Had it not been for fear of expofing myself and disturbing the family, I fhould have roared for the difquietness of my heart. My heavenly pilot difappeared: I feemed to have quite loft my hold on the Rock of ages. I funk in the deep mire, and the waves and ftorms went over me !'

The next day the quickfilver mounted up to the very top. My confolations from above were inexpreffible! Though accustomed to great changes, yet this was so very rapid and extraordinary that it deferved a particular memorandum.

• Here let me leave it on thankful record—that I never was lower in the valley than laft night; nor ever higher on the mount than to-day!'

Though Mr. Toplady talks much of the life and power with which he prayed and preached; his enlargement of foul; the deep and folemn attention given him by crowded audiences; and how the Lord's prefence was with him, yet he acknowledges that all turned out to very little account with his parifhioners of Broad-Hembury. I fear I can truly fay, that my lot hath never hitherto been caft among a people fo generally ignorant of divine things, and fo totally dead to God. I know but of three perfons in all this large and populous parish, on whom I have folid reafon to truft a work of divine grace is begun; and those are, Mrs. Hutchins, Farmer Taylor, and Joan Venn.'

The third part confifts of letters addreffed to feveral of his acquaintance. Some of them may be read with pleasure; particularly those which are addressed to Mrs. Macauley and Dr. Priestley.

His tribute of respect to the memory of the late excellent Mr. Hollis, is very animated. After relating fome particular circumftances refpecting the death of that friend of the British empire and of mankind,' he exclaims, How black is the ingratitude of human nature! Though this valuable man lived entirely to the benefit of others, and may be claffed with the moft public fpirited worthies that ever breathed, yet I have feldom known a death fo little regretted by the generality.Very exalted virtue is often admired; but not often loved. What is the reafon? Because few are truly virtuous: and we muft have some virtue ourselves, before we are capable of loving it in others, or loving others for it.'

Mr. Toplady speaks with much respect of Mr. Lindley's per fonal character; but with the utmoft difdain of his abilities, and with great diflike of his opinions.

In a letter to Mrs. Macauley, he retails a debate which he once had with Mr. Burgh, author of the "political Difquifitions." • I should have had,' fays he, a fharp oufet if he had been in perfect health. Even as it was, he could not forbear feeling my pulfe on the article of free will. In the course of our debase,

drove him into this dreadful refuge, viz. "that God doth all he poffibly can [these were Mr. Burgh's own words] to hinder moral and natural evil; but he cannot prevail, men will not permit God to have his wish." On Mr. Toplady's asking him, if this would not render the Deity an unhappy being? he replied: "No, for he knows that he must be disappointed and defeated, and that there's no help for it; and therefore he submits to the neceffity, and doth not make himself unhappy about it." We were not present at this difpute; and muft therefore take it on Mr. Toplady's word.

The letters to Dr. Priestley are fpirited and fenfible. They confist of much compliment, but more remonftrance, satire and defiance. The following paffages are very remarkable, and we think it due to Mr. Toplady's memory to prefent them to the public; especially as we never heard that the juftice was done him which he had fo unquestionably a right to demand. In what part of any printed work of mine do I" feem [as Dr. Priestley afferted] to think that the torments of hell will not be eternal?"-You yourself, I doubt not, will, on a calm review, be the firft to condemn your own temerity, in having publicly advanced a conjecture totally unwarranted on my part and I am equally difpofed to believe, that this will be the last liberty of the kind which you will venture to take either with me, or with any other man. You must be fenfible that not a word on the nature or the duration of future punishment ever paft between you and me, either in writing or in perfonal converfe. Confequently, you must be entirely unacquainted with my ideas of that awful fubject: and, as fuch, totally unqualified to advance the infinuation of which I have fuch reason to complain !'

We truft Dr. Priestley will at least allow, that if a man doth not understand the opinion of other writers fo well as he, yet that he understands his own.

