induced thus to soar upon hot-water wings. The engineer protests, by all the names of philosophy, that a blowing up is utterly impossible. But in the modern philosophy, the most impossible things have come to pass so often, that a man attached to his own vertebræ may well be allowed to indulge a little scepticism.

ques

The machine will never be entitled to popularity, until the chance of blowing up is entirely out of the tion; which it can scarcely be, while the steam-engine forms a part of the carriage. It must be detached, and at some distance from the carriage, and be not a steam-coach, but a steamhorse. Then, though our steed be blown, we shall not be in the same condition, which, though perhaps easily cured in his system of pipes, boilers, and valves, would defy the pharmacopoeia in ours. And to this construction the machine will naturally come, and we shall have steam-teams for vans, and waggons; steam-sets for mail coaches, and single horse powers of any shape, size, or colour, necessary for the generation of the Tilburies.

The comforts and conveniencies of this contrivance will be universal and obvious. Gentlemen nice about matching their horses, will have nothing to do but send their own pattern to the japanner, and they may have any colour from scarlet to sky-blue. Awkward whips will drive like the choicest artists of Cambridge, without any more trouble than that of holding a rudder. The peculiar genus described in the advertisements, as "timid gentlemen, that love an easy-going cob, tender in the mouth, and pacing like a lady," may have one that will no more start or fling out than a Bath chair; and to the romantic, the whole romance of guiding fiery chargers by a pin in the forehead, will be realized in perfection, at the rate of sixpence a-soar! But if we can conceive this use of steam to be brought to that practical excellence which will allow of its general employment, the effects must be curious, and nationally beneficial in a very high degree. Its evils to the horse trade, or the travelling trade, or the oat trade, it must be idle to set in competition with any one of its advantages. Those advantages, too, will not be so rapid, that time will not be given for things to find their level, and thus the least possible cvil be

done. Political economy is, threefourths of it, utter nonsense, or utter ignorance, made presumptuous by the use of high-sounding words, and exclusive pretensions; nothing, too, can be less wise than the attempt to overthrow an established manufacture for the sake of making the experiment of an unestablished one, or trying how far we may beat the French in silks and gloves, by allowing the British artizans of both to try how long they could live without eating. But where we obtain a new power over nature, we have a new source of national wealth; and no matter what it may displace for the moment, we are sure that it will replace the loss by ten times, or a thousand times, the gain. The spinning-jennies and power-looms have increased the weavers of England from 100,000 to nearly three millions! The steam-boats have perhaps not thrown a single ship out of employment, while they have increased the general tonnage, and rendered the intercourse of England with her dependencies and the Continent a matter of certainty. If the steamcarriage can be made general, its effects will be more important to us than even those of the steam-boat, as being applicable to a greater variety of purposes, more easy of employment, and involving less expense. The result on travelling would be probably ten passengers on the road for one; an obvious benefit to the trusts, to the innkeepers and the towns; the increased cheapness and facility of conveying every kind of produce, domestic, commercial, and agricultural. We should have flocks and herds carried up to our markets without the present delay, expense, and exhaustion of the animals. Corn, coals, all the necessaries and comforts of cities, would be brought with rapidity and ease by steam waggons, and exchanged with the country for the merchandize that now must go by the slow and expensive passage of canals and the coast. The intercourse from corner to corner of England would probably be increased in all its details tenfold or fiftyfold, within a few years; and there would be no assignable limit to its increase, except the surcharge of every corner with the produce of every other-a period beyond calculation.

The horse-breeders would possibly

sed? He may feel our pulse-look wise -order conscience a purge-and depart. But we, the poor miserable sinner, toss on our bed, give no sign, and die. Not a word more on that point. Fourthly, bad as the diseases of the soul arevery bad indeed-quite shocking-they seldom prove fatal; when they do, the patient lingers for a long time with a rueful countenance-and seems neither the better nor the worse of all ghostly prescriptions. Nay, what more common than a hoary-headed hale sinner of fourscore? But the diseases of the body, though sometimes mild and tedious, have a manifest tendency towards death, and therefore we take the alarm speedily, and long for the face of the physician. Fifthly, the diseases of the soul yield intensest pleasure-deny it not-and the active sinner laughs the praying and preaching parson to scorn. But the diseases of the body twitch and twinge, and pinch, and tear, and squeeze, and stifle, and suffocate, and we cry out with a loud voice to be released from the stake in fire or flood.

For these, and a thousand other reasons, we are inclined, contrary to what might have been expected of us, to prefer the physician to the parson. Still the parson is dear to us-exceedingly dear. We have a most particular esteem for him in pulpit and in parlour-in the pit of the General Assembly, or of the theatre-in peace or polemics-exhausting topics or teinds -battling for the Bible-or against the Apocrypha. As a bottle-companion -a friend-nay, a brother, we love him; but when anything goes very wrong with our soul-when the prime via are obstructed-when we shiver in an ague-or in the delirium of fever, see more devils than vast hell can hold,"--would you believe it?--we give the servant orders to tell the minister that we are not at home, hide our heads below the bed-clothes, and remember indistinctly what Shakspeare says"Therein the patient must minister to

himself."

