be increased.' By the friction of personal intercourse, and by comparison of the labours of eminent men in different countries, who formerly had but little intercourse with each other, more brilliant results may confidently be expected, and every fresh discovery will more speedily become the property of the whole world.

But one reflection now remains. Have we used this new and gigantic power wisely, and to the best possible advantage? Have we engrafted upon it every high and holy enterprise? Is it to be thought that He who reigns in heaven, and rules the destinies of earth, has permitted us to girdle that earth with railroads-to penetrate the mysteries of science-to plunge into the midst of uncivilized lands, for mere commercial and political purposes? Has he no higher object in view, than the extension of trade? Shall not this be one of the great subsidiary means for regenerating the world? Shall not the same spirit of enterprise that carries our ships to every shore, carry the messengers of peace to every land? What can more efficiently open up the earth for the reception of British Bibles, than the gigantic strides of British science? The very same power which produces tracts and periodicals by millions, and sends them swift as winged messengers to the dwellings of the poor at home, can not only produce Bibles by myriads in a short period of time -but it can now waft them in a few weeks to the most distant shores of the world!

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

DAVID GARRICK.

on the 2d of March, 1737, the famous pupil and his still more famous master set off, in the same coach, for the British metropolis. A letter of that date, from a gentleman in Lichfield, contains a passage which will gratify the curious in literary biography. Garrick,' writes he, ' and another neighbour of mine, one Mr Samuel Johnson, set out this morning for London together. Davy Garrick will be with you early in the next week; and Mr Johnson goes to try his fate with a tragedy, and to see to get himself employed in some translation from the Latin or French. Such irreverent mention of undeveloped genius is apt to excite a smile in those who have witnessed its achievements, who have been accustomed to think of 'Davy Garrick' as Shakspeare's best living interpreter, and to whom 'one Samuel Johnson' has ceased to be a great unknown.

Garrick, on coming to London, betook himself first to the study of law, and was entered accordingly at Lincoln's Inn. This he soon abandoned, either from want of inclination or from want of funds. Shortly after, the death of his uncle, who had just arrived from Lisbon, put him in possession of £1000. He now went to Rochester, where he placed himself under a teacher of mathematics. While here he lost his father, whose widow, in little more than a year, followed him to the grave. They left three sons, of whom David was the second, and two daughters.

Geometry, to the mind of young Garrick, was no more enticing than law. In either of his earlier pursuits, 'unstable as water, he did not excel.' Returning to London, he entered into partnership with his eldest brother, who carried on business as a wine-merchant. Here he was DAVID GARRICK, whose name occupies the most conspi- attracted into his congenial sphere-frequented the cuous place in the annals of the British drama, was born theatres, became a member of the theatrical clubs, assoat Hereford, in the month of February, 1716. His family ciated with the actors, and criticised the drama. This soon was of French extraction. Monsieur Garrick, his grand- determined his future course. In two years he dissolved father, had taken refuge in England, along with numbers partnership with his brother; and after some time spent of his countrymen, on the revocation of the edict of in the study of characters, he regularly assumed the proNantz. Peter Garrick, the French merchant's son, and fession of a player. In the summer of 1741, he then a father of the famous performer, entered the British young man of four or five-and-twenty-made his first army, in which he rose to the rank of captain. He appearance, under the feigned name of Lyddal, in the chanced to be at Hereford on a recruiting party; and city of Ipswich. Here his merits were at once recogthere his wife, who was daughter of a clergyman at Lich-nised; and he was emboldened to offer himself to the field, gave birth to the subject of this sketch. Soon after more fastidious regards of a London audience. He acthis, Captain Garrick retired on half-pay, fixing his resi- cordingly appeared at one of the minor theatres, in the dence in his wife's native town. The more elementary character of Richard the Third (always a favourite with parts of his education over, David was sent, at the age of him), on the 19th of October, 1741, and continued his ten, to the grammar-school of Lichfield. Even at that performances_throughout the season. His success was early period of his life, the bent of his mind was appa- prodigious. Drury-Lane and Covent-Garden were derent: he displayed more love of mimicry than zeal for serted; and all the wit, rank, and fashion of the metrolearning. Strolling players were his delight; and he polis flocked to Goodman's-Fields. From this time his got up, when only eleven years old, a little performance powers were universally acknowledged; and he conof his own, in which he figured, among a juvenile com- tinued, till his retirement in 1776 (a period of thirtypany, as Serjeant Kite. In this way the child was five years), indisputably and unapproachably at the head father of the man;' and as Pope 'lisped in numbers,' so of his profession-facile princeps of the British stage. Garrick gave proof in boyhood that his vocation was the stage.

