1815.] Description of Geneva, State of Society, &c. the gravel-walks of a garden, along the shores of one of the most beautiful lakes, which, formed into the shape of a halfmoon, is incessantly presenting new charms; and proceeded among numberless neat villages, villas, and small towns, through Morges, Rolle, Nyon, Copet, Versois, &c. to Geneva. Our carriage rattled over the busy streets of St. Gervais, the only quarter of the city that lies on the right bank of the Rhone. Crossing the bridge over that river, we passed through the second quarter, the Isle, (a beautiful island,) into the upper town, along the promenade Petit Languedoc to the street Beauregard, and stopped at the Maison Perdrieaux. The vehicle was soon cleared of our luggage by officious attendants, and we went up stairs to our sinall but pleasant apartments. We had often thought by the way of our landlady, Madame P***, and sketched her picture in imagination after the model of several Genevese ladies whom we had met with at different places on the road; but, as it usually happens, we were all three wrong, not only in regard to her person, but in every other particular. No sooner had we changed our clothes than we received from her an invitation to a soirée. We found a numerous company of ladies and gentlemen assembled to tea in the drawing-room, and were somewhat disconcerted on recollecting that we must now assume the French manners and language. Many may be inclined to ridicule the apprehension felt on such an occasion, but it is by no means unfounded: for it is natural that every individual should wish, if not to shine, at least to appear what he is: but in such a case he must evidently exhibit himself to a great disadvantage. The ladies of Geneva, however, understand the art of raising the foreigner above this unpleasant sensation, which operated as a great encouragement to us. They conducted the conversation in the most agreeable manner, and not without some display of science. Le Lac, les bains du Rhône et de l'Arve, les chars à banc, les campagnes, les thermomètres, les sermons, and les soirées, furnished the principal topics, and seemed here to supply the place of politics, the theatre, and scandal. The company broke up about ten o'clock. The following morning we surveyed the richly-embell shed landscape that lies before our windows. On the left we had the western ridge of the singularly shaped Saleve; in front the most charm 225 ing country, rising with a gentle slope toward the west, and studded, first with the villas of the Genevese, and farther off with villages and hamlets, to an eminence several leagues distant, over which runs the road to Chambery. On the right, the south-west part of the Jura stretches away across the country, and leaves but one opening, through which the eye discerns the still more remote mountains towards Lyons, the termination of the Alpine range. This chasm is formed by the Rhone, which here intersects the Jura, and afterwards sinks in the subterraneous cataract called Perte du Rhone, five leagues from Geneva. About a mile from us, in the same direction, appears a lower break, just at the spot where the gray glacierwater of the impetuous Arve, which issues from Mont Blanc, unites in one bed with the indigo-blue translucent and rapid stream of the Rhone, but in such a manner that both currents can be seen to flow on separately for a considerable space. Just under our window is the street Beauregard, which has here one single row of houses, and leads to two of the finest walks of the city; on the left to the Place St. Antoine, which commands a most magnificent prospect_towards the lake, and, on the right, to La Treille, a terrace planted with four rows of trees, which on the one hand conducts into the midst of the city, and on the other enjoys nearly the same view of the lake as we have from our lodging. The opposite side of the street Beauregard overlooks the old fortifications of Geneva and the Belle Promenade, an extremely beautiful and shady walk, overarched with the thickest foliage of lofty chesnut trees, in the midst of which, on a high pedestal, stands a bust of Rousseau. One portion of the ramparts has been converted into a botanic garden, which a number of private persons have formed and maintain at their own charge. Vaucher, the cryptogamist, Gosse, Micheli, and several ladies, are in their element here. Many of the fair sex, indeed, are distinguished by their proficiency in different branches of the natural sciences. In our vicinity are situated, in La Treille, the Drawing Academy, with its beautiful statues of plaster, and heads after the antique, the Riding House, and the Fencing School; in the Place St. Antoine, the Observatory and the City Library. The proximity to these institutions, and to two of the gates of 226 Description of Geneva, State of Society, &c. the city, which has but three in all, is a great advantage to our house and the whole quarter, which is called le haut de la ville, in opposition to le bas de la ville, a distinction which originates in nature, but which at the period of the Revolution occasioned much bloodshed. Le haut de la ville has the most salubrious as well as the most pleasant situation, and of course also the best houses, and the habitations of the persons most distinguished for wealth and consequence, who during the political and civil commotions were actuated by a very different interest from the inferior classes. M. Picot, the latest historian of his native city, even goes so far as to assert that the form of government, the character, and fate of Geneva would have been totally different, had the place been built entirely in a plain, and not on the side, top, and at the foot of a hill. There is certainly a great difference between the circumstances of the two classes of the inhabitants; here you breathe