to tell him to gallop as fast as he could and hasten the advance of the artillerymen, who ought to have been there an hour ago, and already our major-general (de la Boissière) was turning to execute this commission with all the zeal of an aide-de-camp, when Rohu, whose anti-aristocratic instincts sometimes showed themselves under brutal forms, seeing him turn his back on the field of battle, ran and fastened on the mane of his horse, swearing that he should not move a step farther, and asking if his title of marquis dispensed him from risking his person like the rest. There arose then so great a tumult around the two disputants, that much precious time was lost in explanations before the intractable Rohu could be induced to let go his hold.' This bears a curious resemblance to an incident at Bothwell Brigg, described in Old Mortality,' when Henry Morton's retrograde movement to bring up fresh troops is similarly misconstrued. The Blues, in the mean time had moved up, and were on the point of charging with the bayonet, when they received an unexpected check from Gamber-who opened so effective a fire upon their flank, that, if the reserve and artillery had been there to second him, the affair might have ended in their defeat; but their general, finding that he had greatly the advantage of numbers, kept his ground, and sent out such a multitude of skirmishers that the Chouans soon found themselves outflanked and outmanœuvred in their turn. A vigorous charge of cavalry being made at the same time against the barrier in their front, they at length fell into irremediable disorder, and the road to Auray was covered with the fugitives. The guns arrived just as the flight began, and the gunners, firing one long shot by way of announcing their presence, gallopped off in the direction of the town, which they traversed in haste, and forthwith deposited their trust in a field of corn close to the main road. Such was their hurry, that they did not even stay to unharness the horses, so that the enemy's attention was immediately attracted, and the whole artillery of the Chouans fell into their hands. dren,' was his address, I insist on being your only leader to-day; promise me not to quit me during the action, and to execute faithfully whatever I may command.' An unanimous acclamation of assent was the reply, and they proceeded to post themselves on a ridge commanding the road, resolved on making the Blues pay a heavy toll before passing. They opened so close and well-aimed a fire on the foremost column that it stopped short. An adjutant major was killed, the commander-in-chief received a wound long deemed mortal, and one of his aides-de-camp was stretched beside him. But the reserve, like the main body, was soon hemmed in by skirmishers, and so thick a storm of shot was hailed upon them that they were almost blinded by the leaves and branches cut from some chestnut trees above their heads. Margadel, conceiving that enough had been done for honour, now gave the signal for retreat. The Blues followed close, but a little nearer the town they were encountered by another reserve posted in a cemetery, which it cost them dear to dislodge. The very gate was the scene of a third heroic effort. A gentleman of Auray, M. de Molien, at the head of a few royalists, resolutely barred the passage of the Blues. Repeatedly was he borne to the ground, yet again and again did he rush upon their bayonets, till he fell senseless, and was left for dead in the street. The place was carried, but the reserve kept together and formed a rallying point, to which the disconcerted Chouans soon repaired in sufficient numbers to form a fresh army. After one more engagement, however, in which a party of the Blues were seized with an unaccountable panic and rushed like madmen from the field, the struggle grew languid at the news of Waterloo, and was finally terminated by the second abdication of Buonaparte. Amongst the most pleasing passages of the book are the meeting between the officers of the two parties at a sort of reconciliation festival, and the reception of the students on their return. The table-talk at the festival turned naturally on the stirring scenes in which the guests had been engaged : The reserve, at the head of which were the students, was quartered in Auray. No orders arrived until the streets were choked with runaways, when a staff officer gave the word Les écoliers au Champ de Martyrs,' which naturally enough struck a chill into They had too high an opinion of one another their hearts. The Chevalier de Margadel, to avoid any subject of conversation. General who had given vent to a paroxysm of rage Rousseau spoke of his campaign against the at every fresh blunder, now thought only Chouans in a manner to excite a lively indigof the best manner of averting the useless nation amongst certain bourgeois, to whom his sacrifice of his company. His first care words were repeated, and who persevered in seeing in us