that organ; or it will be rapidly cast out of the system altogether. No poison remains in the blood. Those poisons which remain in the system have specific and constant results after definite periods. Here then we have a means of ascertaining whether the saliva itself is the poison. If this be proved not to be the case, we shall be driven to the conclusion, that the saliva of rabid animals, when imprisoned in the living tissues, undergoes some chemical change-probably from assimilating certain elements of the tissues-which develops the poisonous qualities.

And this, indeed, is the opinion which best accords with the phenomena, and which, until decisive experiment be brought to bear on the point, we must hold to be the only physiological explanation. In those organisms which resist the influence of rabies, we must suppose the chemical conditions necessary for the development of the poison are absent. In those cases where the period of incubation has been unusually short or unusually long, we must suppose some acceleration or retardation of these chemical conditions, dependent on the general state of the organism.

In the absence of direct experiment, however, it is of little avail to speculate as to the origin of the poisonous qualities. Let, us therefore, pass on to a question of some interest, inasmuch as it relates to the anxiety inevitably hovering over every dubious case. We mean, what chance has the bitten man, or animal, of escaping the disease, quite independent of surgical aid? This is worth knowing, because minds of an apprehensive disposition may find some relief from their vague fears that perhaps the surgical precautions have been insufficient, if they remember that, even without such precautions, the chance of infection is but slight. There are two sources of immunity: first, the organism may be insusceptible; second, the saliva may have been wiped off the tooth of the dog before the flesh was pierced. From one or the other

of these causes Dr Hamilton estimates the chance of infection at 1 in 25; John Hunter specifies his, 1 case in 21; Mr Youatt affirms that in dogs three out of four, but in human beings not more than one in four, would be affected. But the researches of M. Renault at Alfort are the most extensive. He says that between the years 1827-37, no less than 244 dogs entered the hospital having been bitten by dogs, either rabid, or reputed so; all these dogs were kept over two months without any treatment whatever, and closely watched. Of this number only about a third (74) became mad; the rest showed no symptoms. Of course we must deduct from this a large number of cases where the rabies was purely hypothetical to begin with; the popular notions of what constitutes "mad-dog" being far from accurate. The same must be said of Hertwig's tables, drawn from the Berlin veterinary school. He makes the proportion 1 in 8 of dogs which have become rabid after having been brought to him under suspicion. In France, out of 99 persons bitten by rabid animals only 41 were subsequently affected; but, as M. Renault observes, these figures are of little value. How many human beings have been bitten, and have escaped without surgical aid? There is no reliable evidence to guide us to an answer. All we can say is that M. Renault's conclusion, from an immense induction, is, that only one-third of the bitten animals ever manifest rabies; and we are warranted in drawing some such conclusion with respect to man. But because, on a calculation of chances, it is two to one that a man will suffer nothing from the bite of a rabid animal, this knowledge should only be employed to allay anxiety, never to warrant the risk. The surgeon at once-that is the plain command in every suspicious case. We have only mentioned what is the calculation of chances, because it is desirable in every way to calm the natural terrors of the patient: these terrors are sometimes

as dangerous as the actual infection. To show how they may affect even the mind most familiar with all the symptoms of the disease, and the certainty of surgical cure, we may mention that the late M. Vatel, professor at the Veterinary College of Alfort, having once been bitten by a dog, and having had the wound carefully cauterised, although no symptom of rabies declared itself in the dog, and although M. Vatel himself remained perfectly well, so horrible had been the shock of his first terror that he never fairly overcame it. From that moment it was impossible for him to see a dog unchained within his reach without a painful uneasiness, which no effort of his mind could subdue. Another

veterinary surgeon, "solidement trempé au physique et au moral," M. Barthélemy, was one day bitten by a mad dog under his care. In spite of immediate cautery, he

could never afterwards endure the sight of a rabid dog-nay more, he suffered inexpressible uneasiness if the very name of the disease were mentioned in his hearing. One day, in 1847, relates M. Renault, he was passing along the Boulevard Saint Martin, when he perceived a crowd; on inquiry, he learned that a child had just been bitten by a mad dog. Forgetting-or conquering his terrors, he jumped from his carriage, pushed aside the crowd, took up the child in his arms (which the crowd had left sobbing on the ground, without venturing to its assistance), and, carrying it to the nearest chemist's shop, he there thoroughly cauterised the many wounds. After this he conducted the child to its parents, prescribed what was to be done, and disappeared without giving his name. "All this time," said his servant," master was as pale as death."

