found highly beneficial to the members. | It provides for sickness, age, and funerals in a rational manner, and secures the regular transaction of the business of the institution, without the assistance of the alehouse. These rules will be found worthy of very general adoption.

5. The Closet Manual, (Stephens, City Road, London,) contains a summary of many excellent principles, strongly recommended in the word of God, and clearly sanctioned by it. It is concise, but important.

6. No. 23. Anti-Slavery Monthly Reporter, presents to our view, like all its predecessors, slavery in its own naked deformity. Oh, when will avarice and injustice listen to the voice of humanity, and attend to the groans of agonizing nature! When will this greatest curse of our globe cease to cry to heaven for vengeance!

7. Report of the Port of London Bethel Union Society, furnishes a pleasing view of that institution. Multitudes of sailors since its establishment have attended public worship, who formerly spent their time in something worse than indolence. In the hearts and conduct of numbers, a visible change has been wrought. The floating chapel has been rendered a blessing to many souls.

8. The Minister's Anxiety that his People should profit by his Ministration, by Thomas Wallace Grantham, (R. Baynes, London,) is a discourse that gives some excellent advice as to the manner in which hearers should attend to the truths delivered. Throughout the whole, it shews the author's design and earnest desire to do good.

9. The Divinity and Offices of the Holy Spirit, &c. a Discourse, by Robert Newstead, (Kershaw, London,) places the divine agency in a very proper, because commanding light, teaching us to infer that without his aid we can do nothing as we ought. It contains wholesome doctrine, leading to close examination, to self-renunciation, to constant reliance on God for supernatural assistance, and to practical godliness.

10. A Narrative of the Loss of the Maria Mail Boat, and the Shipwreck of several Wesleyan Missionaries at the Island of Antigua, (Unwin, Cornhill, London,) is an affecting description. The account has been long before the public in several periodicals. It is here embodied in a small pamphlet, which has passed through three editions.

11. Hymns for Infant Schools, &c., by Mrs. Gilbert, late Ann Taylor, (Holds

worth, London,) will be perused with pleasure by every youthful mind, and we doubt not with much profit by many. The name of this lady is of itself a strong recommendation of every production to which it is prefixed.

12. The Second Annual Report of the Society for promoting Christian Instruc tion in London and its Vicinity, (Teulon, Earle-street, London,) shews that this institution, though of short continuance, is both active and extensive in its operations. The design of the society is, to promote the observance of the Sabbath, to establish prayer meetings and Sunday schools, to circulate religious tracts, and regularly to visit families that require instruction. For this end, districts have been allotted to certain associations, whose active co-operations appear highly important, from the manner in which God has been pleased to bless their endeavours to do good.

13. A Lecture delivered at the Wesleyan Chapel, King-street, Bristol, by George Cubitt, (Kershaw, London,) directs our attention to the evidence of the Christian miracles in favour of the Christian religion. Mr. Cubitt has a logical head and a Christian heart, of which the lecture before us furnishes convincing evidence. His propositions are fairly laid down, and fully established. Having done this, he takes care not to defeat his own purposes, by attempting to infer what may at best appear doubtful, and thus sinking his premises by loading them with illegitimate conclusions.

14. Remarks upon the recent Accusations against the Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society, by a Lay Member of that Institution, (Seeley & Son, London,) is a pamphlet which repels nearly every charge of importance that has been brought against the managers of this institution. In this publication the same facts assume a very different aspect from that which in hostile publications they have been compelled to wear. The integrity of the managers is unimpeachable. Local circumstances have dictated the measures that have been adopted; and it may be more than doubtful if those who are so lavish in their censures, had been placed in the same situations, whether they would have conducted the affairs of the society in a manner less liable to reprehension.

15. Advice to Governesses, (Hatchard and Son, London,) was much wanted; and if it were extended to the mothers of the young ladies who furnish governesses with employment, the latter would escape many a mortification arising from unmerited censure. The situation of a governess, as

described in this little volume, is far from being enviable. It is splendid servitude, subject to mortifications from superiors, to envy from inferiors, to be beneath the former, above the latter, and almost excluded from society. The remarks, how ever, are strictly just, and were the importance of the station duly considered, we should not find so many candidates for this painful pre-eminence.

ON COUNTY ASYLUMS.
MR. EDITOR.