The concluding part of this volume confifts of a fhort hiftory of England from Egbert to Hen. VIII. It is a very imperfect skeleton; but the arrangement is not injudicious. A fpirit of liberty breathes through it; and notwithstanding the flavery of his creed, his fpirit seemed congenial to his disposition; and we are happy to bestow this praise on his memory.

AKT. XIV. An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of that Swelling in one or both of the lower Extremities, which fometimes happens to Lyinging-in Women. Together with an Examination into the Propriety of drawing the Breats, of thofe who do, and also of those who do not give fuck. By Charles White, Efq. F. R. S. &c. &c. 8vo. 2s. 6d. Dilly. 1784.

TH

HE difeafe, which is the principal fubject of this pamphlet, has hitherto been almost unnoticed by the writers of this country. Several of the French authors in midwifery have

treated

treated of it, and they have almost uniformly confidered it as owing to a depofition of milk on the glands of the groin and upper part of the thigh. The lecturers in midwifery, in London, while they have diffented from this notion of the difeafe, have not established any other precife idea concerning it; and, indeed, they pass it over flightly. The Public is therefore much obliged to the ingenious writer of the work before us (whofe fervices to his profeffion are fo well known) for this attempt to introduce a more general knowledge of the nature of a diforder, by no means uncommon, and not a little troublesome. We shall copy his clear and accurate defcription of it.

The fymptoms of this diforder, when in its fimpleft ftate, are thefe: In about twelve or fifteen days after delivery, the patient is feized with great pain in the groin of one fide; accompanied with a confiderable degree of fever, which is feldom preceded by a fhivering fit or cold rigor. This part foon becomes affected with fwelling and tenfion, which extend to the labium pudendi of the fame fide only, and down the infide of the thigh, to the ham, the leg, the foot, and the whole limb; and the progrefs of the fwelling is fo quick, that in a day or two the limb becomes twice the fize of the other, and is moved with great difficulty, is hot and exquifitely tender, but not attended with external inflammation. The pain in the groin is generally preceded by a pain in the small of the back, and sometimes by a pain at the bottom of the belly, on the fame fide; the parts which fuffer the most pain are the groin, the ham, and the back part of the leg about its middle. The pain indeed extends over the whole limb, owing to the fudden diftention; but in a day of two it becomes lefs confiderable. The fwelling is general and equal all over the limb: in every stage of the diforder, it is much harder and firmer than in anafarca; not fo cold in any ftate of the disease, not fo much diminished by an horizontal pofition; neither does it pit when preffed upon by the finger, nor any water iffue from it, on its being punctured with a lancet. It is very fmooth, shining, and pale, and even and equal to the touch in every part, except where the conglobate glands are fituated, which in fome cafes are knotty and hard, as in the groin, the ham, and about the middle of the leg at its back part. This disorder generally comes on about the fecond or third week after delivery; but I have known one inftance of its fhewing itself fo early as twenty-four hours after, and another fo late as five weeks, but neither of these are ufual. The first parts that begin to mend, both as to pain and fwelling, are the groin, and labium pudendi; the -thigh next, and lastly the leg.'

After the general account of the difeafe, Mr. White proceeds to give particular hiftories of its occurrence in fourteen cafes; the various circumstances of which happily illuftrate the varieties of conftitution, degree, and event, under which it appears. On the whole, though a painful and tedious, it is never a fatal disease; and recovery from it, though often very flow, is fure.