CHARGES of literary imitations are more easily made than established. The world of thought and fact is open to all men, and any two may take the same path through it without the one being either beholden to the other, or liable to be ordered off the premises by him. Nothing is more likely than that the same conjunction of events will set two men to the same kind of literary task; and in the next place, nothing is more likely than that, on its completion, there will be some elements in common in the two works. The author who is first in hand is apt in such a case to say, "That's mine;" but if he do so, he will generally be wise to keep his own counsel, for it will be difficult to prove the ownership; and indeed from rash assertions of this kind we have known deplorable results, what seemed last being shown to have been first.

Of two clergymen who have long

My own Life and Times, 1741-1814. burgh Edmonston & Douglas. 1861.

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been gathered to the dust the two autobiographies are published, the one within a month or two of the other. Of all the unreasonable charges of literary imitation that ever have appeared before the world, it surely would seem the most preposterously unreasonable, that an authentic autobiography of a man several years in his grave having been published in the month of December, and had a run of popularity, an imitation should be got up in the shape of another long-deceased clergyman's autobiography, and published two months afterwards. Still, nevertheless, anon and notwithstanding, as old folks used to say, we are minded that the My own Life and Times by the Reverend Thomas Somerville was written in imitation and rivalry of the Autobiography of Carlyle.

That any two authors professing to interest the general public should

By THOMAS SOMERVILLE, D.D. Edin

descant on Cuming the leader of the Moderates, on Dr Webster, Dr Drysdale, John Jardine, Robert Wallace, Bonar of Cockpen, Dickson of Dunse, Principal Tullydelph, and the great crisis of the deposition of Gillespie that they should describe, and be the only persons who have described, Dodd preaching to the Magdalens, and that these two, being clergymen of the Church of Scotland, should each expatiate on their theatrical experiences, and outvie each other in praise of Garrick and Siddons, such coincidences in taste and tenor would certainly, if maintained to be purely fortuitous, elicit cries of "Oh, oh!" from the other side of the house.

It is not, however, from specific coincidences, but from a general all-overishness of community of tenor and method, that we have adopted our conclusion. The two start almost in the same groove. Carlyle, in his careless but attractive way, proposes to endeavour "to serve posterity to the best of my ability, with such a faithful picture of times and characters as come within my view in the humble and private sphere of life, in comparison with that of many others, in which I have always acted." Dr Somerville, balancing and pointing his periods in proper finished style, says, "From the perusal of these Memoirs it will appear that, notwithstanding the obscurity of my position, I have enjoyed considerable opportunities of becoming acquainted with the eminent men of my own time, and that I have not been an inattentive observer of passing events." Thence they both walk over a deal that is common ground, each describing the same thing in his own way, and with a wonderful conformity of difference; while even in those matters which Somerville had to touch alone-his period beginning later and coming farther down than the Autobiography-there is, or one fancies there is, a pervading tinge of rivalry and emulation.

