good paintings here, several; excellent indeed; pleasing foreground that, and sky quite airy. This! by Sir Joshua Lawrence! is it really? very clever, and a capital frame! Ah, so you paint a little yourself, I perceive these two things here.'

"What things, sir? Oh, them-ah! no, sir, I didn't do 'emlittle too busy to amuse myself that way.'

"Better employed, eh? But one of your little boys, perhaps, has been trying his hand-has a sort of turn for-'

"No, sir, no; I don't know what they are, not I; I met with 'em somewhere I've heard say they don't look amiss in some lights-at this distance now?'

"Ah! I perceive-might easily be improved though, you think. Well, now I see you didn't paint them, or you wouldn't laugh at them so. But this French picture here-I have a fit companion for it-fifteen pounds you said-guineas, was it? I always pay pounds. And this is the exact measure-umph! As for these queer beginnings, I suppose they are not for sale at all? I think I could colour them up into something rather different.'

"Why, sir, if you take the handsome French painting, I shall throw you these things in for nothing.'

66 6

No, no, not for nothing. Well then-come-suppose I agree to your price, guineas instead of pounds, allowing the odd shillings for these little extras! And, by the by, I may as well move them out of your way at once, and take them in the cab with me. Can you give me change for a sovereign?'

*

"The cab seemed to fly away with me-me and my two companions."

"Elysian beauty, melancholy grace!"

I exclaimed, "these are the names of the two. Lovely and spiritual children of exalted Art, partakers of the spirit's privilege-Invisibility -being before the world's eyes, yet all unnoticed and unseen! But I must be pardoned, notwithstanding this true story, for maintaining that the present remarkable and adventurous age is not so grossly ignorant-"

"On all points; assuredly not," returned Sharpson. "The educated classes generally, are excellent judges of beef, respectable judges of books, tolerable judges of music, no contemptible judges of taxes, and very bad judges of each other-but the thing they know least about is Art. People who are good critics on other great subjects, are mere canters upon this-that's my creed. And now, what shall it be, once more-coffee or claret?"

THE HOT-WATER CURE.

ACCORDING to the traditions of the last century, a physician of 1742 was a well-powdered, elderly gentleman, whose town residence was a well-built London chariot, and whose ensign of office, a goldheaded consulting-cane. After the birthday, on the 4th of June, it was his custom to order his patients for three or four months into the country, for change of air, while he proceeded to his country-seat for the enjoyment of its domestic felicity and sour grapes; while such among them as were obstinate enough to be bedridden, were assigned for the period of his absence to the well-tied hands of some confidential apothecary.

A physician of 1842, on the contrary, is a gentleman of a certain age, who figures in a natty caoutchouc brutus, and highly-varnished boots; whose town residence stands in a fashionable square, and whose bâton of office is the whip of a well-appointed cabriolet. At the close of the season, the fashionable M.D. orders himself to some foreign watering-place- Aix-la-Chapelle, Wiesbaden, Töplitz, or Carlsbad,-the waters of which become indispensable, not only to his own health, but to that of all his patients,-beneficial at once to his own gout, the plethora of the fat marchioness,-the dyspepsia of the roué duke, and the consumption or hysteria of a whole bevy of fashionable misses! By this arrangement his professional career becomes as agreeable as profitable, and it will go hard with such a medicus if he do not pick up a black, white, or yellow eagle among the German principicules, as a pretext for being beknighted on his return to England. Once Sir Anything, he has only to get up a quarto on the virtues of Twitchingem or Switchingem, or some other equally sonorous spa of the Black Forest, affix to his name the initials of his German order, as well as of the various societies into which he has flummeried himself;-send a well-bound copy to the Emperor of Russia, to secure a diamond ring in return; another to Louis Philippe, to fish for a snuff box; and a third to Louis of Bavaria, as a hint for a gold medal; which imperial benefactions and regal compliments he duly advertises, as they successively come to hand, per paragraph in the morning papers, and lo! his fortune is made with the fools of the fashionable world!

