consider that he so constantly uses fire, edged tools, and chemical substances! A correspondent gives the following practical illustration of the use of pain in preventing injuries:-" A young man, a parishioner of mine, a blacksmith, had the misfortune, a few months since, to be thrown by a horse, with his wrist against a window, and thereby sever the chief arteries. He is now well enough to return to his work. He can grasp a hammer with his clenched hand, but can not take up things with his finger and thumb. | Sensation is almost entirely gone; so much so, that he only discovers that thorns are deep in his hand by looking it over. He happened to have the skin taken clean off, but only discovered it by the sense of sight; and he tells me, that this is very awkward, for he is afraid of pinching or burning himself while at his work, and not finding it out until it becomes serious." If it were not for pain, what poor man would wear shoes, or avoid sharp stones, or, in fact, have a foot to walk with at all? If scalding soap-suds and tea, did not produce pain, what state would washerwomen's hands and throats soon be in? What person, living in a manufacturing town, amid smoke and dust, would have an eye to see with, if it were not for the delicate membrane which instantly informs him of the presence of something in it? The offending particles would remain unnoticed-inflammation would be set upthe transparent structures would become opaque, and the eye would be lost! As it is, the least speck of dust produces motion of the eyelids, and sets at liberty a little fountain of tears, which flows over the surface of the eye, and washes every thing away. member the gladiators of yore, and the prize-fighters of the present day. Pain, "Nature's kind harbinger of mischief," does its work mercifully. If possible, it approaches gently; and if it be prompt and energetic, we may be assured that the evil can not be prevented without it, and that it is still tempered with mercy. Another use of pain is remedial. Pain is the sentinel of health, and is ever ready to give alarm on the approach of the enemy, disease. But when disease succeeds in invading the body, pain then becomes useful in suggesting and carrying out the remedy. A dog with the mange will eat nothing, but the intense thirst causes it to drink freely; and this is the best treatment for that complaint. But pain acts as a curative agent, by insuring rest. Pain was the first healer of wounds and mender of broken limbs. If a savage broke his leg, the good surgeon pain stood over him with a drawn sword, and compelled him to keep the limb at rest until the bones united. Pain is most useful to medical men in pointing out the seat of disease and the character of it. In fact, so useful is pain as a remedial agent, that any one, with the least glimmering of understanding, would rather beg to be allowed the continuance of its benefits than to be rid of it. The retributive use of pain is manifest whenever any person willfully breaks an organic law. The infliction of pain, under these circumstances, is benevolent and just; for the object of it is only to bring the individual back to obedience for his own welfare. Bishop Butler says:-" All we enjoy, and a great part of what we suffer, is put in our own power. For pleasure and pain are the consequence of That the amount of suffering employed our actions, and we are endued by the for the prevention of injuries is not too author of our nature with capacities of great, may be easily shown. Many per- foreseeing these consequences. By prusons will at any time, for mere amusement, dence and care, we may, for the most part, run pins into their legs; savages tatoo pass our days in tolerable ease and quiet; themselves, although the operation is ac-or, on the contrary, we may, by rashness, knowledged to be a very tedious and painful one; ladies suffer their ears to be pierced, and, to improve their personal appearance, will suffer great inconvenience; and how much pain has the vanity of tightly-fitting boots cost mankind? If these examples are not sufficient to prove that pain is not imposed upon us too severely, read the long list of self-imposed torments which religious devotees have endured in all parts of the world; and re ungoverned passion, willfulness, or even negligence, make ourselves as miserable as ever we please." But pain is retributive not only to the individual; it descends to the second and third generation. The unavoidable character of hereditary disease is most distressing. The retribution is awful, and yet not too much so, as is proved by the continuance of those marriages which are the cause of it. John Stuart Mill says: It would not be right to quit the sub "The fact itself of causing the existence of a human being, is one of the most res-ject of pain without paying our grateful ponsible actions in the range of life. To tribute to that noble genius who discov. bestow a life which may be either a curse ered the best means of annihilating it. or a blessing unless the being on whom it Thirteen years ago, Professor Simpson, of is bestowed will have at least the ordinary Edinburgh, first introduced the use of chances of a desirable existence, is a crime chloroform, conferring upon mankind a against that being." benefit, which, in point of value, has scarcely ever been equalled; still he has not yet had the public thanks of