nothing but rogues and brigands. was to put them on their guard against the He complimented de Sol on the fine bearing of impetuosity of the old sergeant: My chil-our little army during the battle of Muzillac, and the heroism with which the students had to fetch the two champions, the youngest of defended their position. He then desired to whom was in consternation at the lot which his know who commanded a certain battalion of inferiority of age and college-rank portended. peasants, who, towards the close of the action, His joy may be imagined when he learnt that it had manœuvred on his left flank, and induced was precisely the reverse; that not only was he him to beat a retreat. The Chouan officers to to receive the cross of honour from the hands of whom this question was addressed were stand- Mademoiselle d'Olonne upon his knees, but that, ing round him, and prevented it from reaching in rising from this suppliant attitude, he would the ear of a bald and infirm peasant, who was be privileged to salute her on both cheeks. It sitting by himself in a corner of the room, his required all the Breton naïveté not to be a little head leaning on his breast, and his hands hang- startled at this noble kiss, given on the very ing between his legs, and who knew better than steps of an altar. But our imaginations were anybody of whom General Rousseau was speak-pitched upon a key which made criticism iming. The General, not receiving a satisfactory possible. When the pair-friends, brothers in answer, repeated his question, which was then arms, and fellow-pupils at once--advanced to better understood, and his auditors, instead of kneel before their ladies, applauses and cries of replying to it themselves, indicated by looks and joy resounded from all sides; these redoubled at gestures the old man to whom this praise refer- the most interesting part of the ceremony, and red, and who was too modest to claim it. became deafening as the thunder-clap, when, "How! is it you, then, who did me that turn?" deferring to the wish passionately expressed by exclaimed Rousseau, approaching Gamber, who, the assembly, Mademoiselle d'Olonne, herself at Muzillac as at other places, had no notion an object of enthusiasm, graciously returned the that he had played anything but a very subor- salute of her knight. As for him, he was in a dinate part. Come, give me your hand; I state of intoxication which prevented him from swear to you that a colonel of the imperial army hearing or seeing anything, not even the steps could not have done better." of the altar he had to descend. He was obliged to be held up by his comrade to prevent his falling. Never before was head so young upset to this extent by the fumes of glory.' Our military readers will remember the embarrassment into which the Duke of Wellington was thrown some years ago by the bequest of a thousand pounds to the man who showed most bravery at Waterloo, whom His Grace was consequently required to name. The royalist officer despatched to Vannes for the purpose encountered the same difficulty in naming a couple of students to receive the cross of the legion of honour; but he fixed at last on two who had been distinguished throughout the campaign as much by their friendship as by their bravery, and they were solemnly installed on an altar raised in the centre of the town. The description is thoroughly and charmingly French: 'An expiatory mass, with a chivalrous ceremony, at which the ladies were present as in the middle age, struck no one as out of keeping; As soon as the officiating priest had descended the steps of the altar, two elegantly dressed women were seen ascending it, the sight of whom convinced the two friends about to be decorated that the memory of this day could not be equally sweet for both of them. The one who, in her quality of wife of the first magistrate of the department, occupied the right, was a venerable matron, full of feeling and dignity; but her companion, who figured in this ceremony with reluctance and out of deference to paternal authority, was an object of ecstatic admiration to all of us, less on account of her dazzling beauty than of an indefinable charm diffused over her whole person. That day the enthusiasm which pierced visibly through the embarrassment her part occasioned her, appeared to animate her naturally sad and subdued look. The officer who presided at the ceremonial, after whispering a few words into her ear, went Mademoiselle d'Olonne took the veil, and died many years ago, so that her knight may record his feelings on the occasion without any risk of exciting the jealousy of Madame. The young hero, thus kissed and kissing, was M. Rio himself. Although we have endeavoured to compress this narrative, occupying nearly four hundred pages, within the limits of a moderate article, and although many of the incidental adventures which we have omitted are full of interest, we do not think M. Rio will suffer, on the