Poor wretch that we are!—to us the uncompanioned silence of the solitude hath become terrible. More dreadful is it than the silence of the tomb; for there, often arise responses to the unuttered soliloquies of the pensive heart. But this is as the silence, not of Time, but of Eternity. No burial heaps—no mounds—no cairns! It is not as if man had perished here, and been forgotten; but as if this were a world in which there had been neither living nor dying. Too utter is the solitariness even for the ghosts of dead! For they are thought to haunt the burial-places of what once was their bodies—the chamber where the spirit breathed its final farewell—the spot of its transitory love and delight, or of its sin and sorrow—to gaze with troubled tenderness on the eyes that once they worshipped—with cold ear to drink the music of the voices long ago adored; and in all their permitted visitations, to express, if but by the beckoning of the shadow of a hand, some unextinguishable longing after the converse of the upper world, even within the gates of the grave.

A change comes over us. Deep and still as is the solitude, we are relieved of our awe, and out of the forest-gloom arise images of beauty that come and go, gliding as on wings, or, statue-like, stand in the glades, like the sylvan deities to whom of old belonged, by birthright, all the regions of the woods. On—on—on!—further into the Forest!—and let the awe of imagination be still further tempered by the delight breathed even from any one of the lovely names sweet-sounding through the famous fables of antiquity. Dryad, Hamadryad! Faunus! Sylvanus!—Now, alas! ye are but names, and no more! Great Pan himself is dead, or here he would set up his reign. But what right has such a dreamer to dream of the dethroned deities of Greece? The language they spoke is not his language; yet the words of the great poets who sang of gods and demigods, are beautiful in their silent meanings as they meet his adoring eyes; and, mighty Lyrists! has he not often floated down the temple-crowned and altar-shaded rivers of your great Choral Odes?

On—on—on!—further into the Forest!—unless, indeed, thou dreadest that the limbs that bear on thy fleshy tabernacle may fail, and the body, left to itself, sink down and die. Ha! such fears thou laughest to scorn; for from youth upwards thou hast dallied with the wild and perilous: and what but the chill delight in which thou hast so often shivered in threatening solitude brought thee here! These dens are not dungeons, nor are we a thrall. Yet if dungeons they must be called—and they are deep, and dark, and grim—ten thousand gates hath this great prison-house, and wide open are they all. So on—on—on!—further into the Forest! But who shall ascend to its summit? Eagles and dreams. Round its base we go, rejoicing in the new-found day, and once more cheered and charmed with the music of birds. Say whence came, ye scientific world-makers, these vast blocks of granite? Was it fire or water, think ye, that hung in air the semblance of yon Gothic cathedral, without nave, or chancel, or aisle—a mass of solid rock? Yet it looks like the abode of Echoes; and haply when there is thunder, rolls out its lengthening shadow of sound to the ear of the solitary shepherd afar off on Cairngorm.

On—on—on!—further into the Forest! Now on all sides leagues of ancient trees surround us, and we are safe as in the grave from the persecuting love or hatred of friends or foes. The sun shall not find us by day, nor the moon by night. Were our life forfeited to what are called the laws, how could the laws discover the criminal? How could they drag us from the impenetrable gloom of this sylvan sanctuary? And if here we chose to perish by suicide or natural death—and famine is a natural death—what eye would ever look on our bones? Raving all; but so it often is with us in severest solitude—our dreams will be hideous with sin and death.

Hideous, said we, with sin and death? Thoughts that came flying against us like vultures, like vultures have disappeared, disappointed of their prey, and afraid to fix their talons in a thing alive. Hither—by some secret and sacred impulse within the soul, that often knoweth not the sovereign virtue of its own great desires—have we been led as into a penitentiary, where, before the altar of nature, we may lay down the burden of guilt or remorse, and walk out of the Forest a heaven-pardoned man. What guilt?—O my soul! canst thou think of Him who inhabiteth eternity, and ask what guilt? What remorse?—For the dereliction of duty every day since thou received'st from Heaven the understanding of good and of evil. All our past existence gathers up into one dread conviction, that every man that is born of woman is a sinner, and worthy of everlasting death. Yet with the same dread conviction is interfused a knowledge, clear as the consciousness of present being, that the soul will live for ever. What was the meaning, O my soul! of all those transitory joys and griefs—of all those fears, hopes, loves, that so shook, each in its own fleeting season, the very foundations on which thy being in this life is laid? Anger, wrath, hatred, pride, and ambition—what are they all but so many shapes of sin coeval with thy birth? That sudden entrance of heaven's light into the Forest, was like the opening of the eye of God! And our spirit stands ashamed of its nakedness, because of the foulness and pollution of sin. But the awful thoughts that have travelled through its chambers have ventilated, swept, and cleansed them—and let us break away from beneath the weight of confession.

Conscience! Speak not of weak and fantastic fears—of abject superstitions—and of all that wild brood of dreams that have for ages been laws to whole nations; though we might speak of them—and, without violation of the spirit of true philosophy, call upon them to bear testimony to the truth. But think of the calm, purified, enlightened, and elevated conscience of the highest natures—from which objectless fear has been excluded—and which hears, in its stillness, the eternal voice of God. What calm celestial joy fills all the being of a good man, when conscience tells him he is obeying God's law! What dismal fear and sudden remorse assail him, whenever he swerves but one single step out of the right path that is shining before his feet! It is not a mere selfish terror—it is not the dread of punishment only that appals him—for, on the contrary, he can calmly look on the punishment which he knows his guilt has incurred, and almost desires that it should be inflicted, that the incensed power may be appeased. It is the consciousness of offence that is unendurable—not the fear of consequent suffering; it is the degradation of sin that his soul deplores—it is the guilt which he would expiate, if possible, in torments; it is the united sense of wrong, sin, guilt, degradation, shame, and remorse, that renders a moment's pang of the conscience more terrible to the good than years of any other punishment—and it thus is the power of the human soul to render its whole life miserable by its very love of that virtue which it has fatally violated. This is a passion which the soul could not suffer—unless it were immortal. Reason, so powerful in the highest minds, would escape from the vain delusion; but it is in the highest minds where reason is most subjected to this awful power—they would seek reconcilement with offended Heaven by the loss of all the happiness that earth ever yielded—and would rejoice to pour out their heart's blood if it could wipe away from the conscience the stain of one deep transgression! These are not the high-wrought and delusive states of mind of religious enthusiasts, passing away with the bodily agitation of the dreamer; but they are the feelings of the loftiest of men's sons—and when the troubled spirit has escaped from their burden, or found strength to support it, the conviction of their reasonableness and of their awful reality remains; nor can it be removed from the minds of the wise and virtuous, without the obliteration from the tablets of memory of all the moral judgments which conscience has there recorded.

It is melancholy to think that even in our own day, a philosopher, and one of high name too, should have spoken slightingly of the universal desire of immortality, as no argument at all in proof of it, because arising inevitably from the regret with which all men must regard the relinquishment of this life. By thus speaking of the desire as a delusion necessarily accompanying the constitution of mind which it has pleased the Deity to bestow on us, such reasoners but darken the mystery both of man and of Providence. But this desire of immortality is not of the kind they say it is, nor does it partake, in any degree, of the character of a blind and weak feeling of regret at merely leaving this present life. "I would not live alway," is a feeling which all men understand—but who can endure the momentary thought of annihilation? Thousands, and tens of thousands—awful a thing as it is to die—are willing to do so—"passing through nature to eternity"—nay, when the last hour comes, death almost always finds his victim ready, if not resigned. To leave earth, and all the light both of the sun and of the soul, is a sad thought to us all—transient as are human smiles, we cannot bear to see them no more—and there is a beauty that binds us to life in the tears of tenderness that the dying man sees gushing for his sake. But between that regret for departing loves and affections, and all the gorgeous or beautiful shows of this earth—between that love and the dread of annihilation, there is no connection. The soul can bear to part with all it loves—the soft voice—the kindling smile—the starting tear—and the profoundest sighs of all by whom it is beloved; but it cannot bear to part with its existence. It cannot even believe the possibility of that which yet it may darkly dread. Its loves—its passions—its joys—its agonies are not itself. They may perish, but it is imperishable. Strip it of all it has seen, touched, enjoyed, or suffered—still it seems to survive; bury all it knew, or could know in the grave—but itself cannot be trodden down into the corruption. It sees nothing like itself in what perishes, except in dim analogies that vanish before its last profound self-meditation—and though it parts with its mortal weeds at last, as with a garment, its life is felt at last to be something not even in contrast with the death of the body, but to flow on like a flood, that we believe continues still to flow after it has entered into the unseen solitude of some boundless desert.

"Behind the cloud of death, Once, I beheld a sun; a sun which gilt That sable cloud, and turn'd it all to gold. How the grave's alter'd! fathomless as hell! A real hell to those who dream'd of heaven, ANNIHILATION! How it yawns before me! Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense, The privilege of angels and of worms, An outcast from existence! and this spirit, This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul, This particle of energy divine, Which travels nature, flies from star to star, And visits gods, and emulates their powers, For ever is extinguish'd."