Such a turn, if distinctly developed, seems to have met with no encouragement from his parents. They sent him, in his fifteenth year, to his uncle, a wine-merchant in Lisbon, at whose counting-house they meant him to be trained to business. It would not do, however; the drudgery and dry detail of a mercantile occupation, in its earlier and humble branches, did not suit his light and mercurial temperament. He came home in about a year, and resumed, with somewhat better success, his classical studies. A few years after, we find him under the care of the celebrated Samuel Johnson, who was at that time beginning the world with a few pupils and boarders, in the neighbourhood of Lichfield. This was the commencement of an acquaintance which lasted for life. Both Johnson and Garrick, however, were dissatisfied with obscurity and seclusion. The one was tired of imparting, while he wished to acquire; the other of acquiring, while he wished to impart. Each longed, in different departments, to make a figure in the world; and then, as now, the world was-London. Accordingly,

To enter, as his feeble and turgid biographer has so laboriously done, on the details of Garrick's dramatic life-to give an inventory, with tedious minuteness, of the characters which, year by year, he personated, and the stages on which he played-would be equally useless and uninteresting. Neither our space nor our inclination permits us to devote whole chapters to a dramatic row, or to utter magniloquent rant on Garrick's trip to the Continent as the setting of the theatrical sun. No two volumes could be more meagre and unsatisfactory than that farrago of trashy gossip, and still more trashy criticism, which Mr Arthur Murphy has given to the world as a life' of his friend. We have a great deal, indeed, about an absurd drama of his own, called 'The Orphan of China,' to which Garrick, it seems, was shy of acting as protector. We have a great deal, also, of impertinent criticism of Shakspeare, who is admitted to have been a superior genius,' and to have produced in Macbeth a well-drawn character! But his proper subject is left to shift for itself. Of Garrick the actor we have little; of Garrick the author, less; of Garrick the man, nothing. Almost the only anecdotes that occur in the work, worth

Of the immense disparity between the function of the poet and that of the player, no one could be more sensible than Garrick himself. Shakspeare he regarded with the most intense veneration. To impress his beauties on an artificial age-to wean the public from his unworthy rivals, and assert for the great national dramatist his due supremacy-was the aim of his professional life. Emphatically enough, though somewhat bombastically, he avowed it to be his principle, to lose no drop of that immortal man.' His enthusiasm expressed itself in the projection of a Shakspeare jubilee, which was held accordingly at Stratford-upon-Avon in the autumn of 1769, on which occasion he composed and recited an ode in honour of the immortal dramatist.

the trouble of extracting, are connected with him who writes the life, and not with him whose life is written. Of these, one is suggested by its author's darling performance, the unfortunate 'Orphan of China.' On the day of its introduction to the public, Mr Murphy dined in company with Foote, the celebrated wit. During dinner there arrived a note for the author, from Mrs Cibber, a popular actress of the day, which contained, in reference to the play, the rather profane assurance, 'I shall offer up my prayers for your success.' To this Foote appended the comment, 'Mrs Cibber is a Catholic; and you know they always pray for the dead. His words, it need not be added, proved prophetic. The other anecdote relates to a farce by the same writer, entitled 'The Apprentice.' On the day after it was acted, Garrick and Dr Munsey Although this and similar efforts are very far from paid him a visit. The former entered the dining-room, being failures, they are all, notwithstanding, suggestive but his friend seemed bent on ascending the stairs. Dr of the truth, that it is one thing to act and another to Munsey, where are you going?' said Garrick. Up stairs, write naturally. Garrick was more in his element when 1 to see the author,' said Munsey. Pho! pho! Come versifying in a lighter vein. Here is an epigram on a down, the author is here.' The doctor accordingly en- snarling critic, who had published an ironical petition tered the dining-room, and addressed, in his free and from the letters I and U, complaining of their being easy way, the master of the house-You scoundrel, I transposed by David Garrick, Esq., in such words as virwas going up to the garret. Who could think of finding tue pronounced vurtue, and ungrateful pronounced inan author on the first floor ?' grateful:

The remaining outlines of Garrick's life may be given in a few sentences. Playing now in London, now in Dublin, for about £500 a season (a sum which would now-a-days be thought paltry in the extreme for a first or even a second-rate actor), he continued to accept engagements for about five years. At the end of that period he became joint patentee and manager of Drury-Lane; an elevation which cost him £8000, and continued in that post, which was the climax of his ambition, during the remaining thirty years of his theatrical career. In July, 1749, he married an opera dancer, an Austrian by birth, but named, for the sake of euphony, Violetti. She proved

a most affectionate and estimable wife.