a fresh pure air, enjoy beautiful prospects, and have broad streets, terraces, and gardens; here reside all persons of fortune and strangers; all the literati, professors and families who take in boarders; here are situated the principal church of St. Pierre, all the literary institutions, the collcges, auditoires, &c, together with the establishments for education, in which no other city is so rich as this: there you find the class of handicrafts; there all the streets, with the exception of the principal, which intersects the town in the middle, la Cité, and one other that runs along the lake, are small, narrow, and mean; whilst some are so steep that it is necessary to have flights of steps in them, and that a rapid stream pours down each at every shower of rain. There, along the lake, are the shambles, the markets for wood and vegetables, the posts and diligences, the shops of all kinds, and in the main street the counting-houses of the mer chants. Thus we live, in fact, as if we were in the country; for we cannot see from our apartments one single house belonging to the city, and yet enjoy all the advantages of a town. But our house, which is named after its owner, M. Perdrieaux, is in fact itself a little town. It resembles, in its arrangement, most of the houses of Geneva: it has three different entrances one above another; and consists, with out covering much ground, of six stories, containing twelve different families or parties, and a total of sixty-one persons, [April 1, During the three weeks that I have been here, we have had one fire, three christenings, one funeral, seven soirées composed only of inmates of the house, and societies every evening. For eight guineas per month each, we have board, lodging, fire, candle, and attendauce, and the pri vilege of accompanying our landlady in all her visits. People here are rejoicing in the anticipation of the return of M. Pictet, and the pleasure they shall derive from the Cours de Physique which he occasionally delivers in winter to a numerous audience of ladies and gentlemen. He is the editor of the Bibliothèque Britannique, for the last sixteen years one of the few journals which have actually enriched the sciences, and completely possesses the valuable gift of stripping them of all that is of no real utility, and introducing whatever is truly worth knowing, whatever is calculated to benefit mankind, into the practice of common life, He is at this moment Inspector of the Universities of France-But to return to the Genevese. They are charged, and not unjustly, with pride; but in my opinion they have abundant reason to be proud. I know not of any city which for three centuries has produced such extraordinary characters, scholars, and statesmen; which has adhered so faithfully to its ancient manners, and is so generally imbued with a spirit of religion; in which you find so much wealth coupled with so much simplicity, so many excellent and popular preachers, and such overflowing churches; where parents pay so much attention to the education of their children; where there are so many observers and admirers of nature; and where the people, in a new political relation, display such dig nity, sincerity, consistence, and at the same time such justice, as here. I shall consider it my duty to make myself as intimately acquainted as possible with all those data which can give me a thorough insight into the character of these people, and with all the means employed by so small a community to impart to its members for ages a peculiarity of figure, the corners of which, could as little be worn away by the late moral deluge, notwithstanding its tendency to destroy every thing characteristic, as the most obdurate granite can be worn by the round smooth pebbles that cover every valley and every road. me there is something uncommonly grand and sublime in the contemplation of man succeeding by his perseverance in civil To 1815.1 Fallacy of the Brunonian Doctrine. and religious principles that have once been adopted as just and good, in securing himself, his children, and his children's children, from the frivolity and the corruption of a whole age. (To be concluded in our next.) MR. EDITOR, WITHOUT wishing in the least to detract from the real merits of the late Dr. John Brown, whose genius and erudition I am disposed to admire; I feel desirous of correcting certain points advanced by his eulogist in your last number, and candidly to inquire how far his pretended discoveries have advanced the improvement of the science of medicine, as well as to estimate the effects of his speculations on medical practice. That the hypothesis of Dr. Brown, or as it has sometimes been called, his doctrine, met at the first promulgation of it with a very extensive and favourable reception, cannot be denied; nor can we be much at a loss to discover the cause of this circumstance. It was admirably well calculated to flatter the vanity of the superficial, and to abridge the labours of those disposed to be idle, since it was abundantly more easy to descant upon the sthenic and asthenic forms of diseases, and the excess and deficiency of excitement, than to describe the distribution of the blood vessels, or to trace the course of the nerves. The knowledge of anatomy and physiology was to a Brunonian perfectly useless; and the laborious toil requisite for the acquirement of these branches of study might well be spared him, since the structure of the human frame and the functions of its various organs were by no means necessary considerations, either in his estimation of the causes of diseases, or of the means requisite for their removal. The beautiful simplicity of the system, accordingly, recommended it chiefly to those who were most deficient in that solid knowledge which can alone form the basis of a successful cultivation of