ing to take them, and maintains that only | from the extent of his learning. His disinhearty, robust people are strong enough to terestedness was equal to his modesty, for he support the disease and the remedies too; for would take no money from his patients, and his own part, he has only just force to bear abolished the perquisites that accrued to his the malady alone." office on the appointment to medical professorships in the universities. He owed his

This grim pleasantry, which occurs in the third scene of Act iii., assumes a ghastly hue | rise at court to Madame de Maintenon, with when read by the light of what occurred after the conclusion of the act and during the performance of the ceremonial ballet. As Moliere, in the character of the Bachelor of Medicine, was taking the oath and pronouncing the word juro, he was seized with a fit of coughing. He endeavored by a forced laugh to conceal the violence of the convulsion from the spectators, and remained in the theatre to the end of the representation. He was then carried to his house in the Rue Richelieu, where he expired soon afterwards, on the 17th February, 1673, suffocated in an attack of pulmonary hæmorrhage. He had literally fulfilled his gloomy prediction, and died without medical assistance.

Viewing him as a champion fighting against the pedantry and obstructiveness of the ancient Faculty, he merits all the glory of having died in the breach. His works undoubtedly exercised an influence which proved beneficial to medical science, in helping her to cast away many of the impediments that hindered her onward course.

whom he became acquainted during a journey she made to Spain in charge of one of the king's natural sons. Genuine love of talent drew the two together. While Daquin held first place, Fagon was but a humble subordinate; but Madame de Maintenon lost no opportunity of advancing her friend, to the prejudice of the nominee of Madame de Montespan. One evening the king being at Marly had an attack of fever, and was attended by his physicians. About midnight, Daquin perceiving the symptoms favorable, retired, saying he would go to bed. Fagon seeming to follow him, stopped short in the ante-room, and settled for the night in an arm-chair, which, owing to an asthma he suffered from, was his ordinary kind of bed. An hour later the king complained to his valet that the fever was no better. "Sire," was the reply, " M. Daquin has gone to bed, but M. Fagon is there-shall I call him in ? "What will he tell me?" said the king, who dreaded Daquin's hearing of this breach of etiquette. "Sire, he will perhaps tell you We have yet a few words to say with re- something to console you." Fagon entered, gard to two of Molière's contemporaries who felt the royal pulse, administered a warm are brought prominently forward by M. Ray- drink, had his majesty turned over on the naud. We allude to the two physicians Fa- other side, and for the first time in his life gon and Mauvillain. The former has been found himself alone with the king, who did pointed at as the original of Purgon in "Le not resist long the charms of his superior Malade imaginaire"-an imputation which we think, with M. Raynaud, is not wellfounded. When the play appeared, he was not a man of mark enough to be worth the dramatist's public raillery. His reputation was at its height in the second half of Louis's reign. He was nephew to the celebrated Gay de la Brosse, the founder of the King's Garden; was admitted of the Faculty of Paris in 1664, and appointed Professor of Botany there by Valot. He spent some years in travelling and collecting specimens, and ever after, even when he became first court physician, he gave special attention to the botanical garden of which he was justly regarded as the second founder. When at the summit of his profession he enjoyed almost universal esteem, as much from the gentleness of his manners as

understanding and fascinating conversation. Three months after this incident Daquin was dismissed, and Fagon appointed to succeed him.

In reading Molière, a question often recurs as to the source from which he drew so copious a medical vocabulary, and other secrets of the mystery of healing. This problem is resolved by M. Raynaud on the assumption that his medical friends gave him assistance. With three physicians at least he was on terms of intimacy-Bernier, a fellow-student under Gassendi, Liénard, an extravagant Cartesian, who wished to adopt the physical principles of Descartes to the entire system of medicine, and Mauvillain, whose reputation is due to the great fame of his friend.

The introductory pages of "Tartufe "con

tain the following lines addressed to the professional disgrace with other antimonists king:

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SIRE,-a very honest doctor, whose patient I have the honor to be, promises and wishes to undertake before a notary that he will make me live thirty years longer, if I can procure him a favor from your majesty. As to his promise, I told him I did not ask for so much, and should be satisfied if he would undertake not to kill me. The favor, sire, is the canonry of your royal chapel of Vincennes, now vacant. Dare I ask this favor of your majesty the very day of the resurrection of Tartufe,' revived by your goodness? By the first favor I am reconciled to the devotees, and by the second I should make my peace with the doctors. For me these are doubtless too many favors at once, but perhaps not too many for your majesty, and I await with respectful hope the reply to my petition."

by signing certificates favorable to a quack medicine, which crime of lèse-faculté, when proved, led to the expulsion of the offending doctors, who possibly had seen in the seller of powders a persecuted chemist. After being purged by a public humiliation and apology, Mauvillain and his friends were restored to the Faculty, “but the blot was not wiped away," says Guy Patin.

