his voice, he keeps perfect time; while he sings, he nods his head in time to the air. "You would think," says the physician, "that his head was the pendulum of a clock." He possesses a most extraordinary faculty-it is that of always knowing the hour of the day, no matter how employed. If digging, sweeping, or engaged in any kind of work, if suddenly asked, he will tell the hour correctly. The account of the accuracy with which the time-keeper can tell the hour, reminds us of a passage in the Spectator, where it is said that Mr. Plot, in his history of Staffordshire. tells of an idiot that, chancing to live within the sound of a clock, and always amusing himself with counting the hour of the day, whenever the clock struck; the clock being spoiled by accident, the idiot continued to strike and count the hour without the help of it, in the same manner as he had done when it was entire.' make progress in music, but can read, write, and draw surprisingly well. It is stated that idiots appear to most advantage when under the influence of music. When the violin is played to them, they may be seen hastening round the room after the master; their animated faces and movements convey the idea that they are happy. It is fabled that the enchanting harmony of the lyre of Orpheus was such, that stones and stocks danced to the melody. The poor idiots, in their untaught state, are little more than stocks and stones, and music has the power of animating them. Its tranquillizing effect on those subject to paroxysms of passion and ir.ordinate fits of weeping, reminds us of the influence of David's harp on Saul, when the evil spirit was cast out and he was restored. Without even taking the effect of music in subduing the angry passions into account, we may consider it a blessing which cannot be too highly estiThe love of the idiots for music, and their mated, that any influence has been discovintuitive idea of time, suggested the proposal ered which can rouse, even for a while, the of having them taught to dance; and it has poor apathetic idiot from his torpidity, and been carried out at the asylum with the dispel the gloom which surrounds him; the greatest success. The cases to which we blessing is enhanced when we consider the have referred, prove how much can be done vast numbers who stand in need of it, for, by with those laboring under the greatest of the returns in 1847, we find that forlorn human infirmities. Some have not only class numbered 7265 in England alone. A GREAT and important change has been re- | consumed with the walls upon which they are cently effected in the Cartoon Gallery at Hamp- hung.-Athenæum. ton Court, although no alteration will be perceptible to the public. They will be glad, Manual of United States History, from 1492 however, to learn that measures have been to 1850. By Samuel Eliot, Professor of Histaken towards the further preservation of Ratory and Literature in Trinity College. phael's cartoons in case of fire. Hitherto, these enormous works have been fixtures against the AN American importation, forming one of the wall; and so great was their size, that, in case best and fairest outlines of American history of any sudden necessity, it would have been that we have met. The plan of treatment is impossible to get them out of the windows. judicious; events being exhibited in proportion Now, by means of a very simple and clever to their influence on the condition of affairs machinery, the cartoons can be slid down from rather than on a predeterminate scale: the last their usual level to touch the ground, moving ninety or a hundred years occupies double the s easily with balanced weights as the sash of space that is given to the previous two centuries an ordinary window. In case of need for artists and a half. Although detail is not the object to study, these massive works can be detached of the author, he never falls into historical disfrom the line in which they slide, and be turned quisition, but selects and plainly states the round in any direction best suitable to the stu-leading facts so as to convey specific informadent. More than this, the cartoons themselves tion. We know not where the reader would find have been fitted upon newly-made strainers, so distinct a view of the immediate causes of which may in an instant, by unbuttoning, be detached from the frames; and the strainers are constructed with a joint in the middle, so as to bend forward and fold the cartoon horizontally, to facilitate the transport. It is to be hoped, indeed, that no necessity may arise to need these arrangements to be put into requisition; but it is some comfort to think that these inestimable works are no longer subject to be the war of Independence as in the account of the provocations from 1763 to 1772. The tone is also philosophic and impartial, without violence in censure or inflation in praise; this impartiality extending alike to the Americans, British, and Continental nations. It will be understood that the history is an introduction or summary, not a full narrative.