If intellect be, indeed, doomed utterly to perish, why may not we ask God, in that deep despair which, in that case, must inevitably flow from the consciousness of those powers with which He has at once blessed and cursed us—why that intellect, whose final doom is death, and that final doom within a moment, finds no thought that can satisfy it but that of Life, and no idea in which its flight can be lost but that of Eternity? If this earth were at once the soul's cradle and her tomb, why should that cradle have been hung amid the stars, and that tomb illumined by their eternal light? If, indeed, a child of the clay, was not this earth, with all its plains, forests, mountains, and seas, capacious enough for the dreams of that creature whose course was finally to be extinguished in the darkness of its bosom? What had we to do with planets, and suns, and spheres, "and all the dread magnificence of heaven?" Were we framed merely that we might for a few years rejoice in the beauty of the stars, as in that of the flowers beneath our feet? And ought we to be grateful for those transitory glimpses of the heavens, as for the fading splendour of the earth? But the heavens are not an idle show, hung out for the gaze of that idle dreamer Man. They are the work of the Eternal God, and He has given us power therein to read and to understand His glory. It is not our eyes only that are dazzled by the face of heaven—our souls can comprehend the laws by which that face is overspread by its celestial smiles. The dwelling-place of our spirits is already in the heavens. Well are we entitled to give names unto the stars; for we know the moment of their rising and their setting, and can be with them at every part of their shining journey through the boundless ether. While generations of men have lived, died, and are buried, the astronomer thinks of the golden orb that shone centuries ago within the vision of man, and lifts up his eye undoubting, at the very moment when it again comes glorious on its predicted return. Were the Eternal Being to slacken the course of a planet, or increase even the distance of the fixed stars, the decree would be soon known on earth. Our ignorance is great, because so is our knowledge; for it is from the mightiness and vastness of what we do know that we imagine the illimitable unknown creation. And to whom has God made these revelations? To a worm that next moment is to be in darkness? To a piece of earth momentarily raised into breathing existence? To a soul perishable as the telescope through which it looks into the gates of heaven?

"Oh! star-eyed science, hast thou wander'd there To waft us home—the message of despair?"

No; there is no despair in the gracious light of heaven. As we travel through those orbs, we feel indeed that we have no power, but we feel that we have mighty knowledge. We can create nothing, but we can dimly understand all. It belongs to God only to create, but it is given to man to know—and that knowledge is itself an assurance of immortality.

"Renounce St Evremont, and read St Paul. Ere rapt by miracle, by reason wing'd, His mounting mind made long abode in heaven. This is freethinking, unconfined to parts, To send the soul, on curious travel bent, Through all the provinces of human thought: To dart her flight through the whole sphere of man; Of this vast universe to make the tour; In each recess of space and time, at home; Familiar with their wonders: diving deep; And like a prince of boundless interests there, Still most ambitious of the most remote; To look on truth unbroken, and entire; Truth in the system, the full orb; where truths, By truths enlighten'd and sustain'd, afford An archlike, strong foundation, to support Th' incumbent weight of absolute, complete Conviction: here, the more we press, we stand More firm; who most examine, most believe. Parts, like half-sentences, confound: the whole Conveys the sense, and GOD is understood, Who not in fragments writes to human race. Read his whole volume, sceptic! then reply."

Renounce St Evremont! Ay, and many a Deistical writer of high repute now in the world. But how came they by the truths they did know? Not by the work of their own unassisted faculties—for they lived in a Christian country; they had already been imbued with many high and holy beliefs, of which—had they willed it—they could never have got rid; and to the very last the light which they, in their pride, believed to have emanated from the inner shrine—the penetralia of Philosophy—came from the temples of the living God. They walked all their lives long—- though they knew it not, or strived to forget it—in the light of revelation, which, though often darkened to men's eyes by clouds from earth, was still shining strong in heaven. Had the New Testament never been—think ye that men in their pride, though

"Poor sons of a day,"

could have discerned the necessity of framing for themselves a religion of humility? No. As by pride we are told the angels fell—so by pride man, after his miserable fall, strove to lift up his helpless being from the dust; and though trailing himself, soul and body, along the soiling earth, and glorying in his own corruption, sought to eternise here his very sins by naming the stars of heaven after heroes, conquerors, murderers, violators of the mandates of the Maker whom they had forgotten, or whose attributes they had debased by their own foul imaginations. They believed themselves, in the delusion of their own idolatries, to be "Lords of the world and Demigods of Fame," while they were the slaves of their own sins and their own sinful Deities. Should we have been wiser in our generation than they, but for the Bible? If in moral speculation we hear but little—too little—of the confession of what it owes to the Christian religion—in all the Philosophy, nevertheless, that is pure and of good report, we see that "the dayspring from on high has visited it." In all philosophic inquiry there is, perhaps, a tendency to the soul's exaltation of itself—which the spirit and genius of Christianity subdues. It is not sufficient to say that a natural sense of our own infirmities will do so—for seldom indeed have Deists been lowly-minded. They have talked proudly of humility. Compare their moral meditations with those of our great divines. Their thoughts and feelings are of the "earth earthy;" but when we listen to those others, we feel that their lore has been God-given.

"It is as if an angel shook his wings."

Thus has Christianity glorified Philosophy; its celestial purity is now the air in which intellect breathes. In the liberty and equality of that religion, the soul of the highest Philosopher dare not offend that of the humblest peasant. Nay, it sometimes stands rebuked before it—and the lowly dweller in the hut, or the shieling on the mountain-side, or in the forest, could abash the proudest son of Science, by pointing to the Sermon of our Saviour on the Mount—and saying, "I see my duties to man and God here!" The religious establishments of Christianity, therefore, have done more not only to support the life of virtue, but to show all its springs and sources, than all the works of all the Philosophers who have ever expounded its principles or its practice.

Ha! what has brought thee hither, thou wide-antlered king of the red-deer of Braemar, from the spacious desert of thy hills of storm? Ere now we have beheld thee, or one stately as thee, gazing abroad, from a rock over the heather, to all the points of heaven, and soon as our figure was seen far below, leading the van of the flight thou went'st haughtily away into the wilderness. But now thou glidest softly and slowly through the gloom—no watchfulness, no anxiety in thy large beaming eyes; and, kneeling among the hoary mosses, layest thyself down in unknown fellowship with one of those human creatures, a glance of whose eye, a murmur of whose voice, would send thee belling through the forest, terrified by the flash or sound that bespoke a hostile nature wont to pursue thy race unto death.—The hunter is upon thee—away—away! Sudden as a shooting-star up springs the red-deer, and in the gloom as suddenly is lost.

On—on—on! further into the Forest!—and now a noise as of "thunder heard remote." Waterfalls—hundreds of waterfalls sounding for ever—here—there—everywhere—among the remoter woods. Northwards one fierce torrent dashes through the centre—but no villages—only a few woodmen's shielings will appear on its banks; for it is a torrent of precipices, where the shrubs that hang midway from the cleft are out of the reach of the spray of its cataracts, even when the red Garroch is in flood.

Many hours have we been in the wilderness, and our heart yearns again for the cheerful dwellings of men. Sweet infant streamlet, that flows by our feet without a murmur, so shallow are yet thy waters—wilt thou—short as hitherto has been thy journeying—wilt thou be our guide out into the green valleys and the blue heaven, and the sight once more of the bright sunshine and the fair fleecy clouds? No other clue to the labyrinth do we seek but that small, thin, pure, transparent thread of silver, which neither bush nor brier will break, and which will wind without entanglement round the roots of the old trees, and the bases of the shaggy rocks. As if glad to escape from its savage birthplace, the small rivulet now gives utterance to a song; and sliding down shelving rocks, so low in their mossy verdure as hardly to deserve that name, glides along the almost level lawns, here and there disclosing a little hermit flower. No danger now of its being imbibed wholly by the thirsty earth; for it has a channel and banks of its own—and there is a waterfall! Thenceforwards the rivulet never loses its merry voice—and in an hour it is a torrent. What beautiful symptoms now of its approach to the edge of the Forest! Wandering lights and whispering airs are here visitants—and there the blue eye of a wild violet looking up from the ground! The glades are more frequent—more frequent open spaces cleared by the woodman's axe—and the antique Oak-Tree all alone by itself, itself a grove. The torrent may be called noble now; and that deep blue atmosphere—or say rather, that glimmer of purple air—lies over the Strath in which a great River rolls along to the Sea.

Nothing in all nature more beautiful than the boundary of a great Highland Forest. Masses of rocks thrown together in magnificent confusion, many of them lichened and weather-stained with colours gorgeous as the eyed plumage of the peacock, the lustre of the rainbow, or the barred and clouded glories of setting suns—some towering aloft with trees sown in the crevices by bird or breeze, and checkering the blue sky—others bare, black, abrupt, grim as volcanoes, and shattered as if by the lightning-stroke. Yet interspersed, places of perfect peace—circles among the tall heather, or taller lady-fern, smoothed into velvet, it is there easy to believe, by Fairies' feet—rocks where the undisturbed linnet hangs her nest among the blooming briers, all floating with dew-draperies of honeysuckle alive with bees—glades green as emerald, where lie the lambs in tempered sunshine, or haply a lovely doe reposes with her fawn; and further down, where the fields half belong to the mountain and half to the strath, the smoke of hidden huts—a log-bridge flung across the torrent—a hanging-garden, and a little broomy knoll, with a few laughing children at play, almost as wild-looking as the wanderers of the woods!