If 'tis true, as you say, that I've injured a letter,
I'll change my note soon, and, I hope, for the better.
May the right use of letters, as well as of men,
Hereafter be fix'd by the tongue and the pen!
Most devoutly I wish they may both have their due,
And that I may be never mistaken for U!

On the point of his professional reputation, Garrick was peculiarly touchy. He dreaded, he felt sore under, and he schemed to avert, ebullitions of critical spleen which he could have well afforded to despise. The lines just cited, pleasing and humorous in themselves, are still a proof and product of this weakness in his character. The address he delivered on the night of his last appearance, exhibits at once a more agreeable trait in his disOn the 10th of June, 1776, Garrick, to the infinite re-position, and higher power in writing. Before bidding gret of its frequenters, took leave of the stage; and hav- farewell to the stage, he had signalized himself as the ing sold his share in Drury-Lane for £37,000, went to liberal and zealous supporter of a fund for the relief of spend the evening of his days to his villa at Hampton. decayed actors. To this fund the proceeds of his last He did not long survive his retirement. Disease in the appearance were devoted; and the prologue he composed kidneys made rapid inroads on his constitution, and on for that occasion presents, in pleasing alliance, his benethe 20th of January, 1779, he breathed his last. On the volence and his wit. Here is part of the address:1st of February, his remains were interred in Westminster Abbey, several of the nobility acting as pall-bearers, and the train of carriages in attendance reaching from the Abbey to Charing-Cross. He was buried in Poet's Corner, near Shakspeare's monument, a proximity which probably suggested the idea of the epitaph on his own:

To paint fair nature, by divine command,
Her magic pencil in his glowing hand,

A Shakspeare rose; then, to expand his fame
Wide o'er the 'breathing world, a Garrick came.
Though sunk in death the forms the poet drew,
The actor's genius bade them breathe anew;
Though, like the bard himself, in night they lay,
Immortal Garrick call'd them back to day;
And till eternity, with power sublime,
Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary Time,
Shakspeare and Garrick, like twin stars, shall shine,
And earth irradiate with a beam divine.

Might we but hope your zeal would not be less,
When I am gone, to patronize distress,
That hope obtain'd the wished-for end secures,
To soothe their cares who oft have lighten'd yours.
Shall the great heroes of celestial line,
Who drank full bowls of Greek and Roman wine-
Cæsar and Brutus, Agamemnon, Hector,

Nay, Jove himself, who here has quaff'd his nectar-
Shall they who govern'd fortune cringe and court her,
Thirst in their age, and call in vain for porter?
Shan't I, who oft have drench'd my hands in gore,
Stabb'd many, poison'd some, beheaded more,
Who numbers slew in battle on this plain,
Shan't I, the slayer, try to feed the slain?
Suppose the babes I smother'd in the tow'r,
By chance or sickness lose their acting power-
Shall they, once princes, worse than all be serv'd?
In childhood murder'd, and, when murder'd, starv'd!
Can I, young Hamlet once, to nature lost,
Behold, O horrible! my father's ghost,
With grizly beard, pale cheek, stalk up and down,
And he, the royal Dane, want half-a-crown?

In addition to some eighty prologues and epilogues, Garrick was the author (conjointly with Colman) of one admired comedy, The Clandestine Marriage,' as well as of several farces and interludes, popular enough in their time, but not calling for any special notice here.

This epitaph, though not without its merits, is disfigured by the false taste and the false judgment of the age. Of all reputations that of an actor is of necessity the most ephemeral and evanescent. His fame is nearly as mortal as himself. To posterity his genius is merely traditional; it is from his cotemporaries alone he can elicit a warm admiration, or a hearty applause. To represent the conceptions of the ever-living Shakspeare as In his personal character, Garrick seems to have been indebted for their future vitality to a man thus doubly universally loved and respected. That he maintained in dead, is therefore the height of absurdity. The universal private life that propriety of feeling and action which incharmer must not be named with even the most success-duced him to correct the licentiousness of the stage, his ful of the fleeting series of his interpreters-interpreters intimacy with Samuel Johnson and Hannah More is a who may enhance, but who do not create, the spell that sufficient pledge. The latter has left a pleasing testibinds the nations. The star of Shakspeare's genius shines mony to his domestic decorum and happiness, as well as clear and calm; the acting even of Garrick is but the to the personal excellence at once of Mrs Garrick and momentary blaze of a rocket, or rather the flash of a himself. 'I can never cease,' she writes, "to remember, meteor, which is only seen when falling. with affection and gratitude, so warm, steady, and disin