In conclusion, we heartily recommend M. Raynaud's book, which has already reached a second edition, to the lovers of medical litvaluable addition to the literature concerning erature, and accept it at the same time as a Molière. A history of the life of that distinguished dramatist is still a desideratum. The late Mr. Prescott, we are informed, had gathered materials for such a work, when his The canonry was given, and it is not a little attention was diverted to Spanish subjects by singular in connection with our present sub- the great success of his "Ferdinand and Isaject that the only royal favor asked by Mo- bella." He handed over his small Molière lière of which there is any record, was on library to Mr. Ticknor, of Boston, who, havbehalf of the son of a medical man. "You ing accumulated further materials, purposed have a doctor," said the king one day to Mo- carrying out the views of his friend. Adliere; "what does he do for you?" Sire," vancing age, however, and the unhappy conreplied the wit, "we talk together; he pre-dition of his country, have combined to check scribes remedies; I do not take them, and I Mr. Ticknor in the prosecution of his design, get well." and quite recently he has abandoned the proMauvillain enjoyed a fair reputation among ject altogether, and has given his curious colthe Faculty for ability, learning, and engag-lection of books on the subject to the Boston ing manners. Once he incurred considerable Athenæum.

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From The Quarterly Review. The Life and Letters of Washington Irving. By his Nephew, Pierre E. Irving. 3 vols. London, 1862-3.

ine and earliest cadet of Drum, William de Erwin, an inhabitant of Kirkwall in 1369, while the islands yet owned the sway of Magnus V., the last of the Norwegian Earls," and so ultimately, to the famous "secretary and armour-bearer of Robert Bruce."* The far descended Orcadian, however, was in an humble condition of life: took to trade, in which he ultimately throve, and became established in New York in the revolutionary time.

tered New York just at the date of the birth
of our author. "Washington's work is
ended," said Mrs. Irving, "and the child
shall be named after him." William was
also attached to the religious persuasion of
his old country, and became a deacon of the
Presbyterian Church in New York.
"A se-

Or the three volumes as yet published of the "Life and Letters of Washington Irving," two only appear to have had the entire supervision of his nephew, whose name appears on the title-page. The third closes with a chapter containing some correspondence of the deceased author with an English family, Throughout the War of Independence introduced with the following note: "These William Irving demeaned himself as "a original letters and anecdotes were received true Whig ;" and his wife shared his partitoo late to be incorporated in their proper sanship. The victorious American army enplace in this work, but have been considered too interesting to be omitted. There has not been time to communicate with Mr. Pierre Irving, that he might insert them.-E. P." The reader is not informed on the title-page or elsewhere, so far as we have observed, to whom these initials belong, and the mystery of this kind of double editing must remain date, conscientious, God-fearing man,' says therefore for the present unsolved. In the his son's biographer, "with much of the meantime, as there are no indications that strictness of the old Scotch Covenanter in his the work is about to be soon completed, and disposition." From which over-strictness folas, with the third volume, as much of the lowed the usual consequences. His children career of Washington Irving as is likely to seem to have taken for the most part to somehave any special interest for English readers thing of Toryism in politics, and all but one terminates, we have thought that our notice strayed over to the Episcopalian fold in point of the work before us should no longer be of religion. Washington himself" signaldelayed. ized his abjuration at an early age, by going stealthily to Trinity Church, when the rite of confirmation was administered, and enrolling himself among its disciples by the laying on of hands, that he might thereafter, though still constrained to attend his father's church, feel that it could not challenge his allegiance." We must add, however, that this seems to have been a solitary instance of serious disobedience. The Irvings were, in truth, a most united and most loving family. As our concern with the distinguished writer relates chiefly to his literary history and English connection, we must needs omit the household details with which the pages of the biography before us are naturally filled. Suffice it to say, that they afford a simple picture of unpretending, honest, fam

