un stop the heart's action, the suspension of which for a few minutes is fatal. Accordingly this organ is wisely placed out of the sphere of the voluntary influence; and yet the heart is obedient to an conscious impression to a certain extent, and sympathizes with the passions of the mind. Thus in anger, joy, and other passions, the heart acts quickly and forcibly, while the depressing emotions diminish its action. In the whole course of our inquiries into the nature of the animal functions, it will be always observable that none of them are fairly attributable to chance or spontaneous creation, or to the casual or even necessary effect of organization. Organized bodies do not live until the breath of life is diffused through them; then and then only man and animals become living beings. Such are the views of life and organization which physiology discloses, and whatever the mania of the revolutionary schools of France may have developed as the national faith in philosophy, we reject them as unsound and contradicted by the same tests to which they appeal in their support-the examination of animal structures and functions, and the general principle of organization. B. BIOGRAPHY OF ODD FELLOWS.-No. II. MR. CHARLES WILKINSON. WHO was ever of late years" in London-that overgrown place," as Mr. Colman somewhere sings, but must have seen, or should have seen, one of its "lions," who so overgrew all that is indigenous to that city that it was almost doubtful which was the largest, the lion or London? Most persons about town must have met with the phenomenon I mean, and others must have heard of the Long Lawyer, (for such was his profession,) who was sometimes seen in the law neighbourhoods in term-time, looking like the long vacation personified, or like one of Chancellor Eldon's legal cases running to seed for want of decision. He put one in mind of Jack of Bean-stalk memory, and the hardly less renowned Tom Thumb; and yet he was very unlike either of those small mightinesses, though not unlike the bean-stalk of the first. **** What could his mother have been thinking of when she bore him? Was it of a soaped pole at a country fair, and some indefatigable fellow vainly trying to reach the top of it; or had she any thoughts of discovering the longitude? what was her mode of rearing him? what his food, his appetites, exercises, and juvenile aspirations? and by what magic did she succeed in bringing him up to his high perfection?—I have sometimes conjectured that his nurse must have sung for his lullaby those two lines of Milton in his " May Morning Thus we salute thee with our early song, and laid too much emphasis on the three last words; but whatever arts were resorted to, whatever mode of culture was adopted, the result was the rearing of as great a human wonder as ever nature turned out from her man-manufactory ; None but himself could be his parallel! Of his pedigree the present writer knows nothing, but it was reported he was related to the Farnborough family, and also to the Wellesleys or to one of them-Mr. Tilney Long Pole. Many pleasant anecdotes were recorded of his habits and manners in-doors and out-doors, abroad and at home. It is said that when he went to the pit of the theatre, the gods of the oneshilling gallery cried out "Sit down, you sir, in the two!" not perceiving that he was some fifty feet lower down than that middlemost heaven; and the managers were obliged to cut away three seats in the pit for the admission of his legs. At the Opera, the wags said they sunk for him a chair six feet below the level of Fop's Alley, close to the orchestra, that the short people behind him might not have their view impeded; and even then that he extinguished the prompter on the stage. **** It was noticed that he never laughed till the laugh was over with the rest of the audience. A physiological friend accounted for this, by supposing that it took a joke some time to travel from his ear to his midriff, and tickle it to laughter. The last time he was seen at a tragedy, it was noticed that his white handkerchief was eighty seconds behindhand with the pit, his sorrow being brought up from a well of much more than the usual depth. His length must have been very inconvenient to him. Nature, when she invented him, ought to have constructed him on the plan of a fishingrod; he should have been made to take in two; one half to screw into the other half, so that, when he waked in the morning, he might ring the bell for his man, and say, "John, bring me my legs and pantaloon parts directly, for I want to run down to Westminster." Then the upper half of him might have been got into any decent-sized bed, and the lower part been hung up with his boots till the morning, or left on the mat at his chamber-door, ready for him to