tavern, returned to the stage, again tried at a puppet show, ate the bitter bread of a strolling player for some years, after which she established herself as a pastry-cook at Chepstow, and next at Pill, near Bristol, with similar success. She eventually entered on a literary career, which she commenced with little tales, written for a newspaper, but the printer not being able to pay her, she once more took to the stage, as a prompter, and, in short, attempted, by every means possible, or thought to be possible by a wild imagination, to earn some sort of a maintenance. Her life is a blank for several years, but it appears that in 1755 her literary occupations were not laid by, for in that year, being in possession of a public house at Islington, she was visited by a bookseller, who went to treat with her for a novel which she had just finished. The description of her menage is a curiosity.

Her house was then a thatched hovel, in the purlieus of Clerkenwell Bridewell, on the way to Islington, not far from the New River Head. Mr. White and his companion having at last reached her door, they were admitted by a domestic, a tall, meagre, ragged figure with a blue apron before her, who spoke with a solemn voice and a hungry smile. The first object that presented itself was a dresser, clean it must be confessed, and furnished with three or four delf-plates, and underneath an earthen pipkin, and a black pitcher with a snip out of its mouth. To the right of the dresser sat the mistress of the mansion, on a maimed chair, under the mantelpiece, with a fire sufficient to put her visitors in mind of starvation. On one hob sat a monkey chattering, on the other a tabby cat of a melancholy aspect, and on the flounce of his lady's dingy petticoat reclined a dog, almost only the skeleton of one. He raised his shaggy head, and staring with bleared eyes, saluted the strangers with a snarl. A magpie was perched on her chair, and on her lap lay a mutilated pair of bellows; their pipe was gone, but they served as a succedaneum for a writing-desk, on which lay displayed her hopes, in the shape of the manuscript of her novel. Her ink-stand was a broken tea-cup; her pen was worn to the stump-she had but one. A rough deal board, with three supporters, was brought for the convenience of the visitors, and, after they were accommodated, they entered upon business.

The work was read-and she read it beautifully-remarks were made, and thirty guineas demanded for the copyright. The squalid hand-maiden looked with astonishment at the amount of the demand. The extortionate bookseller offered five pounds; some altercation ensued, but after it the man of trade doubled his offer; matters in the end were duly accommodated, the lady stipulating for fifty copies in addition to the money.'vol. ii. pp. 72, 73.

The unfortunate woman died in 1760. The facts here stated are principally derived from her own memoirs, and assuredly they exhibit a most extraordinary picture of the exertions which a mother can make for the support of her offspring!

The character of Mrs. Georgiana Bellamy is so well known from the celebrated letters which pass under her name, though written for her by Alexander Bicknell, the editor of Carver's Travels in

Africa, that we need not dwell upon it. Nor need we say more of the remaining lives, consisting of those of Arthur Murphy, Thomas King, Thomas Holcroft, Cooke, Mrs. Baddeley, Miss Farren, Mrs. Jordan, John Kemble, and Mrs. Siddons, than that they are in general well executed. By a remarkable coincidence, the latter died just as the last sheet of the work was undergoing correction for the press.

The style of these volumes is precisely what it ought to have been, fluent, lively, and devoid of all circumlocution. Occasionally a deep and just reflection upon the errors of human nature, but always leaning to the side of benevolence, is intermingled with the busiest parts of the narrative, which arrests the attention, and, apparently without intending it, reminds us of a useful and practical truth. Mr. Galt did not consider it his duty to paint the actors and actresses as all monsters of iniquity. He certainly never throws a veil over their vices, but neither does he exaggerate them. His portraits are in general favourable likenesses, but not more so than all persons who love the stage would wish them to be.

ART. III.-1. Cholera Morbus-Return to an Address to His Majesty, dated 24th June, 1831; for copies or extracts of all information or opinions communicated to Government, relating to the Nature and Extent of any infectious Disease, prevailing in the eastern parts of Europe, and to the precautions recommended to prevent the introduction of such Disease into this country; also

2. A Return of the names of persons appointed as a Board of Health, to consider of the measures proper to be adopted to watch the Nature of such Disease. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 27th June, 1831.