SIR. About ten years ago, I received a challenge from a very respectable magistrate, to discuss publicly the merits of County Asylums for the Insane; a challenge I gladly accepted. After publishing two letters in the Monthly Magazine, the gentleman very candidly confessed that he knew nothing of the subject; that he and his colleagues had simply acted upon the county asylum law, as it lay before them; presuming, no doubt, that it was founded in legislative wisdom, and the purest suggestions of humanity. If that gentleman still retains the candour he so clearly expressed ten years ago, he will, I have no fear, be ready to acknowledge that the pauper lunatics in his district have cost more to their respective parishes, that they have not upon the whole been more comfortable, and that a less proportion have perfectly recovered, than before the establishment of his so-much-boasted institution, the county asylum.

No one will, I must suppose, offer to impugn the motives of the able statesman who brought forward the county asylum law; but that it was not founded in absolute wisdom, is, I think, palpable: for in any public measure relating to the direful malady of insanity, recovery from it should be made a leading object; and if in this law the best means of cure were not entirely lost sight of, they were assuredly made a secondary object; and it might appear that the leading intention of this great and expensive legislative measure was, to sweep out of sight all dangerous idiots, criminal lunatics, and pauper lunatics, and safely confine them in large prisons, "where hope never comes;” and that while the ostensible intention was, the safety and comforts of the mentally diseased, in fact, the object was the safety and comforts of those not afflicted. Still it must be laudable to find comfortable confinement for those who are unfit for liberty; and the great impropriety of the measure is, the pretending to the best means of curing mental diseases, and even

the monopolizing the means of cure in the most numerous class of the community.

While I contend that hospitals, properly constituted for the purpose, may afford the most speedy and certain means of cure for insanity; the thing is impossible in a large prison, the greater part of the inmates being dangerous idiots, criminal lunatics, and incurable pauper lunatics. Some, it is true, will recover in these receptacles of wo, for some will recover under any treatment, however preposterous, and it is upon the proportion of recoveries that we are to look. Under the best, the recoveries will be in the proportion of nine out of ten of all cases, and those recovered, scarcely at all liable to relapse; while under the very worst treatment, four or five out of ten may recover, but all will be liable to relapse. And I do not admit, that, under the best treatment, even any will remain as incurable and in good bodily health, a burden to society and themselves; the failures in the attempt to cure under the best treatment, will be confined to those who sink under bodily disease, or remain only for a short time under their afflictions. It is required for the best chance of recovery, that the proper medical and moral means should be commenced during the incipient or recent state of the complaint; but the county asylum law, by preventing private medical practice, actually prevents the early, and often the timely, means of cure, for there is necessarily considerable delay in having a patient of this description sent to the county asylum; indeed the law itself is the cause of delay.

Much has been said of the bad treatment of lunatics in private asylums; and is it any better under the servants in public asylums? I should think, generally speak+ ing, much worse, though I do know where it is very good in the latter. But if the keepers of private asylums neglect their duty, the patients can be speedily removed; if ill used in public asylums, redress is sure to be slow and uncertain.

If wisdom, and liberality, and active humanity, could but shake hands upon this subject, we should soon hear of hospitals upon the best principles for the cure of insanity gratis, and by this means render large prisons for the incarceration of unfortunate lunatics useless; and it is greatly to be regretted, that, in this particular, so very important to suffering humanity, we are behind some other nations of the modern world. Spain, Naples, New-York, NewEngland, and it may be other countries, can boast of public hospitals for the insane, established upon rational principles for the

of cure.

I have been led into a repetition of what I have often said before, by the information that the most populous county in England, and we must suppose the most intelligent and intellectual, is about to establish the largest county asylum in the kingdom, under a system totally, as I believe, adverse to the suggestions of reason and humanity: a system under which a much less proportion of the insane will recover, than recover at this time; while the path is open of restoring nearly all of that class of the people over which it will have the full command.

“I have known him make a great gash in a choleric gentleman's chin of a morning, by mishap, and consequently, subject himself to some fulminating remarks, brewed by the bilious effervescence of the past night; yet still, by his amiability of manners and discourse, in a few moments he would elicit a smile from his customer, and bring out some mutually entertaining sto

THE STEPNEY BARBER.