Turn your eyes, if you can, from that lovely wilderness, and behold down along a mile-broad Strath, fed by a thousand torrents, floweth the noblest of Scotia's rivers, the strong-sweeping Spey! Let Imagination launch her canoe, and be thou a solitary steersman—for need is none of oar or sail; keep the middle course while all the groves go by, and ere the sun has sunk behind yon golden mountains—nay, mountains they are not, but a transitory pomp of clouds—thou mayest list the roaring, and behold the foaming of the Sea.

Was there ever such a descriptive dream of a coloured engraving of the Cushat, Quest, or Ring-Dove, dreamt before? Poor worn-out and glimmering candle!—whose wick of light and life in a few more flickerings will be no more—what a contrast dost thou present with thyself of eight hours ago! Then, truly, wert thou a shining light, and high aloft in the room-gloaming burned thy clear crest like a star—during its midnight silence, a memento mori of which our spirit was not afraid. Now thou art dying—dying—dead! Our cell is in darkness. But methinks we see another—a purer—a clearer light—one more directly from Heaven. We touch but a spring in a wooden shutter—and lo! the full blaze of day. Oh! why should we mortal beings dread that night-prison—the Grave?



DR KITCHINER.

FIRST COURSE.

It greatly grieved us to think that Dr Kitchiner should have died before our numerous avocations had allowed us an opportunity of dining with him, and subjecting to the test-act of our experienced palate his claims to immortality as a Cook and a Christian. The Doctor had, we know, a dread of Us—not altogether unalloyed by delight; and on the dinner to Us, which he had meditated for nearly a quarter of a century, he knew and felt must have hung his reputation with posterity—his posthumous fame. We understand that there is an unfinished sketch of that Dinner among the Doctor's papers, and that the design is magnificent. Yet, perhaps, it is better for his glory that Kitchiner should have died without attempting to embody in forms the Idea of that Dinner. It might have been a failure. How liable to imperfection the materiel on which he would have had to work! How defective the instruments! Yes—yes!—happier far was it for the good old man that he should have fallen asleep with the undimmed idea of that unattempted Dinner in his imagination, than, vainly contending with the physical evil inherent in matter, have detected the Bishop's foot in the first course, and died of a broken heart!

"Travelling," it is remarked by our poor dear dead Doctor in his "Traveller's Oracle," "is a recreation to be recommended, especially to those whose employments are sedentary—who are engaged in abstract studies—whose minds have been sunk in a state of morbid melancholy by hypochondriasis, or, by what is worst of all, a lack of domestic felicity. Nature, however, will not suffer any sudden transition; and therefore it is improper for people accustomed to a sedentary life to undertake suddenly a journey, during which they will be exposed to long and violent jolting. The case here is the same as if one accustomed to drink water should, all at once, begin to drink wine."

Had the Doctor been alive, we should have asked him what he meant by "long and violent jolting?" Jolting is now absolutely unknown in England, and it is of England the Doctor speaks. No doubt, some occasional jolting might still be discovered among the lanes and cross-roads; but, though violent, it could not be long: and we defy the most sedentary gentleman living to be more so, when sitting in an easy-chair by his parlour fireside, than in a cushioned carriage spinning along the turnpike. But for the trees and hedgerows all galloping by, he would never know that he was himself in motion. The truth is, that no gentleman can be said, nowadays, to lead a sedentary life, who is not constantly travelling before the insensible touch of M'Adam. Look at the first twenty people that come towering by on the roof of a Highflier or a Defiance. What can be more sedentary? Only look at that elderly gentleman with the wig, evidently a parson, jammed in between a brace of buxom virgins on their way down to Doncaster races. Could he be more sedentary, during the psalm, in his own pulpit?

We must object, too, to the illustration of wine and water. Let no man who has been so unfortunate as to be accustomed to drink water, be afraid all at once to begin to drink wine. Let him, without fear or trembling, boldly fill bumpers to the Throne—the Navy—and the Army. These three bumpers will have made him a new man. We have no objection whatever to his drinking, in animated succession, the Apotheosis of the Whigs—the Angler's delight—the cause of Liberty all over the World—Christopher North—Maga the Immortal.—"Nature will not suffer any sudden transition!" Will she not? Look at our water-drinker now! His very own mother could not know him—he has lost all resemblance to his twin-brother, from whom, two short hours ago, you could not have distinguished him but for a slight scar on his brow—so completely is his apparent personal identity lost, that it would be impossible for him to establish an alibi. He sees a figure in the mirror above the chimney-piece, but has not the slightest suspicion that the rosy-faced Bacchanal is himself, the water-drinker; but then he takes care to imitate the manual exercise of the phantom—lifting his glass to his lips at the very same moment, as if they were both moved by one soul.

The Doctor then wisely remarks, that it is "impossible to lay down any rule by which to regulate the number of miles a man may journey in a day, or to prescribe the precise number of ounces he ought to eat; but that nature has given us a very excellent guide in a sense of lassitude, which is as unerring in exercise as the sense of satiety is in eating."

We say the Doctor wisely remarks, yet not altogether wisely; for the rule does not seem to hold always good either in exercise or in eating. What more common than to feel oneself very much fatigued—quite done up as it were, and unwilling to stir hand or foot. Up goes a lark in heaven—tira-lira—or suddenly the breezes blow among the clouds, who forthwith all begin campaigning in the sky, or, quick as lightning, the sunshine in a moment resuscitates a drowned day—or tripping along, all by her happy self, to the sweet accompaniment of her joy-varied songs, the woodman's daughter passes by on her way, with a basket in her hand, to her father in the forest, who has already laid down his axe on the meridian shadow darkening one side of the straight stem of an oak, beneath whose grove might be drawn up five-score of plumed chivalry! Where is your "sense of lassitude now, nature's unerring guide in exercise?" You spring up from the mossy wayside bank, and renewed both in mind and body, "rejoicing in Nature's joy," you continue to pass over houseless moors, by small, single, solitary, straw-roofed huts, through villages gathered round Stone Cross, Elm Grove, or old Monastic Tower, till, unwearied in lith and limb, you see sunset beautifying all the west, and drop in, perhaps, among the hush of the Cottar's Saturday Night—for it is in sweet Scotland we are walking in our dream—and know not, till we have stretched ourselves on a bed of rushes or of heather, that "kind Nature's sweet restorer balmy sleep," is yet among the number of our bosom friends—alas! daily diminishing beneath fate or fortune, the sweeping scythe-stroke of death, or the whisper of some one poor, puny, idle, and unmeaning word!

Then, as to "the sense of satiety in eating." It is produced in us by three platefuls of hotch-potch—and, to the eyes of an ordinary observer, our dinner would seem to be at an end. But no—strictly speaking, it is just going to begin. About an hour ago did we, standing on the very beautiful bridge of Perth, see that identical salmon, with his back-fin just visible above the translucent tide, arrowing up the Tay, bold as a bridegroom, and nothing doubting that he should spend his honeymoon among the gravel-beds of Kinnaird or Moulinearn, or the rocky sofas of the Tummel, or the green marble couches of the Tilt. What has become now of "the sense of satiety in eating?" John—the castors!—mustard—vinegar—cayenne—catchup—pease and potatoes, with a very little butter—the biscuit called "rusk"—and the memory of the hotch-potch is as that of Babylon the Great. That any gigot of mutton, exquisite though much of the five-year-old blackfaced must assuredly be, can, with any rational hopes of success, contend against a haunch of venison, will be asserted by no devout lover of truth. Try the two by alternate platefuls, and you will uniformly find that you leave off after the venison. That "sense of satiety in eating," of which Dr Kitchiner speaks, was produced by the Tay salmon devoured above—but of all the transitory feelings of us transitory creatures on our transit through this transitory world, in which the Doctor asserts nature will not suffer any sudden transitions, the most transitory ever experienced by us is "the sense of satiety in eating." Therefore, we have now seen it for a moment existing on the disappearance of the hotch-potch—dying on the appearance of the Tay salmon—once more noticeable as the last plate of the noble fish melted away—extinguished suddenly by the vision of the venison—again felt for an instant, and but for an instant—for a brace and a half of as fine grouse as ever expanded their voluptuous bosoms to be devoured by hungry love! Sense of satiety in eating indeed! If you please, my dear friend, one of the backs—pungent with the most palate-piercing, stomach-stirring, heart-warming, soul-exalting of all tastes—the wild bitter-sweet.