THE anxious attention of the public has been for some time fixed upon the progress of that formidable disease, which, rising like an evil spirit from the marshes of India, has already marched with fatal and gigantic strides through the finest districts of Persia, over the Caucasus to Moscow; has invaded several of the provinces of Russia, infesting even the well guarded capital of Petersburgh, and finally appearing on those shores which are in constant communication with our own country. The acute mind of Lord Heytesbury, our ambassador at the Russian court, was led to observe and report upon the advance of this universal enemy, so early as the summer of last year; but neither the government nor the people participated in the apprehensions which he then intimated rather than expressed. The malady was still at a distance; we had no fear of being attacked by it, and hence many precious opportunities have been lost for the acquisition of those data, which now seem to be so necessary for fixing its real character. It was not until the cholera morbus arrived at Riga, in view, we might say, of England, and waiting as it were for a favourable chance of wafting itself to our ports, that measures were at length adopted for obtaining informa

tion concerning it, and for establishing the requisite machinery of precaution for providing, as far as human arrangements can provide, against the introduction and diffusion of the malady amongst us.

It would be too much to expect that those arrangements, even if put into execution with the most scrupulous punctuality, should completely protect us from the threatened danger. Persons are not wanting who maintain that the cholera morbus has already made its appearance in England, and it is not long since that one of our steam-boats underwent inspection in a French port, before any of the passengers were allowed to land, in consequence of its having been reported that the contagion, if such it be, had reached our shores. We are not prepared to say whether the rumour be true or false; at all events it indicates the suspicious circumstances in which we are placed by the prevalence of the malady at Riga. Instead therefore of confiding with perfect security upon the care that the government, its medical board, and its quarantine regulations are to take of us, we should be prepared to meet it by all the means which Providence has placed in our power. We should study its history for ourselves, without trusting too implicitly in the skill of the physicians, who, upon this subject, are as uninstructed as it is possible for men to be; we should calmly observe its progress, scrutinize its character, and ascertain the circumstances which assist or impede its diffusion. It is by thus acting that we shall really know the peril which we have to encounter, and, instead of filling our minds with chimerical horrors, which are always engendered and magnified by ignorance, we shall possibly light upon a few practical conclusions, which may enable us, if not to conquer the malady, at least to neutralize its venom.

We understand it to be the opinion of more than one eminent professional person, that even if the Indian cholera were to arrive here in all its native energy, the nature of our climate would not only retard its propagation, but disarm it of much of its fatal power over the human frame. However that may be, we believe that little doubt is entertained that the very general cultivation of our territory, in which few extensive marshes are permitted to remain, the cleanly habits of our people, generally speaking, both in town and country, and the superior quality of their food, would afford us many advantages in combating the contagion, which the inhabitants of Russia, of Persia, and of India do not possess. To these favourable circumstances may be added the general industry of our community, that gives them little time for those depressing apprehensions, which, according to all accounts, are very active causes in pre-disposing an individual for the reception of the disease. Then our island situation gives us the benefit of constant currents of fresh air from the surrounding seas, which, at all events, must frequently alter the state of our atmosphere, and prevent it from being, as the atmosphere is supposed to be in Russia, a con

ductor, or at least a receptacle, of the disease for any considerable period of time. Besides, we have medicine always at hand, and are not obliged to travel for it, as they are often compelled to do in Russia, some forty or fifty miles; and whatever can be effected by the best medical skill in Europe, for the proper and useful application of that medicine, may be accomplished amongst us with a rapidity that no other nation can equal. These are all circumstances on our side, which should prevent the public mind from feeling any very great alarm, even if the cholera should visit us in the course of its appointed progress. At the same time, as, on the the one hand, we ought to give way to no senseless clamour or exaggerated apprehensions of danger, neither should we, on the other, deem ourselves inaccessible to a disease, the true nature of which is not yet understood, and has baffled all previous experience.