Washington Irving was born at New York in 1783 : the youngest of eight children (who grew up) of William Irving, an Orkney man, who settled in America in 1763. William Irving had served on board one of the English mail-packets between Falmouth and New York, during the war which ended in that year. He married a Falmouth girl, our hero's mother; and had it not been for the celebrity of his son, the world would probably have remained unenlightened as to his genealogy. But our author was pleased in after life at making the discovery that the Irvings of Orkney were a clan of very respectable antiquity: and after sundry investigations he obtained through Mr. Robertson, sheriff substitute at Kirkwall (who had made a contribution on the subject to Mr. Dennis- * Mr. Pierre Irving says that this genealogy was toun's interesting "Memoirs of Sir Robert prepared by its learned compiler, Mr. George Petrie, "without a break, from the facility afforded by the Strange"), "a symmetrical and regularly Udal laws of Orkney, which required that lands, on attested table of descent, carrying his lineage the death of an owner, should be divided equally through the senior representatives of the name among the sons and daughters, a peculiarity which to Magnus, of 1608, the first Shapinsha Irv-led, in the partition, to the mention of the names and the relationships of all the parties who were to ing," through him " to the first Orkney Irv-draw a share.”—P. 4.

ily affection, such as is not often witnessed in resolution came to a total collapse.”—Vol. this selfish world: brothers and sisters mutu-i., p. 14. ally helping each other through their very checkered lives, rejoicing in each other's suc cesses, and mingling sorrow and counsel in seasons of distress, with scarcely a shadow of selfishness, or reserve, or jealousy, such as are so constantly found to keep family sympathies apart, even where the hearts remain fundamentally sound. "Brotherhood,' says Irving himself, "is a holy alliance made by God and imprinted in our hearts: and we should observe it with religious faith. The more kindly and scrupulously we obey its dictates, the happier we shall be." His whole life, adds his nephew, was an exemplification of this doctrine. His father died in 1807, at the age of seventy-six; his mother in 1817, after her son had emigrated to England.

Washington, as might be supposed from his after history, grew up an imaginative, impressible child, with quick tastes and ready sympathies, and a strong predilection for almost everything in turn except steady work, for which, throughout life, he retained the most unmitigated aversion. But his most real and most abiding passion was for travel and maritime adventure. The mingled blood of Orkney and Cornwall spoke out in his earliest years, and continued to impel him to restless locomotion at an age when most men have long ceased to travel except by their fireside. "How wistfully," he says in the Introduction to his Sketch-Book, "would I wander about the pier-head in fine weather, and watch the parting ships bound to distant climes! with what longing eyes would I gaze after their lessening sails, and waft myself in imagination to the ends of the earth!" At the age of fourteen, says his biographer, this desire

"had nearly ripened into a purpose to elope from home, and engage as a sailor. The idea of living on salt pork, which was his abhorrence, was, however, a great drawback to his resolution; but with the courage of a martyr he determined to overcome his dislike, and accordingly he made a practice of eating it at every opportunity. It was another part of his discipline, by way of preparing for a hard couch, to get up from his bed at night, and lie on the bare floor. But the discomforts of this regimen soon proved too much for his perseverance; with every new trial the pork grew less appetitious, and the bare floor more hard, until at length his faltering

In early life this passion for travelling was only partially appeased by the imperfect solace of long wanderings in the forest world which in those days covered what are now the populous, in some instances the half-exhausted, fields of New York and its Border States. The following extract from a letter which he wrote at the age of seventy, strongly expresses the feeling produced on an American by revisiting, in old age, the scenes of his youth. One might almost fancy it diotated by Khizzer, the Oriental wandering Jew, after one of his recurring visits at intervals of five centuries-scarcely equivalent in the slow East to five decades of years in the West:——

"One of the most interesting circumstances of my tour (1853) was the sojourn of a day at Ogdensburg, at the mouth of the Oswegatchie River, where it empties itself into the visited it fifty years since. . . All the country was then a wilderness: we floated down the Black River in a scow; we toiled through forests in wagons drawn by oxen; we slept in hunter's cabins, and were once four-andtwenty hours without food; but all was roWell! here I was again, after mance to me. the lapse of fifty years. I found a populous chie, connected by bridges. It was the Ogcity occupying both banks of the Oswegatdensburg of which a village plot had been planned at the time of our visit. I sought the old French fort, where we had been quartered: not a trace of it was left. I sat unwhat I had known as a wilderness, now teemder a tree on the site, and looked round upon ing with life, crowded with habitations, the Oswegatchie River dammed up and encumbered by vast stone mills, the broad St. Lawrence ploughed by immense steamers.