But the Doctor returns to the subject of travelling—and fatigue. "When one begins," he says, "to be low-spirited and dejected, to yawn often and be drowsy, when the appetite is impaired, when the smallest movement occasions a fluttering of the pulse, when the mouth becomes dry, and is sensible of a bitter taste, seek refreshment and repose, if you wish to PREVENT ILLNESS, already beginning to take place." Why, our dear Doctor, illness in such a deplorable case as this, is just about to end, and death is beginning to take place. Thank Heaven, it is a condition to which we do not remember having very nearly approximated! Who ever saw us yawn? or drowsy? or with our appetite impaired, except on the withdrawal of the table-cloth? or low-spirited, but when the Glenlivet was at ebb? Who dare declare that he ever saw our mouth dry? or sensible of a bitter taste, since we gave over munching rowans? Put your ringer on our wrist, at any moment you choose, from June to January, from January to June, and by its pulsation you may rectify Harrison's or Kendal's chronometer.

But the Doctor proceeds—"By raising the temperature of my room to about 65 deg., a broth diet, and taking a tea-spoonful of Epsom salts in half a pint of warm water, and repeating it every half-hour till it moves the bowels twice or thrice, and retiring to rest an hour or two sooner than usual, I have often very speedily got rid of colds, &c."

Why, there may be no great harm in acting as above; although we should far rather recommend a screed of the Epsoms. A tea-spoonful of Epsom salts in half a pint of warm water, reminds one, somehow or other, of Tims. A small matter works a Cockney. It is not so easy—and that the Cockneys well know—to move the bowels of old Christopher North. We do not believe that a tea-spoonful of anything in this world would have any serious effect on old "Ironsides." We should have no hesitation in backing him against so much corrosive sublimate. He would dine out on the day he had bolted that quantity of arsenic;—and would, we verily believe, rise triumphant from a tea-spoonful of Prussic acid.

We could mention a thousand cures for "colds, et cetera," more efficacious than a broth diet, a warm room, a tea-spoonful of Epsom salts, or early roosting. What say you, our dear Dean, to half-a-dozen tumblers of hot toddy? Your share of a brown jug to the same amount? Or an equal quantity, in its gradual decrease revealing deeper and deeper still the romantic Welsh scenery of the Devil's Punch-Bowl? Adde tot small-bearded oysters, all redolent of the salt-sea foam, and worthy, as they stud the Ambrosial brodd, to be licked off all at once by the lambent tongue of Neptune. That antiquated calumny against the character of toasted cheese—that, forsooth, it is indigestible—has been trampled under the march of mind; and therefore, you may tuck in a pound of double Gloucester. Other patients, labouring under catarrh, may, very possibly, prefer the roasted how-towdy—or the green goose from his first stubble-field—or why not, by way of a little variety, a roasted maukin, midway between hare and leveret, tempting as maiden between woman and girl, or, as the Eastern poet says, between a frock and a gown? Go to bed—no need of warming-pans—about a quarter before one;—you will not hear that small hour strike—you will sleep sound till sunrise, sound as the Black Stone at Scone, on which the Kings of Scotland were crowned of old. And if you contrive to carry a cold about you next day, you deserve to be sent to Coventry by all sensible people—and may, if you choose, begin taking, with Tims, a tea-spoonful of Epsom salts in a half-pint of warm water every half-hour, till it moves your bowels twice or thrice; but if you do, be your sex, politics, or religion what they may, never shall ye be suffered to contribute even a bit of Balaam to the Magazine.

The Doctor then treats of the best Season for travelling, and very judiciously observes that it is during these months when there is no occasion for a fire—that is, just before and after the extreme heat. In winter, Dr Kitchiner, who was a man of extraordinary powers of observation, observed, "that the ways are generally bad, and often dangerous, especially in hilly countries, by reason of the snow and ice. The days are short—a traveller comes late to his lodging, and is often forced to rise before the sun in the morning—besides, the country looks dismal—nature is, as it were, half dead. The summer corrects all these inconveniences." Paradoxical as this doctrine may at first sight appear—yet we have verified it by experience—having for many years found, without meeting with one single exception, that the fine, long, warm days of summer are an agreeable and infallible corrective of the inconveniences attending the foul, short, cold days of winter—a season which is surly without being sincere, blustering rather than bold—an intolerable bore—always pretending to be taking his leave, yet domiciliating himself in another man's house for weeks together—and, to be plain, a season so regardless of truth, that nobody believes him till frost has hung an ice-padlock on his mouth, and his many-river'd voice is dumb under the wreathed snows.

"Cleanliness when travelling," observes the Doctor, "is doubly necessary; to sponge the body every morning with tepid water, and then rub it dry with a rough towel, will greatly contribute to preserve health. To put the feet into warm water for a couple of minutes just before going to bed, is very refreshing, and inviting to sleep; for promoting tranquillity, both mental and corporeal, a clean skin may be regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience."

Far be it from us to seek to impugn such doctrine. A dirty dog is a nuisance not to be borne. But here the question arises—who—what—is a dirty dog? Now there are men (no women) naturally—necessarily—dirty. They are not dirty by chance—or accident—say twice or thrice per diem; but they are always dirty—at all times and in all places—and never and nowhere more disgustingly so than when figged out for going to church. It is in the skin, in the blood—in the flesh, and in the bone—that with such the disease of dirt more especially lies. We beg pardon—no less in the hair. Now, such persons do not know that they are dirty—that they are unclean beasts. On the contrary, they often think themselves pinks of purity—incarnations of carnations—impersonations of moss-roses—the spiritual essences of lilies, "imparadised in form of that sweet flesh." Now, were such persons to change their linen every half-hour, night and day, that is, were they to put on forty-eight clean shirts in the twenty-four hours—and it might not be reasonable, perhaps, to demand more of them under a government somewhat too Whiggish—yet though we cheerfully grant that one and all of the shirts would be dirty, we as sulkily deny that at any given moment from sunrise to sunset, and over again, the wearer would be clean. He would be just every whit and bit as dirty as if he had known but one single shirt all his life—and firmly believed his to be the only shirt in the universe.

Men again, on the other hand, there are—and, thank God, in great numbers—who are naturally so clean, that we defy you to make them bona fide dirty. You may as well drive down a duck into a dirty puddle, and expect lasting stains on its pretty plumage. Pope says the same thing of swans—that is, Poets—when speaking of Aaron Hill diving into the ditch,—

"He bears no tokens of the sabler streams, But soars far off among the swans of Thames."

Pleasant people of this kind of constitution you see going about of a morning rather in dishabille—hair uncombed haply—face and hands even unwashed—and shirt with a somewhat day-before-yesterdayish hue. Yet are they, so far from being dirty, at once felt, seen, and smelt, to be among the very cleanest of her Majesty's subjects. The moment you shake hands with them, you feel in the firm flesh of palm and finger that their heart's-blood circulates purely and freely from the point of the highest hair on the apex of the pericranium, to the edge of the nail on the large toe of the right foot. Their eyes are as clear as unclouded skies—the apples on their cheeks are like those on the tree—what need, in either case, of rubbing off dust or dew with a towel? What though, from sleeping without a nightcap, their hair may be a little toozy? It is not dim—dull—oily—like half-withered sea-weeds! It will soon comb itself with the fingers of the west wind—that tent-like tree its toilette—its mirror that pool of the clear-flowing Tweed.

Some streams, just like some men, are always dirty—you cannot possibly tell why—unproducible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet weather. In dry, the oozy wretches are weeping among the slippery weeds, infested with eels and powheads. In wet, they are like so many common-sewers, strewn with dead cats and broken crockery, and threatening with their fierce fulzie to pollute the sea. The sweet, soft, pure rains, soon as they touch the flood are changed into filth. The sun sees his face in one of the pools, and is terrified out of his senses. He shines no more that day. The clouds have no notion of being caricatured, and the trees keep cautiously away from the brink of such streams—save, perchance, now and then, here and there, a weak well-meaning willow—a thing of shreds and patches—its leafless wands covered with bits of old worsted stockings, crowns of hats, a bauchle (see Dr Jamieson), and the remains of a pair of corduroy breeches, long hereditary in the family of the Blood-Royal of the Yetholm Gypsies.

Some streams, just like some men, are always clean—you cannot well tell why—producible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet weather. In dry, the pearly waters are singing among the freshened flowers—so that the trout, if he chooses, may breakfast upon bees. In wet, they grow, it is true, dark and drumly—and at midnight, when heaven's candles are put out, loud and oft the angry spirit of the water shrieks. But Aurora beholds her face in the clarified pools and shallows—far and wide glittering with silver or with gold. All the banks and braes reappear green as emerald from the subsiding current—into which look with the eye of an angler, and you behold a Fish—a twenty-pounder—steadying himself—like an uncertain shadow; and oh! for George Scougal's leister to strike him through the spine! Yes, these are the images of trees far down, as if in another world; and, whether you look up or look down, alike in all its blue, braided, and unbounded beauty, is the morning sky!

