do so. But this is not courage! The mere act of fighting does not constitute bravery. It is the feeling, the inward feeling which he carries with him to the field, it is this which constitutes true valor. The rankest coward that ever lived will fight if he knows that instant death attends his refusal, or that there is more danger in running away than in going forward. True courage loves danger for the sake of the excitement its affords-loves it for the same reason that men love wine: loves it, too, for the glory consequent on overcoming it. Had Richard the First not been the giant he was, would he have been the hero he was? Would he have courted danger as he did, alone and single-handed? I have said that many virtues depend on this single quality of courage. Richard possessed the ne plus ultra of courage, and he was highminded and generous to a fault. He sought to accomplish all his ends openly, avowedly, and honorably, because he felt himself able to do so. His bro her John was a coward, and how did he seek to accomplish his objects? Why, by every species of low and cunning villany, not stopping even at murder. Had John been physically constituted as Richard, and Richard as John, John had been called the lion-hearted, and Richard the craven coward. Again, it may be urged that on the field of battle men not physically strong have frequently performed feats of gratuitous and uncalled-for daring. But neither will this objection hold, for at the time of performing these deeds of valor their physical constitution is actually altered. The brain, powerfully excited by the scenes, the trumpet clang, the panoply of war, the martial music, the stir, the life, the uproar all around, pours into the heart a resistless tide, as it were, of nervous energy, and the heart, obedient to the impulse, propels the blood in a stream of tríple force along the arteries, until every organ of the body is in a state of the highest excitement, swollen and distended with the living current. Thus for a time the weak become actually strong, and hence these instances of courage in the weak. The same thing occurs in anger. A man under the influence of rage not only appears but really does possess treble the physical power which he can command when calm. deeply into physical man;-there it is that the moral man lies concealed; the outward man is only the shell of the man within." To alter a man's moral character, you need only alter his physical condition. Take the brave and hardy mountaineer from his hills-lap him in luxury-let him be fed on dainties and couched on down-let his lullaby be sounded by the "soft breathings of the lascivious lute," instead of the wild music of the whistling wind, -you will soon reduce him, first physically, and then morally, to the rotund but helpless condition of the turtle-fed yet imbecile alderman. In a few years replace him on his mountain-top-set him beside his former companions show him the agressor against his rights, the oppressor of his race-bid him meet and repel the common enemy. Behold! his courage has fled, the love of liberty and independence is dead within him, the spirit of freedom sleeps; he trembles and yields, preferring the indolence of slavery to the toil necessary to preserve him free. It may be said that courage is but one of the moral qualities: true-but it is one on which many others depend. Courage results from a consciousness of physical strength, and cowardice from a consciousness of physical weakness. The strong will not shun danger, because he feels himself competent to resist and repel it. The weak man, knowing himself unable to surmount danger by an exercise of strength which he does not possess, will resort to other means of preservation-to petty cunning, wily stratagem, mean subterfuge, lying, and circumvention. Thus the virtues which are directly opposed to these vices all depend upon courage, at least, to a considerable extent; and courage depends on physical strength, the size of the heart and lungs, the firmness of the heart's structural fibre, and the liveliness and energy with which circulation and animalization is performed. The fortitude with which the Indian savage endures torture at the stake, I shall endeavor to show by and by is clearly the result of his physical condition. It may be objected, that we have numerous instances of undoubted courage in men possessing but little physical strength: but this objection will not hold. When the noble scion of a noble house, the nursling of luxurious ease from his cradle, goes out to fight a duel, is it Madness in all its grades, from mere eccenbecause he loves danger for the sake of the tricity, through all the devious wanderings, pleasurable excitement it affords? No. Is wild imaginings, and musing moodiness of the it because he is indifferent to danger? No poet's mind up to the furious raving of incuraWhat is it then which urges him on? It is ble insanity, has its seat in the physical structhe fear of disgrace; it is the dread of being ture or physical disorganization of the brain. hooted from that sphere of society in which And what are all these varying shades of inhe moves; it is his fear of the finger of scorn sanity but so many peculiarities of character, which impels him: this, therefore, is not cou- taking the name of eccentricity while they are rage! this is fear! If he refuse to fight he but slightly marked and harmless; of insanity knows that