The people of Holstein and Sleswick are Dutch in their manners, character, and appearance. Their language is in general the Low German; though the better sort of people in the towns begin to speak High German. In Jutland and the isles, the Danish language is spoken: within half a century this language has been cultivated with some attention: before that period, the Danish writers preferred to make use of the Latin or the German language, It is in the island of Finland that it is spoken with the greatest purity. The Danish character is not agreeable. It is marked by silence, phlegm, and reserve. A Dane is the excess and extravagance of a Dutchman; more breeched, more ponderous, and more saturnine. He is not often a bad member of society in the great points of morals, and seldom a good one in the lighter requisites of manners. His understanding is alive only to the useful and the profitable: he never lives for what is merely gracious, courteous, and ornamental. His faculties seem to be drenched and slackened by the eternal fogs in which he resides; he is never alert, elastic, nor serene. His

There are, in the University of Co- | students in the same university we penhagen, seven professors of Theology, were a good deal amused to find only two of Civil Law, two of Mathematics, one student dedicating himself to one of Latin and Rhetoric, one of Belles Lettres. Greek, one of Oriental Languages, one of History, five of Medicine, one of Agriculture, and one of Statistics. They enjoy a salary of from 1000 to 1500 rix-dollars, and are well lodged in the University. The University of Copenhagen is extremely rich, and enjoys an income of 3,000,000 rixdollars. Even Mr. Catteau admits that it has need of reform. In fact, the reputation of universities is almost always short-lived, or else it survives their merit. If they are endowed, professors become fat-witted, and never imagine that the arts and sciences are anything else but incomes. If universities slenderly endowed are rendered famous by the accidental occurrence of a few great teachers, the number of scholars attracted there by the reputation of the place makes the situation of a professor worth intriguing for. The learned pate is not fond of ducking to the golden fool: he who has the best talents for getting the office has most commonly the least for filling it; and men are made moral and mathematical teachers by the same trick and filthiness with which they are made tide-waiters and clerks of the kitchen. The number of students in the Uni-state of animal spirits is so low, that versity of Copenhagen is about 700: what in other countries would be they come not only from Denmark, deemed dejection, proceeding from but from Norway and Iceland: the casual misfortune, is the habitual tenour latter are distinguished as well for the and complexion of his mind. In all regularity of their manners as for the the operations of his understanding intensity of their application; the in- he must have time. He is capable of struments of which application are undertaking great journeys; but he furnished to them by a library con- travels only a foot pace, and never taining 60,000 volumes. The Danes leaps nor runs. He loves arithmetic have primary schools established in better than lyric poetry, and affects the towns, but which have need of Cocker rather than Pindar. He is much reform before they can answer slow to speak of fountains and amorous all the beneficial ends of such an in-maidens: but can take a spell at stitution. We should have been happy porisms as well as another; and will to have learned from Mr. Catteau the make profound and extensive comdegree of information diffused among binations of thought, if you pay him the lower orders in the Danish dominions; but upon this subject he is silent. In the University of Kiel there is an institution for the instruction of schoolmasters; and in the list of

Mr. Catteau's description of Heligoland is entertaining. In an island containing a population of 2000, there is neither imagined the possibility of such a fact in horse, cart, nor plough. We could not have any part of Europe.

for it, and do not insist that he shall | We have been compelled to pass either be brisk or brief. There is some-over many parts of Mr. Catteau's book thing, on the contrary, extremely more precipitately than we could have pleasing in the Norwegian style of wished; but we hope we have said and character. The Norwegian expresses exhibited enough of it, to satisfy the firmness and elevation in all that he public that it is, upon the whole, a very says and does. In comparison with valuable publication. The two great the Danes, he has always been a free requisites for his undertaking, moderaman; and you read his history in his tion and industry, we are convinced looks. He is not apt, to be sure, to this gentleman possesses in an eminent forgive his enemies; but he does not degree. He represents everything withdeserve any, for he is hospitable in the out prejudice, and he represents everyextreme, and prevents the needy in thing authentically. The same cool their wants. It is not possible for a and judicious disposition, which clears writer of this country to speak ill of him from the spirit of party, makes him the Norwegians; for, of all strangers, perhaps cautious in excess. We are the people of Norway love and admire convinced that everything he says is the British the most. In reading Mr. true; but we have been sometimes inCatteau's account of the congealed and duced to suspect that we do not see blighted Laplanders, we were struck the whole truth. After all, perhaps. with the infinite delight they must have he has told as much truth as he could in dying; the only circumstance in do, compatibly with the opportunity of which they can enjoy any superiority telling any. A person more disposed over the rest of mankind; or which to touch upon critical and offensive tends, in their instance, to verify the subjects might not have submitted as theory of the equality of human con- diligently to the investigation of truth, dition. with which passion was not concerned. How few writers are, at the same time, laborious, impartial, and intrepid!