medical science; whilst its fallacy was too evident to those who had opportunities of witnessing its want of accordance with the natural operations of health and the phenomena of diseases. The only real test of the value of professional acquirements and of the truth of medical theories is the bedside of the patient; and, alas! what a figure does a Brunonian make there! He finds his hypothesis totally inadequate to explain the numerous and various symptoms which constantly confound and perplex him; nor does his doctrine 227 afford him the least ground of preference among the multiplicity of curative means offered to his choice. Were it true, as your correspondent asserts, that the ac tion of all external agents upon the ani inal economy is the same in kind, and only different in degree, the practice of medicine would be rendered simple indeed, and nothing more would be requisite in the treatment of the whole catalogue of diseases, than to increase or diminish excitement, accordingly as the malady assumes a sthenic or asthenic form; the actual substance by which the indication is to be accomplished would he a perfect matter of indifference; the action of every substance upon the animal economy being the same in kind, the degree of action produced would become our only care. One universal medicine might then be adopted, the effect of which is to be regulated by the dose applied, and no medicine can be preferable to another on account of any specific property contained in it. Absurd as is the idea, there have not been wanting those who have attempted to regulate their medical practice upon such preposterous principles. Young men of ardent and enthusiastic imaginations, deficient in those solid acquirements which constitute the judicious practitioner, have not unfrequently reduced their theory to practice, and the consequences to their patients have been lamentable. Fortunately for mankind, the delusion has vanished, and the majority of practi tioners have returned to their sober senses. An intimate acquaintance with the structure and functions of the animal economy in health, an accurate knowledge of the various morbid deviations to which it is subject, and close observation of the customary progress and termination of diseases, are circumstances on which the practitioner of the present day rests his claims to public confidence. I am much disposed to question the truth of your correspondent's assertion, that "before the appearance of this splendid system, not a single phenomenon in the animal economy had been satisfactorily explained," and must confess that the light I have received from this system has gone but a small way in increas ing the facility of explanation. Equally ignorant am I of the well marked line, said by Philopater to have been left by the Brunonian doctrine, by which every rational practitioner may regulate his conduct in the treatment of diseases with a degree of precision and certainty heretofore unknown." The declension 66 228 Attack of the Monthly Mag. on the Trading Classes. [April 1, every where of the stimulant mode of treatment is the best possible comment on the doctrine of excitement, and the most satisfactory refutation of its applicability to actual practice. I cannot deny that it is highly meritorious in your correspondent to endeavour at rescuing the character of his departed friend from obloquy or aspersion, although I cannot but think it injudicious in him to found his friend's reputation upon the discovery of a system," the fallibility of which at the patient's bed-side, and in cases of daily occurrence, must be admitted by its warmest admirers." London, March 7, 1815. CRITO. MR. EDITOR, AS your publication was professedly established for the purpose of exposing and counteracting that dangerous spirit of discontent which certain desperate adventurers take so much pains to excite in the lower classes of the inhabitants of this country, I shall make no apology for calling your attention to a passage in the last number of the Monthly Magazine, purporting to have been written by a Mr. COMMON SENSE, (a more appropriate appellation would be UNCOMMON NONSENSE,) and who for above a twelvemonth past has been occasionally illuminating the public with lucubrations strung together under the title of a Walk to Kew. Of his trite panegyric on "the Emperor Napoleon," "who endeavoured to apply philosophy to all the arts of life," 99 66 in spite of those malignant confederacies which he was so often called upon to overthrow," I shall say nothing the writer, no doubt, lives in hopes that the time will come when he shall receive the due reward of his adherence to his fallen patron. Therefore to the point. "The sides of this road, (from Wandsworth to Putney Heath,) and the openings of the distant landscape," says this philosophizing pedestrian, "excite the admiration of the eye of taste, by the architectural and horticultural beauties of mansions which have sprung out of the profits or the artifices of trade. The multiplication of these dormitories of avarice is considered by too many as the sign of public prosperity. Fallacious, delusive, and mischievous notion! Was the world made for the many or the few? Can any one become rich from domestic trade without making others poor? or can another bring wealth from foreign countries except by adding to the circulating medium, and thereby diminishing the value of money? In either case what is the benefit to the public or the community? Yet a benefit is rendered visible-a fine house has arisen where there stood before but a wretched hovel, and a paradise has been created out of a sheep-pasture! The benefit, however, is merely to the individual! his pride and taste are gratified, and this gratifi cation is called a benefit-yet with him the benefit, if to him it really is so, begins and ends. But he employs