Irishmen are generally men of the kind thus illustrated—generally sweet—at least in their own green Isle; and that was the best argument in favour of Catholic Emancipation.—So are Scotsmen. Whereas, blindfolded, take a London, Edinburgh, or Glasgow Cockney's hand, immediately after it has been washed and scented, and put it to your nose—and you will begin to be apprehensive that some practical wit has substituted in lieu of the sonnet-scribbling bunch of little fetid fives, the body of some chicken-butcher of a weasel, that died of the plague. We have seen as much of what is most ignorantly and malignantly denominated dirt—one week's earth—washed off the feet of a pretty young girl on a Saturday night, at a single sitting in the little rivulet that runs almost round about her father's hut, as would have served him to raise his mignonette in, or his crop of cresses. How beautifully glowed the crimson-snow of the singing creature's new-washed feet! First, as they shone almost motionless beneath the lucid waters—and then, fearless of the hard bent and rough roots of the heather, bore the almost alarming Fairy dancing away from the eyes of the stranger; till the courteous spirit that reigns over all the Highland wilds arrested her steps knee-deep in bloom, and bade her bow her auburn head, as, blushing, she faltered forth, in her sweet Gaelic accents, a welcome that thrilled like a blessing through the heart of the Sassenach, nearly benighted, and wearied sore with the fifty glorious mountain-miles that intermit at times their frowning forests from the corries of Cruachan to the cliffs of Cairngorm.

It will be seen from these hurried remarks, that there is more truth than perhaps Dr Kitchiner was aware of in his apothegm—"that a clean skin may be regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience." But the Doctor had but a very imperfect notion of the meaning of the words "clean skin"—his observation being not even skin-deep. A wash-hand basin, a bit of soap, and a coarse towel, he thought would give a Cockney on Ludgate-hill a clean skin—just as many good people think that a Bible, a prayer-book, and a long sermon, can give a clear conscience to a criminal in Newgate. The cause of the evil, in both cases, lies too deep for tears. Millions of men and women pass through nature to eternity clean-skinned and pious—with slight expense either in soap or sermons; while millions more, with much week-day bodily scrubbing, and much Sabbath spiritual sanctification, are held in bad odour here, while they live, by those who happen to sit near them, and finally go out like the stink of a candle.

Never stir, quoth the Doctor, "without paper, pen, and ink, and a note-book in your pocket. Notes made by pencils are easily obliterated by the motion of travelling. Commit to paper whatever you see, hear, or read, that is remarkable, with your sensations on observing it—do this upon the spot, if possible, at the moment it first strikes you—at all events do not delay it beyond the first convenient opportunity."

Suppose all people behaved in this way—and what an absurd world we should have of it—every man, woman, and child who could write, jotting away at their note-books! This committing to paper of whatever you see, hear, or read, has, among many other bad effects, this one especially—in a few years it reduces you to a state of idiocy. The memory of all men who commit to paper becomes regularly extinct, we have observed, about the age of thirty. Now, although the Memory does not bear a very brilliant reputation among the faculties, a man finds himself very much at a stand who is unprovided with one; for the Imagination, the Judgment, and the Reason walk off in search of the Memory—each in opposite directions; and the Mind, left at home by itself, is in a very awkward predicament—gets comatose—snores loudly, and expires. For our own part, we would much rather lose our Imagination and our Judgment—nay, our very Reason itself—than our Memory—provided we were suffered to retain a little Feeling and a little Fancy. Committers to paper forget that the Memory is a tablet, or they carelessly fling that mysterious tablet away, soft as wax to receive impressions, and harder than adamant to retain, and put their trust in a bit of calf-skin, or a bundle of old rags.

The observer who instantly jots down every object he sees, never, properly speaking, saw an object in his life. There has always been in the creature's mind a feeling alien to that which the object would, of its pure self, have excited. The very preservation of a sort of style in the creature's remarks, costs him an effort which disables him from understanding what is before him, by dividing the small attention of which he might have been capable, between the jotting, the jotter, and the thing jotted. Then your committer to paper of whatever he sees, hears, or reads, forgets or has never known that all real knowledge, either of men or things, must be gathered up by operations which are in their very being spontaneous and free—the mind being even unconscious of them as they are going on—while the edifice has all the time been silently rising up under the unintermitting labours of those silent workers—Thoughts; and is finally seen, not without wonder, by the Mind or Soul itself, which, gentle reader, was all along Architect and Foreman—had not only originally planned, but had even daily superintended the building of the Temple.

Were Dr Kitchiner not dead, we should just put to him this simple question—Could you, Doctor, not recollect all the dishes of the most various dinner at which you ever assisted, down to the obscurest kidney, without committing every item to your note-book? Yes, Doctor, you could. Well, then, all the universe is but one great dinner. Heaven and earth, what a show of dishes! From a sun to a salad—a moon to a mutton chop—a comet to a curry—a planet to a pate! What gross ingratitude to the Giver of the feast, not to be able, with the memory he has given us, to remember his bounties! It is true, what the Doctor says, that notes made with pencils are easily obliterated by the motion of travelling; but then, Doctor, notes made by the Mind herself, with the Ruby Pen Nature gives all her children who have also discourse of Reason, are with the slightest touch, easilier far than glass by the diamond, traced on the tablets that disease alone seems to deface, death alone to break, but which, ineffaceable, and not to be broken, shall with all their miscellaneous inscriptions endure for ever—yea, even to the great Day of Judgment.

If men will but look and listen, and feel and think—they will never forget anything worth being remembered. Do we forget "our children, that to our eyes are dearer than the sun?" Do we forget our wives—unreasonable and almost downright disagreeable as they sometimes will be? Do we forget our triumphs—our defeats—our ecstasies, our agonies—the face of a dear friend, or "dearest foe"—the ghost-like voice of conscience at midnight arraigning us of crimes—or her seraph hymn, at which the gates of heaven seem to expand for us that we may enter in among the white-robed spirits, and

"Summer high in bliss upon the hills of God?"

What are all the jottings that ever were jotted down on his jot-book, by the most inveterate jotter that ever reached a raven age, in comparison with the Library of Useful Knowledge, that every man—who is a man—carries within the Ratcliffe—the Bodleian of his own breast?

What are you grinning at in the corner there, you little ugly Beelzebub of a Printer's Devil? and have you dropped through a seam in the ceiling? More copy do you want? There, you imp—vanished like a thought!



DR KITCHINER.

SECOND COURSE.

Above all things, continues Dr Kitchiner, "avoid travelling through the night, which, by interrupting sleep, and exposing the body to the night air, is always prejudicial, even in the mildest weather, and to the strongest constitutions." Pray, Doctor, what ails you at the night air? If the night air be, even in the mildest weather, prejudicial to the strongest constitutions, what do you think becomes of the cattle on a thousand hills? Why don't all the bulls in Bashan die of the asthma—or look interesting by moonlight in a galloping consumption? Nay, if the night air be so very fatal, how do you account for the longevity of owls? Have you never read of the Chaldean shepherds watching the courses of the stars? Or, to come nearer our own times, do you not know that every blessed night throughout the year, thousands of young lads and lasses meet, either beneath the milk-white thorn—or on the lea-rig, although the night be ne'er sae wet, and they be ne'er sae weary—or under a rock on the hill—or—no uncommon case—beneath a frozen stack—not of chimneys, but of corn-sheaves—or on a couch of snow—and that they are all as warm as so many pies; while, instead of feeling what you call "the lack of vigour attendant on the loss of sleep, which is as enfeebling and as distressing as the languor that attends the want of food," they are, to use a homely Scotch expression, "neither to haud nor bind;" the eyes of the young lads being all as brisk, bold, and bright as the stars in Charles's Wain, while those of the young lasses shine with a soft, faint, obscure, but beautiful lustre, like the dewy Pleiades, over which nature has insensibly been breathing a mist almost waving and wavering into a veil of clouds?

Have you, our dear Doctor, no compassion for those unfortunate blades, who, nolentes-volentes, must remain out perennially all night—we mean the blades of grass, and also the flowers? Their constitutions seem often far from strong; and shut your eyes on a frosty night, and you will hear them—we have done so many million times—shivering, ay, absolutely shivering under their coat of hoar-frost! If the night air be indeed what Dr Kitchiner has declared it to be—Lord have mercy on the vegetable world! What agonies in that field of turnips! Alas, poor Swedes! The imagination recoils from the condition of that club of winter cabbages—and of what materials, pray, must the heart of that man be made, who could think but for a moment on the case of those carrots, without bursting into a flood of tears!

The Doctor avers that the firm health and fine spirits of persons who live in the country, are not more from breathing a purer air, than from enjoying plenty of sound sleep; and the most distressing misery of "this Elysium of bricks and mortar," is the rareness with which we enjoy "the sweets of a slumber unbroke."