even his own countrymen. Had he been a general who had killed ten thousand men, he would by this time have been a peer of the realm; as he has, however, only been the preserver of millions from mental and bodily torture, he is not even a knight One class of cases may be brought forward in which the children have to suffer for the sins of the parents, and as it is one on which divinity and law are silent, and the innocent offspring is committed, what continued remorse must follow the discovery-if it be done willfully, what heart-rending sorrow! DEATH OF THE OLD YEAR. FULL knee-deep lies the winter snow, And the winter winds are wearily sighing; Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow, Old Year, you must not die; He lieth still; he doth not move : He froth'd his bumpers to the brim ; But though his eyes are waxing dim, Old Year, you shall not die; He was full of joke and jest, Every one for his own. The night is starry and cold, my friend, friend, Comes up to take his own. How hard he breathes! over the snow The cricket chirps; the light burns low: Shake hands, before you die. Old Year, we'll dearly rue for you: His face is growing sharp and thin. And waiteth at the door. TENNYSON. LORD JOHN RUSSELL. [IN connection with a fine portrait of this eminent statesman which embellishes this number of the ECLECTIC, we place on our pages a brief biographical sketch.] The right Hon. Lord John, is the third and youngest son of the sixth Duke of Bedford, by his first wife, the Hon. Georgiania Elizabeth, the second daughter of the fourth Viscount Torrington. His eldest brother, the present or seventh Duke, is four years his senior. He was born in Hertford-street London, on the 18th of August 1792, and was educated first at Westminster school, and afterwards at the University of Edinburgh, where he attended the moral philosophy lectures of Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown. It was Lord John Russell, who headed the deputation of students that waited on Dugald Stewart to congratulate him on his recovery from the illness which had caused him to have recourse to Brown's help, and to thank him for having procured so valuable a substitute. In 1813, at the age of twenty-one, he entered the house of Commons as member for Tavistock, of which borough his father had the disposal; and, faithful to the hereditary Whiggism of the house of Bedford, he attached himself at once to the opposition, who were then maintaining whig principles against the powerful ministry of Liverpool and Castlereagh. It was about this time that the cessation of the European war left the mind of the nation free to return to home-politics; and the first portion of Lord John Russell's parliamentary career is identified with the progress of that stubborn contest which the whig opposition, with the country at their back, carried on inch by inch till the year 1827 against the reigning Toryism. His abilities, and the industry and conscientiousness with which he devoted himself to politics as his business, concurred, with the advantages of his birth and connections as a scion of the great ducal house of Bedford, to give him very soon the place of a leader among the whig politicians. While taking part in all the whig questions, he fastened from the first with extraordinary tenacity on the main ques | tion of parliamentary reform, bringing forward or supporting year after year measures for the supression of rotten boroughs and the enfranchisement of large commercial towns. Lord Brougham, after speaking of the great services rendered to the cause of reform at this time in parliament by Earl Grey, Sir Francis Burdett, Lord Durham, and others, says, "But no one did more lasting and real service to the question than Lord John Russell, whose repeated motions, backed by the progress of the subject out of doors, had the effect of increasing the minority in its favor, in so much that, when he at last brought it forward in 1826, Mr. Canning, [then Castlereagh's successor in the Foreign Secretaryship in the Liverpool cabinet, but virtual head of the government,] finding he could only defeat it by a comparatively small majority, pronounced the question substantially carried. It was probably from this time that his party perceived the prudence of staying a change which they could not prevent." The bill, the proposal of which had this important effect, was one for disfranchising certain rotten boroughs and substituting large and important towns in their place. At the time of proposing it Lord John was no longer member for Tavistock, but for Huntingdonshire, which county he had represented since 1820. While thus laying the foundation of his reputation as a serious and persevering whig statesman, and as the man among the junior whigs who had made the question of parliamentary reform most thoroughly his own, Lord John had at the same time made various appearances as an author. In 1819 he published in quarto a Life of William, Lord Russell, with some account of the Times in which he lived, -a graceful and characteristic tribute to his celebrated whig ancestor. work was followed in 1821 by An Essay on the History of the English Government and Constitution, from the Reign of Henry VII. to the Present Time; and this again by an effort in verse entitled Don Carlos, or Persecution, a Tragedy in Five Acts, published in 1822, and which went through The |