at every cough. This morning, by the pale daylight, the change in him frightened me: he has sunk in the last three days to a most ghastly look. Though Dr. Clark has prepared me for the worst, I shall be ill able to bear it. I cannot bear to be set free even from this my horrible situation by the loss of him.

"I am still quite precluded from painting: which may be of consequence to me. Poor Keats has me ever by him, and shadows out the form of one solitary friend: he opens his eyes in great doubt and horror, but when they fall upon me, they close gently, open quietly and close again, till he sinks to sleep. This thought alone would keep me by him till he dies: and why did I say I was losing my time? The advantages I have gained by knowing John Keats are double and treble any I could have won by any other occupation. Farewell.

،

"Feb. 27th. He is gone; he died with the most perfect easehe seemed to go to sleep. On the twenty-third, about four, the approaches of death came on. Severn-I-lift me up-I am dying-I shall die easy; don't be frightened-be firm, and thank God it has come.' I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed boiling in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he gradually sunk into death, so quiet, that I still thought he slept. I cannot say more now. I am broken down by four nights' watching, no sleep since, and my poor Keats gone. Three days since the body was opened: the lungs were completely gone. The doctors could not imagine how he had lived these two months. I followed his dear body to the grave on Monday with many English. They take much care of me here-I must else have gone into a fever. I am better now, but still quite disabled.' "-pp. 93, 94, vol. ii.

Into poor Keats's religious opinions it would be painful to enter too closely, but there is a deep and warning lesson for the incipient doubter to be learned at his early deathbed. His letters, as far as they are now published, do not contain any absolute avowal of a fixed and settled system of unbelief, but they leave an impression which it is impossible to resist; and in his views even upon the first elements of natural religion, there is a vagueness and uncertainty which fills one with dismay. Thus, for instance, he calmly places Jesus and Socrates (266) upon the same level, as the only two whom he can remember "to have had hearts completely disinterested;" and speculates as to whether "there may not be some superior beings amused with any graceful attitude his mind may fall into," as if the idea of a Providence was one which did not enter into his mind (269.) Again, although in one place (p. 246) he professes "a firm belief in immortality," yet, in another, he doubts whether "there is a future life," and wherever he alludes to the prospect of his death, all his aspirations after death are after the forgetfulness and oblivion with which he professedly identifies it. In a word, all his opinions seem vague and undefined, and we have no doubt that this very vagueness and uncertainty is the worst penalty which unbelief brings in its train.

The reader, we doubt not, will have been reminded, in many passages of Keats's life, of the not very dissimilar career of our own countryman, Gerald Griffin. But, alas, how different their close! How striking the contrast of Griffin's peaceful and happy death, with the following outpouring of wretchedness and gloom-the more wretched from the terrible doubts and uncertainties in which the future seems involved!

"I wish to write on subjects that will not agitate me much. There is one I must mention and have done with it. Even if my body would recover of itself, this would prevent it. The very thing which I want to live most for, will be a great occasion of my death. I cannot help it. Who can help it? Were I in health it would make me ill, and how can I bear it in my state? I dare say you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping-you know what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at your house. I wish for death every day and night to deliver me from these pains, and then I wish death away, for death would destroy even those pains, which are better than nothing. Land and sea, weakness and decline, are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever. When the pang of this thought has passed through my mind, I may say the bitterness of death is passed."-pp. 73, 74, vol. ii.

"Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering. The receiving this letter is to be one of yours-I will say nothing about our friendship, or rather yours to me, more than that, as you deserve to escape, you will never be so unhappy as I am. I should think of you in my last moments. I shall endeavour to write to Miss -, if possible, to-day. A sudden stop to my life in the middle of one of these letters would be no bad thing, for it keeps one in a sort of fever awhile." - pp. 74, 75, vol. ii.

We shall add, in connexion with the history of the close of his career, his Last Sonnet, written on the Dorchester coast, during that voyage to Italy, from which he was destined never to return.

VOL. XXV. - NO. XLIX.

12

"KEATS'S LAST SONNET.

"Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever-or else swoon to death."*-Vol. ii, p. 306.