jump into at a moment's notice. One of the nymphs who walk under the Moon without being chastened by her beams, was, it is said, in love with him to desperation, and once tried to throw herself out of a hackney-coach into his arms, but she pitched with her nose in his coat-pocket; and as he could not stoop to her, and as there was no ladder standing near by which she could rise to him, she was obliged to give up her ambitious passion in despair. **** It is said that he was the sole cause of the Strand being lighted with gas; the commissioners found it impossible any longer to sustain the loss of oil which his head running against their old lamps nightly brought upon them they did not so much mind the glasses, but the waste of oil was awful, and, as Russia looked refractory about that time, there might have been a stoppage in the usual unctuous supply. Money, of Fleet Street, who used to shave him, was obliged to mount a dining-table to get at his chin, and even then he strained his tendon Achillis from standing so long on tip-toe. It was considered wonderful he did not unbeard himself in the manner of the Irish giant, who went up a ladder to shave himself! His tailor, when he measured him, like a sensible man, stood on a flight of steps; but three of his journeymen, unaccustomed to such a perpendicular position, were said to have broken their necks in the attempt, and their widows and children are now pensioners on the master, who swears that these accidents lessened his profits so much, that he did not make more than 40 per cent. by his custom. Mr. Wilkinson wanted to go up with Mr. Sadler in his balloon. Sadler, who had been to Dublin, and came back as full of bulls as a pope, told him candidly that he could not carry him higher than he was already. Failing in this, he wished to o'er-monument the Monument; but the prudent keeper of that long lie very properly refused him, remarking that it would make the pillar look little when his height was subtracted from its elevation. Besides, the inhabitants of Fish Street Hill threatened to quit their houses if he attempted the ascent: he might, as they had every reason to fear, bring down both monument and houses on their devoted heads. When he went shooting in September, his friends who had estates of their own, where they are allowed to cut the timber, lopped off the lower branches of their plantations, lest he should meet with the death of Ab salom; and before he came down to their shooting-boxes they had the doors made higher and the ceilings lifted, &c. &c. so it is humorously said. He would persist in travelling by one coach, when he ought to have gone by three; and when he was resolutely bent upon riding inside, they made a hole through the roof for his head and shoulders, and got informed against for carrying luggage higher than the number of inches allowed by act of parliament. If he went outside, the coach was either upset, or they lost so much time in setting him down and taking him up in passing under arches and gateways, that they were quite sick of attempting to get him out of town; and at last as soon as his servant entered a coach-office to take a place for him, " There was not a place to he had for six months to come!" was the universal coach-office cry. Even in town, when he called "Coach!" the whole stand could stand him no longer ;-coach, chariot, and cab bolted off the street as fast as their crazy cattle could carry them. Of course, no hackneyman was anxious to take up a gentleman who bulges out the back part of his coach with his shoulders, and trips up his horses by thrusting his excess of legs through the front. It was the same if he invoked the aid of a “Boat!”the watermen cut their inch of cable, and pushed off for the Surrey shore. **** He never rode on horseback. No doubt he would have done so if he could find either horse or mare hands-high enough to keep his legs from trailing after him. Indeed, it is said that he once affected to ride a cobb, but it was soon perceived that he was walking, and that the little fellow was only trotting along between his legs, as it were, under his auspices. When he knocked to inquire for lodgings at Bath or at Brighton, as soon as the boarding-house keeper opened his door, and looked up at his proposed lodger, he became so alarmed, that down went the "To Let immediately, and he swore that every floor was full. The most amusing circumstance connected with this excellent man, for a kind good-humoured fellow he was to the last, was his forgetfulness of his dimensions. Sitting some time after dinner one day, he remarked on the sudden, that he should get up and stretch himself!