We have scarcely been able to bring ourselves to believe, that human beings are in general indifferent about the state either of their bodies or of their souls. It is the high-flown fashionable doctrine, however, at present, both in the Religious and Medical World. The soul may be sorrowfully VOL. XXIII.

and penitentially sensible of its sins, without wishing to obtrude its suf ferings on the notice of all eyes,and a careless exterior may conceal a serious habit of inward self-meditation. That portion of the life of almost every individual that is visible and audible to the public eye and ear, is necessarily the least spiritual; and we can learn little or nothing of any man till we have been with him in his familiar privacy, and seen something of the chosen channels in which his thoughts and feelings love to travel, when his hearth is lighted and his house hushed. What false judgments does even the religious world pass, and how slowly does it rescind or revoke them, even on new and full evidence, clear as the light of day! Charity is indeed then an angel, when she searches for, and sees, and believes, in the religion that lies hidden in almost all human hearts -unrepelled and unprovoked by differences in faith, creed, profession, pursuits, manners, or appearances, and still inspired in all her judgments of other human beings, by that meek yet lofty spirit of which the word "Christian" expresses the sacred signification.

We would almost venture to say, that many people are too anxious about the state of their souls, their anxiety making them selfish in all their religion. They deliver their consciences up into some saintly keeping, that it may be safe, and a look or a whisper from the mortal creature in whom they have put their trust, disturbs their serenity, and throws them before him almost upon their very knees. There is much Popery in our Protestant land; and the days are not yet gone by of auricular confession. Perhaps the people who speak least of their faith, have it deepest and most steadfast,-preserving its sanctity unprofaned by unseasonable colloquies,avowing it on the Sabbath before man as well as God in public worship,and to God alone every morning and every evening in the private chamber of their own thoughts. Yet may they be pronounced, by the rash judgments of the righteous overmuch, indifferent about the state of their souls!

Just so with that which we call our bodies. It is not possible that rational beings can be utterly careless about the health of their bodies any more

N

than of their souls. We all fear to die, and at the slightest tap from the finger of Death at the door of our earthly tabernacle, how we hurry to barricado it, and to fasten all the bolts and bars! True, that when that disturber of all our peace is thought to be at a distance, we forget how suddenly he can be with us, and through what a small cranny he can creep in! But in this case, too, we may be too anxious about this body of ours, and look now in the same sort of selfish superstition towards the physician, as we did then towards the priest,-beseeching and imploring him to keep our body from disease, terrified at the thought of its ceasing to breathe, and dropping and decaying into dust.

It is our belief, then, that people are, for the most part, far from being indifferent about the state either of their souls or bodies, although they are too often betrayed into fits of strange forgetfulness of the true interests of both, and into the adoption of the worst possible means for preserving their well-being; and this, we hope, will not be considered too serious matter for an introduction to an article which is intended to be, on the whole, of a facetious character-for mirth may be moral, and laughter as salutary as

tears.

We have been very fortunate in our physicians that is to say, we have had them of all the Three Kinds-and yet are alive, and supped at Ambrose's on Thursday. First, we have had, and have now, your man of educationyour scholar and your gentleman who is as open, honest, and sincere at your bedside, as at your dinner-table, and who would be disinterestedly sorry were you, in spite of his efforts to detain you here, to go to another and a better world. Experience has strengthened and refined his sagacity into an instinct; and what skill and knowledge can do, he will do for us, should we, which may be highly probable, die tomorrow. He is no monger of mysterious monosyllables-no silent headshaker-no appalling mute, with one fearful fore-finger on your pulse, and two horrid eyes fixed on your face, till you are faint with the ticking of that accursed chronometer in your swimming brain-while you think you see visions of undertakers, saulies, a hearse, and many mourning coaches-a deepdug wet hole, much shovelling, the

sudden off-taking of hats, and the breaking up of anything but a convivial party, all discussing your character, and wondering if you have died rich or poor. Every smile on his face is worth a fee, and you set death and the devil at defiance, when he asks you "if you do not think the last an admirable Noctes, and Murray inimitable in Pong Wong?"

The Second Kind is your Old Wo man. A pleasing imbecility reigns over face and figure-his speech is a trefoil of terror, stutter, and lisp; and he smiles so sweetly, that you pluck up courage to believe that you cannot pos sibly be near the last agonies. His sole anxiety is about your bowels-he beseeches you to keep quiet-administers his pill-tells you not to allow yourself to be flurried-and as he trips bustling away, and keeps talking to himself, and your housekeeper, all the way down stairs, and out of the streetdoor, you begin cautiously to put first one leg out of the bed, and then another, and having found your breeches secreted in your drawers, you apparel yourself in warm winter raiment, order dinner, and in a few hours are sitting with a friend, with your feet on the fender, and on your right hand a jug of hot toddy, a cheerful and chatty convalescent.

