When grief's harsh tempests round me fly, H. D. C. ANECDOTE. JUST after a division in the House of Commons on a motion of Mr. Fox, a member who had been absent the whole day, came down to the house full of the grape. Whether it was to make amends for having played the truant, or whatever other motive we know not, but nothing could prevent the baronet from attempting to speak on the honourable member's second motion; but beginning with "Sir I am astonished,” the claret drenched patriot could go no further. The house, however, did not discover the Baronet till he had repeated the verb astonished seven times, when a general merriment ensued. Sir George was offended at the levity of the members, and, asking if there was any thing ridiculous in the word, began again, "Sir, I say, I am astonished;" which repeating three or four times more the house was in the loudest roar of laughter. The baronet then appealed to the speaker, who pleasantly asked him what he would have him to do. The tipsy gentleman took fire at this, and declared he would not give up the word, "for I am really astonished, quite astonished that-I am astonished," and was proceeding; but, finding the bursts of laughter too strong for his obstinacy, he was induced, by the advice of his friends, after having mentioned the word astonished above a dozen times more, to change it for surprised, by which time having entirely forgotten what he intended to have said, he sat himself down. A MAN going into a barber's shop to be shaved, popped his head through one of the squares of the window which was ..ade of oiled paper instead of glass, and asked, is the barber within. Strap, popping out his head throug another square, answered Just gone out, sir. AN Hibernian telling his friend that passing along the street he saw a person on the other side with whom he thought he was acquainted, said, I crossed to see him, I thought I knew him, and he thought he knew me; but by it was neither one nor t'other of us. VARIETY. You shall not see a sailor, says a very quaint author, without a good large pair of silver buckles, though what he has about him else be altogether mean; the reason they give for it is that, in cases of shipwreck, they have something with them whereof to make money. Although the writer of this whimsical passage was a legitimate son of John Bull, yet we doubt exceedingly whether it be applicable to the British tar; but we must confess, with the tears running down our cheeks, and with the most profound respect for our invaluable country, not forgetting dear Nancy New England, that sweetest of charmers, that any thing about him whereof to make money is finely descriptive of your Yankee sailor. THE COACHMAKER'S FAITH. See Shabby's coach along the village runs, Drawn by four scrubs, pursued by thrice four duns : Without all vanity, all vice within; The mob the gaudy pageant strikes; they gaze, And thy surpassing art, O Fielding, praise : In different views thy merit I explore, Thy works surprise me, but thy faith much more. AN author, whose works had been severely criticised in the Edinburgh Review, assured a friend that he wished, of all things, to write down that journal: then write in it, said his friend. Mr. Southey, with great good humour, thus adverts to the number of times of sufferance, when he has been cut up by the knife of the critical anatomist, from the butchers in the Critical Review, to the surgeons of Edinburgh. "An author is proof against reviewing, when, like myself, he has been reviewed above seventy times; but the opinion of a reviewer, upon a writer's first publication, has more effect, both upon his feelings and success, than it ought to have, or would have, if the mystery of the ungentle craft were more generally understood. The price of The Port Folio is six dollars per annum, PRINTED FOR BRADFORD AND INSKEEP, NO. 4, SOUTH THIRDSTREET, BY SMITH AND MAXWELL. The plate accompanying this number of The Port Folio, is a specimen of a new style in the graphic art, invented by Mr. C. Tiebout. The use of the common graver is almost entirely dispensed with in the execution of it, the work being principally performed by a roulet or dotting wheel. We have inserted it for the encouragement of the artist and the gratification of our readers. CRITICISM-FOR THE PORT FOLIO. MR. OLDSCHOOL, THE Port Folio, in its present form, invites reviews of all treatises on science and literature, as they are published in our country. Remarks on the Brunonian System, in the form of a pamphlet, have lately been presented to the public. Brown's work, which is alike interesting to the philosopher and the physician, furnishes much matter which cannot fail to interest a great portion of your readers. As Dr. Jackson has aimed a thrust at the very vitals of Brown, it deserves examination whether Brown had so behaved like a malefactor as to merit that hostile attack; and this examination, it is hoped, will not prove unacceptable to the philosophic class of your subscribers. Remarks on the Brunonian System, by James Jackson, A. M. & M. M. S. S. Natura sui juris est, ac longius latiusque, patet, quam ut certos ei fines, angustos que humani ingenii terminos constituamus, extra quos egredi non possit.-BAGLIVI. L'hypothesése facile de Themision se signale aujourd'hui sans un autre nom, par ses imprudences et ses homicides.