The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 272, September 8, 1827

LORD ORFORD'S DESCRIPTION OF THE DEATH OF GENERAL WOLFE

The rapidity with which our arms had prevailed in every quarter of the globe, made us presume that Canada could not fail of being added to our acquisitions; and, however arduously won, it would have sunk in value if the transient cloud that overcast the dawn of this glory had not made it burst forth with redoubled lustre. The incidents of dramatic fiction could not be conducted with more address to lead an audience from despondency to sudden exultation, than accident prepared to excite the passions of a whole people. They despaired—they triumphed—and they wept—for Wolfe had fallen in the hour of victory! Joy, grief, curiosity, astonishment were painted in every countenance; the more they inquired, the higher their admiration rose. Not an incident but was heroic and affecting! Wolfe between persuasion of the impracticability, unwillingness to leave any attempt untried that could be proposed, and weariness and anxiety of mind and body, had determined to make one last effort above the town. He embarked his forces at one in the morning, and passed the French sentinels in silence that were posted along the shore. The current carried them beyond the destined spot. They found themselves at the foot of a precipice, esteemed so impracticable, that only a slight guard of one hundred and fifty men defended it. Had there been a path, the night was too dark to discover it. The troops, whom nothing could discourage, for these difficulties could not, pulled themselves and one another up by stumps and boughs of trees. The guard hearing a rustling, fired down the precipice at random, as our men did up into the air; but, terrified by the strangeness of the attempt, the French picquet fled—all but the captain, who, though wounded, would not accept quarter, but fired at one of our officers at the head of five hundred men. This, as he staked but a single life, was thought such an unfair war, that, instead of honouring his desperate valour, our men, to punish him, cut off his croix de St. Louis before they sent him to the hospital. Two of our officers, however, signed a certificate of his courage, lest the French should punish him as corrupted—our enterprises, unless facilitated by corruption, being deemed impossible to have taken place. Day-break discovered our forces in possession of the eminence. Montcalm could not credit it when reported to him—but it was too late to doubt, when nothing but a battle could save the town. Even then he held our attempt so desperate, that being shown the position of the English, he said, "Oui, je les vois où ils ne doivent pas être." Forced to quit his intrenchments, he said, "S'il faut done combattre, je vais les écraser." He prepared for engagement, after lining the bushes with detachments of Indians. Our men according to orders, reserved their fire with a patience and tranquillity equal to the resolution they had exerted in clambering the precipice—but when they gave it, it took place with such terrible slaughter of the enemy, that half an hour decided the day. The French fled precipitately, and Montcalm, endeavouring to rally them, was killed on the spot. General Monckton was wounded early, and obliged to retire. The fall of Wolfe was noble indeed. He received a wound in the head, but covered it from his soldiers with his handkerchief. A second ball struck him in the belly, that too he dissembled. A third hitting him in the breast, he sunk under the anguish, and was carried behind the ranks. Yet, as fast as life ebbed out, his whole anxiety centred on the fortune of the day. He begged to be borne nearer to the action; but his sight being dimmed by the approach of death, he entreated to be told what they who supported him saw; he was answered that the enemy gave ground. He eagerly repeated the question, heard the enemy was totally routed, cried, "I am satisfied!"—and expired—Thackeray's Life of the Earl of Chatham.

SYRIAN LOOKING GLASSES

The Damascus blades are the handsomest and best of all Syria; and it is curious to observe their manner of burnishing them. This operation is performed before tempering, and they have for this purpose a small piece of wood, in which is fixed an iron, which they run up and down the blade, and thus clear off all inequalities, as a plane does to wood: they then temper and polish it. This polish is so highly finished, that when any one wants to arrange his turban, he uses his sword for a looking-glass. As to its temper it is perfect, and I have nowhere seen swords that cut so excellently. There are made at Damascus and in the adjoining country mirrors of steel, that magnify objects like burning-glasses. I have seen some that, when exposed to the sun, have reflected the heat so strongly as to set fire to a plant fifteen or sixteen feet distant!—Broquiere's Travels to Jerusalem in 1432.