MR. EDITOR, SIR,-During the spring and summer months of 1797, when taking my accustomed morning walk, I occasionally passed through the venerable church-yard of Stepney; and, sometimes, sauntered among the tombs which surround the sacred edifice, to read the inscriptions, which furnished topics of conversation when I joined my wife and sister at the breakfast table. Hence, the epitaphs, reflections, and characters, which many of the tombstones presented, afforded food for the mind, while the table gratified us with support for the body. But among the variety thus introduced to our notice, there was none that gave us more entertainment than the freakish life of the ill-starr'd Mr. William Simpson, yclep'd, by my sister-in-law, "the Barber of Stepney," long since laid in his mother earth. If the narrative can give a moment's gratification to your readers, it is much at your service.-Yours, &c. J. L.

very

"William Simpson was the only offspring of a well-gifted Scotch dissenter, a shoemaker, of the same name, whose progenitors had long maintained a respectable character in the beautiful and romantic vil

with a good education, and, like many of his fellow-tradesmen, he was particularly fond of reading. His chief delight was in Fielding's Tom Jones, and Roderick Random; and in these novels, in the characters of Partridge and Strap, he discovered two of the greatest ornaments of the profession, of which any age could boast. But though he had not in himself the marked enterprising spirit, and masterly contrivance of mind, with which these two knights of the razor and block were blessed, he nevertheless was conscious and proud of his own intellectual endowments, which were certainly more than many of his fellow craftsmen of the day possessed.

"He had a famous hand at writing petitions for the poor, and almost every window in the village exhibited to view, specimens of his ornamental penmanship, such as, "New-laid eggs," ?? "Lodgings to let," "New-milk from the cow every morning," and "The tooth-ach cured without pain or drawing." How this miraculous cure was effected I could never learn, but such a notice is still to be seen, stuck above a room in the adjacent village of New Bromley.

"Simpson had been from his infancy devoted to his present pursuit; and many were the conceited craniums and empty pates of noblemen and gentlemen, as he said, which he had handled and surveyed. He could have twigged a nose with more grace or elegance than the greatest quarrelpicker of the day, for innumerable, almost, were the Roman, Grecian, flat, pug, snuffy, and flabby, organs of smell, with which his digits had come in contact, in the prosecution of his vocation. Nor was he a lover, to excess, of filthy lucre, for he was wont to tell me, whenever our conversations took that turn, that he would not

"As politics ran high about this time, occasioned by the agitations of the French nation, he delighted in obtaining and talking about the news of the day. I have sometimes heard him warmly protesting, after a calm night's rest, before he had broke his fast, and when all nervous irritation was considerably subdued, that sooner than the hamlet of Stepney should become a colony of the French nation, in the event of Buonaparte's threatened invasion proving successful, he would muster a regiment of ablebodied men himself, and fortify the churchyard for a garrison: his courage, however, was never put to the test, nor were his schemes ever carried into effect.

"About the month of June, however, in the afore-mentioned year, poor Simpson's earthly grandeur and felicity came to a crisis; for he was not destitute of the finer human passions; and an affection for a neighbouring milkmaid, plump and rosy, cheerful and bewitching, had been for months past daily making deeper and deeper progress on his mind. He had joked with her, loved her, and wooed her; and she, in return, had not rejected or despised his addresses; so that each succeeding day he was screwing his courage to the sticking place," resolving to make her an overture, and constitute her the queen of his household goods. But wo, for the sake of Mr. William Simpson, to the remembrance of the tenth of June! The truth of the proverb, that "delays are dangerous," was this day sadly realized in his fate.

"At a quarter before eight o'clock A. M. while I sat under the operation of his hand and razor, Jacob, the pot-boy, from the World's End tea-gardens, burst the door open, exclaiming, "Mr. Simpson! Mr. Simpson! Nancy has fled the village since last night, with Jobson, the travelling postman!" Guess the effect produced by this sudden and appalling intelligence.

My

chin sustained a deep wound from the utensil in the quivering hand of the operator, of which it bears the mark to this day; and I never look at myself in the glass, without a pleasing, yet melancholy recollection of the eccentricities and hard fate of the "barber of Stepney."

"It is scarcely necessary to say, that this.

afflicting news instantaneously destroyed all the nerve of Mr. William Simpson. He reeled, and fell like a corpse at my feet, leaving my face half shaved, and the other half covered with soap suds and blood, while the surgeon of the village, after nearly an hour's exercise of his profession, by phlebotomy, fumigation, and anointing, brought him only half to life again.