The second charge admits of question. That he was frugal, especially in early life, is certain; but that he was a niggard may very fairly be doubted. It is true that he was alleged by a celebrated wit to have been frightened from a generous action by the ghost of a halfpenny, and that he grumbled in Johnson's presence at the strength of the tea- Why, it is as red as blood.' And yet, if stingy by fits and starts in trifles, he must have been, on the whole, a generous man. Johnson, who would let no one find fault with Garrick but himself, gave frequent testimonies to his liberality. Garrick,' we quote from Boswell, was a very good man, the cheerfulest man of his age; a decent liver in a profession which is supposed to give indulgence to licentiousness; and a man who gave away freely money acquired by himself. He began the world with a great hunger for money; the son of a half-pay officer, bred in a family whose study was to make fourpence do as much as others made fourpencehalfpenny do. But when he had got money, he was very liberal. Sir, a liberal man. He has given away

terested a friend; and I can most truly bear this testimony to his memory, that I never witnessed in any family more decorum, propriety, and regularity, than in his: where I never saw a card, or even met (except in one instance) a person of his own profession at his table; of which Mrs Garrick, by her elegance of taste, her correctness of manners, and very original turn of humour, was the brightest ornament. All his pursuits were so decidedly intellectual, that it made the society and the conversation which was always to be found in his circle interesting and delightful.' In reference to the regularity of their household arrangements, she jocularly complains in another letter-Alas! I dare not lie in bed in a morning, for the Garricks are as much my conscience here as the doctor (a clerical friend) is at Bristol.' It is pleasing to find ground for the hope that to mere amiability and general excellence, Mrs Garrick (who died so recently as 1822, at the advanced age of 97) added those distinctive religious feelings which seem -a consideration which ought to weigh much in any discussion of the lawfulness of stage amusements- more money than any man in England. There may be scarcely compatible with the profession of her husband. a little vanity mixed; but he has shown that money is Mrs More's account of her behaviour about the time of not his first object.' To his relations he was ever kind the funeral is, in this view, highly interesting:-She and considerate. The distressed he was always prompt ran into my arms, and we both remained silent for some to relieve. The poor at Hampton lost in him a constant minutes. At last she whispered, 'I have this moment benefactor. Numerous instances of his liberality are reembraced his coffin, and you come next.' She soon re-corded by his biographers. It seems, for instance, that covered herself, and said, with great composure, 'The goodness of God to me is inexpressible. I desired to die, but it is his will that I should live; and he has convinced me he will not let my life be quite miserable; for he gives astonishing strength to my body and grace to my heart; neither do I deserve, but I am thankful for both.'' Traits, all of them, which may prepare us for the emphatic protestation of another friend-Never did I behold so happy a pair.'

Two faults have been laid to his charge. That he was vain and also somewhat addicted to envy there can be no doubt. He was never known to praise another actor. Adulation, when he himself was its object, was rarely too gross to be grateful. For fame and distinction, his appetite was insatiable. Mallet had but to hint that he had found a nook for him in his promised life of Marlborough, in order to introduce his Elvira on the boards of Drury; and notwithstanding the unlikelihood of any such notice, considering the period and the subject, the bait was swallowed, and the play accepted. This cupidity of praise often exposed him to mortifications. He was once exhibiting a very rich snuff-box he had had presented to him by a German Prince during one of his foreign excursions, as a mark of his Serene Highness's pleasure at witnessing a private performance of his. 'So,' said a cynical member of the company, 'you went about the Continent mouthing for snuff-boxes.' Dr Johnson turned to ridicule a line in one of his songs

I'd smile with the simple, and feed with the poor. 'Poor David!' said the literary dictator; smile with the simple! what folly is that! and who would feed with the poor that can help it? No, no; let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.' This rough handling, when reported to Garrick, instead of being treated as a jest, gave him sensible annoyance. -On one occasion he played Richard the Third before the reigning monarch, whose opinion of the performance he was anxious to reach. It seems that, for George the Second, the personation of his predecessor had no peculiar charms. But when an obscure actor appeared as Lord Mayor of London, his Majesty seemed highly gratified :'Duke of Grafton,' said he, 'I like that Lord Mayor;' again, when the scene was over, 'Duke of Grafton, that is good Lord Mayor;' and once more, when Garrick was shouting, 'A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!' the sovereign expressed his desire for another sight of the civic functionary-Duke of Grafton, will that Lord Mayor come again?' On this occasion, it is presumed, his solicitude for the royal approbation would have its antidote in his contempt for the royal taste.

to rescue a friend from difficulties, he once made a proffer, with little prospect of repayment, of no less than £5000.