AUSTRALIAN PATRIOTISM

A young Australian, on being once asked his opinion of a splendid shop on Ludgate-hill, replied, in a disappointed tone, "It is not equal to Big Cooper's," (a store-shop in Sidney,) while Mrs. Rickards' Fashionable Repository is believed to be unrivalled, even in Bond-street. Some of them also contrive to find out that the English cows give less milk and butter than the Australian, and the choicest Newmarket racers possess less beauty and swiftness than Junius, Modus, Currency Lass, and others of Australian turf pedigree; nay, even a young girl, when asked how she would like to go to England, replied with great naiveté, "I should be afraid to go, from the number of thieves there," doubtless conceiving England to be a downright hive of such, that threw off its annual swarms to people the wilds of this colony. Nay, the very miserable looking trees that cast their annual coats of bark, and present to the eye of a raw European the appearance of being actually dead, I have heard praised as objects of incomparable beauty! and I myself, so powerful is habit, begin to look upon them pleasurably. Our ideas of beauty are, in truth, less referrable to a natural than an artificial standard, varying in every country according to what the eye has been habituated to, and fashion prescribes.—Cunningham's Two Years in New South Wales.

THE LECTURER

MENTAL DERANGEMENT

The term melancholia is applied to insanity, when attended with depression of spirits, arising commonly from some supposed impending evil; but sometimes it takes place without any such error of judgment, and is altogether unaccountable. As far as I have seen, this depression of spirits is in no wise essentially connected with, far less dependent upon, bodily weakness, as its cause. On the contrary, you will often find such patients to be of full habit, and complaining of throbbing headach, with flushing of the face, a full and strong pulse, though sometimes the pulse is preternaturally slow; the tongue is often white and dry, as in inflammation in general. These symptoms, considered in themselves, would call for antiphlogistic measures, such as bleeding and purging; and these are not at all the less necessary because the patient is in a low and desponding state of mind. In short, I know of no difference in the medical treatment of mania and melancholia, merely as such; you must look to the state of vascular action, both local and general, in order to lay down a proper plan of cure.

Hypochondriasis is a still slighter form of mental derangement, and which is characterized by a preposterous anxiety and solicitude with regard to the patient's own health, which in these cases is often little if at all disturbed, with the exception of occasional uneasiness at the stomach, arising from flatulency and other effects of indigestion. This disorder in the state of the digestive function, is generally considered by the patient as the real and primary disease, though 99 times in 100 it is merely secondary, the result of torpor of the alimentary canal altogether. This torpor is the consequence of an oppressed condition of brain, proceeding, for the most part, from increased arterial action in this organ. Thus the effect is taken for the cause, and a treatment directed in conformity with this mistaken notion. Happily, the practice usually pursued on those occasions, and which is directed to the state of the stomach and intestinal canal, is, as far as it goes, beneficial to the primary disease; for occasional purging, whether with the blue pill or Plummer's pill, and the use of a simple and abstemious mode of living, are as well calculated to relieve affections of the brain, as those of the stomach. But the fault of such a mistaken view of the subject is, that the treatment is confined too exclusively to one organ, and that the one not primarily affected; to the neglect of other means that may be as much or more required for the relief of the head. Where, for example, the patient complains of throbbing headach, with other marks of increased arterial action in and about the brain, it is dangerous to rely solely upon cathartics, and to neglect bleeding, a neglect, which, I have more than once seen reason to believe, has been the occasion of fatal apoplexy ensuing.

The precise difference in the condition of the brain, in the three forms of insanity now mentioned, is not at all known. Dissection hitherto has not thrown any light upon the subject; nor is it probable that it will do so hereafter. The derangement of intellect in all of them, and the mutual convertibility of one into the other, prove that there is no essential or fundamental difference between them; and the same is true with regard to their medical treatment. The moral management of the patient calls for nicer discrimination, and requires much penetration and judgment on the part of the practitioner, as well as extensive experience in mental disorders altogether—Clutterbuck's Lectures on the Nervous System.