St. Lawrence. I had not been there since I

"I walked to the point where, with the two girls, I used to launch forth in the canoe, while the rest of the party would wave handkerchiefs and cheer us from shore; it was now a bustling landing-place for steamers. There were still some rocks where I used to sit of an evening and accompany with my flute one of the ladies who sang. I sat for a long time on the rocks, summoning recollections of bygone days, and of the happy beings by whom I was then surrounded. All had passed away-all were dead and gone. Of that young and joyous party I was the sole survivor. They had all lived quietly at home out of the reach of mischance, yet had gone down to their graves; while I, who had

been wandering about the world, exposed to | scent. The trees on each side of the road all hazards by land and sea, was yet alive. were like the side scenes of a theatre; while It seemed almost marvellous. I have often, those which had hitherto bounded my view in my shifting about the world, come upon in front seemed to have sunk from before me, the traces of former existence; but I do not and I looked forth on a luxuriant and almost think anything has made a stronger impres- boundless expanse of country. The forest sion on me than this second visit to the banks swept down from beneath my feet, and spread of the Oswegatchie."-P. 30. out into a vast ocean of foliage, tinted with by a setting sun. all the brilliant dyes of autumn, and gilded Here and there a column of smoke, curling its light blue volumes into the air, rose as a beacon to direct the eye to some infant settlement, as to some haven in this sylvan sea. As my eye ranged over the mellow landscape, I could perceive where the country dipped again into its second terrace, blended in the purple mist of sunset; until the foliage beyond being more and more a glittering line of gold, trembling along the horizon, showed the distant waters of Onta

We copy another bit of American scenery from his journals, because, besides the beauty of the language, it illustrates two of his tastes -the pictorial (he wanted at one time to turn painter, and always made artists his favorite associates) and the dramatic-which, however, he never had the opportunity of indulging beyond the limits of social theatricals,

wherein he considered himself by no means a contemptible performer.* He had got to the brink of one of the famous "terraces," sea margins, of undivinable antiquity, which skirt at some distance the southern shore of Lake Ontario :

rio."-P. 183.

These longings received early in life a full gratification. There was a consumptive tendency in the family, whether derived from "I found myself on the brow of a hill, down the father's or mother's side, which cut short which the road suddenly made a winding de- the lives of some, and rendered others subjects *Irving was a constant votary of the theatre in of great anxiety. Washington, at twentyEngland in his early days, and, when he could find the opportunity, in America. He used to describe one, was extremely delicate, and it was judged with much humor a scene between the audience at advisable to send him to Europe, in order to New York and Cooke, in his tipsy days. "He was try the effects of a long sea voyage and a to play Shylock and Sir Archy MacSarcasm. He milder climate than his own. He was at this went through Shylock admirably, but had primed himself with drink to such a degree before the com- time already embarked in life as "clerk" to mencement of the afterpiece, that he was not him- Mr. Hoffman, "a distinguished advocate; self. His condition was so apparent that they hur- but in the young States-such was the happy ried through the piece, and skipped and curtailed, to have the curtain fall, when, lo! as it was de- security of the prospect of business for any scending, Cooke stepped out from under it, and pre- one who turned his mind to it, and such the sented himself before the footlights to make a speech. versatility of the community-an interruption Instantly there were shouts from the pit, 'Go home, Cooke; go home; you're drunk.' Cooke kept his of a year or two seems never to have been reground. Didn't I please you in Shylock?' Yes, garded as a matter of any consequence in a yes; you played that nobly.' 'Well, then, the young man's professional or commercial caman who played Shylock well could not be drunk.' His brothers shared the expense beYou weren't drunk then, but you are drunk now.' reer. was the rejoinder; and they continued to roar, 'Go tween them, the chief burden being borne by home; go home; go to bed.' Cooke, indignant, William, the eldest, "the man I most loved tapped the handle of his sword emphatically, "Tis but a foil; then, extending his right arm to the on earth," said Washington in after years. audience, Tis well for you it is;' and marched off He was in such frail condition when he stepped amid roars of laughter" (vol. i. p. 161). In after- on the deck of the vessel which was to carry times he used to take off the stately ways of Mrs. him to Bordeaux, that the captain said to Siddons. His first interview with her (after the appearance of the "Sketch-Book") "was character- himself, "There's a chap who will go overistic. As he approached and was introduced, she board before we get across." But every day looked at him for a moment, and then, in her clear and deep-toned voice, she slowly enunciated, You've of his much-loved travel seems to have remade me weep.' Nothing could have been finer than moved the danger farther. His wanderings, such a compliment from such a source; but the ac- though in the most frequented regions of Eucost' was so abrupt, and the manner so peculiar, that never was modest man so completely put out rope, were delightfully full of adventure. of countenance" (vol. i. p. 89). He felt so enthu- For an American to make his way through siastic about Miss O'Neill, that he paid her the the imperial dominions at the outbreak of strange compliment of declining to be introduced to her, unwilling to take the risk of a possible disen- war with England, was a matter of difficulty and some danger. At Nice he was detained

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chantment."