And yet, of the two defects, real or alleged, in Garrick's character, the great doctor would sometimes exaggerate the second, and now and then palliate the first. For example- What do you think of Garrick? He has refused me an order for the play for Miss Williams, because he knows that the house will be full, and that an order will be worth three shillings.' On the other hand -It is wonderful how little Garrick assumes. Consider, sir, celebrated men such as you have mentioned have had their applause at a distance; but Garrick had it dashed in his face, sounded in his ears, and went home every night with the plaudits of a thousand in his cranium. If this, sir, had happened to me, I should have had a couple of fellows with long poles walking before me, to knock down every body that stood in the way.'

Of Garrick's conversational powers, often put forth in connexion with his turn for mimicry, the same authority declared- After all, I thought him less to be envied on the stage than at the head of a table.' The doctor was not, perhaps, aware that the talent for entertaining on which he passed this encomium, was occasionally exercised at his own expense. The author of the dictionary, it seems, had never got rid of certain provincialisms. On these Garrick would fasten; and squeezing a lemon into a punch-bowl, a la Johnson, mimicking, at the same time, his singularly uncouth manner, would demand of the company, Who's for poonsh?'

Mimicry, however, was but the unbending for an hour; Imitation, its more serious sister, was the study of his life. It is the business of an actor to be every body but himself. In all the rest of the fine arts, the artist and his work are distinct; but the player must be at once the imitator and the imitation. No one ever applied himself to his task better fitted for it than Garrick. There were combined in him the three great requisites for success-taste, talent, and enthusiasm. His person, though slight, was symmetrical; his voice was melodious and clear, his eye was lightning, and his face a language. His versatility and range were amazing. He could do anything, and do everything well. In single parts he might be equalled, but in universality of power and excellence he was without a rival. Comedy and tragedy came alike to him. He was favoured alike by Thalia and Melpomene. He would melt his audience into tears in Lear, or make their blood run cold in Mac

*The expression of one of Garrick's admirers, who was deaf and dumb!

beth; and in less than half an hour they would be convulsed with laughter at Abel Drugger, the tobacco-boy, Bayes in the Rehearsal, or the Lying Valet.

It was, however, in the depicting of the passions that his great strength lay. Discarding that bombastic rant and foolish gesticulation which had rendered the drama ridiculous, he adopted the tones and attitudes of real feeling; and by making himself simply a looking-glass to nature, earned a title to the applause of the satirist who lashed so unmercifully his predecessors and cotemporaries:

Hence to thy praises, Garrick, I agree;

And, pleased with nature, must be pleased with thee. One anecdote, in connexion with this excellence, is well worthy of preservation. A friend of Garrick's had let his only daughter, a child of two years old, fall from his arms at an open window, and the infant was killed on the spot. The unfortunate father went distracted, and the rest of his life was passed in imaginary repetitions of the tragical incident. He would daily repair to the same window, there seem occupied for a little in dandling his child, then appear to let it fall, and lastly give vent to the most poignant agony. At this melancholy spectacle Garrick was often present. He would give such an affecting representation of it in private, that the company would be dissolved in tears. It furnished him with the hint for Lear, one of his grandest efforts. It was then,' he would say, when relating the story, that I learned to imitate madness. I copied nature; and to that I owed my success in Lear.'

Praises thus accorded by the mass were re-echoed by the gifted few; and the name of Garrick has found a place in the pages of the poet, the historian, and the moralist. Johnson averred that his death eclipsed the harmless gaiety of nations;' Smollett expressed his eagerness to 'do him justice in a work of truth, for the injury he had done him in a work of fiction,' and he kept his word; his genius and his virtues employed the elegant pen of Sheridan; and the tribute paid him in the verse of Churchill stamps him to posterity as the Shakspeare of

actors:

If manly sense, if nature linked with art,
If thorough knowledge of the human heart,
If powers of acting vast and unconfined,
If fewest faults with greatest beauties joined,
If strong expression and strange powers which lie
Within the magic circle of the eye,

If feelings which few hearts like his can know,
And which no face so well as his can show,
Deserve the preference-Garrick take the chair,
Nor quit it till thou place an equal there.

