remorseless engine came up-dashed pell-mell into the unlucky van, and sent all the treasures of art to the four winds. A minute later or a minute earlier, and all would have been safe. To have taken such pains to escape the disasters of the railway-so nearly to have accomplished the object, and then to be smashed by one of the very accidents against which there had been such costly securities, made the whole thing a thousand times more provoking. It looked almost as if the genius of the rail, jealous and angry of the implied distrust, had watched its opportunity, and taken, at the last moment, a dire and effectual revenge. To complete the disaster, the poor gentleman went to law to recover damages, and was-nonsuited ! *

I have just been running through the "Memoirs of a Stomach" you sent me. There is some smartness in it, and a good deal of sense too; and yet it is impossible to get over the absurdity of thus personifying this respectable viscus, and making

* A courteous correspondent, who seems to have been privy to the history of the disaster here described, writes to say, that in some particulars there is a want of perfect accuracy, There can be no doubt that the transaction to which he refers is the same as that here related. It is too singular to be repeated. It is also highly probable that wherein the accounts differ, his is the more authentic. This was taken from the current accounts in the newspapers at the time-his seems the result of personal knowledge. Still as the material facts are the same, as no names are mentioned and no one's interests injured, the Editor has left Mr. Greyson's letter as it was.

it chatter about anatomy, physiology, and chemistry! This sort of allegory will only admit of the briefest possible handling and the lightest touch. Addison might have given a graceful short paper on it, after the manner of the fable of " Menenius Agrippa," which is almost as long as we can permit the separate organs of the body to talk to us or with one another. When the stomach twaddles away on pathology and metaphysics, copies physicians' prescriptions, and refines on the effects of "bismuth of lead" and "sesquicarbonate of potash," it is a little de trop. I am speaking of the brochure simply as a work of art for really the philosophy of it is as sensible as if it came out of the brain instead of the stomach.

If we could suppose this poor patient drudge of an organ a conscious unity, and animated by a separate intelligence (as some philosophers have held opinions quite as absurd), who can express the ire it would feel at the treatment to which it is subjected? crammed to bursting with the mélange of an alderman's enormous meal; tight as a drum; stuffed like a corpulent carpet-bag; full of turbot, venison, salads, wines, and fruits; not an inch of free space for the "animal spirits" to move in! Yet is it expected to reduce the chaos of viands to order, and that, too, with such cruel despatch, that long before its task is half done, it finds the ruthless gullet pouring down more. How may we imagine it looking at its "kitchen," — all the fires put out,-in despair; sometimes fairly getting into the sulks, and doggedly refusing to have anything more to do with the thing;-now, in a fury, ejecting the whole "indigesta moles" in a volcanic eruption, — now setting our old friends, "the animal spirits," briskly to work, under the hard pressure of necessity.

But I am not sure that it would not resent quite as much the infatuation of the hypochondriac who is hourly dosing it, and will never leave well alone! How would it explode, in mingled wrath and astonishment, when, coveting a hot-buttered roll and a cheering aromatic cup of coffee (which it feels itself quite entitled to, and fully capable of dealing with), it finds, as it gapes upwards in delighted expectation, the remorseless œsophagus,

years

!