Even such a man is the eminent Sir Jedediah Claversham, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. of Hanover-square; whose portrait may be admired in the various annual exhibitions,-in oils, crayons, watercolours, from miniature to full length, besides being engraved in all the printshops, and stitched in Berlin-work in all the fancy repositories! Arranged with fitting classification under glass in his gorgeous drawing-room, lie the insignia of half-a-dozen orders, a profusion of gold and silver medals of honour, autograph letters from crowned heads, diplomas from foreign universities, announcing Sir Jedediah Claversham to be a man of European reputation." The beau monde cannot be ignorant that while his cab is waiting at the door of some dowager in Wilton Crescent, Rome, Dresden, Stockholm, are in agonies of impatience for his answer to their letters. Sir Jedediah is, in short, a Dec. -VOL. LXVI. NO. CCLXIV. 2 I

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modern Boerhaave-a Boerhaave with diamond shirt-studs and white kid-gloves!

The influence which this transformation in the form and pressure of medical capacities may have had on the bills of mortality, is a matter for the consideration of Mr. Wakley, or the discussion of the Statistical Society. Certain it is, meanwhile, that our pills have been agreeably gilded by the innovations of the new school and that a one-andtwenty day fever, prolonged in duration to forty-two, appears reduced to a ten days visitation by the agreeability of the Sir Jedediahs of the day.

By the obsolete order of three-visits-and-three-draughts-a-day-apothecaries, a malady was rendered a calamity indeed! whereas the travelled Esculapii execute for the sick and ailing world all that Howell and James perform for the fashionable, by the assiduous importation of the last new novelties and spring fashions of the continent. While the jog-trot men of routine, still extant in the quizical old College of Physicians, or their snail-shells in Baker-street or Bloomsbury, adhere to rhubarb, senna, and the Pharmacopeia Londonensis or Edinensis, the Sir Jedediahs come back from the continent at the expiration of every cholera-season, bringing with them, by the Antwerp steamer, some monstrous nostrum-some patent device, such as curing consumption by the application of bear's-grease to the soles of the feet, or removing tubercles from the lungs by baths of oxtail soup! One year, homoeopathy is their stalking-horse; the next, brandy and salt; the third, the cold-water cure!

The importation of Sir Jedediah last season, however, still remains an anonymous mystery-a cure without a name! Homœopathy has long been vulgarized by the press; and Vincent Preissnitz became a byword the moment his book of revelations was seen in print; warned by which experience, Sir Jedediah chose to be as mute as a mummy concerning a new system of medical treatment, to which he is reported to have become a convert at the baths of Mehadia, in Hungary, in consultation with the body-physician of Georgewitsch Czerny, Prince of Servia, called in with him to attend the hysterical waiting-maid of an English dowager of fashion, by whom rumours of the wondrous works of her united doctors were circulated on her return, throughout half the country-houses of Great Britain. In the course of the spring, accordingly, Sir Jedediah began to foresee the necessity for doubling the returns of his profits to the income-tax commissioners. Patients sprang under his feet like mushrooms! Still he uttered not a word. When applied to by a dozen applicants for a programme of his performances when requested by letters from Ireland or the Land'send, to state whether his mode of practice were founded on electropathy, or hydropathy, or any other newly-invented pathy, he contented himself with replying that he possessed no exclusive mode of practice, and that all he demanded was "the power of communicating with his patient in person and alone."

The immediate consequence of this regulation was the establishment of two new hotels, and the letting of all the old lodging-houses in the vicinity of Hanover-square, at the various doors of which the cab of the fashionable physician is still seen in daily waiting, in doses of

half an hour at a time. Already wonders are related of the healing influence of these visits. Four countesses dying of nervous fever, three honourable misses subject to spasms,-the young Viscount Benledi who inherits seventy thousand a year, and a liver complaint, to say nothing of an eminent ex-member of parliament, given over in an atrophy, have been successively redeemed from the brink of the grave by the miraculous spells of Sir Jedediah Claversham, &c. &c. &c.!!

Now I plead guilty to a weakness for new inventions. Through life I have been a martyr to patents, and my lumber-room is encumbered with lamps "on an entirely novel principle," which could never be made to burn, and locks of scientific mechanism, which could never be kept shut. Having the misfortune to enjoy perfect health, I had, however, no pretext for searching into the mysteries of the Prince of Servia's body-physician. But I have at least the good fortune to possess a near relative in a highly infirm state of nerves; a lady of fashion and fortune, for whose recovery, having nothing to hope from her will, I am deeply interested. Some months ago I persuaded her to consult Sir Jedediah.

"I am too ill and nervous to see strangers," was her reply, drawing her cachemere shawl more closely round her stooping shoulders.

"But a physician is never a stranger!" said I, and Sir Jedediah will cure you of being weak and nervous.

