The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1866-12-11 00:00:00

tittrature.

litt. HUNT AND HIS wurrixas.
(stomp minx.)

I. The Irrational@ of Spare& by a minute l'hilo
her:l.ll. Reprinted f•om Fonda Magestne. Lou.
don: Longman's. ISM.

lne. James Hoot, • Dorestshire earted, now red-
dent at Hastings, whose archaeological researches in
Mind we reviewed in oar last, possesses a speciality,
inherited front his Esther, in the core of sweat. We
doh'. whether any man has ever made this divine
fropy of num no complete a subject of investigation
as lie. Hunt. It is not alone the fruits of his own
experience with which be presents us, but in the
under noted volume—which we perceive we have
Ts,iewed before in • most ungrateful quarter—he
kas worked so effectually the golden mine of uni-
tool opinion and observation on this subject as to
sway the whole range of human intelligence, we
wily wises, so far as applied to its consideration,
in ceder before us. The present work, however,
from the pen of Profaner Kingsley, or some other
equally fascinating writer, is itself • review of Dr.
Hunt's linguistic productions —"Tin Unspeakable," •
popular story founded on the life and adventures of •
person effected with the particular evil which Dr. Hunt
undertakes to eradicate, A Manual of the Philoso-
phy of Voice and Speech," and, finally, klts work
suenboued below, or rather • previous edition of it.
Commencing with the articulation of the talking
nein, this paper from Fraser graphically traces
not the causes of defects in speech, and detailing
hist the many empirical methods that have been
tried of cure, arrives at leogth, after relating the
torturu inflicted by surgeons, at the prunes of Mr.
Hunt for their removal.
ho says, "the true method of sure in at
It tot its elements bail suggested Well toe hard headed
gentleman of Dorsetahirr, a Mr. Hunt, the father of •
man to whom tbia writer is under deep obligations.
whiet. ins here most publicly oonfewca—who, when an
subargratluate at Cambridge, set himself to cure •
atammering friend, and by dint of minute philosophy—
in plain English. acing hi. eyes and his common souse
succeeded. Delighted with his first attempt he went
on with his plan, and left college t wit up as a doctor
of stammering- not without angry harks from the
maim! profession."
Dr. James Hunt bas since extended his science and
observations to the general topic of man, until he
now stands at the head the Anthropological Society
of Londoo, of which he is the recognised founder.
4:hustler Bunsen and Mr. Cranford perhaps first
pointed out that striking relationship of language
and ethnology which forms in many instances the
sole distinctive tut of races amongst men. But I
stimulated by the nooses of Bichal and Pnuier Bey,
and the learned men of Paris, Dr. Hunt, in the face
of considerable opposition, succeeded in establishing
the London Anthropological Society, and even with
Huxley and others in engrafting it on &section of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Zealous to adhere to orthodoxy ourselves, we are not
of those who object to see the most fearless and un-
reaerved examination into the morns of life and
nature, persuaded that as our old Edinburgh pastor,
the Rev. D. T. K. Drummond, very beautifully
espressed himself only last week at • lecture on
' The Unity and Antiquity of MAD," "I venture
to answer when these refracted rays of light, such as
Tyndall, Lyell, and • Huxley, the blue, the yellow,
and the red, with their less developed imitators,
the violet, the orange, and the purple, shall, by some
marvellous process of modification or mutual adapta-
tion, succeed in blending their various theoriee into
onel colourless ray of sunlight, then, but not till
then. will theologians gladly meet them on these
and all other questions such as these, for it will then
be found that the pure light of true science, together
with tho pure light of revealed truth, radiate from
but one source, even from Him who is the light of
the world, and who lighted every man that cometh
Into the world." While therefore we must hold that
there is no real harm in the speculations of the
anthropologists, of whom Dr. Hunt is the head, but
thst all must come right and be reconciled in the
who( ray of truth in the end, we leave this little
book now under review to tell emphatically of Dr.
Hunt's sensible mode of cure and conquest over the
" Irrational. of Speech."

IL—Stammering and stuttering : their nature and
treatment. By Dr. James Hunt. Sixth edition.
London : Longman% 180.