From the first and second reports of Dr. Walker, an eminent English physician long resident in Russia, to whom the Lords of the Privy Council applied for information in consequence of his professional character and knowledge, it appears that even in the March of the present year, the disease was not quite extinct, though it had then greatly subsided, in Moscow. He mentions what we consider to be a very surprising circumstance, considering the numbers that had already fallen victims to the malady in that capital, that the patients were generally in such an advanced stage of the disease, when they were taken to the hospitals, that curative means had little effect, and more than half fell victims. This assuredly is a species of negligence upon the part of the authorities, or of apathy upon that of the families to which the patients belonged, which never could happen in England. It is Doctor Walker's opinion, and he is borne out by the almost universal testimony of the Moscow physicians, that the malady is not the plague, or any complication with it, but the true India cholera. The symptoms of the disease,' he says, ' and the appearances on dissection, are exactly the same as those described in the official reports from the medical boards of the three presidencies in India, and by the various medical men who have written on the disease in that country.' As to the important question, whether the cholera is contagious or not, the Doctor hazards no opinion, the facts for and against not having been yet sufficiently examined; but he adds that by far the greater number of medical men in Moscow were disposed to think it not contagious, but produced by some peculiar state of the atmosphere, not cognizable by either our senses or by instruments; that this was proved by almost every person in the city feeling during the time some inconvenience or other, which wanted only the exciting cause of catching cold, or of some irregularity in diet, to bring on cholera; that very few of those immediately about the patients were taken ill; that persons had put on the clothes of patients who were very ill, or had died of cholera, had lain in their beds, or even alongside of corpses, had

bathed in the same water where very bad cholera patients had been bathed just before, and that none of these persons were taken ill.' These are undoubtedly very strong facts on the side of the non-contagionists; but facts similar to these, if not still stronger, have been known to occur in cases of plague, and of other diseases, the contagious character of which, nevertheless, no man of competent experience could doubt. When we find great numbers of individuals suffering in the same country from precisely the same malady, and when we find that that malady is conveyed from that place to other places by means of human intercourse, we can come to no other rational (certainly no other safe) conclusion, than that the malady is contagious, no matter by what concealed and undiscoverable process it is communicated from individual to individual. It seems that even those who maintain the contrary doctrine in Moscow, acknowledge that where a number of cholera patients are collected together, it is perfectly possible that the disease, like others, may become contagious.' Dr. Walker mentions that one gentleman, the inspector of an hospital, was at first a non-contagionist, but that he found himself forced to adopt the opposite opinion, because so many of the attendants at the establishment under his superintendence were attacked with the disease.' The evidence collected by the Doctor on this point, and on that of the communication of the disease by inanimate objects, as well as his own reasoning upon the subject, are well worthy of attention.

6

At Jaroslaw, Minsk, Mologa, Ustuskna, Somina, Titzvin, through all which places the disease made its approaches towards St. Petersburg, and where, from the small extent of the field of observation, every case came uuder more immediate inspection, I found every where the medical men and others convinced that the disease was brought to them somehow or other by the boats which came up the Volga from Nishni Novgorod, and other places where the disease had been; they said that the first attacked with the disease were always boatmen, and it was only afterwards that the disease appeared among the towns-people. But after the disease got into a town, that it could not be traced from one to another, and that very often, perhaps most frequently, only one in a family, while in others every one was attacked with it.

Combining this with its slow and gradual progress from Astrachan (whither one party consider it proved that it was brought by a vessel from Saliany, which the other party deny), along the great lines of water communications, I think it more than probable that it is carried along by men somehow or other, although it has not been ascertained in what way. It has been alleged that it follows the tracts of rivers, not because it is carried by people going along them, but because the miasma, or whatever it is that predisposes to, and excites, the disease, has a great affinity for humidity. But if this were the case, it should go along all rivers and streams, whereas I believe it follows only those where there is navigation; and it also would not proceed along the great roads, as we are assured it does, more than along others which are less frequented. The question is a very difficult