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boasts indeed of Metastasio: but his compositions are more justly celebrated for harmony of language than originality of invention or warmth of sentiment; and the specimens, which have been inserted in this collection, are not the best that might have been selected. In justice, however, to the publisher, we may remark that the comparative scarcity of Italian collections in this country may have prompted his efforts, that several of the extracts are worthy of quotation, and that the text is very correctly printed. Two or three of the small pieces may amuse our readers.

L'AGITAZIONE.

DI FILOMARINI.

• Ruscel che mormori
Aura, che spiri
Sai, se si aggiri
Quà il caro ben?
Ahi l'aure fuggono?
Abi passa il rio!
Qual pena, oh Dio!
M'Agita il sen.'

A UN FRATE.
EPIGRAMMA DI PANANTI.
Pentiti, a un dissoluto moribondo
Disse un Frate, perchè
Ho delle scale in fondo

Visto il Demonio che venia per te.
E sotto qual figura?
D'un asino.-Eb badate
La vostr' ombra v'avrà fatio
paura.'

AGITATION.
By FILOMARINI.
Murm'ring streamlet, sighing
gale,

Moves my fair one in this vale?
Ah! the gales in silence die,
Ah! the streamlet passes by.
Ah! in vain I sigh for rest!
Tumult wild distracts my breast.

ON A FRIAR.

AN EPIGRAM BY PANANTI.
As a dissolute wag lay dying in
bed,

"Repent, I beseech you," his
good beadsman said:
"For, to tell you a secret-below
in the hall,

The devil just now did my senses
appall."

"And under what likeness ?—”
"Why that of an ass,"

"The fear of your shadow,-so
let the joke pass."

The biographical notices are very slight and meagre,

MEDICA L.

Art. 21. Advice to Mothers, on the Subject of their own Health, and on the
Means of promoting the Health, Strength, and Beauty of their Offspring.
By Wm. Buchan, M. D. Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians,
and Author of Domestic Medicine. 8vo. pp. 418. 6s. Boards.
Cadell and Davies.

This publication displays much good sense and benevolence. The author strenuously maintains the propriety of a careful attention to the dictates of Nature, in the various circumstances of mothers and children; and he contends against those injurious, though too common prejudices, which still exist on the management of children, and on the subject of female health.-We shall give a general view of the plan of this work, which we may with great safety recommend to the careful perusal of the judicious parent,

The first, second, and third chapters are particularly directed to the conduct of women before marriage, and during pregnancy and child

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birth. The disadvantages arising from the present fashionable mode of living are forcibly pointed out; while regularity, temperance, and a regard to every thing which may preserve the general health, are strongly inculcated. Dr. B. is disposed to prefer the employment of female midwives, because, as their time is less valuable than that of men, they are less likely to give a scanty and hurried attendance: but he requires that they should possess a licence to practise, founded on proofs of real qualifications. The use of cordials in child-birth is strongly and properly reprobated.

Dr. B.'s observations on the Nursing and Rearing of Children, in chap. iv., are divided into Remarks on the Influence of Air; on warm and cold Bathing; Dress; Use of Medicines; Food; Exercise and Rest. The early and indiscriminate use of the cold bath or washing is considered as highly injurious to the delicate frame of the infant; and he is decidedly of opinion that the temperature of the water employed should at first be that of the body, and be very gra. dually lowered.

Cleanliness is particularly necessary in the persons and linen of children: but nurses are generally too fastidious about the removal of that slime, which covers the bodies of newly-born children, and which easily comes away after three or four washings with a soft sponge and warm water, with a little soap in it.

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With regard to dress, it should be simple and easy, and every kind of pressure should be studiously avoided, as tending to produce convulsions and other serious complaints. The only part of an infant's dress or covering, which may be applied pretty close, is a broad piece of thin flannel round the navel, to guard against any protrusion there, from the accidental violence of the child's cries. But take care not to make the pressure too tight, or you will not only hurt the bowels, but, perhaps, cause, in another place, a much worse rupture than that to which your precaution is directed.'