so you

without any "by your leave" or "heads below there," sending down a horrid portion of "black draught," or still worse, castor oil! One can imagine the hurry with which it would summon its scavengers to clear the streets of the filthy tide, and throw wide the pylorus to let the abomination flow on! How would it congratulate itself, in such a case, if homoeopathically treated! absolutely unable to tell where the poor trecillionth of a grain it was enjoined to take such care of, was got to! But suppose the search were vain, it would not matter; "Let it lie where it is " the stomach might say "an infinitesimal particle in an infinitesimal follicle will do no harm if it lie there for a hundred It is no incommodity to better guests, it will give no offence, poor thing! I do not grudge it room!" More than threescore species of the genus DYSPEPSIA, doctors tell us, and the varieties of these infinite! Fifty times as many substances which you doctors send down the throat to cure them, while of not a tenth can you certainly tell what chemical changes the subtle laboratory of the stomach may work upon them! What a "glorious uncertainty" in Physic, as well as Law! How little less than the cruelty of shooting a bullet of lead into the stomach from the outside, is that of firing a pellet of some more subtle mineral into its inside! And yet, you folks of the Medicis family (always renowned for poisoning) do these things with as little remorse as you would eat the wing of a partridge. Nay, you prescribe half a dozen things at once, though with every ingredient in the prescription the uncertainty of the ultimate product of the vital chemistry may become still more hopelessly complicated, and the result more inscrutable. Surely, the way in which your “practice” terminates, must be often like that of the ludicrous "practice" with the Lancaster gun on board but the "Arrow" off the Needles lately. The gunners fired they could trace nothing of the ball in its flight; fired again still nothing came of it. While they were gazing in its presumed direction in stupid wonder, people came running in consternation from a totally different quarter, to implore the inimitable marksmen to cease their sport, for that their eccentric fire had been

-

but too effective, only in an unexpected direction, having nearly knocked to pieces the lighthouse !

Long may you have that greatest proof of a stomach, that you know not that you have any! I have long ceased, in this matter, to enjoy that "ignorance" which is "bliss."

Forgive all this idle badinage on your venerable profession, for which none have, after all, a more sincere veneration than I, when intelligently and cautiously practised-that is, as you practise it.

N. B. As I am about to visit you shortly, I think it is as well to add this "placebo." My kind regards to your "Catherine de Medicis."

Yours faithfully,

R. E. H. G.

LETTER LXXIX.

Dear Friend,

To RD, a Quaker.

October, 1855.

Thank you, or if thee be more pleasing, imagine it said, -for the Pamphlet on the "Peace Question." I have read it, and attentively, but remain where I was. Your views, in such a world, appear to me not only chimerical, but, if practicable, most dangerous; opposed to "the spirit" of Scripture, which you generally profess to revere, and plausible only by a slavish adherence to the "letter"-which, strange inconsistency! you profess generally to despise. "If any

"Resist not evil;"

You the words are express, say man smite thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other also." Yes and the Romanist says the words he pleads for transubstantiation are express: "This is my body." Pray, why don't you and he act consistently, and interpret other passages with the same literality? For example, you see in the immediate

vicinity of your abused text;-"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee;- if thy hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee." How is it that I do not see thee blind and maimed, worthy friend? You will say, "These are strong tropical modes of expressing the duty of self-denial and self-mortification, when our senses would allure us to sin.” And, in like manner, say I, the words you abuse, are a strong tropical mode of representing the spirit in which we should receive affronts; the forbearance and gentleness with which, wherever we can, we should endeavour to disarm malice, the patience with which we should rather suffer any moderate wrongs than hastily resent them, or any wrongs rather than abandon ourselves to a spirit of diabolical revenge. But it is no warrant for our becoming suicides, by letting miscreants kill us "unresisting," if they please to do so; nor for quenching, when attacked, that instinct of self-preservation, which as manifestly came from God as any truth of Revelation, and which, in fact, except in the case of a Quaker here and there, always vindicates itself the moment life or safety is threatened, by acting (as all our instincts do) independently of our reason. A man is assaulted in the dark, suppose; if he has a weapon he strikes out, asking no questions "for conscience' sake," or for "reason's" sake, or for any other faculty; any more than he would ask, if thrown into the water, whether he is permitted to swim; or if starving, whether the roots and wild berries he snatches are precisely the best food for his digestion; or whether when he "plucks the ears of corn," he is not invading the "rights of property."

You will say, perhaps, that you do not forbid passive resistance, of which, indeed, there are singular examples, I am well aware, among the "Friends;" some of them so singular as to make the difference between "active" and "passive" not a little puzzling to any but a Quaker grammarian. But I know what you mean; you will say you are at liberty to struggle with your adversary with a view to disarm him. But this cool calculation in sudden encounters is as impossible as to do nothing. That same instinct which prompts to resist, without consulting reason,