We are by no means disposed to drop our theory on occasion of

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an ingenious desire in his very first page to draw the reader-perhaps to draw himself-off into another track. Having been favoured," he says, "by Dr Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, with the perusal of his Life in manuscript, it struck me that a similar work might in my case prove a resource against the oppression of indolence, without involving, what I was not fit for at the time, severe application or the fatigue of research." Now it so happens that My own Life and Times has no more resemblance to the Anecdotes of the Life of Bishop Watson than it has to Rousseau's Confessions or Cæsar's Commentaries. It would be very unfair indeed to compare Somerville's pleasant volume, unobtrusively referring to himself and his own affairs only as types of the condition and manners of the times, to the Bishop's ponderous narrative about the public affairs, of which he is always the central point, and to his self-laudation, and the exposition of the public spirit and disinterestedness which are ever prompting him to seek more elevated rank and higher emoluments. People are exceedingly shy sometimes about their actual rivalries; they are afraid to reveal them even to themselves. How often is there profession of following the common conventional model, when in reality there is some example nearer home carefully watched and emulated. The worthy Doctor would have blushed to think that he was following in the track of a brother pastor in Scotland, who had moved in the same sphere as himself, beheld the - same things, and partaken in the same contests. It was another thing altogether adopting the model of the English prelate. Let the reader just adopt our theory; it will do no harm to any living being-no injury to the memory of any of the departed; and it will enable him to pass a reflection or two through his mind on the funny nature of such a rivalry, stopped for half a century and let loose again-as if it were two competitors, starting on a race

in the palace that went to sleep, and tied to the starting-post until the accepted knight's kiss on the lips of the sleeping beauty set all in motion again, and let them go. Carlyle died in 1805; Dr Somerville began his task eight years after wards. The manuscript of Carlyle's Autobiography was greedily sought after. It was seen by several people. Lord Woodhouselee, Sir Walter Scott, and some others, are known to have made use of it. Nothing is more natural than that Somerville, a clergyman in a neighbouring presbytery, should have seen it. To find the reason why the sight of it should have fired his ambition, let us look at the relative position of the two men while they were respectively at work, and the changes which had come over their standing in the eye of the world at the time when the fruit of their labours has been made visible. They were both of good extraction descended of gentlefolks; and it was the lot in life of each to be a minister of a southeastern parish in Scotland, each having within it a small town Somerville's the more important of the two, being Jedburgh, the county town of Roxburghshire. So far they were pretty equally matched. But Carlyle was one of the social chiefs of his day, which was a day in which social chiefship had mighty pomp and prerogative. These autocrats were a creation of the eighteenth century, and were perhaps abolished by the French Revolution, like patches, pomatum, powder, and many more important things. We have but partial glimpses now of what they really were there is the wondrous history, to be sure, of the rough tyrant Johnson, and in Walpole's letters and other places we catch a flying impression of the polished insolence of George Selwyn; but in reality we have almost as great difficulty in realising them in this republican age, when nobody is allowed to play the despot, as we have in realising the prophet or the druid. It was something quite

clear of birth or rank; and hence perhaps the jealousy which those who happened to be invested with the privilege protected it from intrusion, as the class of actors called stars" protect their dignity from being invaded by the common herd. It was not a position gained even by high authorship, though that was generally the path towards it. What we chiefly know in a substantial shape about it is, that though it was acknowledged and exemplified in Britain, it was in France that it had its centre and supreme empire, thence radiating, through less-favoured countries, like the Parisian fashions. So it was that, to his amazement and disgust, Horace Walpole found that that great, fat, hazy, broad-brogued Scotsman, an author forsooth, calling himself in the titlepages of the books he sold, "David Hume, Esq.," had become a social despot in Paris, when he who at Strawberry Hill or Ranelagh's might have received David with condescension as he would his bailiff, or the holder of one of his father's livings, was comparatively nobody. So it was with the small crowd in Paris, who found a republic in letters so socially aristocratic as to neutralise any other claim to rank, yielding the privilege and position of patrons only to the higher sovereigns, and receiving with something like huffy contempt the proffers of Margraves, Grand Dukes, and such inferior people. Such were D'Alembert, Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, Moncrif (who surely was of Scotch descent), Henault, Marmontel, Morellet, and the rest, some of them noble of birth, others from the dregs of a degraded population, but all princes and mighty men in the social circle.

The phenomenon was exemplified in this country in a modified form; but still it did exist, and produced disturbances in the settled strata of the social relations, as we now see them, which it is difficult to explain or estimate. So it comes to pass that the two clergymen occupied a totally different position in the