Doctor—in the first place, it is somewhat doubtful whether or not persons who live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits than persons who live in towns—even in London. What kind of persons do you mean? You must not be allowed to select some dozen or two of the hairiest among the curates—a few chosen rectors whose faces have been but lately elevated to the purple—a team of prebends issuing sleek from their golden stalls—a picked bishop—a sacred band the elite of the squirearchy—with a corresponding sprinkling of superior noblemen from lords to dukes—and then to compare them, cheek by jowl, with an equal number of external objects taken from the common run of Cockneys. This, Doctor, is manifestly what you are ettling at—but you must clap your hand, Doctor, without discrimination, on the great body of the rural population of England, male and female, and take whatever comes first—be it a poor, wrinkled, toothless, blear-eyed, palsied hag, tottering horizontally on a staff, under the load of a premature old age (for she is not yet fifty), brought on by annual rheumatism and perennial poverty;—Be it a young, ugly, unmarried woman, far advanced in pregnancy, and sullenly trooping to the alehouse, to meet the overseer of the parish poor, who, enraged with the unborn bastard, is about to force the parish bully to marry the parish prostitute;—Be it a landlord of a rural inn, with pig eyes peering over his ruby cheeks, the whole machinery of his mouth so deranged by tippling that he simultaneously snorts, stutters, slavers and snores—pot-bellied—shanked like a spindle-strae—and bidding fair to be buried on or before Saturday week;—Be it a half-drunk horse-cowper, swinging to and fro in a wraprascal on a bit of broken-down blood that once won a fifty, every sentence, however short, having but two intelligible words, an oath and a lie—his heart rotten with falsehood, and his bowels burned up with brandy, so that sudden death may pull him from his saddle before he put spurs to his sporting filly that she may bilk the turnpike man, and carry him more speedily home to beat or murder his poor, pale, industrious char-woman of a wife;—Be it—not a beggar, for beggars are prohibited from this parish—but a pauper in the sulks, dying on her pittance from the poor-rates, which altogether amount in merry England but to about the paltry sum of, more or less, six millions a-year—her son, all the while, being in a thriving way as a general merchant in the capital of the parish, and with clear profits from his business of L300 per annum, yet suffering the mother that bore him, and suckled him, and washed his childish hands, and combed the bumpkin's hair, and gave him Epsoms in a cup when her dear Johnny-raw had the belly-ache, to go down, step by step, as surely and as obviously as one is seen going down a stair with a feeble hold of the banisters, and stumbling every foot-fall down that other flight of steps that consist of flags that are mortal damp and mortal cold, and lead to nothing but a parcel of rotten planks, and overhead a vault dripping with perpetual moisture, green and slobbery, such as toads delight in crawling heavily through with now and then a bloated leap, and hideous things more worm-like, that go wriggling briskly in and out among the refuse of the coffins, and are heard, by imagination at least, to emit faint angry sounds, because the light of day has hurt their eyes, and the air from the upper world weakened the rank savoury smell of corruption, clothing, as with a pall, all the inside walls of the tombs;—Be it a man yet in the prime of life as to years, six feet and an inch high, and measuring round the chest forty-eight inches (which is more, reader, than thou dost by six, we bet a sovereign, member although thou even be'st of the Edinburgh Six Feet Club), to whom Washington Irving's Jack Tibbuts was but a Tims—but then ever so many gamekeepers met him all alone in my lord's pheasant preserve, and though two of them died within the month, two within the year, and two are now in the workhouse—one a mere idiot, and the other a madman—both shadows—so terribly were their bodies mauled, and so sorely were their skulls fractured;—yet the poacher was taken, tried, hulked; and there he sits now, sunning himself on a bank by the edge of the wood whose haunts he must thread no more—for the keepers were grim bone-breakers enough in their way—and when they had gotten him on his back, one gouged him like a Yankee, and the other bit off his nose like a Bolton Trotter—and one smashed his os frontis with the nailed heel of a two-pound wooden clog, a Preston Purrer;—so that Master Allonby is now far from being a beauty, with a face of that description attached to a head wagging from side to side under a powerful palsy, while the Mandarin drinks damnation to the Lord of the Manor in a horn of eleemosynary ale, handed to him by the village blacksmith, in days of old not the worst of the gang, and who, but for a stupid jury, a merciful judge, and something like prevarication in the circumstantial evidence, would have been hanged for a murderer—as he was—dissected, and hung in chains;—Be it a red-haired woman, with a pug nose, small fiery eyes, high cheekbones, bulging lips, and teeth like swine-tusks,—bearded—flat-breasted as a man—tall, scambling in her gait, but swift, and full of wild motions in her weather-withered arms, all starting with sinews like whipcord—the Pedestrian Post to and fro the market town twelve miles off—and so powerful a pugilist that she hit Grace Maddox senseless in seven minutes—tried before she was eighteen for child-murder, but not hanged, although the man-child, of which the drab was self-delivered in a ditch, was found with blue finger-marks on its windpipe, bloody mouth, and eyes forced out of their sockets, buried in the dunghill behind her father's hut—not hanged, because a surgeon, originally bred a sow-gelder, swore that he believed the mother had unconsciously destroyed her offspring in the throes of travail, if indeed it had ever breathed, for the lungs would not swim, he swore, in a basin of water—so the incestuous murderess was let loose; her brother got hanged in due time after the mutiny at the Nore—and her father, the fishmonger—why, he went red raving mad as if a dog had bitten him—and died, as the same surgeon and sow-gelder averred, of the hydrophobia, foaming at the mouth, gnashing his teeth, and some said cursing, but that was a calumny, for something seemed to be the matter with his tongue, and he could not speak, only splutter—nobody venturing, except his amiable daughter—and in that particular act of filial affection she was amiable—to hold in the article of death the old man's head;—Be it that moping idiot that would sit, were she suffered, on, on, on—night and day for ever, on the self-same spot, whatever that spot might be on which she happened to squat at morning, mound, wall, or stone—motionless, dumb, and, as a stranger would think, also blind, for the eyelids are still shut—never opened in sun or storm;—yet that figure—that which is now, and has for years been, an utter and hopeless idiot, was once a gay, laughing, dancing, singing girl, whose blue eyes seemed full of light, whether they looked on earth or heaven, the flowers or the stars—her sweetheart—a rational young man, it would appear—having leapt out upon her suddenly, as she was passing through the churchyard at night, from behind a tombstone, in a sack which she, having little time for consideration, and being naturally superstitious, supposed to be a shroud, and the wearer thereof, who was an active stripling of sound flesh and blood, to be a ghost or skeleton, all one horrid rattle of bones; so that the trick succeeded far beyond the most sanguine expectation of the Tailor who played the principal part—and sense, feeling, memory, imagination, and reason, were all felled by one blow of fear—as butcher felleth ox—while by one of those mysteries, which neither we, nor you, nor anybody else, can understand, life remained not only unimpaired, but even invigorated; and there she sits, like a clock wound up to go a certain time, the machinery of which being good, has not been altogether deranged by the shock that sorely cracked the case, and will work till the chain is run down, and then it will tick no more;—Be it that tall, fair, lovely girl, so thin and attenuated that all wonder she can walk by herself—that she is not blown away even by the gentle summer breeze that wooes the hectic of her cheek—dying all see—and none better than her poor old mother—and yet herself thoughtless of the coming doom, and cheerful as a nest-building bird—while her lover, too deep in despair to be betrayed into tears, as he carries her to her couch, each successive day feels the dear and dreadful burden lighter and lighter in his arms. Small strength will it need to support her bier! The coffin, as if empty, will be lowered unfelt by the hands that hold those rueful cords!

In mercy to our readers and ourselves, we shall endeavour to prevent ourselves from pursuing this argument any further—and perhaps quite enough has been said to show that Dr Kitchiner's assertion, that persons who live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits than the inhabitants of towns—is exceedingly problematical. But even admitting the fact to be as the Doctor has stated it, we do not think he has attributed the phenomenon to the right cause. He attributes it to "their enjoying plenty of sound sleep." The worthy Doctor is entirely out in his conjecture. The working classes in the country enjoy, we don't doubt it, sound sleep—but not plenty of it. They have but a short allowance of sleep—and whether it be sound or not, depends chiefly on themselves; while as to the noises in towns and cities, they are nothing to what one hears in the country—unless, indeed, you perversely prefer private lodgings at a pewterer's. Did we wish to be personal, we could name a single waterfall who, even in dry weather, keeps all the visitors from town awake within a circle of four miles diameter; and in wet weather, not only keeps them all awake, but impresses them with a constantly recurring conviction during the hours of night, that there is something seriously amiss about the foundation of the river, and that the whole parish is about to be overflowed, up to the battlements of the old castle that over-looks the linn. Then, on another point, we are certain—namely, that rural thunder is many hundred times more powerful than villatic. London porter is above admiration—but London thunder below contempt. An ordinary hackney-coach beats it hollow. But, my faith! a thunderstorm in the country—especially if it be mountainous, with a few fine Woods and Forests, makes you inevitably think of that land from whose bourne no traveller returns; and even our town readers will acknowledge that country thunder much more frequently proves mortal than the thunder you meet with in cities. In the country, few thunderstorms are contented to pass over without killing at least one horse, some milch-kine, half-a-dozen sucking pigs or turkeys, an old woman or two, perhaps the Minister of the parish, a man about forty, name unknown, and a nursing mother at the ingle, the child escaping with singed eyebrows, and a singular black mark on one of its great toes. We say nothing of the numbers stupified, who awake the day after, as from a dream, with strange pains in their heads, and not altogether sure about the names or countenances of the somewhat unaccountable people whom they see variously employed about the premises, and making themselves pretty much at home. In towns, not one thunderstorm in fifty that performs an exploit more magnanimous than knocking down an old wife from a chimney-top—singeing a pair of worsted stockings that, knit in an ill-starred hour, when the sun had entered Aries, had been hung out to dry on a line in the backyard, or garden as it is called—or cutting a few inches off the tail of an old Whig weathercock that for years had been pecking the eyes out of all the airts the wind can blaw, greedy of some still higher preferment.

