallace , pushing hi . s triumph , added yet four other lines , which follow : —

    " 'The twain that in twining before in tho twine , An twins wen ; in twisted , he now doth entwine ; 'Twist the twain intertwisting a twine more between , Ko , twirling hin twister , malms n twist of ( ho twine . ' " Dr . Adam Clarke , to whom we are indebted for tho record of the preceding trial of skill between the two philologists , adds in conclusion , that ' he questions whether there is another language in the universe capable of such a variety ol flections , or which can ufford ho many tornis and derivatives , all legitimate , coming from tho same radix , without borrowing a single term from another tongue , or coining one for the mike of the sound ; for there in not a . word used hy Dr . Wallace in these lines which is not purely Anglo-Saxon , not one oxotic being entertained . ' " Tho following linos , from ( iray : ' The ploughman homeward plods his weary way , ' has been found to admit of eighteen transpositions , without destroying tho rhyme or altering the House : the reader will be content with the following :

    " ' The weary ploughman p lods hi « homeward way . The -weary ploughman homeward plods his way . Tho ploughman , weary , plodH his homeward way . The ploiighinnii , weary , homeward plods his way . ; Weary tho plou / rlmum ploil . i bin homeward way . Weary the ploughman homeward plods his way . Homeward tho ploughman plodn bis weary way . Homeward the weary ploughman plods his way . ITornownrd the ploughman , w «* nry , plods hifl way . Tho homeward ploughman weary plods hifl way . The homeward ploughman j > 1 oc ! h Ihh weary way . ' " Southoy , it may be remembered , ho highly esteemed CW perVbeautifu l Linos to bin Mother ' fl Portrait , that ho is reported to have mud , he would willingly barter , all he had written for thoir authorship . Thin i « high trilmto to tho ainiaoio yet melancholy » nia « of Oowpor ; but we are digressing . We therefore rotur" ^ our nnomaloviH nnd curious muuotioiiR ; and lirnl , bog to present » " in ^ oiuouH p »« - of literary Mojmio ;

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 19, 1853, page 18, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_19111853/page/18/