From what has been said of Dr. Hunt, the reader
will be prepared to find him at home in the most
recondite mysteries of his important and not on.
interesting study of vocal defects. He has gone to
every people and every language, endeavouring to
glean, even from the synonyms they employ expres-
sive of impedimenta of speech, what they know or
think upon the subject. The learned names for
stammering and stuttering are the Greek ones,
Alalia and Dyslalia. The transmission of the
affliction, sometimes hereditary, is influenced by
external temperature, internal temperament, end
other physical cause., but more especially by _ mental
cautious. hiet.rie,a the MST.Wr we
nave masses of reference from the earliest records of
scripture from lierodotus, Aristotle, and Hippo.
crates, down to Sir Charles Ball and Marshall
Hall. In regard to peahen or stammering, Dr.
Hunt adduces the statistic" or computed number
of stammerers in various countries, discusses the
alleged exemption of the female sex, and other
national and individual influences, and then details
the agencies from age to sge employed in its removal
since Galen end the surgeons commenced their ope-
rations till the time when the late Thomas Hunt
put a stop to them. Opinions widely differ is to
whether stuttering or stammering may be • dimes.
Even Genus, Ulpian, and the lawyers of old are
made to favour us with their ids's, a circumstance
which may perhaps incite even oar County Court
Jedges to acquaint themselves with things a little
out of their beaten path. But Dr. Hunt pronounces
stuttering to be no disease and pollee in some cases
the cause and not the elleot of disease. One thing
seems certain, and that is the improvement of the
general health on the removal of stammering. It is
therefore with all the more oonfidence that the
author commends and enjoins a trial of the system
of his late father and of his own practice,
concluding with a memoir of the former,
and adducing the opinions of some very
eminent men of the present day on behalf of his
labours and successes. The present work is not only
ably, it is beautifully written, and supported with
references ea authoritative se to compose an absolute
encyclopedia on the topic of which it treats. It is
in our eye quite a curiosity of literature, a mono-
graph which Sands alone in its elaboration, on •
subject which no other writer has exhaustively
treated.

DECEMBER.
" This year bath first its Jocund spring,
Wherein the loaves, to birds sweet carolling,
Dance with the wind. Then seen the summer's day,
Perfect the embryo blossom of each spray.
Nest cometh autumn, when the threshed sheaf
Loseth his grain, and every tree his leaf.
Lastly, sold winter's re's, with many • storm,
Threats the proud pine which the high hills adorn,
And makes the sap leave suceourlims the shoot,
Shrinkiog to comfort its decaying root."

I do not know a more perfect *tare of the
masons given in so few lines as the above, written
by William Brown. He lived in the days of
Queen Bee'. I cannot endure the fashion of call-
ing that horrid old flirt "good." What wail she
termed good for, I should like to know. Was it
because she ordered her lover (poor &sex's) head to
Ix chopped off after she was tired of deceiving him?
or was it for murdering her beautiful cousin at
Fotheringsy Castle? It is all very well for some
of our modern historians to try and exculpate her
Majesty by asserting that the Queen's signature to
Mary's death was forged. I believe in the virtues
and goodness of the %alai& beauty, and detest
the character of her hard-hearted relative. Mr.
Wallace Fyfe, the present Editor of the
DorAtt County &preen, has written a very
charming hook, entitled "Summer Life on
Land and Water," and ',peaking in it of Mary's
Inscription at Rosythe Castle, he observes :—" We
read the melancholy inscription ' M.R., 1561,' with
the cross and the crown—the unmistakeable insignia
of ons whose fate and midortuses shed a halo of
Interest around so many of our ruined ceatJaa in Soot.
lard." Yes, truly her fate WY • melancholy one;
but to return to tho poet of the golden age. William
Brown's w wka are little read now. He wea a true
poet though; give me his description of country
We and rural aZOIIOI4 before any author's that I
Tb• bard of bards, Avon's minstrel, in
"Love's Labour Lost," never painted a better word
winter than William Brown has done in some of his
writiufle"—lifra Helen H Walney, in Land and
Water, December."

LONCIFLEICT.
&rums° • Mmaron•nv Box. —Led Thoreday,
before P. Styling:llaq., (Mayor), Alderman Harris, and
J. W. Martin, rs.—Will6in Johnson, aiias Captain
Toole, of Wool.* , • ticket-of.leave-rnan, and William
Pox, of Newomtle, wore charred by superintendent
Gifford with stealing a missionary box containing silver
and copper moue rem the shop of Mr, Palmer at
longffeet, on Wednesday afternoon. About are.
o'clock Mr. Palmer's shop boll rang, and an bisdatighter
going in there was nobody there, but on looking out
at the door she saw both prisoners. Shortly alter, the
missionary box was mimed. It oontained several shil-
lala in coppers and some silver. P.S. Hunt maw John.
son some (roma closet in • garden near his house in •
suspicious manner, and went there, when ho
aaw In tbe vault the missionary box with the lid broken
off. His daughter had beard some one rattling money,
and on solos out saw Johnson throw the box into Um
emit, arid she picked up the lid, broken Into three
In the pup m. t Hunt apprehended
rofthasion at Thomas lodghg.bosee at Pools, Johnson
had no matey, but said he bad bought and paid for
some providoes, They spud llid. there. P.M Reeks
afterwards apprehended Fox at the same house. He
had Is. in poppers. and 6d. usurer. Johnson pleaded
rent', and Fox not guilty.—Th. Bebe easuidand both
prisoners equally guilt 7, and senteneed them to two
mouths' impriseemeat each wig) herd labour in Dot.
cheater Geol.