Our dear deceased author proceeds to tell his Traveller how to eat and drink; and remarks, "that people are apt to imagine that they may indulge a little more in high living when on a journey. Travelling itself, however, acts as a stimulus; therefore less nourishment is required than in a state of rest. What you might not consider intemperate at home, may occasion violent irritation, fatal inflammations, &c., in situations where you are least able to obtain medical assistance."

All this is very loosely stated, and must be set to rights. If you shut yourself up for some fifty hours or so in a mail-coach, that keeps wheeling along at the rate of ten miles an hour, and changes horses in half a minute, certainly for obvious reasons the less you eat and drink the better; and perhaps an hourly hundred drops of laudanum, or equivalent grain of opium, would be advisable, so that the transit from London to Edinburgh might be performed in a phantasma. But the free agent ought to live well on his travels—some degrees better, without doubt, than when at home. People seldom live very well at home. There is always something requiring to be eaten up, that it may not be lost, which destroys the soothing and satisfactory symmetry of an unexceptionable dinner. We have detected the same duck through many unprincipled disguises, playing a different part in the farce of domestic economy, with a versatility hardly to have been expected in one of the most generally despised of the web-footed tribe. When travelling at one's own sweet will, one feeds at a different inn every meal; and, except when the coincidence of circumstances is against you, there is an agreeable variety both in the natural and artificial disposition of the dishes. True that travelling may act as a stimulus—but false that therefore less nourishment is required. Would Dr Kitchiner, if now alive, presume to say that it was right for him, who had sat all day with his feet on the fender, to gobble up, at six o'clock of the afternoon, as enormous a dinner as we who had walked since sunrise forty or fifty miles? Because our stimulus had been greater, was our nourishment to be less? We don't care a curse about stimulus. What we want, in such a case, is lots of fresh food; and we hold that, under such circumstances, a man with a sound Tory Church-and-King stomach and constitution cannot over-eat himself—no, not for his immortal soul.

We had almost forgot to take the deceased Doctor to task for one of the most free-and-easy suggestions ever made to the ill-disposed, how to disturb and destroy the domestic happiness of eminent literary characters. "An introduction to eminent authors may be obtained," quoth he slyly, "from the booksellers who publish their works."

The booksellers who publish the works of eminent authors have rather more common sense and feeling, it is to be hoped, than this comes to—and know better what is the province of their profession. Any one man may, if he chooses, give any other man an introduction to any third man in this world. Thus the tailor of any eminent author—or his bookseller—or his parish minister—or his butcher—or his baker—or his "man of business"—or his house-builder—may, one and all, give such travellers as Dr Kitchiner and others, letters of introduction to the said eminent author in prose or verse. This, we have heard, is sometimes done—but fortunately we cannot speak from experience, not being ourselves an eminent author. The more general the intercourse between men of taste, feeling, cultivation, learning, genius, the better; but that intercourse should be brought about freely and of its own accord, as fortunate circumstances permit, and there should be no impertinent interference of selfish or benevolent go-betweens. It would seem that Dr Kitchiner thought the commonest traveller, one who was almost, as it were, bordering on a Bagman, had nothing to do but call on the publisher of any great writer, and get a free admission into his house. Had the Doctor not been dead, we should have given him a severe rowing and blowing-up for this vulgar folly; but as he is dead, we have only to hope that the readers of the Oracle who intend to travel will not degrade themselves, and disgust "authors of eminence," by thrusting their ugly or comely faces—both are equally odious—into the privacy of gentlemen who have done nothing to exclude themselves from the protection of the laws of civilised society—or subject their fire-sides to be infested by one-half of the curious men of the country, two-thirds of the clever, and all the blockheads.



DR KITCHINER.

THIRD COURSE.

Having thus briefly instructed travellers how to get a look at Lions, the Doctor suddenly exclaims—"IMPRIMIS, BEWARE OF DOGS!" "There have," he says, "been many arguments, pro and con, on the dreadful disease their bite produces—it is enough to prove that multitudes of men, women, and children have died in consequence of having been bitten by dogs. What does it matter whether they were the victims of bodily disease or mental irritation? The life of the most humble human being is of more value than all the dogs in the world—dare the most brutal cynic say otherwise?"

Dr Kitchiner always travelled, it appears, in chaises; and a chaise of one kind or other he recommends to all his brethren of mankind. Why, then, this intense fear of the canine species? Who ever saw a mad dog leap into the mail-coach, or even a gig? The creature, when so afflicted, hangs his head, and goes snapping right and left at pedestrians. Poor people like us, who must walk, may well fear hydrophobia—though, thank Heaven, we have never, during the course of a tolerably long and well-spent life, been so much as once bitten by "the rabid animal!" But what have rich authors, who loll in carriages, to dread from dogs, who always go on foot? We cannot credit the very sweeping assertion, that multitudes of men, women, and children have died in consequence of being bitten by dogs. Even the newspapers do not run up the amount above a dozen per annum, from which you may safely deduct two-thirds. Now, four men, women, and children, are not "a multitude." Of those four, we may set down two as problematical—having died, it is true, in, but not of hydrophobia—states of mind and body wide as the poles asunder. He who drinks two bottles of pure spirit every day he buttons and unbuttons his breeches, generally dies in a state of hydrophobia—for he abhorred water, and knew instinctively the jug containing that insipid element. But he never dies at all of hydrophobia, there being evidence to prove that for twenty years he had drank nothing but brandy. Suppose we are driven to confess the other two—why, one of them was an old woman of eighty, who was dying as fast as she could hobble, at the very time she thought herself bitten—and the other a nine-year-old brat, in hooping-cough and measles, who, had there not been such a quadruped as a dog created, would have worried itself to death before evening, so lamentably had its education been neglected, and so dangerous an accomplishment is an impish temper. The twelve cases for the year of that most horrible disease, hydrophobia, have, we flatter ourselves, been satisfactorily disposed of—eight of the alleged deceased being at this moment engaged at various handicrafts, on low wages indeed, but still such as enable the industrious to live—two having died of drinking—one of extreme old age, and one of a complication of complaints incident to childhood, their violence having, in this particular instance, been aggravated by neglect and devilish temper. Where now the "multitude" of men, women, and children, who have died in consequence of being bitten by mad dogs?

Gentle reader—a mad dog is a bugbear; we have walked many hundred times the diameter and the circumference of this our habitable globe—along all roads, public and private—with stiles or turnpikes—metropolitan streets and suburban paths—and at all seasons of the revolving year and day; but never, as we padded the hoof along, met we nor were over-taken by greyhound, mastiff, or cur, in a state of hydrophobia. We have many million times seen them with their tongues lolling out about a yard—their sides panting—flag struck—and the whole dog showing symptoms of severe distress. That such travellers were not mad we do not assert—they may have been mad—but they certainly were fatigued; and the difference, we hope, is often considerable between weariness and insanity. Dr Kitchiner, had he seen such dogs as we have seen, would have fainted on the spot. He would have raised the country against the harmless jog-trotter. Pitchforks would have gleamed in the setting sun, and the flower of the agricultural youth of a midland county, forming a levy en masse, would have offered battle to a turnspit. The Doctor, sitting in his coach—like Napoleon at Waterloo—would have cried "Tout est perdu—sauve, qui peut!"—and re-galloping to a provincial town, would have found refuge under the gateway of the Hen and Chickens.

"The life of the most humble human being," quoth the Doctor, "is of more value than all the dogs in the world—dare the most brutal cynic say otherwise?"

This question is not put to us; for so far from being the most brutal Cynic, we do not belong to the Cynic school at all—being an Eclectic, and our philosophy composed chiefly of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Peripateticism—with a fine, pure, clear, bold dash of Platonicism. The most brutal Cynic, if now alive and snarling, must therefore answer for himself—while we tell the Doctor, that so far from holding, with him, that the life of the most humble human being is of more value than all the dogs in the world, we, on the contrary, verily believe that there is many a humble dog whose life far transcends in value the lives of many men, women, and children. Whether or not dogs have souls, is a question in philosophy never yet solved; although we have ourselves no doubt on the subject, and firmly believe that they have souls. But the question, as put by the Doctor, is not about souls, but about lives; and as the human soul does not die when the human body does, the death of an old woman, middle-aged man, or young child, is no such very great calamity, either to themselves or to the world. Better, perhaps, that all the dogs now alive should be massacred, to prevent hydrophobia, than that a human soul should be lost;—but not a single human soul is going to be lost, although the whole canine species should become insane to-morrow. Now, would the Doctor have laid one hand on his heart and the other on his Bible, and taken a solemn oath that rather than that one old woman of a century and a quarter should suddenly be cut off by the bite of a mad dog, he would have signed the warrant of execution of all the packs of harriers and fox-hounds, all the pointers, spaniels, setters, and cockers, all the stag-hounds, greyhounds, and lurchers, all the Newfoundlanders, shepherd-dogs, mastiffs, bull-dogs, and terriers, the infinite generation of mongrels and crosses included, in Great Britain and Ireland—to say nothing of the sledge-drawers in Kamtschatka, and in the realms slow-moving near the Pole? To clench the argument at once—What are all the old women in Europe, one-half of the men, and one-third of the children, when compared, in value, with any one of Christopher North's Newfoundland dogs—Fro—Bronte—or O'Bronte? Finally, does he include in his sweeping condemnation the whole brute creation, lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, camelopardales, zebras, quaggas, cattle, horses, asses, mules, cats, the ichneumon, cranes, storks, cocks-of-the-wood, geese, and how-towdies?