If we pass over Tycho Brahé, and the well known history of the Scaldes, of the Chronicles of Isleif, Sæmunder, We cannot conclude this article withHinfronde, Snorro, Sturleson, and out expressing the high sense we enterother Islandic worthies, the list of tain of the importance of such reDanish literati will best prove that searches as those in which Mr. Catteau they have no literati at all. Are has been engaged. They must form there twenty persons in Great Britain the basis of all interior regulations, and who have ever heard of Longomon-ought principally to influence the contanus, Nicholas Stenonis, Sperling Lau- duct of every country in its relations renberg, Huitfeild, Gramn, Holberg, towards foreign powers. As they conLangebeck, Carstens, Suhm, Kofod, tain the best estimate of the wealth Anger? or of the living Wad, Fabri- and happiness of a people, they bring cius, Hanch, Tode, and Zaga? We theory to the strictest test; and meado not deny merit to these various sure, better than all reasoning, the personages; many of them may be wisdom with which laws are made, and much admired by those who are more the mildness with which they are adconversant in Danish literature than ministered. If such judicious and we can pretend to be: but they are elaborate surveys of the state of this certainly not names on which the and other countries in Europe had learned fame of any country can be been made from time to time for the built very high. They have no classical last two centuries, they would have celebrity and diffusion: they are not quickened and matured the progress an universal language: they have not of knowledge, and the art of governing, enlarged their original dominion, and by throwing light on the spirit and become the authors of Europe, instead tendency of laws; they would have of the authors of Denmark. It would checked the spirit of officious interbe loss of time to speak of the fine ference in legislation; have softened arts in Denmark; they hardly exist. persecution, and expanded narrow con

ceptions of national policy. The hap-Dr. Wittman, too, was passing over piness of a nation would have been the same ground trodden by Bonaparte proclaimed by the fulness of its garners, in his Syrian expedition, and had an and the multitudes of its sheep and oxen; and rulers might sometimes have sacrificed their schemes of ambition, or their unfeeling splendour, at the detail of silent fields, empty harbours, and famished peasants.

on substantial evidence. Indeed, I am sorry to add, that the charge of cruelty against the French generally does not rest here. It having been reported, that, previously to the retreat of the French army from Syria, their commander-in-chief had ordered all the French sick at Jaffa to be poisoned, I was led to make the inquiry to which every one who should have visited the spot would naturally have been directed, respecting an act of such singular, and, it should seem, wanton inhumanity. It concerns me to have to state, not only that such a circumstance was positively asserted to have happened, but that, while in Egypt, an individual was pointed out to us, as having been the executioner of these diabolical commands."-(p. 128.)

much more the appearance of a battle and pursuit than of a massacre. After all, this gentleman lay eight months under the walls of Jaffa; whence comes it he has given us no better evidence? Were 5000 men murdered in cold blood by a division of the French army a year before, and did no man remain in Jaffa, who said, I saw it done - I was present when they were marched out - I went the next

would wreak his vengeance upon Soliman Aga, Mustapha Cawn, Sidi Mahomet, or any given Turks, upon whose positive evidence Dr. Wittman might have rested his accusation. Two such wicked acts as the poisoning and the massacre have not been committed within the memory of man; - within the same memory, no such extraordinary person has appeared, as he who is said to have committed them; and yet, though their commission must have been public, no one has yet said, Vidi ego. The accusation still rests

day, and saw the scarcely dead bodies of the victims? If Dr. Wittman received any such evidence, why did he not bring it forward? If he never inquired for such evidence, how is he Now, in this passage, Dr. Wittman qualified to write upon the subject? offers no other evidence whatever of If he inquired for it and could not the massacre, than that he had seen find it, how is the fact credible? the skeletons scattered over the hills, This author cannot make the same and that the fact was universally be-excuse as Sir Robert Wilson, for the lieved. But how does Dr. Wittman suppression of his evidence; as there know what skeletons those were which could be no probability that Bonaparte he saw? An oriental camp, affected by the plague, leaves as many skeletons behind it as a massacre. And though the Turks bury their dead, the Doctor complains of the very little depth at which they are interred; so that jackals, high winds, and a sandy soil, might, with great facility, undo the work of Turkish sextons. Let any one read Dr. Wittman's account of the camp near Jaffa, where the Turks remained so long in company with the military mission, and he will immediately perceive that, a year after their departure, it might have been mis-upon hearsay. taken, with great ease, for the scene of At the same time, widely dissemia massacre. The spot which Dr. Witt-nated as this accusation has been over man saw might have been the spot where a battle had been fought. In the turbulent state of Syria, and amidst the variety of its barbarous inhabitants, can it be imagined that every bloody battle, with its precise limits and cireumscription, is accurately committed to tradition, and faithfully reported to inquirers? Besides, why scattered among hills? If 5000 men were marched out to a convenient spot and massacred, their remains would be heaped up in a small space, a mountain of the murdered, a vast ridge of bones and rottenness. As the Doctor has described the bones scenery, it has VOL. I.