The purging off the meconium by medicines is a favourite but very hurtful and unnecessary practice; because Nature has given the first secreted milk a laxative property, which answers the purpose of discharging that substance much better than the productions of the apothecary's shop. Children should not be continually crammed with food; the mother's milk is at first the only nourishment which should be given to them: but pap may be gradually introduced, so as to prepare the way for weaning. The mother, after delivery, should be indulged with a few hours' sleep, to recover from the fatigue which she has lately undergone, and to allow due time for the secretion of the milk, before the infant is put to the breast. The child can suffer no inconvenience from this delay. Being replete with blood and juices, he has not the least occasion for any fresh supply of nutriment, till the mother is prepared, by necessary repose, to give him the grateful and spontaneous beverage.'

The remaining chapters of this useful work are occupied with Considerations on Dwarfishness and Deformity; on the baneful Effects of a delicate and enervating Education; on Employments unfavourable to the Growth and Health of Children; on Accidents; on Found

ling Hospitals, and other charitable Inftitutions for the rearing of poor deserted Children; and in giving a Sketch of a Plan for the Preservation and Improvement of the Human Species. In this last, the author recommends, as an encouragement to the rearing of healthy children, that a premium should be granted annually to every mother, in proportion to the age and number of healthy children brought up by her. An Appendix contains a principal part of Dr. Cadogan's Essay on the Nursing and Management of Children, which is now

scarce.

Art. 22. Discourses on the Management of Infants, and the Treatment of their
Diseases. Written in a plain and familiar Style, to render it intelligible
and useful to all Mothers and those who have the Management of
Infants. By John Herdman, M. D. 8vo. pp. 127.
sewed. Johnson.

2s. 6d.

We have here the first of four discourses, which the author has written on the management of infants and the treatment of their discases. It contains directions for the attentions necessary during the periods of nursing and weaning. The second discourse will treat of the Causes, Symptoms, Nature, and Cure of Infant (infantile) Diseases; the third, of their contagious Diseases; and the fourth, of the Management of their mental faculties and Passions.

Dr. H.'s view of the proper conduct during the periods of nursing and weaning agrees very nearly with that of Dr. Buchan on the same subject, which we have noticed in the preceding article. We have only therefore to express our hopes that the creditable exertions of this author, and of others who strenuously contend against those prejudices which still maintain their ground respecting the management of infants, may prove successful.

The present discourse is not altogether free from occasional Scotticisms.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Yell.

D.o Art. 23. A Compendious Treatise of Modern Education, in which the following interesting Subjects are liberally discussed: The Nursery, Private Schools, Public Schools, Universities, Gallantry, Duelling, Gaming, Suicide. By the late Joel M'Cringer, D. D. F.R.S. A.S.S. Rector of the united parishes of Pigworth, Goosebridge, and Honeytown, in Middlesex-Vicar of Cornstead-cum-Haybury, in the same county-Prebendary of St. Glebemore-Whitehall Preacher, and Domestic Chaplain to the Right Honorable Lord Trainwell. To which are added, coloured Designs, both characteristic and illustrative, delineated by J. B. W *** Esq.,

and etched by Thomas Rowlandson. Long Folio. il. 1s. Boards. Miller.

Geoffrey Gambado, by being Master of the Horse to the Doge of Venice, could not have been better enabled to write a treatise on Horsemanship, than the Reverend Pluralist, whose successes in life are exhibited in this title page, must have been fitted to inculcate the principles of education. Indebted for elevation to qualities which cannot be suspected of any connection with morality, the Doctor does not profess a partiality for any of those sentiments which are termed virtuous. He is not alarmed at vice like some unaspiring