he will be degraded from his caste when deeply marked and dangerous; and of -his views, whether of love or ambition, will patriotism when the effect of the ruling pasbe destroyed. If he fight he has a chance of sion is to benefit the state, though that benefit escape, and if he escape his character as a be purchased at the small cost of self-destrucman of courage is established. His, there- tion? Was not the Roman mad who, in orfore, is a choice of two evils, and he chooses der to show his enemy how little he cared for to fight as being the less evil of the two. If his threats of punishment, thrust his own he could avoid both evils, assuredly he would hand into the fire and held it there till it was consumed? Codrus, the last king of Athens, allowed himself purposely to be killed by one of his enemies, the Heraclidæ, because the oracle had declared that the victory should be won by that nation whose king should be slain in battle. Codrus, therefore, was a patriot. Had he done the same thing from sadness of heart, weariness of the world, or simply to please himself, he would have been a suicide and a madman. another. grand distinctions then between veins and arteries is, that while the arteries arising from the heart are multiplied in number and diminished in size, until they have reached and distributed their blood to the ultimate tissue, the veins arising from the ultimate tissue are constantly becoming diminished in numbers and increased in size, until they have reached and carried their blood to the heart. Another general distinction between arteThe moral qualities are therefore, at least, ries and veins is, that arteries possess contracto a great extent, the offspring of physical tility. That is, they possess the power of structure. I know that moral causes may, contracting upon (and so propelling) their and often do, produce physical disease: but blood, and then of recovering their size, and this does not weaken the argument, for a contracting again; and so on. This alternate child may destroy its parent. The qualities contraction and expansion constitutes the of the mind, also, may be modified, improved, pulse. The veins are simply and but slightly trained, and properly directed by religion elastic. A simply elastic body can only conand education. But so, also, may the child tract after having been previously expanded. of one parent be nurtured and educated by The arteries can contract without previous expansion. This power they owe to what is called contractility. The veins, therefore, have no pulse, and consequently little or no power to propel their blood. The blood in the veins is driven on by various extrinsic circumstances, such as the contraction of muscles around them, the pulsation of arteries in their neighborhood, a dependent position, &c. The veins, therefore, have valves which, when the blood has been squeezed onward towards the heart by the adventitious causes just mentioned, prevent its regurgitation or gravitation backward. One of the most familiar instances of the influence of physical conformation on moral character is to be found in the fact, that all the most courageous and ferocious animals have a heart remarkably large and strong in proportion to their size, while the weak and timid have hearts proportionally small. It is as impossible for an animal with a small, flabby heart to be bold and strong as for two and two to equal five. I am glad to perceive, by some late publications, that the truth of this doctrine is beginning to be admitted, and I trust it will not I have said that there is scarcely any point be long before parents can be made to under- in the body which is not occupied by vessels stand that the only certain method of assur- and nerves. It follows, therefore, that there ing to children a vigorous and healthy mind is scarcely any point of it which does not is, first of all, to allow them the opportunity consist of vessels and nerves. And this is of acquiring a vigorous and healthy body. true. When you look at a piece of red raw Let them be assured, too, that those who be- flesh, that which appears to you a solid mass, gin by cramming a child's memory (for judg- is, in fact, little else than a wonderful and ment is out of the question) with a quantity compact tissue of nerves and hollow tubes of bad French and worse Latin, together firmly compressed and matted together. The with the terms and problems of the abstruse only solid parts are the nervous threads, a sciences, which, after all, they can only learn to repeat as the parrot does, by rote without understanding; let them, I say, be assured that those who thus begin, by seeking to make a child so very, very wise, will end, in all human probability, by making him a fool. I have been seduced by this bewitching subject into a long digression :-but let us return to the arteries and veins. little cellular substance, and the delicate membranes forming the coats of those hollow tubes-that is, the blood-vessels and absorbents-and even these are porous—at least the blood-vessels. Even that which anatomists call the muscular fibre, and which you call the grain of the meat, has been asserted by Ruysch to be no more than little bundles of vessels-minute tubes, like the hairs of your The arteries, ramifying in every direction, head, every one of which you, of course, like the branches of a tree from their com- know is hollow. Ruysch's opinion is very