-Spectator. From The West of Scotland Magazine. RABELAIS. greatest work of humor, either of ancient or modern times, is in all and every respect original and unapproachable. The The Ir forms no slight imputation on the erudition of the present age, that the char- Francis Rabelais was born in 1483. acter of Rabelais, and of his great work, is first part of his great work was given to the still but imperfectly understood. From the world in 1536, just as he was waning his popular tradition which represents him as fifth lustre. The last two books of Pantaemploying his latest breath in the utterance gruel were published after his death, in 1554. of a profane pun, to the line in Pope which The period of time over which his existence shows him "laughing in his easy chair," stretches formed the first half of that cenRabelais has been placed scarce higher in the tury which has been termed "the most sudintellectual scale than a jester or buffoon. denly enriched, and intellectually fruitful, That he was the greatest and most original period in European history." The growing humorist that ever wrote that he was the spirit of adventure which then prevailed, and deepest and most brilliant, as well as the the adoption of the Mariner's Compass, had boldest thinker of his age-we have the been crowned on the one side by the discovunited testimony of Hallam and Coleridge; ery of America by Columbus, and on the and although it had, perhaps, been better other, by Vincent de Gama laying bare the that these writers had done a little more sea-path to India by the Cape of Good Hope. than merely express their belief to this effect, The first direct blow to the supremacy of the yet such an opinion is valuable in the midst papal power had been given by Luther, the of so much misapprehension. Had the world great father of agitators. Only some twelve been contented with such a generalized ex-years prior to the birth of Rabelais, a few pression of excellence in the case of Shak- German artisans had discovered the art of speare, half the greatness of our greatest printing, which was destined to grow great poet had been yet unveiled. Rabelais is as the papal supremacy declined, and which scarcely less deserving of that microscopic has since shone with an uninterrupted brilsurvey which infers the existence of brilliancy liancy like a sun over the nations. of genius and depth of purpose in those period in which Rabelais lived commenced by works to which it has been so perseveringly adding a new hemisphere to our globe - was applied. The labors of commentators and spent in advancing the most important art the examination of critics would, perhaps, ever discovered by mankind - succeeded in be as richly repaid by a careful study of the breaking up a form of worship and a species Romance of Pantagruel, as by many works of spiritual thraldom which had become conwhich have undergone a similar ordeal, with-solidated by the usage of centuries-and out proving themselves unworthy of it. We hold Rabelais to have been one of the world's master-minds, who may be regarded as not only having created a province in literature, but as having done much to mould the literature of a country. Whatever we have been taught to admire in the style of French authors the epigrammatic point of Voltaire the grace of Buffon the humor of Moliere the terse homeliness of Beranger - and much that has been admired in au- It has been too much the fashion to atthors belonging to our own country-may tribute the accumulation of magnificent disbe traced to Rabelais as its prototype. In coveries, great minds, and important changes, his pages is to be found an ore, purer and to the Reformation. A closer examination more test-worthy than that which has been undergoing a refining process for centuries in the crucibles of his imitators and successors, which, whether regarded as the emanation of a wonderful age, the effort of an extraordinary mind, or as being the first and -- ended in giving birth to a generation of master-minds who formed and fashioned the hitherto rude and shapeless literature of Europe into the first lineaments of that perfect "statue which enchants the world." Such an age may well be designated as remarkable, which commenced with the gigantic discovery of Columbus, and ended with the simultaneous birth of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Shakspeare. will show that such an opinion arises from regarding the effect, and part of the effect only, as the cause. The whole of these brilliant discoveries were made by men not of the new church, but of the old. The invention of paper, of gunpowder, of the compass, had been known long before in Europe, and had hand at the battle of Lepanto; of Calderon, existed in China for centuries. The great that he was a member of the Inquisitorial enlargement of mind which took place in tribunal; of Shakspeare, that he possessed a the age of Rabelais must not be attributed share in the Globe theatre. The rest is but to these inventions, but to the seizing these a kind of inductive reasoning, by which we hitherto neglected arts with a perception and conclude that certain events must have prean appreciation of the power which was con- ceded these several points in their career; tained in them. The better energies of man- and with equal probability we hazard a guess kind had lain dormant since the Crusades. at a train of circumstances which we suppose The spirit of returning enterprise now rose to have followed. The life of Rabelais, as at once like a returning tide, sweeping off found in the pages of his editors, forms no the old landmarks which had been slowly exception to this rule. The first and best raised during the almost inactive ebb which authenticated event we discover of him, is, preceded it. The love of adventure, discov- that he began to study medicine in the Hosery, and examination, was re-animated. The pital at Montpellier, at the ripe age of fortysame feeling which prompted the daring of eight. Having renounced the care of souls, their navigators on unknown seas, was ex- he here endeavored to find a kindred occupaerted at home in forwarding the sciences, tion in the care of bodies, doubtless with a repelling the usurpations of the church, and conviction that his genius was better suited remodelling the whole structure of society. for the one than the other. His anticipaThe tions of success in his new career were not illusory; for, in common with most men who change their profession late in life, his ardor was guided by experience, and without