the most notable period of her history,—namely, during the very height of the late agitation-and that the monster meeting of Tara forms a chief feature in his book-and the reader will except, as he will most assuredly find-one of the most amusing and instructive volumes that has lately issued from the press :-a volume, too, be it expressly understood, in which the reader will not only find no physic, but that "medicine for a mind diseased," which nothing but pleasant books can administer, but a volume which (as if to guard against the fears that might be born of the ominous M.D. in the title-page), bears upon one of its earliest pages the following characteristic (and to physic haters) consolatory passage:

I will go further, and declare my conscientious opinion, founded on long observation and reflection, that if there was not a single physician, surgeon, apothecary, man-midwife, chemist, druggist, or DRUG, on the face of the earth, there would be less sickness and less mortality than now obtains.

Here is a physician for you! Why if Dr. James Johnson had never written another prescription, this alone ought to make him immortal! Let him henceforth-as Abernethy did-when any thing particular is not the matter with his patients, bid them "get my book on Ireland," and if their cure is not effected, all we can say is, that they are "past surgery."

SILENT LOVE.*

"No man e'er lov'd like me," is the burden of this unhappy poet's song. The bard, it seems, was a "Paisley Body," born nearly a century ago, who, after practising as an apothecary in his native town till he was fast approaching his grand climacteric, "sighed his soul," not "towards the Grecian camp," but into "the tomb of all the Capulets." He seems to have been a man of an ardent, yet delicate temperament, with strong feelings, some fancy, and a correct ear for rhyme. His own diffidence, rather than any discouragement on the part of the fair lady whom he forbears to name, seems to have rendered his passion an unavailing one till the death of its object, just as he had almost made up his mind to "propose," left him no other resource than to give vent to his sorrows in verse. It was not till a quarter of a century after his decease that these effusions which soothed his solitary hours, were given to the world by his nephew, and have since excited so much sympathy on the other side the border, as to have now reached a third edition. The book is prettily got up, and would form a very appropriate present to his lady-love from any modest young gentleman who would prefer the exhibition of a quiet hint to the adoption of either horn of that most distressing dilemma, the "sitting like Patience on a monument," or "blustering out the broad, staring question, 'Madam, will you marry me?" "

Silent Love: a Poem by the late James Wilson.

THE PROGRESSES OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN VICTORIA, AND H. R. H. PRINCE ALBERT, IN FRANCE, BELGIUM,

AND ENGLAND.

A SERIES of 114 woodcuts of various dimensions illustrative of the recent royal progresses which excited so much interest both here and on the continent. Most of these excellent specimens of an art which has risen deservedly in public estimation of late years have ranked among the principal embellishments of the Pictorial Times; from the excellence of the impressions, however, we are inclined to suspect that they have been struck off previously to the blocks being used for that spirited publication. The work is handsomely got up, and is well calculated for the table of the boudoir, while the accompanying letter-press, illustrative of the details of the royal visits it records will, in a few years, much increase the value of the work as a book of reference, and as rescuing an interesting portion of our youthful sovereign's domestic history from the compative oblivion into which the unconnected columns of the ablest periodical must almost necessarily fall.

STAFFORD ON DISEASES OF THE SPINE.

A VALUABLE practical treatise which, from the high position in his profession, filled by the author as Senior Surgeon to the Marylebone Infirmary, is well entitled to the attention of every member of the faculty. These Essays were originally composed for the Jacksonian Prize, which, it is unnecessary to add, they obtained. They have since been carefully revised, and have received considerable additions. The new mode of treatment proposed for Lateral Curvature, is especially worthy of notice.

THE PERFIDIOUS ENGINEER.

A TALE OF THE IRON AGE.

MR. CRANK was an engineer, and his friend and ally, Mr. Plugson, was another. Both were men of railways and locomotives, boilers and safety-valves, sleepers and gradients, always in motion, though their talk was of stations, and a pair of business-like steady fellows, though constantly tripping.

Crank was an iron man—a cast-iron man -almost as much a machine as any of his own engines. He was dry as coke, formal as a piston, and little, very little more sentimental than a tender! It is to be supposed, however, that he took fire one day with the rapidity of his movements, for he fell in love (such love as an iron man is capable of) with a not very young, not very handsome, not very wise, not very amiable, and not very wealthy maiden of Birmingham, whom he courted and married as mechanically as if Matrimony and the Grand Junction were convertible

terms.

It may seem odd that any woman should fancy Mr. Crank; but he had considerable reputation in his line, or rather on his lines: amongst the workers in iron he was deemed a working and rising man, and it is just possible that Miss Louisa Tramway, accustomed from the go-cart to speculations in that metal, may have thought that at no remote period Mr. Crank would convert his iron into gold.

Perhaps she was not so mercenary. Cupid may have iron-headed shafts in his quiver. Miss Tramway may have loved Mr. Thomas Crank purely because he was-an ENGINEER!"

One thing about Tom Crank certainly pleased the lady vastly. She thought him the best dressed man she had ever seen, and certainly he was the most flashily-dressed man that any body ever saw. He wore the brightest blues or the liveliest greens in his coats; the most gorgeous velvets in his waistcoats, the gayest satin stocks, and he had the most prodigious variety of nether habiliments, of all textures, tints, shades, and stripes, that perhaps the wardrobe of a man of business ever contained. In patent leather he was a downright spendthrift, and his button-hole never wanted a bunch of roses, carnations, geraniums, jessamine, or myrtle. Besides all this, he wore as much jewellery as would set up a reasonable goldsmith's shop; chains, pins, rings, studs, buckles, July.-VOL. LXXI. NO. CCLXXXIII.