The Third Sort is your Quack-and from him Heaven preserve all the subscribers to this Magazine! Hard-hearted, coarse, vulgar, greedy, profligate, and unprincipled, in his unfearing ignorance, you see at once that he is the active partner in the firm of Mors, Morbus, and Co. He treats you as if you were a horse, and drenches you with drugs to death. Hence so many widows left with eight children-so many men six feet high on Monday, and only six feet long on the Saturday following-letters announcing the death of contributors on the eves of articles-in place of marriage-sheets, funeral-shrouds-instead of trips to the Trossachs in jaunting cars, rattling along eight miles an hour, journeys to the place of interment in the Grey Friars and the West Kirk churchyard, in a vehicle that, although drawn by six horses, goes nodding on at a snail's pace, and lands you in the dirt at last. The quack attends impatiently the patient corpse, in his own chariot, and then drives off to give the coup-degrace to another incumbent.

The house visited by the true physician is known from the aspect of its inmates-especially the children. There is an airy freedom in the figures of the family; a clear-skinned complexion of face, inclining to pinkiness; a laughing lustre of lip and eye, set off by the glitter of well-brushed hair; a taking tidiness about the dress of the creatures, as if health and happiness had stood behind them at the mirror. This you seldom or never meet with in a house annoyed by the Old Woman, or cursed by the Quack. Not that the Old Woman often does much serious mischief to the bairns; that is to say, she seldom either kills them outright (though such things occasionally happen) or for life ruins their constitution. But then she teaches them to have recourse, on the most insignificant occasions, to small bottles and boxes, so that not the slightest touch of a sore throat, a headach, or a colic, is suffered to go off of its own accord, but must be ejected by drop or pill; while the amiable patient appears with a yard of flannel round her pretty throat, or a cap on her curly head, and is treated perhaps for a whole week as a valetudinarian. The Old Woman frequently infects both parents with her own fiddle-faddle, and when there is unfortunately no illness of any kind in their own families, they are like people appointed to a Dispensary, and prescribe for all the paupers about the place. We know not how it is, but were we a young man, we should not-we could not-we would notmarry out of a family attended by an Old Woman. Certain habits are disgusting; and from young women, whose health has been under the care of old women, that sensitive and instinctive delicacy is not to be expected, which guards wedded life from all offence of coarseness, and preserves to the husband's eyes the matron-wife pure and beautiful as the virgin-mis

tress.

As for the Quack, when he has fairly established himself in a house-farewell, domestic peace! He is a paid and privileged murderer. All your family, even when at their highest health, are more or less sick; when allowed to be ill, they are at death's door; and when they die, it is in some startling and shocking manner, enough to break your heart and turn your brain. Al

though two children are perhaps born to you in three years your family never increases; and by the time that you and your wife are fifty, looking dismally about the house, you see yourselves to be childless, and feel yourselves to be old people.

There is, it must be confessed, something exceedingly perplexing in the medical profession. We are subject to a vast variety of diseases; and physicians, in order to cure them, study the art or science of medicine. By dint of extraordinary natural sagacity, great practice and experience, a physician becomes so wise in the knowledge of all diseases, and antidotes to death, that he acquires the character of a life-preserver. You see him driving about with supplies of health in his carriage, just like that neat cart-waggon with its Peebles ale, dropping comfort at every door. He dies; and in some half-dozen years or so, a physician whom he had long kept down, lifts up his now undepres sed head, and gets into prodigious practice. He adopts a system diametrically opposite to that of his prede cessor. That which the one said would kill, the other says will cure. Now, the question to be answered is, which of these two men is the murderer? If it indeed be within the power of medical treatment to put a patient to death, a hot close room, with a huge fire and nailed windows, and a cool airy room with no fire at all, and windows frequently open, cannot be equally good for a small child, with its face one blotch of small-pox. So on with all other complaints under the sun, moon, and stars. Fathers and mothers fall down on their knees before physicians, blessing them for having, under God, rescued a beloved child from the tomb; while, had they known the truth, as it is expounded by a future Hippocrates, they would have screamed him off the premises as an assassin. Yet the bills of mortality preserve a wonderfully nice equilibrium; and it would almost seem that both Life and. Death laugh at the doctors. A patient labouring under a hereditary disease, say a cancer in the stomach, like Napoleon-or gout in the toe, like Christopher North-is puzzled, when told that at the very fewest, his father, grandfather, and great grandfather, have been murdered, and that he must submit to a new regimen, the result of