doubt opportunities were seen and taken advantage of, about which a less mature student would have hesitated until the golden hour had gone past. Though but a student in surgery, Rabelais was no novice in the ways of the world. He had worn the cowl of a monk since his twenty-ninth year. The duties of a confessor form, perhaps, the nearest approach that can be made by man of mortal mould to the faculty possessed by Asmodeus. But whatever interest might be felt in such a situation, it is certain that neither the temper ament nor conduct of Rabelais harmonized with his office. Besides, his love of study was intense, and this was an unpardonable offence in most monkish communities. has incidentally given us specimens of his proficiency in thirteen languages. The slothful life of a priest, and the abstinence which the rules, or rather the restraints of his order, inculcated not in sensual but in intellectual things, suited neither the age nor the man. To his superiors, who held Greek to be the language of the devil-such a love of learning-such a diversity of tongues deserved a fate similar to that of the builders of Babel; and Rabelais would have been thrown out accordingly, had a fear not existed that the satire which had already been employed with severity within doors, would have vented itself in tenfold severity without. That We turn from the age to the man. scarcity of materials for a life of Rabelais forms a characteristic of his times. A paucity of information is a feature which belongs to the biographical records of most of his contemporaries. The fifteenth century was too much employed with the interests of the masses to take much heed of individuals. It belonged to Boswell, and the worthies of a later age, to introduce the fashion of chronicling the every-day doings of individual celebrity. It becomes a question whether the scanty information we possess as to events in the lives of such men as were contemporary with Rabelais, is not preferable to the redundancy which records every thing, from an invitation to dinner to the details of the dinner itself. One thing is certain, the great masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries wrote little of themselves, and those of their contemporaries who survived them followed their example. A set of commendatory verses, prefixed to a posthumous edition of some work, was as far as an author then ventured in praise of a friend who had gone before him. Not that they loved their friend less, but that they loved his memory more. This paucity of materials for biography may, perhaps, be accounted for, from the fact, that in all ages in which great changes are effected, the individual is lost in the mass, or is known only in relation to some particular point where the angle of his existence touches the broad line of history. All that we know of Cervantes is, that he lost his He 'they might sleep in peace, his superiors called | of medicine in the University of Montpellier. his orthodoxy in question-sacrilege was The gown which he wore, or rather its laid to his charge he was formally tried, successor for it has been twice partially and his judges sentenced him to undergo that replaced-is still used in that university as terrible punishment called in pace, perpetual the robe of investiture, assumed by each imprisonment on bread and water in a sub- student as he passes his last examination terranean cell, the entrance to which was preparatory to receiving his degree. closed up from the hour of the culprit's being placed within its walls. There were few religious establishments in those days that were not provided with these dreadful receptacles for refractory members of their order. The words of the sentence which doomed them to this lingering death, also gave the name to the living tomb which received them. "Vade in pace," served alike for the form of words in which the decree was pronounced, and a name for the cell in which it was carried into execution. The entrance was built up with stone and lime, never again to be opened during the lifetime of its miserable occupant. The lengthened procession of mitred dignitaries, with their cowled followers, often swept over the sealed flag in the pavement, amid clouds of incense and bursts of choral melody, regardless of the wretch immured below, whose name had been inscribed on their records, preceded by that ominous red cross, which told, more significantly than words, that the sum of his existence had been cast up and closed. But destiny had in store a different fate for Rabelais. His reputation had penetrated beyond the walls of his abbey. Andre Franquea, lieutenant-general of Poition, and Geffroi de Estissie, Bishop of Mallezais, interested themselves in his favor, and not only recovered his liberty, but by their interest procured a papal indulgence releasing him from his vows as a Franciscan, and promoting him to the Bishop's own chapter of the wealthy order of Saint Benedict. Yet even here the energies of Rabelais had not that scope he longed for, and ere long he threw off all monastic restraints and became a secular priest. At that time the growing strength of the Lutheran faction had raised the fires of persecution as a means of staying the movement, and this movement of Rabela is placed him almost equally in jeopardy with the Lutherans. It was at this period, that, with the experience of nearly half a century, and the ban of the church on his shoulders, Rabelais entered himself a student Even yet Rabelais had given the world no token of those powers for which he has been most valued. Tradition tells us, that having edited two medical works, and written some notes for Latin versions of Galen and Hippocrates which lay unsaleable on the shelves of his bookseller, at the request of the worthy bibliopole, and