Phrenology.–Dr Spurzheim.–On the 20th of June 1832, Dr Spurzheim sailed from Havre for the United States, and arrived at New York on the 4th of August. On the 17th of September, he commenced a course of eighteen lectures at the Athenæum Hall, in Boston, and, soon after, another course at the University, Cambridge, three miles distant. He delivered, besides, in the afternoon of every alternate day, a course of five lectures before the Medical Faculty, and other professional gentlemen of Boston, on the anatomy of the brain. “His lectures, both in Boston, and at the University, excited great and lively interest: they attracted alike the fashionable and the learned, the gay and the grave, the aged and the young, the sceptic and the Christian. Our most eminent men, as well as humble citizens, were early at the hall to secure eligible seats; and they were alike profoundly silent and attentive to the eloquence and philosophy of the lecturer.”

The climate of the United States is felt by most British travellers to be highly stimulating. The air is drier, and it appears to me to be more highly charged with electricity than that of Britain. The habitual state of the American people, also, is one of much higher mental excitement than that of the inhabitants of Britain.