And vi et armis, then we'll push on, And crush Perkinean Institution. But first, in flaming MANIFESTO, Say to the publick all you can say, Say to the publick all you can say, In crows and infants, dogs and horses: ' 1 In crows and infants, dogs and horses. I These are among the patients whose cures are attested in Perkins's publication, in which he has introduced them to show that his tractors do not cure by an influence on the imagination. The fallacy of any deductions, drawn from such cases, in favour of the tractors, will be apparent from the following most learned and elaborate investigation of the subject. There are no animals in existence, I shall incontestibly prove, that are more susceptible of impressions from imagination, than those above mentioned. Tell how their minds-but here you old men To begin with the crow. Strong mental faculties ever indicate a vivid imagination; and what being, except Mivera's beauty the owl, is more renowned for such faculties than the crow? Who does not know that he will smell gunpowder three miles, if it be in a gun, and he imagine it be intended for his destruction? These emblems of sagacity, besides "fetching and carrying like a spaniel," and talking as well or better than colonel Kelly's parrot (which by the by I suspect to have been a crow) are, as Edwards assures us in his Natural History, "the planters of all sorts of wood and trees." ." "I observed," says he, "a great quantity of crows very busy at their work. I went out of my way on purpose to view their labour, and I found they were planting a grove of oaks." Vol. V. Pref. xxxv. These geniuses always can tell, and always have told, since the days of Virgil, the approach of rain. That poet says, "Tum cornix plena pluviam vocat improba voce." They can likewise tell when bad news is approaching, as we learn from the same writer, "Sæpe sinistra cava prædixit ab ilice cornix.” Now I beg leave to know what mortal can do more? and to suppose a crow not blessed with those more brilliant parts, under which imagination is classed, is to do them a singular injustice, which I shall certainly resent on every occasion. Now as to infants. Whoever has been in the way of an acquaintance with some of the more musical sort of Y For graduates at horses' college, Most certainly are men of knowledge! these little gentry (like my seven last darlings for instance) and has been serenaded with the dulcet sonatas of their warbling strains will not be disposed to deny their powers on the imagination of others. I have known the delusion practised so effectually by these young conjurors, that I have myself imagined my head was actually aching most violently, even on the point of cracking open: but on going beyond the reach of their magick spell, that is, out of hearing, my head has been as free from pain as it necessarily must be at this moment, while I am penning this lucid performance. Now, I maintain it to be most unphilosophical, and totally opposite to certain new principles in ethicks, which I shall establish in a future publication, to suppose that infants should be able to impart either pleasure or pain, by operating on the imagination, and not themselves possess a large share of that imagination, by the aid of which they operate to so much effect upon others. Next come dogs. Dr. Shaw, in his Zoology, vol. i. p. 289, informs us," that a dog belonging to a nobleman of the Medici family always attended his master's table, changed the plates for him, carried him his wine in a glass placed on a salver, without spilling the smallest drop." The celebrated Leibnitz mentions another, a subject of the elector of Saxony, who could discourse in an "intelligible manner," especially on "tea, coffee, and chocolate;" whether in Greek, Latin, German, or English, however, he has not stated; but Dr. Shaw, alluding to the same dog, says, undoubtedly under the influence of prejudice, "he was somewhat of a truant, and did not willingly exert That though imagination cures, With aid of pair of patent skewers, his talents, being rather pressed into the service of literature." ment. Indeed our greatest naturalists assure us, that this animal is far before the human species in every ennobling quality. Buffon makes man a very devil compared with the dog; and had he come directly to the point, I presume he would have told us that the dog is one link above man in the great chain from the fossil to the angel. "Without the dog," says Buffon," how could man have been able to tame and reduce other animals into slavery? To serve his own safety, it was necessary to make friends among those animals whom he found capable of attachThe fruit of associating with the dog was the conquest and the peaceable possession of the earth. The dog will always preserve his empire. He reigns at the head of a flock, and makes himself better understood than the voice of the shepherd" (well he might, for it appears he is more knowing, more powerful, and more just.) "Safety, order, and discipline, are the fruits of his vigilance and activity. They are a people submitted to his management, whom he conducts and protects, and against whom he never employs force but for the preservation of peace and good order." BARR'S BUFFON, vol. v. p. 302. It is to me somewhat remarkable that theorizing Frenchmen, many of whose discoveries are scarcely less important than my own, cannot make them apply in such a manner as to effect some practical good in society. Buffon discovered that a dog was a species of demi-god, and appears on the point of worshipping this great Anubis of the Egyptians. Voltaire tells us, that Frenchmen are Still such relief cannot be real, half monkey and half tiger, and every body knows that the one is insufferably mischievous, and the other infinitely ferocious. Now it is surprising that these philosophers could not contrive to improve the breed by a little of the canine blood. Indeed, I should advise them to import some of our Bond-street male puppies, to be paired with French female monkies, and I will venture to assert that there will be very little of the tiger perceivable in their offspring. And since a dog, as Buffon says, " reigns with so much dignity at the head of a flock, will always preserve his empire, never employs force but for the preservation of peace and good order," and is endowed with so many other great qualifications, which seem to denote him to be a proper personage to wield the sceptre of dominion, I would seriously advise the abbé Sieyes, when he frames his 999th constitution for the free French Republick (which it is said he has already begun to manufacture) so to organize the executive branch, that at least one of the consuls should be a true blooded English bull-dog. After the ample proof I have now given of the infinite superiority of the dog to man, when his merits are fairly estimated, which it is very difficult for us, being interested, to do without prejudice, I shall take it for granted, that he must possess all the brilliancy even of a poet's imagination, and therefore that he is far more likely to be cured by imagination than any man. It now remains to speak of horses, and these (not to mention the Bucephalus of Alexander, or the Pegasus of doctor Caustick) I shall show, in a very few words, can boast of performances and qualifications, to which a lively fancy in the comparison is but as the wit of an oyster to |