a direct authority to inspect the arrangements of those religious com munities who enjoy any revenue from government.'

The advocates of liberty can scarcely fail to regret the almost unqualified ascendancy given by this constitution to the executive power. King William was called in his day King of. Holland, and Stadtholder of England; and with equal truth it may be said that the present ruler of the Netherlands possesses, under the modest title of " Prince," a more extensive range of prerogative than our laws assign to our monarch. The exclusive command of the army and navy, with the appointment to most of the civil offices, and the complete controul of the clergy, are potent instruments in the hands of an hereditary governor. On the other side, it is but fair to admit that the antient Constitution of the Dutch was extremely defective, and was made to answer the purpose of government only by the good sense and moderation of the inhabitants. That the same qualities will tend to correct any deficiency in the present institutions must be the wish of all who are aware that a period of tranquillity is absolutely necessary to that afflicted and oppressed country. Let us hope, also, that the increased intimacy of connection between the Netherlands and England will have the effect of shewing the government of the latter, that a resolute maintenance of popular rights has no connection with secret wishes for the success of a hostile nation, but may be strictly compatible with a most cordial union of the members of a state, whenever their independence is threatened from abroad. This feeling, natural as it is to Englishmen, and evidently as it is the duty of all nations, was not adequately cherished in Holland; where the opposing parties were accustomed, with little scruple as to national respectability, to look for the means of preponderance from the interference of their foreign supporters.

ART. X. Essai sur le Diagnostic de la Gale, &c.; i. e. An Essay on the Diagnostics of the Itah, the Causes of it, and the practical medical Inferences to be deduced from correct Views of this Disease. By J. C. GALÉS, M.D. 4to. Paris. 1812. Imported by De Boffe. Price 58.

WE E were not a little surprized to receive a quarto pamphlet, consisting of above 50 closely printed pages, on the subject of the Itch; and, after having perused it, we certainly think that the information which it contains might advantageously have been put into a smaller compass; yet we confess that we have not read it without some interest. That part of it which is the most deAFF. REV. VOL. LXXV. Kk serving

serving of attention is the account of the insect which has been supposed by some writers to occasion the disease, and which M. GALÉS describes with much minuteness. It appears that Moufet was the first naturalist who mentions the animalcules which breed in the human skin: but that it was in a letter from Cestoni to Redi, and published in the works of the latter, that the animal which is imagined to produce the itch was, for the first time, observed and described with an accuracy almost equal to that of the modern entomologists.' The insect was said to be of the genus acarus; and Cestoni positively asserts that it is the true source of the disease. This letter of Cestoni seems, however, to have fallen into complete oblivion, and to have had little or no influence on the opinions of his successors. Yet the idea that the itch is caused by a peculiar insect was adopted by Linné, and the animal was arranged by him in the class of aptera and the genus acarus. De Geer afterward described the animal with considerable detail; and it was also noticed by Fabricius, Latreille, and others: yet still some uncertainty prevailed on the subject; both because the descriptions of the different naturalists did not entirely agree, and because some of the more intelligent medical writers, although they could not doubt that an insect had been found in the vesicle of the itch, did not consider it as the cause of the complaint, but rather supposed that the state of the skin produced by the disease afforded a convenient lodgment in which the insect might deposit its eggs. M. GALES was resolved, if possible, to ascertain the real fact, with respect both to the existence and the nature of the animal and to its power of generating the malady. He therefore employed a microscope of considerable power; and, examining a small quantity of the fluid obtained from the vesicle of the itch, he easily perceived the animalcules, and was able to observe distinctly their motions and their particular organs. He subjoins a magnified figure of the insect, which is very similar to the mite in cheese.

Of the existence of this insect, as M. GALÉS describes it, we apprehend that no doubt can remain: the general tenor of his pamphlet leads us to regard him as a man of veracity; and we cannot suppose that the whole of what he says is a fiction. It is not, however, quite so certain whether this creature be the cause or the consequence of the disease: yet the author states several circumstances which are strongly in favour of the former opinion, and relates an experiment performed on himself which tends materially to establish it. Having confined a few of the animals by a small glass on a part of his hand, he soon began to perceive the sensation of itching, and in a few hours the actual vesicles were formed. The experiment was indeed

scarcely

scarcely carried sufficiently far; and it was not prosecuted long enough entirely to decide the point. Probably, from its dis gusting nature, it is not likely soon to be repeated.

Some remarks in different parts of this tract would induce us to suspect that the itch is a more common disease in France than in England, and that the treatment of it is there less un derstood. The author enlarges very particularly on the means of cure; and his remarks, being probably the result of experience, are worth attention. He supposes that external applications are the only means of removing the disease, and that it may be effected by different substances; yet that sulphur is the remedy which, in the greatest degree, unites safety with certainty.

ART. XI. Reflexions, &c.; i. e. Reflections of M. BERGASSE, formerly a Member of the Assemblée Constituante, on the Constitutional Act passed by the Senate after the Removal of Bonaparte. 8vo. Paris. 1814.