"From that hour he never recovered the shock. Instead of the respect he was wont to display for himself, and the cleanliness and neatness with which he adorned his person, he became careless in his profession, and regardless of his habits. I have often, after this catastrophe, found him in bed at a time of day when he formerly had been four hours a-stirring. His presence of mind also gradually forsook him, and the healthy hue of his countenance fled. At last, pale consumption brought him to the darkhosom'd tomb;' nor was ever any thing more heard of his Nancy."

GLEANINGS.

ciples of the Reformation.-In our last number, British Society for promoting the Religious Princol. 586, we gave some account of the formation and principles of this society. Since that time we have been favoured with the general plan of their proceedings, from which we extract the following as the leading objects:

I. To enable Clergymen, and others engaged in promoting the Reformation in Ireland, to purchase such quantities of Bibles, Testaments, and Tracts, as the increasing wants of their respective parishes and districts may require.

II. To supply individuals and associations with the means of circulating such instruction and information as may best meet the present circumstances of Ireland.

III. To enable the friends of the Reformation to defray the expenses incurred by meetings for religious discussion, and by the publication of their proceedings, for which no Society at present provides.

IV. To collect and circulate authentic intelligence respecting the progress of the Reformation. V. To promote such modes of instruction as are best suited to the condition of the lower orders of the Roman Catholics throughout the empire.

Wesleyan Methodist Academy. - A plan has lately been submitted to the respectable members of this religious body, for forming an academy on an extended basis, for the education of their children, on principles somewhat similar to the schools at Kingswood and Woodhouse Grove, in which the children of the preachers receive instruction. It is proposed that a sum of £100,000 shall be raised on shares of £100 each; that a suitable building shall be erected within a few miles of the metropolis, for the purpose; that the management shall be entirely under the directioon of members of the Wesleyan Society, preachers and others; that the selection of teachers shall rest with the committee; that the boys and girls shall have no intercourse with each other; and, that until 500 shares are subscribed, no expenditure shall take place. If this plan can be carried into effect, we conceive that it will prove highly advantageous to the members of this increasing body of Christians. At present the plan is in its infancy, and will, no doubt, be subject to such revisions, as the parties interested in its welfare, may suggest. By an application,

letters, post paid, to Mr. John Knight, 78, Tooleystreet, London, further particulars, and a prospectus of the design, may be obtained.

New Zealand. On the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 9, 1827, the whaler Sisters, Captain Robert Dubre, arrived at Sidney, from New Zealand, which she left on the 28th of January preceding. By this vessel an account was brought that the Wesleyan Mission Station had been plundered of all its valuables, and the Missionaries and families compelled to flee from Whangarooa for their lives. The Reverend Mr. Turner, and Mrs. Turner, and three children, together with the Reverend Messrs. Hobbs and Stack, as also Mr. L. Wade and wife, arrived as passengers in the Sisters.

British and Foreign Seamen's Friend Society. -This society held their second anniversary at the City of London Tavern on Friday, May 18th, 1827, Admiral Pearson in the chair. The meeting, we learn, was numerously and respectably attended, and many animated speeches were delivered on the occasion. The design of the institution is, to propagate religion among the sailors, by preaching, prayer meetings, schools, and the circulation of tracts. The report bore testimony to its past utility; and the zealous unanimity that prevailed, furnished a pleasing presage of future success.

A Little Learning.-Mr. Thomas Campbell, in his late inaugural speech at the Glasgow University, thus alludes to the asserted danger of a little learning" Such of you as have been but shortly in this institution, I would advise not to be ashamed of a little learning, Many wise individuals think a little learning useless: and some, in their wisdom, call it dangerous,' with much the same correctness as a little virtue would be called dangerous. To despise a little learning, is like the action of the individual who should shut up his windows because they were too narrow, or that the glass had not the power of a telescope. Despise pedantry as much as you please; but adopt not this miserable principle.In your studies, I would not advise that formal division of labour that keeps the pin manufactory in such exact order. Newton made geometry illustrate physical science; and Richter, in later times, has followed up the great example. Let the mind have its choice as far as possible; and however numerous may be the subjects it may go into-however distracted the rays of truth may be that it gathers from them-doubt, not they will one day blend themselves into the white light of inspiration! Think not the stream of study will be shallower by its expansion; be confident rather that with a mind devoted to its subject, it will be profounder from its breadth."