whole, from being introduced to the English public in this manner; for he is often diffuse, and sometimes philosophical. He should have set down his facts and impressions at the time, before he had lost the fire of youth and acquired the trick of authorship,-when the Chouan rising was still, in his eyes, the grandest of recorded struggles for liberty. He now mentally compares it with other struggles, glances over the scenes of his boyhood with a calm, contemplative air, rounds a paragraph with a reflection, and spreads out or dishes up his incidents with a too obvious reference to effect. Still the bold, earnest, chivalrous character of the original man is observable throughout; and there cannot be a stronger proof of this than the manner in which all the poets who have come in contact with him are affected. Wordsworth, Milnes, Landor, Mrs. Norton, Brizeux,no sooner have they heard his tale than they proceed to embalm some striking passage in verse. Mr. Wordsworth's contribution | ART. IV.-Animal Chemistry; or the Ap 'Shade of Caractacus! if spirits love Of thy renown from Cambrian mountains fans With thy own scorn of tyrants they advance, Mr. Milnes avails himself of the opportunity to promote the pacific intentions of his friends M. Guizot and Sir Robert Peel: For honest men of every blood and creed not By circumstance of birth or mortal lot, O France and England! on whose lofty crests Turn a fierce wrath against each other's No! by our common hope and being, no! England and France shall not be foe to foe: plication of Organic Chemistry to the Elucidation of Physiology and Pathology. By Justus Liebig, M. D. Edited from the German MS. by William Gregory, M. D., Professor of Chemistry, LonKing's College, Aberdeen. 8vo. don, 1842. THE recent progress of Chemistry, especially of Organic Chemistry, has been rapid and most interesting. Throughout Europe several distinguished men have for a good many years been assiduously devoted to its cultivation; and we are now beginning to reap the benefit of their exertions. In a late article we had to notice the masterly work of Professor Liebig on 'Agricultural Chemistry; and already we have, from the same pen, a no less remarkable volume on 'Animal Chemistry.' As his new theme, in one point of view, concerns us all even more nearly than that of agriculture, we shall endeavour to give our readers some notion of the kind and degree of light which our author's labours promise to throw on the obscure and difficult, but most important subject of physiology. The readers of the Agricultural Chemistry' will remember that he has there developed, and, as we think, established by a very beautiful inductive argument, his theory of fermentation, putrefaction, and decay; or, to speak more generally, of chemical transformation or metamorphosis. In order to the understanding of the present work, it is desirable that we should state, very briefly, the nature of that theory, on which so many of its details are founded. Professor Liebig, then, applies the name of metamorphosis to those chemical actions in which a given compound, by the presence of a peculiar substance, is made to resolve itself into two or more new compounds: as, for example, when sugar, by the presence of ferment or yest, is made to yield alcohol and carbonic acid. There are various forms of metamorphosis. Sometimes the elements of the ferment, or exciting body, do not enter into the composition of the new compounds: such is the case in the fermentation of suAt other times all the bodies present gar. contribute to the formation of the new products. Thirdly, in one form of metamorphosis, namely, that of decay, or eremacausis, the oxygen of the air is essential to the change: as when alcohol is converted into acetic acid, or wine into vinegar. When an inodorous gas is one of the products, the process is called fermentation; when any of the products are fetid, it is called putrefaction: but these distinctions | carbonic acid gas. The carbon and hydroare not essential; for putrefying animal gen are derived, ultimately, from the food. matters will cause sugar to ferment, as well By comparing the amount of oxygen abas common yest. The fetid smell of putre- sorbed with that of carbonic acid given out, faction is chiefly owing to ammonia; and and with that of the food consumed, the hence it is observed not only in the fermen- author demonstrates that— tation of animal matter, but also of such vegetable bodies as contain nitrogen, and therefore yield ammonia. Now the explanation given by our author of these and similar changes is this: that the ferment, or exciting body, is invariably a substance in an active state of decomposition. Its particles are therefore in a state of motion; and this motion, being communicated to those of the body to be metamorphosed, is sufficient to overturn their very unstable equilibrium, and to cause the formation of new and more stable compounds. The more complex the original