to make up for the loss he had caused him, Rabelais tried his hand at a romance, as a more likely speculation for the then literary market. Like Liston's attempts in tragedy, the result was mock-heroic in spite of the author's intentions, and the Chronicle of Gargantua shook the sides of France. The work was a parody, which eclipsed its originals, and met with a success as gigantic as the stature of the personages depicted in its pages. Some few years afterwards, Rabelais remodelled this portion of his work, and gave some succeeding books of it to the world, That which followed was different from the first attempt, in its purpose and apparent intention. The philosophy of Pantagruelism pervaded its pages. The powers that were could not see much difference between Pantagruelism and Lutheranism. They saw little difference between being laughed at and preached at, and Rabelais was a third time in danger of having a judicial death thrust upon him. But the stake and the faggot formed no portion of the Pantagruelian system, which inculcated any thing rather than aspirations after a career of martyrdom. While Calvin and his friends retired beyond the papal grasp to Geneva, Rabelais boldly sought safety in Romesubmitted himself like a good son of the church to the Pope, and returned from the holy city with a pardon in his pocket, reinstated in his clerical privileges, and with full powers to practise as a physician. Thus, while the Huguenots were burned for whispering their opinions, Rabelais was scattering his satire, and continued to scatter it without measure, against the church and its supporters. By this time his genius had found him the most powerful of friends. An order of the Parliament of Paris for- | by Rabelais. It refers to an age when the bidding the sale of his book had brought it appurtenances of the theatre were more under the notice of Francis I. The mon- complete than they existed in his time, as arch, resolving to judge for himself in the may be plainly inferred from the contemmatter, read the work which had been con-porary descriptions that have been handed demned by the doctors of the Sorbonne as down to us. Besides, the whole story is at heretical and atheistical. From that hour variance with the account given by M. Rabelais was safe. The king became a Jacob, his latest French editor, of the latter convert to Pantagruelism, and the royal years of Rabelais. This writer describes sides shook in concert with those of his sub- him as having for a long series of years jects. This protection was continued after acquitted himself as well as possible in the the death of Francis, by his successor Henry duties of his ministry. He admitted no II., who had Cardinal de Bellay, the patron females into his parsonage, fearful that their of Rabelais, for his minister. Amid such presence might occasion scandal. He oca concurrence of favorable circumstances, cupied himself chiefly with the decorations edition after edition poured from the press. of his church, with teaching the children Pantagruelism became the fashionable phil- of his cure to sing, and teaching the poor of osophy of France. The doctors of the his parish to read. His library consisted Sorbonne gnashed their teeth. Rabelais entirely of rare and curious books; for he enjoyed his cure at Mendon, and, following made a point of buying all those productions his profession as a physician, attained a good that fell still-born from the press, giving as old age, and died at last in his bed. a reason for doing so, that these were sure As in the case of most favorites of the never again to be reprinted, while a popular multitude, the people have invented a work was to be met with at all times. The biography of Rabelais for themselves. It margins of these unique copies, he covered consists of a series of broad jests and floating with notes, or sallies of imagination expreswitticisms which the vulgar have attached sive of his opinions. Fond to the last of to his name, on the principle, perhaps, that study and good living, and free from the much of the effects of such traditions depend usual infirmities of age, the latter years of on their being associated with a personal Rabelais seem to have been passed in a interest, and by their being related with happy placidity rather unusual for times of reference to some popular character. The so stirring a kind. He died at Paris just as mistaken generosity of tradition has invested he had reached that 'length of days which the death-bed of Rabelais with much of this farcical impropriety. His will has been made a model of simplicity and tersenesstwo qualities most essential to the perfection of that kind of instrument: "I have nothing; I owe much; the rest I leave to the poor." A little before he breathed his last, he is said to have called for his domino, or hood, which he usually wore as a part of his ecclesiastical costume, and desired those about him to put it on his head, that he might die in it, for "Beati qui in DOMINO moriuntur ; ""Blessed are they who die in the Lord." A page was sent by his patron, the Cardinal, to ask how he was. He is We turn now to our more immediate purreported to have said, "Tell my lord how pose-from the man to the book. The Rothou findest me. I am going to leap into mance of Pantagruel contains within itself the dark; I journey to seek a great perhaps. the origin and the perfection of the idea it He is up in the cock-loft; tell him to keep is intended to illustrate. It is similar in this there. As for thee, thou'lt always be a fool. respect with the Iliad, the Inferno, the inDraw the curtain: the farce is done." This imitable Romance of Cervantes, the Pillast allusion could scarcely have been made grim's Progress, and that brilliant circle of the Psalmist has set as the sum of man's |