U

seals, proving him already possessed of no small stock of the precious metal.

He went upon one occasion to a masquerade-ball at Warrington in the character of the Count D'Orsay, and was taken for the count himself! It was at that ball Miss Tramway saw him first; it was there he first saw Miss Tramway; it was there the proposal was made and accepted. Some people said that she actually promised her hand to Mr. Crank under the impression that she was bestowing herself and two hundred a-year On the most distinguished fashionable in England. In Mr. Crank's defence it was urged that the negotiation took place after supper, and that too much champagne had previously sparkled in his glass. But then he must have seen two very plain faces instead of one; so that the excuse did the engineer no great service.

He was not very long a married man before he made up his mind that the two hundred a-year was the best part of the bargain. His wife had a pug-nose, a pugnacious disposition, and a pug-dog, three serious incumbrances upon so small a fortune; still the two hundred a-year was of use to a rising man, and Crank never heaved a sigh or breathed a murmur, unless he did so in confidential intercourse with Plugson.

The ills of matrimony sit lighter on an engineer than on any other man living, so numerous are the opportunities he enjoys of escaping from domestic storms into the calm haven of active life. Crank bore his wife's ill-humour with the most philosophic composure, feeling the comfortable assurance that before the expiration of thirty-six hours some new railroad would put half the kingdom between them. When at home, however, he did but little indeed to make his partner happy, supposing it had been possible to do so. He had no domestic resource but his toilette. Mrs. Crank's dress or amusement never occupied his mind an instant; when Snap was indisposed he never asked for him; he took no periodicals but the Mechanics Magazine and the Railway Journal; he never had a man to dine with him but Plugson, or one or two directors of some new company. If Mrs. Crank proposed a walk he was probably busy preparing one of his dry pamphlets for the press; if he agreed, he was sure to lead her towards Euston-square, or to say, "Shall we go see the tunnel ?"

Mrs. Crank had seen the tunnel twenty times. She thought it hard that her husband never took her to Mr. Catlin's exhibition, to the Napoleon museum, or to see General Tom Thumb.

"You know I hate the tunnel."

"Hate the tunnel !"

"I do; you know I do ;-I'm tired of it."

"Well, shall we go see the Gallery of Arts ?-there's a model there of my new condenser."

"The Gallery of Arts!"

Mrs. Crank had a scornful toss of the head, peculiar to herself, so disagreeable that it seemed invented expressly for her husband's use, and this was the gesture with which she received the proposal of the Gallery of Arts.

"I know nothing else," replied the engineer.

"Nothing else! Why isn't there the National Gallery, and the Giantess, and the Water Colours, the Panoramas of Rome and Hong Kong, and Miss Linwood, and the Mermaid, the Egyptian Hall, and the

Singing Mouse, and Madame Tussaud's wax-works, and the Cartoons, and the Cosmorama and the Diorama, and the Zoological Gardens, and Mount Hecla ?" and here Mrs. Crank stopped to breathe; not that she had half exhausted the wonders and shows of London.

"Well, my dear, we shall go and see them all the next time I can manage to stay a few days with you; but just now I am so pressed, it's out of the question. Do walk with me to-day to Euston-square: I have business at the railway office, and on our return we can drop in at Albemarle-street and hear Dr. Swift's lecture on the velocity of locomotives."

Crank did not plague his wife out of malice prepense, but he was supremely indifferent whether he plagued her or not; in fact, when he was dressed for the day he thought and talked of nothing but his business, beyond which he did not possess a single scrap of information upon any subject, or one idea to clink against another.

The splendour of his dress, too, was not half so agreeable to Louisa Crank as it had been to Louisa Tramway. The roving lives of engineers expose them unquestionably to many temptations, and one had only to look at Tom Crank to see that he was ambitious to shine in the eyes of somebody! But might not that somebody be his bride? Well! there was something or another about Mrs. Crank, and something, too, in Mr. Crank's general manner towards her, which led one to a different conclu

sion.

The day but one after Crank's considerate offer to take his wife that charming new walk to Euston-square, he went down to Folkestone on a short professional tour; he returned the same day, only to start again for Birmingham, where he made a short stay, and then ran across to Bristol, from which place he wrote to his lady, bidding her direct to him at Liverpool; from Liverpool he returned to London, and passed two hours at home, during which time Snap bit his middle finger, and Mrs. Crank worried him about a pair of diamond shirt studs. Perhaps these little incidents accelerated his departure, but he certainly left town instantly for the north of England, having first treated himself in Cockspur-street to a new hat. And this was the life he led for some time; expedition after expedition, and trip upon trip. Motives were as plenty as locomotives. He was abroad for weeks and at home for days, Mrs. Crank continually complaining of his roving propensities, always hinting that he might pass more of his time in town, if he was disposed, but not taking any great pains, the while, to increase the attractions of headquarters.

Crank was not a domestic man, but he soon forgot trifling domestic annoyances; and when he returned from the north he had totally forgotten the bite of his wife's lap-dog and the affair of the shirt studs.

Mrs. Crank made another attempt to see the Napoleon Museum, but to no purpose.

"The next time I can contrive to have a couple of days in town, my dear."

"That's what you say always."

"But really, Louisa, it is quite impracticable to-day; I am so full of business. Valve at twelve, Euston-square at half-past one; then I must run down to meet Brunel at the tunnel-would you like to come with me? I'll take you,—well, just as you please at four I have an appointment at Vauxhall Bridge-and then I have to call at Princes-street, and