compound, the more easily does it undergo metamorphosis. The Professor has produced, in support of this doctrine, an extraordinary number of facts, and has, by strict induction from these, demonstrated it almost mathematically. It appears to us that he has for ever banished the notion of the catalytic force—an unknown and mysterious power which some writers had invoked to explain the phenomena of chemical transformations. When we turn our attention to the living animal body, there are certain processes or operations which at once present themselves as the most interesting. Among these may be mentioned respiration, nutrition, the waste and supply of matter, digestion, secretion, and excretion, with the bearings of all on health and disease. On all of these subjects the views of the author are equally original and interesting. 'Wonders,' he remarks, 'surround us on every side. The formation of a crystal, of an octahedron, is not less incomprehensible than the production of a leaf or of a muscular fibre; and the production of vermilion from mercury and sulphur is as much an enigma as the formation of an eye from the substance of the blood.'-p. 12. There are two essential conditions of animal life. First, the assimilation or appropriation of nourishment; secondly, the continual absorption of oxygen from the atmosphere. Now the quantity both of food and of oxygen introduced into the system of an adult is very considerable, and yet the weight of his body does not increase: it is clear, therefore, that as much must be given out as is taken in. But in what form is the oxygen, for example, given out? It is invariably in combination with carbon or hydrogen, or both, as water and The amount of nourishment required for its support by the animal body must be in a direct ratio to the quantity of oxygen taken into the system." But the amount of oxygen inspired varies very much. It is increased by motion or exercise, which increases the number of respirations: it is increased by cold, which renders the air more dense; and it is also increased in proportion as the barometer rises, for the same reason. "The consumption of oxygen in equal times may be expressed by the number of respirations: tity of nourishment required must vary with the it is clear that, in the same individual, the quanforce and number of the respirations. A child, in whom the organs of respiration are naturally in a state of greater activity, requires food oftener, and in greater proportion to its bulk, than an adult, and bears hunger less easily. A bird, deprived of food, dies on the third day; while a serpent, which, if kept under a bell-jar, hardly consumes in an hour so much oxygen as that we can detect the carbonic acid produced, can live without food three months and longer. 'In summer and winter, at the pole and at the equator, we respire an equal volume of air. In summer, the air contains aqueous vapour, while in winter it is dry. The space occupied by vapour in warm air is filled up by air itself in winter: that is, an equal volume of air contains more oxygen in winter than in summer. The cold air is warmed in the air-passages and in the cells of the lungs, and acquires the temperature of the body. To introduce the same volume of oxygen into the lungs, a smaller expenditure of force is necessary in winter than in summer; and for the same expenditure of force, more oxygen is inspired in winter than in summer. 'The oxygen taken into the system is given out again in the same forms, whether in summer or in winter: hence we expire more carbon in cold weather, and when the barometer is high, than we do in warm weather; and we must consume more or less carbon in our food in the same proportion: in Sweden more than in Sicily; and in our more temperate climate a full eighth more in winter than in summer. Even when we consume equal weights of food a long time under the equator; but cold and hunger united very soon exhaust the body. "The mutual action between the elements of the food and the oxygen conveyed by the circulation of the blood to every part of the body is THE SOURCE OF ANIMAL HEAT.'-p. 17. We are tempted to continue our extracts from this part of the work. Speaking of the uniform temperature of the animal body, and of the effects of cooling, he says: lers have related with astonishment of these people. We should then, also, be able to take the same quantity of brandy or train oil without bad effects, because the carbon and hydrogen of these substances would only suffice to keep up the equilibrium between the external temperature and that of our bodies. The Englishman in Jamaica sees with regret the disappearance of his appetite, previously a source of frequently recurring enjoyment; and the most powerful stimulants, in enabling himhe succeeds, by the use of Cayenne pepper and self to swallow as much food as he was accusThe most trustworthy observations prove tomed to take at home. But the whole of the that in all climates, in the temperate zones as carbon thus introduced into the system is not well as at the equator or the poles, the tempera- consumed: the temperature of the air is too ture of the body in man, and in what are commonly called warm-blooded animals, is invaria-him to increase the number of respirations by high, and the oppressive heat does not allow bly the same; yet how different are the circum-active exercise, and thus to proportion the waste stances under which they live? to the amount of food taken. Disease of some kind therefore ensues. 