The rest of the "Literary Remains," with a few exceptions, are hardly equal to the reputation which the author's published poetry had won. The largest piece of the entire, the tragedy of "Otho the Great," was written with a view to its being represented, and was offered for this purpose with some prospect of success, at more than one of the London theatres; but, like Gerald Griffin's "Gisippus," it was allowed, in the end, to fall to the ground; and even Mr. Milnes acknowledges the judiciousness of the sentence. Nevertheless, there are many passages in it which evince poetic merit of the very highest order; and as a piece for the closet, it is hardly surpassed by any of our modern tragedies. The fairy fantasy of "The Cap and Bells" appears to have been suggested by the study of Ariosto, but it is in a most unfinished state; and though it displays abundant evidence of humour and of imagination, yet the absence of anything like a fixed plan, as well as the exceeding carelessness of the composition, deprive it of almost all interest, except as a specimen of the wonderful versatility of the author's mind, and his extraordinary power, both in diction and in rhyme, over the barren and dissonant vocabulary of our language. The minor pieces are tolerably numerous. They resemble very much in style and character the poems of the same class which had been already published, and and perhaps for general interest,

* Another reading :

"Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death."

are the most valuable of the new materials which Mr. Milnes's volumes have preserved for those faithful hearts which still "weep for Adonais."

ART. VIII. Researches on the Chemistry of Food. By JUSTUS LIEBIG, M. D. Edited by WILLIAM GREGORY, M. D. London: Taylor and Walton, 1847, pp. 156.

OTWITHSTANDING the really respectable antiquity of the practices

very considerable extent to which they are even yet carried on, the opinions held of their philosophy have been hitherto very slight and incorrect. If the viands have been savoury and easy of assimilation, the theories as to the choice and action of them have been singularly crude and undigested. Sentiments the most erroneous have been entertained regarding the relative nutrition, digestibility, and salubrity of the various articles of food and drink, and are by the majority still entertained. From an ignorance of true principles regarding these points very serious diseases have sometimes been produced, and there can be little doubt but that a considerable undercurrent of indisposition is still from this cause kept up. Indeed, had mankind acted upon the ideas which it held of food and drink, and had it not fortunately been guided by two old-fashioned instincts-hunger and thirst-incalculable consequences might have happened.

The researches of modern chemistry have undoubtedly considerably improved this state of matters. Formerly the amount of nutrition which articles of food contained, was tested by some peculiarity of appearance, smell, or taste, which was wholly arbitrary. The distinguishing of the proximate principles of animal and vegetable substances-Fibrin, Albumen, Osmazome, Gluten, Starch, &c. and the attempting to discriminate the value of each as a nutritive agent, and what proportion of each or any of them any article of food contained, were unquestionably important advances. We have always been of opinion that if Davy had lived longer, some important discovery in the philosophy of food would have been made. Equal to any of his predecessors, this eminent philosopher was undoubtedly far superior to any who have succeeded him in chemical investigations. Unfortunately, however, he was not spared to us.

Then, Dr. Prout's speculations as to the manner in which the articles of food should be arranged, are interesting and important. He divided them, according to their chemical relations, under three heads, the Saccharine, the Albuminous, and the Oily. The first of these he conceived to consist of carbon in different proportions, chemically combined with water; and the two others of compound bases, also united with water. The prototype of all these classes exists in milk, and Dr. Prout is of opinion that two at least of these must be taken, either together or soon after one another, to meet the demands of the system, and to answer the purposes of digestion and nutrition.

Next have come the brilliant theories of Liebig. Others have previously to him perceived the necessity of the connexion of physiology and pathology with organic chemistry, and also the great importance of a more particular study of the chemistry of animal and vegetable life; but he has had the good fortune to convince the world of this. He has even made it, and this too in a very short space of time, an enthusiastic admirer both of the science and of the splendid hypotheses with which he has adorned it. In almost every particular he has been most fortunate. Deeply versed in chemistry, possessed of an extraordinary skill in making analyses, endowed with quickness of perception, readiness of reasoning, and a facility of getting over objections, he has also been assisted by minor advantages. In other countries than his own he has found valuable editors. His own style, abrupt and obscure as it occasionally is, yet gives sometimes to his opinions and statements the magic and bright colour of romance. Enthusiastic, it excites enthusiastic admirers in its readers. Even when an adversary has risen up against him, Liebig has, like a Napoleon of science, immediately put out his whole strength against him, and as yet has succeeded in at once and effectually crushing him.

But if the style of Liebig sometimes resembles that of the writer of fiction, we fear that his ardent imagination occasionally carries him further than strict logical deduction from facts should permit him. Some of his details