SPECTABILIA.
The Midland Medical and Surgical Reporter, published at Worcester, gives in English and Latin.an account of an extraordinary boy, " John Jones four years and six weeks old, and three feet ten inches and three quarters high," who is endowed with a beard and whiskers, and other premature indications of manhood. He cut three teeth before he was three months old, and grew amazingly. from the age of twelve months. His frame is herculean, his head large, his voice deep-toned, his temper violent, his appetite great. The expression of his face is vacant ; he is deficient in intellectual capacity, and hardly begins to speak. The phrenologists have an eye upon him. He resides with his parents at Dulwich.
The " perfection" of the linen manufacture in Ireland is ascribed by Southey, in the last Quarterly Review, to the revocation of the edict of Nantes ; " Government having aided, with adequate funds for carrying it on, a Ilu uc not, whose family had been for many generations linen-manufacturers at St. Quintino." Strafford expended thirty thousand pounds of his own fortune on the experiment.
WHISKY NOT A NATIVE BEVERAGE OF THE HIGHLA NUS.—We have already spoken in commendation of the new Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, published by Mr. Blackwood. Among the excellent articles, replete with every kind of scientific and practical information on agriculture and rural economy, which the Third Number contains, there is one of much simplicity and earnestness, from the pen of Major-General Stewart of Garth, on the history of Whisky, and the origin of smuggling in the Highlands of Scotland, According to the patriotic General, whisky is a modern beverage, which was never drunk at gentlemen's tables till the legal distillation of it wastprohibited then, indeed, it became fashionable, and the example of the chiefs was followed by the clans. There is no term in the Gaelic language for" whisky-house ;" the taverns are called tai-leanne, or" ale-houses." The ancient beverage of the common people was ale and beer ; that of the gentry, rum, brandy, and French wines, which were landed on the western coast, and conveyed to all parts of the interior—the price of claret was a shilling the quart. Drunkenness, as well as whisky, was unknown in the Highlands till a recent period. During the first American war, while the allowance of spirits was served out to other regiments day by day, because the soldiers could not be trusted with it, the privates of the Forty-second, (a Highland regiment) were supplied, like the officers, with four days' allowance at once ; and this iedulgence they never abused throughout the whole six campaigns. We may, in a future notice, return to General Stewart's account of the causes and cure of smuggling.
USEFULNESS OE MACHINERY —So far are we from regarding the increased use of machinery as an evil which requires to be checked, that we hail every such application of the discoveries of science as another step in the steady course by which the benevolent Author Of Nature pushes forward
the improvement of the human race. In our °pinky', instead of being an evil to be deprecated, and, if possible, counteracted and repressed, the application of machinery, as a substitute for labour, serves to disengage a large number of human beings from manufacturing toil, in order that they may be employed in perfecting and extending our tillage ; thereby increasing at once their own happiness and the resources of the empire.—Quarterly Review
THE BRITISH POLITY SYMBOLICAL Cl' MAN.—The imaginary republic of Plato did not so happily symbolize the powers which uphold the "little kingdom, Man," as does the actual polity of Britain. It were no preposterous conceit to affirm, that nature typifies, in each individual man, the several offices and orders which our commonwealth distributes to the several ranks and functionaries of the State and Church. There is the regality of reason, " which can do no wrong," sacred, indefeasible, irresponsible, never to be deposed or violated by any suffrage, combination, consent, or conspiracy of lower delegated powers, yet of itself eyeless, handless, passionless, seeing, acting, and feeling. mediately by the understanding, its responsible minister, who is again dependent for information upon the senses, its subordinate agents. There are the Operative Energies, Talents, Passions, Appe tites, good servants all, but bad masters, useful citizens, always to he controlled, but never oppressed, and most effective when they are neither pam pered or starved. There, too is the Executive Will ; Prudence, Chancellor
of the Exchequer; Self-love:Minister for the Home Department ; Observation, Secretary of Foreign Mans ; Poetry (alias Lord Lowther,) over the
Woods and Forests; Lord Keeper Conscience, a sage, scrupulous, hesitating, head-shaking, hair-splitting personage, whose decisions are most just, but to slow to be useful, and who is readier to weep for what is done, than to direct what should be done ; Wit, Manager of the House of Commons, a flashy either-sided gentleman, who piques himself on never being out; an Self-denial, always eager to vacate his seat, and accept the Chiltern Hundreds.—Bfachwood's _Magazine for November.
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