-If you had seen the consternation of the party, or if I could describe it; but no, it is impossible. Three ladies, of imaginative mind, shrieked as with one voice, and fainted; and the gentlemen part of the company fairly took to their heels. Another time, a sick lady was quite thunderstruck at hearing him apologize for paying so "short a visit, when, if he had considered but a moment, he must have been convinced that, wherever he came, it was a visitation of nine feet six inches at the very least estimation. He half frightened another friend by threatening to "drop in" some day at dinner. Poor Simpson ran in wild alarm to get his house insured, and the next day the district surveyor ordered it to be shored up. Drop in he did, however, in defiance of all danger; and, after the first impressions of fear had subsided, the little Simpsons were introduced with the dessert. One adventurous boy began to climb his knee, -the envied kiss to share; but, after clambering half-way up, he grew dizzy, and slid down again, just as "the bigger sort of boys" slip down a ladder, or a long baluster. There is a good story told of an incident connected with one of his rural walks, or rather strides. Being overtaken in one of the narrow green lanes by a short man in a low chaise with a small pony, the little fellow bawled out to him, in a mixed tone of threat and tenderness, “Why don't you get out of the way? do you want to be run over?"-The ninefoot turned about, and, looking down at the threatener, coolly replied, "Pooh, pooh, if you say another word, I'll run over you!" He stood and even sat exempted from many of the small and large annoyances which vex and fasten upon men of moderate dimensions. No bullying fellow thought of threatening to squeeze his nostrils with violent finger and thumb; no intrusive one hoped to pick his pocket-for how indeed could the cleanest of artists in that light line follow him with a ladder (without which he could not get at it) at the rate at which he walked about town. Things which impede other men he must step over as over a straw ;-such as a cabriolet upset upon a popular crossing, or a hogshead of sugar, or a crate of earthenware placed in a pathway. Stiles and five-barred gates, ditches and quick-set hedges were no let or hindrance to him: he got over any stile, even Edward Irving's or Jeremy Bentham's,—and, last and worst, he would have got over his biographer's. There was a proportionate moral elevation in a man who aspired as he did to "commerce with the skies." He never, even in his stripling age, indulged in such a minute triviality as "ring taw" — he might indeed in the knuckling of the Elgin Marbles: he might have condescended so much as to have impelled the Torso or the Theseus through the ring; but what ring? none would have been large enough for his purpose but the ring of Saturn. **** He must have disdained "top" unless it were to -o'ertop Pelion, and touch The skiey head of blue Olympus. He laughed "hop-scotch" to scorn--hop-Scotland only could have been worthy of his exertions; cricket cramped his powers, for how could he fail to gain notches without number who could stand at one wicket and stretch his leg out to the other, without stirring his stumps or stirring from them. He could not condescend to do any thing little. He could not stoop so low as to pick up a pin, or scramble after a dropped farthing with a beggar, or fasten his own shoe-tie ;-he could not afford the time they would take him. Where is he now? Has he grown out of London, and been put into Paris? Is he sojourning in Long Acre "in utmost longitude, or buried in Long Lane? Wherever he be, if he still exist, he is, in addition to his length, a gentleman, good-humoured and unpresuming. W. SONNET. UGO FOSCOLO. SINCE the deep fountain of vain tears is dried, Or calm remembrance, it is undenied To breathe aloud of what I feel or deem. To thee I call, O solitary stream! Where meditation at sad even-tide Leads me to babble of my life's strange scheme, Hear me descant of those soft-smiling eyes, That sear'd with lightning-flames my trusting heart— The rosy lips, the gold-enwoven dyes Of odorous tresses, and the natural art Of heavenly form, kind accents, and warm sighs, J. C. A TALE OF TRAFALGAR. BY DELTA.1 "TWERE endless to describe the myriad dyes, That with the fairy change of April skies Tinge the full thoughts when love, sweet love, is there, Sighs uttered to the night, which only hears The gloom of absence, and the smile which brings- The first fond words of confidence, the voice The spring of passion, brighter than earth's spring, Theirs were the fond walks in the leafy grove, Or through the clovery plains they roam'd, and heard, Came from the wood-tuft mournfully along, 'Mid Grecian seas, when round her Twilight throws But now the summons came that bade depart The calm, unclouded sunshine of the heart D. M. MOIR, Esq. of Musselburgh, N. B. |