7

squeamish

squeamish preceptors, but undertakes to point out how much of
this ingredient enters into the composition of Modern Education.
To prepare us for so beneficial a discovery, he thus translates Juve-
nal's Nemo repente fuit turpissimus.” "No one can become a com-
PLETE GENTLEMAN at once;" by which we are put on our guard
against the declamations of moralists; and apprized that what the
antients rejected as the turpe we must teach our children to cherish as
the pulchrum, if we would have them to be men of finished education.
Now this most sage and important information must induce us to re-
commend Dr M'Cringer as a preceptor, with all the zeal which
we should exercise in behalf of our old friend Gambado as a riding
master. To form a complete Gentleman, early cruelty, early debauch-
ery, drunkenness, gallantry, disease, duelling, and gaming, are most
indispensably necessary; and to render the picture exactly what it
ought to be, suicide must crown the whole. Can any loving parent,
then, refrain from wishing that his son may become a complete Gentle-
man? Who can even look at the designs which embellish and illustrate
this precious fragment (for alas! the observant M'Cringer was pre-
vented by death from finishing his sagacious treatise); who can ob-
serve the orderly treatment of the child in the nursery; the harmless
amusements of the boy at the private seminary, and his sober exploite
at the public school; his manly studies at the university, his proficiency
in gallantry, and his mode of honorably killing without murder, his
contempt of sordid wealth by risking all on the throw of a die, and
his prudent method of escaping poverty by killing himself; who
can survey all this without expressing due thanks to Dr. M'Cringer
and his friends for their hints and advice; which, if properly under-
stood, and well digested, may do as much good as some more elaborate
and vulgar performances. We have only to add that the Doctor
having been what is called " a knowing one," the reader must take
for granted that he is fond of "quizzing."
Art. 24. L' Italie et L' Angleterre, &c. i. e. Italy and England,-
each considered in one of her Children. 8vo. 28. Clarke.
Such is the fantastical title of this small morsel of criticism. The
children of the respective countries are Michael Angelo and Shak-
speare, between whose excellencies and defects the author, hints at
real or fancied analogies. He cannot, however, dissemble that the
Italian artist was indebted for his celebrity to the study of the an
tique; and that the bard of Stratford depended wholly on the re-
sources of native genius; or, to copy the writer's own terms, on
spontaneous infused intuition." We will not say that this essay,
which is ascribed to the Comte de Catuelan, is vox et præterea nihil,
but it certainly displays more turgid verbiage than accurate and dis-
criminate appreciation of two of the greatest geniuses who have
adorned the world.

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Art. 25. Flowers of Literature, for 1801, 1801, and 1803; or charac teristic Sketches of human Nature and human Manners. To which is added a general View of Literature during that Period. With Notes Historical, Critical, and Explanatory. By the Rev. F. Prevost, and F. Blagdon Esq. 2 Vols. 12mo. 11s. Boards. Crosby and Co.

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Readers

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Readers of a versatile turn, who find it difficult to fix their attention for any time to one subject, will here obtain a relief for their wandering fancy, and a choice variety to amuse their leisure hours. Such reading, however, we consider as of no other advantage than the amusement of the moment; since new images, presented so rapidly to the imagination, make no lasting impression. Like the vision of the kings in Shakspeare, another and another comes; and when the volume closes, the reader arises from his sofa with the faint traces on his recollection, as it were, of a dream.

The introduction gives a cursory view of the more noted publications of the day; and we observe that the editors have occasionally done us the honor to adopt our remarks on the merits of some of these performances. Several notes accompany the extracts, and will be found worth perusal; and a few articles occur, which have not previously made their appearance in print. Mans

EDUCATION.

Art. 26. Practical Arithmetic, or the Definitions and Rules in whole Numbers, Fractions vulgar and decimal, exemplified by a large Collection of Questions relative to business; including Rules and Examples of mental Calculations, and Abbreviations in most Parts of Arithmetic, with Notes. Adapted to the use of young Ladies, as well as young Gentlemen. By J. Richards, Izmo. 2s. 6d. Bound. Seeley.

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This book contains a great variety of examples, sufficiently appropriate, and is offered to the public at a cheap rate. The author has judiciously introduced several tables, for the values of annuities, &c. but we wish that he had farther extended his plan of mental calculation. The aids of which the mind avails itself, in such calculations, are derived from the principles of the Science, reflect light on those principles, and create a habit and adroitness in compounding and decompounding. Persons in ordinary life, ignorant of reading and writing, calculate mentally; and an attention to the process which they carry on will often more illustrate the nature of arithmetic, than written elaborate elucidations. Mr. R's book seems well adapted to answer the purpose for which he intended it.

Art. 27. Dialogues Enfantin: Juvenile Dialogues, in short and easy
Words, to facilitate the reading of French. By the Countess de
Fouchecour. Small 2mo. Is. Highley.

It may be doubted whether any advantage is likely to accrue from placing the corresponding English on the opposite pages of books of education; espècially when, as in this instance, it does not closely accord word for word with the French. It will probably lead the beginner to mistakes, which he must afterward take some trouble to correct. These dialogues are in other respects suited to the capacity of early youth.

Art. 28. A General Table of the French Verbs, regular and irregular by which the Formation of any Tense or Person required may be immediately found. By R. Juigné, M.A. of the University of Paris. Folio Sheet. Dulau and Co.

The

RV.

Man

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