LECTURES ON THE ORDINARY AGENTS
OF LIFE.*

We present our readers with a few extracts from this volume, in the belief that as it was published in the form of lectures addressed to the medical profession, it may have been seen by comparatively few of those who stand most in need of information on the subjects so ably treated by Mr Kilgour, and which all who feel an interest in the Garrick may be styled the reformer of the drama; he comfort and well-being of their fellow-creatures must recertainly accelerated the popularity of the prince of dra-joice to think are now beginning to attract that share of matists. He discountenanced at once offences against good taste in acting, and offences against good morals in plays. The histrionic art, till he appeared, was at a very low ebb in Britain. Here is the idea given in the Rosciad of the style of acting he laboured to supersede:

When, to enforce some very tender part,

The right hand sleeps by instinct on the heart,
The soul, of every other thought bereft,
Is only anxious where to place the left;

public attention which they so well deserve. Without venturing an opinion on points on which the most eminent medical authorities differ, we would recommend a perusal of Mr Kilgour's lectures, in the confidence that there will be found in them much valuable information on subjects of great importance to all classes.

Atmosphere. The necessity of a pure atmosphere for the preservation of health is readily admitted; but how few persons provide themselves with that which they acknowledge to be beneficial to them? The man who takes, on some special occasion, a walk into the open fields, feels an exhilaration of spirits, and a lightness and vigour of body as he inhales the pure ether. But he seems to think that a pure atmosphere is only to be obtained or enjoyed in the country, and that in his dwelling-house, or his workshop, the atmosphere within the walls is better than that without. How few ventilate their apartments, how few workmen seek to give exit to the vapours and odours, separated from the materials of their trade, provided that has to be done by sending a current of cold air through the workshop. There is nothing in nature but is undergoing a decomposition, nothing which is not giving off something to the atmosphere, or taking some of its constituents. It has been said that air, by stagnation, may corrupt itself, and become a subtile poison. It is more correct to say, that air cannot exist in any place without acting or being acted upon by that perishable matter which encloses it. The air of a room which has been long closely shut, has a smell which is well known. That air has been loaded with the decaying matter around it, and the more extensively that the air becomes deteriorated, the more rapidly does decomposition of all things around, or in it, advance. The foul air in an old well, or in a common sewer, does not arise in consequence of the stagnation of atmospheric air inducing decomposition of the particles by action upon each other; but in consequence of that air being decomposed by the chemical affinities of the bodies to which it is exposed. Habit has a very great effect in reconciling the constitution to a vitiated state of the air. The countryman soon feels the pernicious effect of the air

He sobs and pants to soothe his weeping spouse, To soothe his weeping mother turns and bows: Awkward, embarrassed, stiff, without the skill Of moving gracefully or standing still, One leg, as if suspicious of his brother, Desirous seems to run away from t'other. This wretched parody of nature Garrick had the good sense to avoid, and the power, in some degree, to put down. His taste raised the taste of the age; he made the stage respectable, and the player a gentleman. In the course of his public life, he realized the enormous fortune of £100,000. He was thus enabled to maintain a style of living, which, together with his pleasing talents, his superior intelligence, and his strict decorum, gained him admittance to the first circles in the nation. The great Lord Chatham courted his society, he lived on terms of intimacy with all the wits of his day, and the first nobility of England bore him to his grave. The popularity which he had enjoyed from the outset of his career continued unimpaired to the last. One summer he played at Dublin, an epidemic which then raged in the city received the nickname of the Garrick fever.' Pope said of him in the dawn of his fortunes- This young man will be spoiled, for he will have no competitor. For five-andthirty years, at a period when the stage was half men's business, Garrick was the lion of London-the prime minister of entertainment to the metropolis of the world. Clarion, herself the most brilliant actress in France, was so enraptured with his consummate performance, that in the presence of Mrs Garrick, to whom she afterwards apologized for the freedom, she caught him in her arms and kissed him. When he took his final leave of the stage, tears told still better, though they told in silence, the regard of the public for their favourite player, than the thunders of applause amidst which he withdrew; and sadness itself lent value to the triumph which was borne *By ALEXANDER KILGOUR, M. D., Member of the Royal Colto him on the universal and enthusiastic 'farewell.'lege of Surgeons, London. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black.