-FOEDERER. INTRODUCTION DE PHYSIOLOG. POSIT. Boston, printed by Thomas Wait & Co. Court-street, 1809. Dr. Jackson commences by telling the reader that he is no Brunonian. In conformity with this statement, which must be viewed as an indirect declaration of war against the Brunonian system, he profanely tears the laurels from Brown, and thinks to plant them on the LI VOL. III. temples of Hippocrates and Sydenham. This done, he makes the candid reader pronounce sentence upon the purity of his motives in distributing justice pro meritis. Not satisfied with despoiling Brown of his honours, he arraigns him before the bar of the public as a malefactor who had raised to the mind of his student an insurmountable barrier to all further improvement in the science of medicine. We will now pass from the indictment to the testimony, by which these declarations are to be supported. Page 2. Brown is accused of “ using words in different senses, without any definite ideas, or without any at all. For instance, in his seventy-second paragraph he says, that ' life is not a natural but a forced state.' What we are to call natural if not life, it must puzzle every philosopher inferior to Brown to determine." When Brown says "life is not a natural but a forced state," the sentence simply imports that the infant abandoned to nature would perish; that man, deprived of either of the accustomed stimuli, of food, drink, warmth, or air, would become extinct. This is the idea which every unprejudiced reader would receive from perusing this passage in connexion with the body of his work. And is it strange that life, which it cost so much care, and anxiety, and labour, to sustain, should be called "a forced state?" Would not even the half famished savage, ranging the forest, or exploring the floods in quest of food, readily comprehend the meaning, if he were told, "life is a forced state?" If there are certain " philosophers inferior to Brown," who are puzzled with this strange doctrine, that "life is a forced state," there is scarcely a mother the force of whose constitution is employed in protecting her offspring from the numerous perils which assail its life, who would not understand the import of the passage, and admire its force and simplicity. P. 4th. It is thought Brown had proceeded in a manner according with the principles of the great Bacon." With "Haller, Whytt, the two Hunters, George Fordyce, and their contemporaries" in one scale, and John Brown in the other, our metaphysical critic undertakes to weigh the causes of "the revolution in medical opinions within the last half century." The consistency of this with previous passages the reader will no doubt fully appreciate. P. 4th. "To every animated being is allotted a certain portion only of this quality or principle, on which the phenomena of life depend. This principle is denominated excitability." This paragraph is analyzed into two constituent parts, to both of which serious objections are filed. First, the definition of excitability, second, the limitation of it, raise inextricable difficulties from which the doctor cannot disentangle himself. But here, on viewing the sentence and the strictures upon it, the reader naturally asks, does the difficulty lie in the obscurity of the path, or in the bewildered imagination of the traveller? Is there really any impropriety in calling the power of being roused to action by stimuli excitability? The unbiassed reader would not put any other construction upon the definition of the term. Or can there be any impropriety in prescribing bounds to this power of being excited, or in alleging that to every animated being is allotted a certain portion only of the quality or principle on which the phenomena of life depend," because Methusalah, when he had lived nine hundred and sixty and nine years, became incapable of being further excited? If the gentleman, in conformity with Brown's prescription, which he has quoted, had avoided "the slippery question respecting causes," he would have avoided all the difficulties into which he has plunged in the discussion of this paragraph. P. 13. "Life is a forced state; if the exciting powers are withdrawn death ensues as certainly as when the excitability is gone." The simple interpretation is, that if a man neither eat nor drink, nor inhale the air, nor protect himself from the inclemency of the seasons, he dies. But let us hear the doctor's objection to this proposition. P. 13. "One would think that whatever opinions a great philosopher might advance, he would not express them in terms which would render them ridiculous." The doctor here has reason to compliment himself upon his own sagacity in descrying the "ridiculous" in this expression, for common optics, under common excitement could not have discovered it. Page 16, 17, &c. Our mining critic is again benighted by diving into "the slippery question respecting causes," but, unfortunately, he is left without any pillar of fire to irradiate the night of his imagination. In this "darkness visible," after blundering over many "stumbling blocks," he is attracted to the light of the proposition which had bewildered him, and P. 18, unwarily admits its correctness in this concession. "Still it is true, that action generally is excited and maintained by stimulus." P. 19 contains another quotation from Brown. "The excitement may be too great, too small, or in just measure." The plain sense of the letter is that a man may eat, drink, and exercise too much, too little, or in a just proportion. But the smooth road which had been constructed for the easy travelling of the tyro in medicine, the doctor, with Herculean labour, endeavours to break up, that he may divert from his route the honest traveller, who wishes to proceed in the paved highway of Brown, illuminated by the lamp of truth. He passes from the clearness and simplicity of the proposition to "the minima vascula, the capillary vessels. Those we do not see, and must form our opinion only from their effects." This observation is altogether irrelative: for it has no natural connexion with the proposition. Brown nowhere says different organs do not possess different susceptibilities to the inAuence of stimuli, as Dr. Jackson has supposed. The reasoning, therefore, which is founded on this supposition is necessarily erroneous. P 24th has the following quotation: "By too great excitement weakness |