nglish critics. "There is a
ludicrous difference," he says, "in the criticism of London and Lisbon.
Every thing is condemned in the former place, and every thing hailed
with rapture in the latter. There are faults on both sides." We have
been informed that previous literary efforts of the author of the
"Overland Journey" met, at the hands of certain reviewers, with rougher
handling than they deserved. His present book is certainly not so
cautiously written as to guarantee it against censure. The good that is
in it, which is considerable, is defaced by triviality and bad taste. We
shall not again dilate on faults to which we have already adverted, but
merely advise Mr. Hughes, when next he sits down to record his rambles,
to eschew flimsy and unpalatable gossip, and, bearing in mind Lord
Bacon's admonition to travellers, to be "rather advised in his discourse
than forward to tell stories."

TO THE STETHOSCOPE

"Tuba mirum spargens sonum."
_Dies Irae._

[The Stethoscope, as most, probably, of our readers are aware, is a
short, straight, wooden tube, shaped like a small post-horn. By means of
it, the medical man can listen to the sounds which accompany the
movements of the lungs and heart; and as certain murmurs accompany the
healthy action of these organs, and certain others mark their diseased
condition, an experienced physician can readily discover not only the
extent, but also the nature of the distemper which afflicts his patient,
and foretell more or less accurately the fate of the latter.

The Stethoscope has long ceased to excite merely professional interest.
There are few families to whom it has not proved an object of horror and
the saddest remembrance, as connected with the loss of dear relatives,
though it is but a revealer, not a producer of physical suffering.

As an instrument on which the hopes and fears, and one may also say the
destinies of mankind, so largely hang, it appears to present a fit
subject for poetic treatment. How far the present attempt to carry out
this idea is successful, the reader must determine.]

STETHOSCOPE! thou simple tube,
Clarion of the yawning tomb,
Unto me thou seem'st to be
A very trump of doom.

Wielding thee, the grave physician
By the trembling patient stands,
Like some deftly skilled musician;
Strange! the trumpet in his hands.
Whilst the sufferer's eyeball glistens
Full of hope and full of fe