the neighbourhood, patronizes the arts, and encourages trade! Granted-but whence come his means? His wealth is not miraculous. It has no exclusive and intrinsic properties. If he spends it at Putney, he must draw it from other places; either from rents of land or houses, or from interest of money, both the fruit of others' industry, and the sign of corresponding privations in those who pay them." Your readers will surely imagine that this must be the rant of a maniac, or at least of one of those votaries of the Liberty and Equality system, whose poison circulated through France till it corrupted the mass of the lower orders, and produced that revolution which de luged Europe with misery and blood. They will scarcely believe that there can still be found a man so weak, or so wicked, as to preach up doctrines so mischievous, after witnessing the manifold calamities which they have produced. Still less would they suppose that a public writer could have the hardihood to insult the good sense of English readers by absurdities too palpable to need refutation. Least of all would they have expected such language of a man who, from a very humble be ginning, contrived, by what artifices are best known to himself, to shine the me teor of a few years in trade; who, in addition to his establishment in town, must needs have his dormitory of avarice also; who moreover "gratified his pride and taste" with the ostentatious display of orange liveries and a gold chain; and whose wealth certainly was "not miraculous," as it was "the fruit of others' industry, and the sign of corresponding privations in those who furnished it." They would not have expected this, I say, from a wholesale manufacturer of accommodation bills-a bankrupt, whose estate in five years has paid as many shillings in the pound-who, evidently judging from his own standard, cannot separate the idea of artifices from trade and triumphantly asks," Can any one 1815.] Inaccuracies in the Parish Register and Curates' Act. become rich from domestic trade without making others poor?" If the "fruit of others' industry" paid for his townhouse and his country-house, his equipage, his title, and the expenses attendant on the civic office into which he thrust himself; if it be true that the show of wealth he kept up entailed distress upon many, and utter ruin upon some; surely this cannot justify the malignant libel which he has here sent forth against all the trading classes of this commercial city, whose general honour and integrity in their dealings, are not less celebrated abroad than uni versally acknowledged at home? Because this renegado, whose name will hereafter be classed with those of a GOLDSMITH, a DUTTON, and an O'CON→ NOR, has chosen to exhibit in his own person a glaring example of a contrary mode of proceeding, and of the disgrace consequent upon it, he must not ima gine that he will be suffered to vent the effusions of his envy against honest and successful industry, without deserved ⚫ castigation. DETECTOR. London, March 8, 1815. pro MR. EDITOR, IN the form of the declaration vided in the late Register Act (at least according to the copies sent to every parish) a very singular error occurs. If the minister, therefore, as the act requires, should strictly transcribe this form, in drawing out the verification of his annual returns to the registrar, he must literally make nonsense of his attestation! The part to which I allude is this: "and that no other entry, during such period, is contained in any of such books respectively, are truly made, (Qu. what?) according to the best of my knowledge and belief." I could much wish to learn from any of your clerical readers in what way they rectify this strange inaccuracy. In a copy I have of the bill, as amended after its final re-commitment, just before it passed, the words, are truly made," do not appear at all. If they were, therefore, designedly added In using the term domestic trade, the Knight must, I presume, have had an eye to the trade in English bills drawn upon Irish stamps carried on in the countinghouse of a certain ci-devant bookseller of Bridge-street, Blackfriars. In this case nothing can be more just than his question. No man can become rich from such a trade without making others poor in the same proportion. NEW MONTHLY MAG.-No, 15, 229 after this, there has been on the part of the printer an omission of some intervening words, owing, it is most probable, to the carelessness of the transcriber in copying the act for the press. It is very surprising that, so often as it has of late happened that the phraseology of our statutes has been obscured by such absurd blunders, no method has been yet adopted to prevent their recur rence. In the last Curates' Act, passed in 1813,* another of these unaccountable mistakes occurs, though being only in a marginal title to one of the clauses, it is not of such material consequence as the preceding. This occurs in sect. 19, which, as it is now printed, runs, "Statement of particulars necessary to be given by persons applying for a licence for nonresidence." The clause itself relates to the statement to be made by clergy not applying for non-residence licences, but by clergy being already actually exempt! Therefore the title, to have been correct, should have been worded, "Statement of particulars necessary to be given by persons, BEING EXEMPT FROM RESI DENCE, ON APPLYING FOR A LICENCE FOR A CURATE. V. M. H. P. S. Can any of your correspondents inform me for what object it is required in the above-noticed Register Act, that the annual copies shall be drawn out by the ministers (or any persons authorized by them) " at the expiration of two months after the end of every year;" although the copies so made are only required to be transmitted to the registrar" on or before the first of June in every year?" |