The

The writer next confiders the nature and caufe of this difeafe, and he properly begins by fhewing what it is not. The notion of the French phyficians, that it is a milky depofition, feems fufficiently refuted by the obfervation (confirmed by the cafes related) that it happens under every poffible state of that fecretion, whether copious or deficient, encouraged or repreffed. Indeed, our best writers on puerperal diforders are by no means difpofed to admit that the re-abforption of the milk is fo general or common a caufe of difeafe as foreign writers have maintained. After Mr. White has thus cleared his way, he ventures to lay down his own opinion, "that the proximate cause of this disorder is an obftruction, detention, and accumulation of lymph in the limb." The circumftances of the cafe fhew that the obstruction of the lymphatics is as high as where they enter the pelvis. After an anatomical defcription of the lymphatics of the lower extremity, and the glands through which they pafs, our author proceeds to confider what the remote caufe can be which occafions fuch an affection. He finds, that a common trunk of the lymphatics of the leg and thigh paffes over the bones of the pelvis in its way towards the thoracic duct. This, he thinks, may in fome fubjects be preffed upon by the child's head as it defcends into the pelvis during labour. Such a preffure would cause an oftruction to the paffage of the lymph flowing through the veffel; and as it cannot regurgigate on account of the valves, but is ftill receiving fresh acceffions of fluid from below, he fuppofes it would be fo diftended, as fometimes to burst. The extravafated lymph would, he imagines, be reabforbed; and little or no inconvenience would enfue, till the wound of the lymphatic were clofed. But as this cannot happen without a great contraction of the diameter of the veffels, he conceives that the whole fyftem of lymphatics below the cicatrix would now become fuddenly diftended; and not being able to free themselves, would occafion a large and painful tumefaction of the limb, which would not fubfide till the confined lymph had found a new paffage by collateral and anastomofing branches, as in the cafe of an arterial trunk tied, on being wounded.

To this hypothefis, ingenious at it is, various objections will probably arife in the breaft of the phyfiological reader. We fhall not anticipate thefe, fince the determination of the point is of little practical confequence; and whether the writer's conjecture be true or falfe, we are ftill obliged to him for exciting our attention to the fubject, and removing erroneous opinions which have prevailed concerning it. As to the cure, it is obvious, that on Mr. White's hypothefis, it must be effected by nature, and art can only be in a fmall degree auxiliary to it. Á rational method of treatment on this ground is pointed out in the treatise. In order further to elucidate and confirm the doctrine REV. May 1784.

C c

laid

laid down, three plates from the late Mr. Hewfon's Experimental Inquiries into the Lymphatic Syftem, are annexed.

In the obfervations concerning the drawing of the breafts, the writer very candidly acknowledges himself a convert to Mr. Cruttwell's opinion of the impropriety of that practice in cafes where there is no intention of preferving the milk; and he adds his teftimony in favour of the fafety and advantage of the oppofite method, of fuffering them to fubfide, and leaving the management to nature. But where it is meant to keep the milk, he still thinks that the drawing of a skillful perfon will be of fervice, where circumstances occur in which the child itself cannot properly perform it.

MONTHLY CATALOGUE, For MAY, 1784.

POLITICAL.

Art. 15. Thoughts on a Parliamentary Reform. 8vo. 19. Dodfley.

A

GAINST every idea of a Reform, on the different plans that have been propofed; and, indeed, against the project in the abftract. The great end aimed at, being to procure an independent House of Commons, the Author objects to that scheme, as totally inimical to the due balance of our Constitution. He feems to dread nothing fo much as independency in that branch of our government. An independent House of Commons, he obferves, in the last century, engroffed the whole power to itself, changed the form of government, murdered the King, annihilated the peers, and established the worst kind of democracy that ever exifted; and the fame confufion, he adds, would infallibly be repeated, fhould we ever be fo unfortunate as to fee another. This writer advances many fpecious remarks, but his talents for declamation and ridicule feem to be fuperior to his powers of argumentation.

Art. 16. Popular Topics; or the Grand Queftion difcuffed. In which the following Subjects are confidered, viz. The King's Prerogative, the Privilege of Parliament, Secret Influence, and a Syftem of Reform for the Eaft India Company. 8vo. IS. Debrett. 1784.

This Writer fets out with a pofition to which we are unwilling to yield our affent; and not to be fufpected of misrepresenting his meaning, we shall deliver it in his own words:

I will not attempt the weak, though common, impofition, of declaring, I am not a party man.—, -At this period, when two great parties divide the fentiments of the whole empire, he who profeffes to be no party man, owns either that he has not ability to form an opinion, or courage and honefty enough to declare it. However individuals may difagree on particular points with the leaders of the two parties,

the