THIS

HIS pamphlet, one of the first that appeared after the counterrevolution, is composed with much zeal for the cause of royalty, but without a due consideration of the prudence and management which are necessary in a time of convulsion. The author enlarges on the inconsistency of the Senate in presuming to condemn the conduct of the tyrant whom they had been so long instrumental in upholding. There are,' he says, in the Senate several men of great merit, who, had they lived in better times, would have acted an useful part for their country: but I most strongly condemn those who have taken the lead in deciding the determinations of that public body. We have no right to vilify a fallen enemy, particularly a man at whose hands, like the members of the Senate, we have accepted favours, and have earned them by constituting ourselves the apologist of his crimes; still less to disavow in secret his violence, if in public we have made it the subject of encomium.'-M. BERGASSE proceeds in the same style to term the act against Bonaparte an act of self-accusation on the part of the Senate: but the point, which calls forth his loudest animadversions, is the conduct of the Senate in making the recall of the Bourbons in some measure conditional on the acceptance of the Constitutional Act. Has Louis XVIII.,' he adds, need of the Senate to be constituted king of France? Has not royalty always been hereditary among us? Is not this going almost as far as to say that the Convention had the power to pass a capital sentence on Louis XVI., and to declare that they were intitled to pronounce the termination of the dynasty of the Bourbons as kings of France?"

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Another argument of an equally cogent nature applies to the vigilance of the Senate, in converting into hereditary possessions those dignities and incomes of which they had only a temporary tenure. Do not these incomes,' asks M. BERGASSE, belong to the public; and can the Senate appropriate permanently to itself that of which it was merely the depositary? It is curious to see them thus self-constituted the nobility and even the prime nobility of the kingdom. What must be the feelings of the Rohans, Montmorencys, and other antient families, on being associated with the men who once held the language of sturdy republicanism?'-The pamphlet concludes with an encomium on the king's extensive reading and judgment, and with an argument on a very different topic, but which few reflecting men will be disposed to contest; viz. that the overthrow of Bonaparte was owing not to the exertions of any government or class of men, but to his own infatuation in the Russian campaign.

In condemning the tenor of this tract, we are actuated less by a total disapprobation of the writer's principles than by a distrust of his prudence. No person doubts that the majority of the Senate were participators, to a considerable degree, in the criminality of Bonaparte's measures; or that men of honour would rather have chosen to resign and live in poverty, than bear a share in such dreadful responsibility: but the rule of conduct, for a sovereign returning after a convulsion of twentyfive years, must be an adherence less to the abstract prin ciples of honour, and even of justice, than to that course which will have the effect of producing the smallest public discontent or mischief. Only a few months since, the Senators, like the Marshals and other great officers, influenced considerable parties; and an opposition to their wishes, on the occurrence of the late crisis, might have excited dissensions in which it would have been no difficult matter to induce the surviving part of the old soldiers to take the side of their late Emperor. The issue of such a conflict, among a nation so easily deceived as the French, no man can pretend to foresee; so that little doubt remained of the expediency of making a considerable concession for the attainment of tranquillity. In our own history, a sacrifice of a similar kind was necessary at the Restoration; and the republicans, who were employed by Charles II., proved by no means the worst servants of the Crown.

ART.

ART. XII. Récherches Historiques et Pratiques, &c.; i. e. Historical and Practical Researches on the Croup, by LOUIS VALENTIN, M.D., &c. 8vo. Paris. 1812. Imported by De Boffe. Price 14s.

IN

Na recent Appendix, we had occasion to mention the premium which was offered by the late ruler of France for the best essay on the subject of Croup. The number of candidates appears to have been very considerable indeed, not fewer than eighty-four having been selected from the general mass as having fulfilled the conditions required by the declaration. The prize was decreed to M. Jurine of Geneva and to M. Albers of Bremen, conjointly; and three other memoirs were selected as deserving particular notice on account of their excellence, viz. those of M. Vieusseux of Geneva, M. Caillan of Bourdeaux, and M. Double of Paris. Of the first and the last of these, we have already made our reports. M. VALENTIN informs us that he was not able to prepare his essay in time to offer it to the judges: but that, having amassed a great quantity of materials on the subject of Croup, he was induced to complete his original plan; and that some learned friends, having seen the manuscript, prevailed on him to publish it.

This gentleman's researches compose a volume of between six and seven hundred pages, in which every circumstance belonging to the disease in question is introduced in detail, with much specification and regularity. It contains numerous divisions and subdivisions, and quotations of authorities' in profusion; and it seems as if no writer had ever treated on Croup, nor any opinion been broached respecting it, that is not here noticed and examined. It consists of twenty-five chapters, which are again divided into different sections. After an account of the definition, distinction, and synonyms of Croup, Dr. V. enters into the history of the disease, and institutes an inquiry respecting its origin and frequency. The second chapter has five sections, in which the following questions are respectively discussed; viz. whether any characteristic description of the Croup has been left by the antients, or by the authors who wrote previously to the last century; whether it was as frequent in the countries of the north, before the middle. of the last century, as it is at present; whether it is more common in the northern countries than in France; whether it has become of late years more prevalent in France; and, lastly, the author details his own observations on the subject.

Chapter iii., intitled Description and Symptoms, occupies a hundred pages, and is subdivided into twenty-seven sections, in which each symptom is made a distinct consideration. We shall enumerate the heads of the sections, in order to shew the