mon root in the heart, and having shot their high authority, for he possessed a secret minute and hair-like terminations into every which enabled him to carry the art of injectpart of the body, so that you cannot insert ing minute vessels to a degree of nicety the point of the finest needle without wounding one or more of them, cease to be arteries and take the structure of veins. These hairlike veins (which are merely a continuation of hair-like arteries with an alteration in the structure of their coats) soon begin to unite two into one, to form larger veins. These What I have said of the red raw flesh is veins again presently unite two or more into also true of the bones especially of young one, to form larger still; and so on, until all animals. For the internal structure of the the veins of the body have united together, bones is honey-combed, and highly spongoid, and so formed two very large ones which and their cells everywhere are filled with empty themselves into the heart. One of the vessels and nerves. From all this there re which has never since been equalled, nor even approached. But he died, and, like a miser, refused to divulge his secret, though large sums of money were offered him. If any man deserved to have confession extorted from him by the rack, it was Ruysch. E. JOHNSON. THOUGHTS ON WOMAN. BY MRS. CRAWFORD. sults another consequence, which is this: that scarcely a day passed but that complaints nearly the whole of the body, consisting of were made at court by ladies, both married tubes, and these tubes being filled with fluid, and unmarried, who had been carried off, and a very large proportion of the whole body seduced by their powerful neighbors. The must consist of fluid. This, too, is true. If Marshal de Boncicant, with twelve other you take a piece of human muscle (that is, knights, at whose head was a cousin of the what you call, in meat, the lean part) of the king, therefore resolved to found an order for size and thickness of an ordinary beef steak, the protection of the fair sex, to which they and dry it perfectly, it will become no thick- gave the appellation of "De la Dame Blanche er than a sheet of paper. In fact, fully five- à l'Escu Verd.' The insignia of this order sixths of the body are fluid. The next large consisted of a golden shield enamelled with proportion consists of solid matter composing green, containing the figure of a white lady." the nerves and the coats of vessels. What Thus we see, that in the age most distinguishremains is too trifling for consideration. Au ed for a chivalrous devotion to woman, a few revoir adieu. brave men were obliged to unite in the defence of innocence and beauty, and teach men decency and decorum towards that sex, whose charms (despite the boast of chivalry) inspired any thing, rather than a delicate and tender passion. And such, some will say, perhaps, is the case now even in this reformed age of the world. Too frequently, we admit, but with many rare exceptions. That beauty will always be a lovely flower in the path of man, that youth will steal upon his senses, like the first breath of spring, cannot be denied: but what we would maintain is, WHAT is it that has raised woman in the not that woman, as relates to personal apscale of being ?-Christianity. Who was pearance, is no longer an object of sense; her first great champion and liberator?- but that the Christian lover and husband of Christ! And can she who owes her freedom this age are bound to woman by stronger and to a divine master become the slave of man! more lasting feelings than those of mere pasCan she quit his service, which is indeed per- sion,-feelings of companionship, which halfect freedom, for the thraldom of the world? low the domestic hearth,-feelings of loving Let us take a brief review of the state of wo- consideration, which sweeten the social board man as it was, in order that we may the more--and, above all, feelings of tender sympathy justly estimate what it now is. Look at the in sickness, which smooth the wedded couch. situation of the sex in the barbarous ages of Yes, such are the fruits of Christianity; such the world: mere objects of a gross sensuality the feelings of the Christian husband, often and abject obedience to their rude and selfish (for I have seen it) surviving both the youth possessors. As the nations become more en- and the beauty of the wife. Let woman, then, lightened, and men's habits less savage and with the book of salvation open to her, learn lawless, the state of woman was somewhat to estimate her high and glorious prerogative, improved. Yet, even amongst the far-famed that heir-loom of God's grace, which the Greeks and Romans, where the arts flourish-mothers and daughters of Judea have transed, and the minds of men were illuminated mitted to her, and which can never be lost, with the rays of genius and the light of phi- or sequestered, but by her own act. He, the losophy, what was woman? Still but a mere Saviour of souls, the Regenerator of hearts— object of the senses. Or, if she rose to any He, the sinless one! who told the accused higher consideration, it was only by throw-adultress to "go and sin no more"—who pering aside the graces of her feminine nature, mitted the polluted Magdalen to touch his and arraying herself like Bellona. When a immaculate feet-He has left lasting and trinew era dawned upon the world, and chival- umphant testimonials of the regard in which ry made woman its seeming idol, wearing He held woman: woman by him so honored, her colors on its mailed arm, and her faveurs as to bear in her bosom the incarnate God, joyaux, or emprises d'amour, on its crested helm, going forth in her name alone to the combat "la guerre des amoureux," what then was woman? Nothing. Still but the mere object of sense; her charms, her youth, the only ties that bound man to her. Poets are fond of singing the praises of love, as it existed in chivalrous times; let us hear what the philosopher says upon the subject. the long-predicted Paraclete; the only Saviour of souls!