"Semi-drowning in the sea"—he continues—"and all the pretended specifics, are mere delusions—there is no real remedy but cutting the part out immediately. If the bite be near a blood-vessel, that cannot always be done, nor when done, however well done, will it always prevent the miserable victim from dying the most dreadful of deaths. Well might St Paul tell us to 'beware of dogs.' First Epistle to Philippians, chap. iii., v. 2."

Semi-drowning in the sea is, we grant, a bad specific, and difficult to be administered. It is not possible to tell, a priori, how much drowning any particular patient can bear. What is mere semi-drowning to James, is total drowning to John;—Tom is easy of resuscitation—Bob will not stir a muscle for all the Humane Societies in the United Kingdoms. To cut a pound of flesh from the rump of a fat dowager, who turns sixteen stone, is within the practical skill of the veriest bungler in the anatomy of the human frame—to scarify the fleshless spindle-shank of an antiquated spinstress, who lives on a small annuity, might be beyond the scalpel of an Abernethy or a Liston. A large blood-vessel, as the Doctor well remarks, is an awkward neighbour to the wound made by the bite of a mad dog, "when a new excision has to be attempted"—but will any Doctor living inform us how, in a thousand other cases besides hydrophobia, "the miserable victim may always be prevented from dying?" There are, probably, more dogs in Britain than horses; yet a hundred men, women, and children are killed by kicks of sane horses, for one by bites of insane dogs. Is the British army, therefore, to be deprived of its left arm, the cavalry? Is there to be no flying artillery? What is to become of the horse-marines?

Still the Doctor, though too dogmatical, and rather puppyish above, is, at times, sensible on dogs.

"Therefore," quoth he, "never travel without a good tough Black Thorn in your Fist, not less than three feet in length, on which may be marked the Inches, and so it may serve for a measure.

"Pampered Dogs, that are permitted to prance about as they please, when they hear a knock, scamper to the door, and not seldom snap at unwary visitors. Whenever Counsellor Cautious went to a house, &c., where he was not quite certain that there was no Dog, after he had rapped at the door, he retired three or four yards from it, and prepared against the Enemy: when the door was opened, he desired, if there was any Dog, that it might be shut up till he was gone, and would not enter the House till it was.

"Sword and Tuck Sticks, as commonly made, are hardly so good a weapon as a stout Stick—the Blades are often inserted into the Handles in such a slight manner, that one smart blow will break them out;—if you wish for a Sword-Cane, you must have one made with a good Regulation Blade, which alone will cost more than is usually charged for the entire Stick.—I have seen a Cane made by Mr PRICE, of the Stick and Umbrella Warehouse, 221, in the Strand, near Temple Bar, which was excellently put together.

"A powerful weapon, and a very smart and light-looking thing, is an Iron Stick of about four-tenths of an inch in diameter, with a Hook next the Hand, and terminating at the other end in a Spike about five inches in length, which is covered by a Ferrule, the whole painted the colour of a common walking-stick; it has a light natty appearance, while it is in fact a most formidable Instrument."

We cannot charge our memory with this instrument, yet had we seen one once, we hardly think we could have forgot it. But Colonel de Berenger in his Helps and Hints prefers the umbrella. Umbrellas are usually carried, we believe, in wet weather, and dogs run mad, if ever, in dry. So the safe plan is to carry one all the year through, like the Duke.

"I found it a valuable weapon, although by mere chance; for, walking alone in the rain, a large mad dog, pursued by men, suddenly turned upon me, out of a street which I had just approached; by instinct more than judgment, I gave point at him severely, opened as the umbrella was, which, screening me at the same time, was an article from which he did not expect thrusts; but which, although made at guess, for I could not see him, turned him over and over, and before he could recover himself, his pursuers had come up immediately to despatch him; the whole being the work of even few seconds; but for the umbrella the horrors of hydrophobia might have fallen to my lot."

There is another mode, which, with the omission or alteration of a word or two, looks feasible, supposing we had to deal not with a bull-dog, but a young lady of our own species. "If," says the Colonel, "you can seize a dog's front paw neatly, and immediately squeeze it sharply, he cannot bite you till you cease to squeeze it; therefore, by keeping him thus well pinched, you may lead him wherever you like; or you may, with the other hand, seize him by the skin of the neck, to hold him thus without danger, provided your strength is equal to his efforts at extrication." But here comes the Colonel's infallible vade-mecum.

"Look at them with your face from between your opened legs, holding the skirts away, and running at them thus backwards, of course head below, stern exposed, and above all growling angrily; most dogs, seeing so strange an animal, the head at the heels, the eyes below the mouth, &c., are so dismayed, that, with their tails between their legs, they are glad to scamper away, some even howling with affright. I have never tried it with a thorough-bred bull-dog, nor do I advise it with them; though I have practised it, and successfully, with most of the other kinds; it might fail with these, still I cannot say it will."

Thus armed against the canine species, the Traveller, according to our Oracle, must also provide himself with a portable case of instruments for drawing—a sketch and note-book—paper—ink—and PINS—NEEDLES—AND THREAD! A ruby or Rhodium pen, made by Doughty, No. 10, Great Ormond Street—pencils from Langdon's of Great Russell Street—a folding one-foot rule, divided into eighths, tenths, and twelfths of inches—a hunting-watch with seconds, with a detached lever or Dupleix escapement, in good strong silver cases—a Dollond's achromatic opera-glass—a night-lamp—a tinder-box—two pair of spectacles, with strong silver frames—an eye-glass in a silver ring slung round the neck—a traveller's knife, containing a large and a small blade, a saw, hook for taking a stone out of a horse's shoe, turnscrew, gun-picker, tweezers, and long corkscrew—galoches or paraloses—your own knife and fork, and spoon—a Welsh wig—a spare hat—umbrella—two great-coats, one for cool and fair weather (i.e. between 45 deg. and 55 deg. of Fahrenheit), and another for cold and foul weather, of broad cloth, lined with fur, and denominated a "dreadnought."

Such are a few of the articles with which every sensible traveller will provide himself before leaving Dulce Domum to brave the perils of a Tour through the Hop-districts.

"If circumstances compel you," continues the Doctor, "to ride on the outside of a coach, put on two shirts and two pair of stockings, turn up the collar of your great-coat, and tie a handkerchief round it, and have plenty of dry straw to set your feet on."

In our younger days we used to ride a pretty considerable deal on the outside of coaches, and much hardship did we endure before we hit on the discovery above promulgated. We once rode outside from Edinburgh to London, in winter, without a great-coat, in nankeen trousers sans drawers, and all other articles of our dress thin and light in proportion. That we are alive at this day, is no less singular than true—no more true than singular. We have known ourselves so firmly frozen to the leathern ceiling of the mail-coach, that it required the united strength of coachman, guard, and the other three outsides, to separate us from the vehicle, to which we adhered as part and parcel. All at once the device of the double shirt flashed upon us—and it underwent signal improvements before we reduced the theory to practice. For, first, we endued ourselves with a leather shirt—then with a flannel one—and then, in regular succession, with three linen shirts. This concluded the Series of Shirts. Then commenced the waistcoats. A plain woollen waistcoat without buttons—with hooks and eyes—took the lead, and kept it; it was closely pressed by what is, in common palaver, called an under-waistcoat—the body being flannel, the breast-edges bearing a pretty pattern of stripes or bars—then came a natty red waistcoat, of which we were particularly proud, and of which the effect on landlady, bar-maid, and chamber-maid, we remember was irresistible—and, fourthly and finally, to complete that department of our investiture, shone with soft yet sprightly lustre—the double-breasted bright-buttoned Buff. Five and four are nine—so that between our carcass and our coat, it might have been classically said of our dress—"Novies interfusa coercet." At this juncture of affairs began the coats, which—as it is a great mistake to wear too many coats—never exceeded six. The first used generally to be a pretty old coat that had lived to moralise over the mutability of human affairs—thread-bare—napless—and what ignorant people might have called shabby-genteel. It was followed by a plain, sensible, honest, unpretending, commonplace, everyday sort of a coat—and not, perhaps, of the very best merino. Over it was drawn, with some little difficulty, what had, in its prime of life, attracted universal admiration in Princes Street, as a blue surtout. Then came your regular olive-coloured great-coat—not braided and embroidered a la militaire—for we scorned to sham travelling-captain—but simplex munditiis, plain in its neatness; not wanting then was your shag-hued wraprascal, betokening that its wearer was up to snuff—and to close this strange eventful history, the seven-caped Dreadnought, that loved to dally with the sleets and snows—held in calm contempt Boreas, Notus, Auster, Eurus, and "the rest"—and drove baffled Winter howling behind the Pole.