"No, no! He will do as all the others have done,-advise air, exercise, exertion ;-exertion to me, who have scarcely strength to turn on my sofa! These doctors come here, themselves in robust health, from visiting the wife of some country squire, and fancy that a person of my susceptibility is to be treated in the same manner! Physician, my dear cousin, is but another name for savage."

"Sir Jedediah is the most amiable person on the face of the earth," cried I. "At Vienna he is cited as more courteous than the ambassador. He has figured at all the courts in Europe. At Rome he used to drink tea with the Pope; and the Hetman of the Cossacks offered him millions of rubles a year, and the hand of his niece, to become his household physician!"

“Well, well! I will try to think about it," said Lady Anne. "My nerves are so wretchedly shattered that even the mention of a new name makes me tremble from head to foot."

Nerves, indeed! A solitary prisoner, month after month, in a boudoir fifteen feet square, with the thermometer at 80°, and the atmosphere charged with the emanations of cape jessamines, tuberoses, and sachets of vitiori and marselline, living on a diet of green tea, French novels, and échaudés! One of Meux's dray-horses could not have stood it a week! However, I had no choice but to leave poor dear Lady Anne to the enjoyment of her vagaries, and soon afterwards crossed the channel for a ramble through Normandy.

On my return to town, finding still a remnant left of the season, I sauntered into Hyde Park, where, in the fervours of July, the fashionable world concentrates itself, as is its custom of an afternoon, from six. to eight o'clock, in open carriages, stationary beside the cool waters of the Serpentine, surrounded by equestrians, male and female, engaged in the smallest of small-talk with the fair loungers of the britzkas and barouches. To my utter surprise, the first carriage that met my view

was that of the charming Lady Anne, confronting the keen air of the dog-days with only half-a-dozen India shawls and boas for her protection. I approached with my congratulations on this auspicious convalescence.

"It is all Sir Jedediah's doing," said she, cordially accepting my shake of the hand. "Sir Jedediah is the cleverest creature in the world!"

"You have seen him, then, at last?"

"Seen him? I would not pass a day without seeing him for the universe! My life is in his hands!"

"And may I inquire," said I, with a smile, "by what peculiar charm he has wrought this last and greatest of miracles?"

"I cannot tell you if I would," replied her ladyship; "though as my first adviser in the business you are in every way entitled to my confidence! Between ourselves, Sir Jedediah calls it THE HOT-WATER CURE; why, I am sure, I cannot conjecture; for he expressly interdicts the use of the warm bath. However, come to my house to tea this evening, and I will explain to you the whole affair!"

A few months before and I would as soon have gone to drink caudle with some Welsh curate's prolific consort, as tea with my fair cousin. But the prospect of the development of the grand mystery of pathy tempted me sorely. At nine o'clock, therefore, I entered the wellknown boudoir in Chesterfield-street.

Nothing was altered. The same subdued light-the same hermetically-closed windows-the same overpowering scent of heliotropes and orange-blossom-the same bonbonnières scattered about. Every thing I had been accustomed to notice in her delicate retreat was still there, with the exception of the last H. B., and the latest novel of Balzac.

"You may remember," said Lady Anne in a cheerful voice, inviting me to take my place beside her, as soon as we had swallowed two tiny cups of coffee, yellow and transparent as a Cairn-Gorm pebble, "how utterly lost I was when you quitted London. Chambers had ordered me to Nice,-Sir Henry insisted on my wintering at Malta. So reduced was I, that three wafers and half an ice a day were almost too much for my digestion, while my spirits were in such a fluttering state that I was obliged to order poor Flora into Mademoiselle's room, not being able to bear the excitement of her company. In short, my dear cousin, I felt my end to be approaching. I had signed my will, and every now and then added a codicil,-instructions for which to my men of business, served only to increase my depression. By your desire I sent, as a last resource, to Sir Jedediah. Aware that he only came to see me die by inches, I could have no objection to comply with your wishes, and let him see me die!"

Assuming a becoming face of sympathy, I patted the head of poor Flora, now restored to her former post of honour beside her lady.

"Never shall I forget," resumed Lady Anne," the evening on which that inestimable man paid me his first visit. The morning had been rainy, with that small, still, spring rain, so far from conveying the excitement of a summer shower. All day, one had known that it would rain all day :—that there would be no intermission, and consequently no droppers-in, no chat,-no news,-no nothing! By degrees, as