-woman his last care when dying, and his first chosen herald when risen again from the dead; and who still, if she watches like the two loving Marys at his tomb, will see him one day in the garden of eternity! Regret not then, ye young and fair romancers, the days of chivalry; nor sigh for the loves of those by-gone days. Among all the ages of chivalry, there Trust to the voice of Truth. Woman never was none in which it flourished to such a de- rose so high in the scale of being as now, gree, at least in France, or that produced so when her mind makes her the companion many Chevaliers des Dames, as the four- and not the puppet of man; who, in this hapteenth. Yet in this very century so great py age, is not ashamed to honor in woman, was the libertinism of the nobles, that | both the tender parent that bore him, and the 66 eyes; blessed mother of the God that redeemed Quick-spreading smiles round infant lips and him. And who is more tenderly than ever bound to the partner of his fortunes and earthly fate, by their common hopes of a joyful re-union, and a glorious immortality hereafter. To the Editor of the Metropolitan. Or on the breezy forehead of the dawn, Till, wearied with the vastness of the dome, Fairies my ministers-who to me bring, SIR. AFTER Contributing to some of the most respectable periodical and other literary works of the age, and after the public commendations of "Blackwood's," "the Athenæum," &c. and privately of such persons as Wordsworth, Montgomery, Miss Mitford, and Miss Bowles, &c. I find my name yet liable to And make me regal as the spicy morn. the malignity and dandyism of criticism.* II too sport round God's throne-but draw not should be deficient in manliness and spirit were I to resign the least spark of literary existence by any thing they could inflict; I allude to "Fraser's Magazine," where my brother, the author of "Pantika," assures me my name is classed with "the immortals of 1835." I wish to give public proof that I belong yet to "mortal poets," that I am, as Shakspeare says, a man of this world." 66 As a reader of the "Metropolitan," and one who has derived much pleasure from your own pen, I turn naturally to that work, and to you as Editor of it, with the request that if you find the poetry in the lines attending this, of the quality I believe it to be, you will, by giving it a place in your very respectable Magazine, assist me in making public the best answer to the malice of any reviewer. Your's, very respectfully, &c. R. HOWITT. FANCY. My wings are light as gossamer-my way Leaves light where'er it rests. But who can My palace-home, the region where I dwell, near, Awed by Imagination's eye severe- Sees at a glance whichever way I fly,— THE LIFE OF A SUB-EDITOR; BY THE SUB-EDITOR. AND, SO filling our cabins with invalided officers, we sailed for England. We took home with us a convoy: and a miserable voyage we made of it. I had none of those exhilarating feelings so usual to every one who is about, after a long period of absence, to revisit his native land. I grew dull and irritable, a mixture of qualities as unpleasant as they are contradictory. I began to cast up accounts with that stern old reckoner Time, and I found the balance dreadfully in my disfavor. What had I in exchange, for the loss of the three most sunshiny years of life, comprised between the ages of fifteen and eighteen? To look back upon that period, it seemed a dreary waste, with only one small bright spot blooming upon it. Indeed, the contemplation of that oasis was so dazzling, that, when my mental eye was no longer rivetted upon it, like a gaze upon the sun, it made all else seem dark and indistinct. The indomitable pride natural to every bosom, and perhaps too plentiful in mine, had, also, its share in filling my mind with an unceasing and cankering disgust. I began to What *We know not to whom the malignity and dan. feel the bitterness of being unowned. dyism of criticism allude. Surely not to "Fra. was country to me? The chain that binds a ser's Magazine," as our correspondent supposes: man to it, is formed of innumerable small, be it as it may, we have not seen the attack. We yet precious links, almost all of which will do our best, however, to revivify Mr. Howitt. -ED. *Continued from page 54. were wanting in my case. Father, mother, transition into vivification. There is no exfamily, a heritage, a holding, something to aggeration in all this. From the continual claim as one's own-these are what bind a coming and going, and the state of constant man's affections to a particular spot of earth, disunion in which we lived, it was every man and these were not mine;-the fact was, I for himself, and God, I am sorry to say, wanted, just at that time, excitement of good seemed to have very little to do with any of or of