'On the other hand, England sends her sick, The animal body is a heated mass, which bears the same relation to surrounding objects as any other heated mass. It receives heat when the surrounding objects are hotter, it loses whose diseased digestive organs have in a greatheat when they are colder, than itself. We know food into that state in which it is best er or less degree lost the power of bringing the that the rapidity of cooling increases with the adapted for oxidation-and therefore furnish difference between the temperature of the heat- less resistance to the oxidising agency of the ed body and that of the surrounding medium; atmosphere than is required in their native that is, the colder the surrounding medium the climate-to southern regions, where the amount shorter the time required for the cooling of the of inspired oxygen is diminished in so great a heated body. How unequal, then, must be the proportion: and the result, an improvement in loss of heat in a man at Palermo, where the ex- the health, is obvious. The diseased organs of ternal temperature is nearly equal to that of the digestion have sufficient power to place the dibody, and in the polar regions, where the exter-minished amount of food in equilibrium with the nal temperature is from 70° to 90° lower. Yet, notwithstanding this extremely unequal loss of heat, experience has shown that the blood of the inhabitant of the Arctic circle has a temperature as high as that of the native of the south, who lives in so different a medium. This fact, when its true significance is perceived, proves that the heat given off to the surrounding medium is restored within the body with great rapidity. This compensation takes place more rapidly in winter than in summer, at the pole than at the equator. inspired oxygen: in the colder climate, the organs of respiration themselves would have been to the action of the atmospheric oxygen. consumed in furnishing the necessary resistance arising from excess of carbon, prevail in sum'In our climate, hepatic diseases, or those mer: in winter, pulmonic diseases, or those arising from excess of oxygen, are more frequent. The cooling of the body, by whatever cause it may be produced, increases the amount of air, in a carriage or on the deck of a ship, by food necessary. The mere exposure to the open the loss of heat, and compels us to eat more increasing radiation and vaporization, increases In the animal body the food is the fuel; with a proper supply of oxygen we obtain the heat given out during its oxidation or combustion. In winter, when we take exercise in a than usual. The same is true of those who are cold atmosphere, and when, consequently, the accustomed to drink large quantities of cold amount of inspired oxygen increases, the neceswater, which is given off at the temperature of sity for food containing carbon and hydrogen the body, 98.5o. It increases the appetite, increases in the same ratio; and by gratifying and persons of weak constitution find it necessathe appetite thus excited, we obtain the most efficient protection against the most piercing tem the oxygen required to restore the heat abry, by continued excrcise, to supply to the syscold. A starving man is soon frozen to death;stracted by the cold water. Loud and long-conand every one knows that the animals of prey tinued speaking, the crying of infants, moist air, in the Arctic regions far exceed in voracity those all exert a decided and appreciable influence on of the torrid zone. Our clothing is merely an equivalent for a certain amount of food. The the amount of food which is taken.'-pp. 23, more warmly we are clothed the less urgent becomes the appetite for food, because the loss of heat by cooling, and consequently the amount of heat to be supplied by food, is diminished. If we were to go naked, like certain savage tribes, or if in hunting and fishing we were exposed to the same degree of cold as the Samoyedes, we should be able with ease to consume 10 lbs. of flesh, and perhaps a dozen of tallow candles into the bargain, daily, as warmly-clad travel 24. When we read, as we lately did, of five substantial meals a day in Calcutta as very common, while four are universal there, liver complaint? or can we doubt that a can we be surprised at the prevalence of much nearer approach to the native diet would insure to our countrymen in India a condition of health much nearer what they |