Petrifaction.-A discovery, interesting alike to the naturalist and to the geological student, was made a few days ago in the Moat Colliery, in the parish of Tipton, in Staffordshire. A petrifaction resembling part of the trunk of a considerable sized tree towards the butt, measuring in length two feet four inches, and in circumference four feet ten inches, with the bark formed into coal, was found in nearly an upright position, among the strata of iron-stone, at the depth of upwards of two hundred yards below the surface, and which, in the extraction of it, was broken from the upper part of the trunk, which still remains in the earth. On the exposure of this fossil to the atmospheric air, the coal formed from the bark, shivered from the trunk. So great a curiosity is this specimen considered, that the proprietors of the colliery, at their quarterly meeting, passed a resolution, generously offering it as a present to the Trustees of the British Museum, and there can be no doubt that it will be deemed a valuable acquisition to the numerous fossils which are already deposited in that national institution,

Fashionable Nomenclature. An Utility, is a young man who hates cards and dancing, yet is always ready to stand up in a quadrille, or take a hand at whist, when called upon by the lady of the house. An Indispensable, is one who

takes care of gloves, fans, handkerchiefs, &c., hands ices and lemonade, assists in cloaking and shawling, and calls up the coach. An Inde fatigable, is either a young gentleman just come out, or an old beau, who goes to three different parties every evening; dances indiscriminately with old and young, pretty and plain; plays on the fiddle, the flute, and the pianoforte; always arrives first, and stays till the wax-lights are twinkling in their sockets.

Origin of Disease." I tell you honestly what I think is the cause of the complicated maladies of the human race; it is their gormandizing and stuffing, and stimulating those organs (the digestive) to an excess, thereby producing nervous disorder and irritation. The state of their mind is another grand cause; the fidgeting and discontenting yourself about that which can't be helped passions of all kinds-malignant passions and worldly cares-pressing on the mind, disturb the cerebral action, and do a great deal of harm." -Abernethy's Lectures.

Method of obtaining Flowers of Different Colours on the same Stem.-Split a small twig of elder lengthwise, and having scraped out the pith, fill each of the apartments with seeds of flowers of different sorts, but which blossom about the same time: surround them with mould, and then tying together the two bits of wood, plant the whole in a pot filled with earth properly prepared. The stems of the different flowers will thus be so incorporated as to exhibit to the eye only one stem, throwing out branches covered with flowers analogous to the seed which produced them.

Chimney-sweeping.-The Annual Meeting of the Society for the Suppression of the practice of using Climbing Boys, was held in May last at the City of London Tavern. From the report it appeared, that the machinery now in use was capable of superseding the use of boys in 99 cases out of 100, but the obstinacy of the masters could not by any means be overcome. A resolution was adopted, recommending that another application be made to the Legislature, for an act in furtherance of the views of the Society.

of

A Classical Horticulturist. At Sutton, near Abingdon, Berks, a board is fixed up on a small cottage at the end of the village with the following unique announcement. Thomas Cullum, arborist, florist, horticulturist, propagator culinary and esculent vegetables, indigenous and exotic trees, shrubs, and plants; budder, grafter, pruner and trainer of standard, espalier, and mural fruit trees; and operator of every practical branch of the Horticultural Geoponics.N. B. Plantations laid out on the most picturesque, geometrical, and scientific principles, on the shortest notice."

Canonization in the Nineteenth Century.-The Roman calendar has recently been augmented by the addition of a new saint; a father of the society of Jesuits having been canonized by pope Leo. XII. The following miracle gave rise to the celestial exaltation:-The reverend father went one Friday to the house of a Roman prince, whom he found at table ready to eat six larks, which stood before him. Being shocked at witnessing such a violation of the laws of the church, the holy man rebuked the prince severely; and the latter paying no heed to his exhortation, he stretched out his hand over the birds, and they revived. A picture, representing the miraculous event, has been placed at the gate of St. Peter's church, at Rome. In this picture the father is represented standing, and his hand stretched ont. His eyes are lifted up to heaven, which he seems to invoke, and the prince appears thunderstruck. Of the six birds two have already returned to life, two others flap their wings, and the two last are piously awaiting the moment of their resurrection!

Curious Fish.-(From the Hampshire Telegraph.) The skeleton of a very curious and rare animal has been landed here, from the Diadem transport, which has been viewed by a great number of persons, as the remains of a mermaid, but which appears, from Mr. Slight's description,