Europe, it is extraordinary that it has not been contradicted in print; and, though Sir Robert Wilson's book must have been read in France, that no officer of the division of Bon has come forward in vindication of a criminal who could repay incredulity so well. General Andreossi, who was with the First Consul in Syria, treats the accusations as contemptible falsehoods. But though we are convinced he is a man of character, his evidence has certainly less weight, as he may have been speaking in the mask of diplomacy. As to the general circulation of the report, he must think much higher of

F

the sagacity of multitudes than we do, I throw the person rubbed into a very who would convert this into a reason copious perspiration. A patient in of belief. Whoever thinks it so easy typhus, who was given over, recovered to get at truth in the midst of passion, after this discipline was administered. should read the various histories of the recent rebellion in Ireland; or he may, if he chooses, believe, with thousands of worthy Frenchmen, that the infernale was planned by Mr. Pitt and Lord Melville. As for us, we will state what appears to us to be the truth, should it even chance to justify a man in whose lifetime Europe can know neither happiness nor peace.

The boldness and enterprise of medical men is quite as striking as the courage displayed in battle, and evinces how much the power of encountering danger depends upon habit. Many a military veteran would tremble to feed upon pus; to sleep in sheets running with water; or to draw up the breath of feverish patients. Dr. White might not, perhaps, have marched up to a The story of the poisoning is given battery with great alacrity; but Dr. by Dr. Wittman precisely in the same White, in the year 1801, inoculated desultory manner as that of the mas- himself in the arms, with recent matter sacre. "An individual was pointed out taken from the bubo of a pestiferous to us as the executioner of these diaboli-patient, and rubbed the same matter cal commands." By how many persons upon different parts of his body. was he pointed out as the executioner? With somewhat less of courage, and by persons of what authority? and of what credibility? Was it asserted from personal knowledge, or merely from rumour? Whence comes it that such an agent, after the flight of his employer, was not driven away by the general indignation of the army? If Dr. Wittman had combined this species of information with his stories, his conduct would have been more just, and his accusations would have carried greater weight. At present, when he, who had the opportunity of telling us so much, has told us so little, we are rather less inclined to believe than we were before. We do not say, these accusations are not true, but that Dr. Wittman has not proved them to be

true.

Dr. Wittman did not see more than two cases of plague: he has given them both at full length. The symptoms were thirst, headache, vertigo, pains in the limbs, bilious vomitings, and painful tumours in the groins. The means of cure adopted were, to evacuate the primæ viæ; to give diluting and refreshing drinks; to expel the redundant bile by emetics; and to assuage the pain in the groin by fomentations and anodynes; both cases proved fatal. In one of the cases, the friction with warm oil was tried in vain; but it was thought useful in the prevention of plague: the immediate effect produced was, to

more of injustice, he wrapt his Arab servant in the bed of a person just dead of the plague. The Doctor died; and the Doctor's man (perhaps to prove his master's theory, that the plague was not contagious) ran away.

The bravery of our naval officers never produced anything superior to this therapeutic heroism of the Doctor's.

Dr. Wittman has a chapter which he calls An Historical Journal of the Plague; but the information which it contains amounts to nothing at all. He confesses that he has had no experience in the complaint; that he has no remedy to offer for its cure, and no theory for its cause.* The treatment of the minor plague of Egypt, Ophthalmia, was precisely the method common in this country; and was generally attended with success, where the remedies were applied in time.

Nothing can be conceived more dreadful than was the situation of the military mission in the Turkish camp; exposed to a mutinous Turkish soldiery, to infection, famine, and a scene of the most abominable filth and putrefaction; and this they endured for a year and a half, with the patience of apostles of

* One fact mentioned by Dr. Wittman :- that Constantiappears to be curious;the interruption of its communication with nople was nearly free from plague during Egypt.