| <!-- This page is divided into two columns and both columns are fully justified. --><head>THE EXAMINER.</head>-----<lb/>for example, a lady of noble birth, who marries a man not of that caste, at<lb/>once loses all title and distinction, and becomes simple Madam Schmidt or<lb/>Madam Schneider; but in England, where foreign nobility is not legally<lb/>recognized, a Captain Smith or a Rev. Mr. Tomlinson, who has married<lb/>a countess or baroness abroad, announces his wife by the title she had <hi rend="underline">lost</hi><lb/>in her <hi rend="underline">own</hi> country! Englishwomen of late years have been frequently<lb/>guilty of (and almost as frequently punished for) a worse practice, to<lb/>gratify the passion for title—I mean sinfully giving away of their<lb/>pretty faces and handsome fortunes in marriage, in order to become<lb/><hi rend="underline">marchesas, comtesses,</hi> etc. An old Irish gentleman, in allusion to this<lb/>anti-national propensity, assured me, with tears in his eyes, that he had<lb/>witnessed twenty-six instances of it, and that the united fortunes of the<lb/>brides (£10,000 being the minimum in any case) might be computed at<lb/>half a million sterling—all lost to the country and gone or going for the<lb/>most part to the gaming table, old debts, and opera dancers. S.<lb/>-----<p><head>NOTABILIA.</head><lb/>-----<lb/>The Duke of Wellington's Last Fall.—The Duke of Wellington<lb/>has a great talent for falling. We question whether any man, more<lb/>accustomed to riding than John Gilpin, has had so many equestrian reverses.<lb/>On Saturday, the 19th, the newspapers announced his Grace's last tumble.<lb/>The Duke varies these casualties; sometimes he falls, and sometimes the<lb/>horse comes down under him, which last mishap occurs surprisingly often<lb/>to a person who rides good horses, and implies marvelous lack of skill.</p><p>Burning in Surrey.—A short time since, a barn upon the farm in the<lb/>occupation of Mr. Maynard, at Reigate, was totally destroyed by fire. Mr.<lb/>Maynard filled some parochial office, and had been applied to by a pauper<lb/>for money on the evening of the conflagration. This had been refused;<lb/>and in little more than an hour afterwards the barn was discovered to be in<lb/>flames, which consumed the building, as well as the stock of grain which it<lb/>contained. The latter only was insured. The pauper was taken up and<lb/>examined, but no proof was obtained that he had bee the destroyer of the<lb/>property. If, as there is every reason to believe, the mischief was<lb/>produced designedly from a feeling of disappointment, it affords a most striking<lb/>example of the operation of the blind spirit of vengeance by which the<lb/>ignorant peasantry have of late been guided. The property destroyed<lb/>does not belong to the farmer, who, as it is supposed, was the individual<lb/>marked out to be the sufferer, but to Dr. Fellowes, who will thus be<lb/>subjected to an outlay of several hundred pounds for the rebuilding of the<lb/>barn.—[The highly respectable Country Paper from which we have copied<lb/>this account proceeds in a strain of praise of Dr. Fellowes, which gives the<lb/>finishing stroke to the vexatious circumstance it recounts. The destruction<lb/>of the property is a trifle compared to the annoyance of the incense<lb/>that has smoked upon the occasion of it. To one of the character of the<lb/>party concerned, the burning of the barn was hardly felt to be a misfortune<lb/>till the paragraphing of his virtues followed upon it.]</p><p>Suspension of Animal Life while Organic Life remains.—<lb/>In the second of his present course of lectures on physiology, given at the<lb/>London University, Dr. Southwood Smith, after having explained the<lb/>interesting distinction between animal and organic life, observed that<lb/>animal life may be wholly suspended, or may absolutely die, while the<lb/>organic life may continue to exist in almost unimpaired vigour. Apoplexy,<lb/>said he, may suddenly reduce to the most driveling fatuity the most<lb/>exalted intellect, and render powerless muscles of the most gigantic strength.<lb/>And catalepsy, that extraordinary disease, in which the senses are<lb/>abolished, the intellectual faculties suspended, the power of voluntary<lb/>motion destroyed, while the body remains immoveably fixed in whatever<lb/>attitude it may happen to be at the moment of attack, illustrates in a still<lb/>more striking manner the utter abolition of animal life while the heart<lb/>beats, and the blood circulated, and the respiration goes on, and secretion,<lb/>and excretion, and the entire circle of the organic functions continue with their<lb/>usual regularity, though not, indeed, with their usual vigour. My patient, says<lb/>Dr. Jebb, in giving an account of a young lady who was the subject of this<lb/>singular disorder, was seized with an attack just as I was announced. At<lb/>that moment she was employed in netting: she was in the act of passing<lb/>the needle through the mesh: in that position she became immoveably rigid,<lb/>exhibiting, in a very pleasing form, a figure of death-like sleep, beyond the<lb/>power of art to imitate, or the <sic>imigination</sic> to conceive. The paleness of her colour,<lb/>and her breathing, which at a distance was scarcely perceptible, operated in<lb/>rendering the similitude to marble more exact and striking. The position<lb/>of her fingers, hands, and arms, was altered with difficulty, but preserved<lb/>every form of flexure they acquired; nor were the muscles of the neck<lb/>exempted from this law, her head maintaining every situation in which the<lb/>hand could place it, as firmly as her limbs. In this case, all the senses<lb/>were locked in a death-like sleep, and the patient was as insensible as she<lb/>was motionless. But sometimes the abolition of the animal life is only partial,<lb/>sensibility being destroyed while contractility remains, in the power of motion<lb/>being lost while sensation is unaffected. An example of this kind is on<lb/>record in which a female lay in complete possession of her intellectual<lb/>faculties, but deprived of the power of moving a muscle of the body. She<lb/>was in the distressing condition of finding herself given up by her attendants<lb/>as dead: she was laid out; her toes were bound together; her chin<lb/>was tied up' she heard the arrangements for her funeral discussed—<lb/>and yet she was unable to make the slightest sign that she was still in the<lb/>possession of sense, feeling, and life.</p><p>Tithes.—The Rev. Mr. Beresford has instituted twenty-four actions,<lb/>in the Court of Exchequer, against the parishioners of At. Andrew's,<lb/>Holborn, from whom he claims tithe on inhabited houses. The parishioners, at<lb/>a meeting, resolved to persist in defending the actions.—<hi rend="underline">Moral Reformer.</hi></p> | |