evil, and I was soon supplied with that us. So complete was our disorganization, and aliment of life, ad nauseam. so great our destitution as a mess, that, after the first week, the supernumerary sick young gentlemen were relieved from this candlelight den of starvation and of dirt, and distributed among the warrant officers. In taking my soi-disant school-fellow on board the Eos, I had shipped with me my Mephistophiles. The former servant to the midshipman's berth was promoted to the mizen top, and Joshua Daunton inducted, with due solemnities, to all the honors of waiting upon about half a dozen fierce, unruly midshipmen, and as many sick supernumeraries, and he formally took charge of all the messplate and munitions de bouche of this submarine establishment. There was no temptation to embezzlement. Our little society was a commonwealth of the most democratic description-and, as usually happens in these sorts of experiments, there was a community of goods that were good for nothing to the community. It was to wait upon our persons, to administer to our wants, and to take care of our culinary comforts, that Joshua Daunton was duly installed. It was very ludicrous to see our late servant giving up his charge to our present one. The solemnity with which the iron tureen, and the one knife, and the three forks, that were not furcated, seeing that they had but one prong each, were given up. Joshua's contempt at the sordid poverty of the republic to which he was to administer, was quite as undisguised as his surprise. I again and again requested him to do his duty in some capacity in the ship, but he steadily refused. pered either with me or my messmates. He contrived, in the most plausible manner possible, to spoil our almost unspoilable meals. He always contrived to draw for us the very worst rations, and to lay the blame on the purser's steward. In bringing aft our miserable dinners his foot would slip, or a man would run against him-or somebody had taken it off the galley fire, and thrown it in the manger. Salt water would miraculously intrude into my messmate's rum bottle, and my daily pint of wine was either sour, or muddy, or sandy, or afflicted with something that made it undrinkable. In one word, under the care of the good Joshua, Messieurs the midshipman ran a most imminent risk of being actually starved. I will give an inventory of all the moveables of this republic, for the edification of the curious. Among these I must first of all The silky, soft-spoken, cockney-dialected enumerate the salle a manger itself, a hot, lit- Josh, got me into continual hot water. He tle hole in the cock-pit, of about eight feet seemed to consider himself as my servant by six, which was never still. This dining- only: consequently, he got continually thrashparlor and breakfast-room also contained our ed, and I, on his appeal, taking his part, had cellars, which contained nothing, and on to endeavor to thrash the thrasher. Now this which cellars we lay down when there was could not always conveniently be done. The room-your true midshipman is a recumbent more I suffered for this Daunton, the more animal-and sat when we could not lie. For ardently he seemed to attach himself to me. the same reason that the Romans called a But there appeared to be much more malice grove lucus, these celarets were called lock-than affection in this fidelity. Nothing prosers, because there was nothing to lock in them, and no locks to lock in, that nothing withall. In the midst stood an oak table, carved with more names than ever Rosalind accused Orlando of spoiling good trees with, besides the outline of a ship, and a number of squares which served for an immoveable draught-board. One battered, spoutless, handless, japanned-tin jug, that did not contain water, for it leaked, some tin mugs, seven, or perhaps eight pewter plates, an excellent old iron tureen, the best friend which we had, and which had stood by us through storm and calm, and the spiteful kick of a reefer, and the contemptuous "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" in the galley, which contained our cocoa in the morning, our peasoup at noon, and, after these multiplied duties, performed the character of wash-hand basin, whenever the midshipman's fag condescended to cleanse his hands. It is a fact, that when we sailed for England, of crockery ware we had not a single article. There was a calabash or so, and two or three sections of cocoa-nut shells. We had no other provisions than barely the ship's allowance, and even these were of the worst description. Bread, it is well remarked, is the staff of life; but it is not quite pleasant to find it so replete with life as to have the power of locomotion. Every other description of food was in the same state of Many a time, after we had gone through the motions of dining, without eating, and as we sate in our dark hot hole, over our undrinkable potations, and our inedible eatables, each of us resting his hungry head upon his aching elbows, watching the progress of some animated piece of biscuit, would Master Daunton, the slave of our lamp, which, bythe-by, was a bottle bearing a miserably consumptive purser's dip, beside which a farthing rushlight would look quite aldermanic-I say, this slave of our lamp would perch himself down on the combings of the cable-tier hatchway, in the midst of the flood of Heav en's blessed daylight, that came pouring |