the horses! One dose of that joyous Socialism is a cure for our worst attack of the mopes. The truth is, an invalid's misanthropy is no more in earnest than the piety of the sick demon who wanted to be a monk, or the sentence about being weary of existence, to which Hypochondriasis puts a period with a Parr's Life Pill!

A more serious peril, from illness, concerns the temper. When the nerves are irritable, and the skin is irritable, and the stomach is irritable-not to be irritable altogether is a moral miracle; and especially in England, where, by one of the anomalies of the constitution, whilst a man cannot be tried twice for the same offence, his temper may be tried over and over again for no offence at all. Indeed, as our author says, "there are cases, and not a few, where an invalid's freedom from irritability is a merit of the highest order." For example, after soot in your gruel, tallow. grease in your barley-water, and snuff over your light pudding, to have "the draught as before" poured into your wakeful eyes, instead of your open mouth, by a drunken Mrs. Gamp, or one of her stamp. To check at such a moment the explosive speech, is at least equal to spiking a cannon in the heat of battle. There is beyond denial an ease to the chest, or somewhere, in a passionate objurgation-("Swear, my dear," said Fuseli to his wife, "it will relieve you")—so much so, that a certain invalid of our acquaintance, doubly afflicted with a painful complaint, and an unmanageable hard-mouthed temper, regularly retains, as helper to the sick-nurse, a stone-deaf old woman, whom he can abuse without violence to her feelings.

How much better to have emulated the heavenly patience in sickness, of which woman-in spite of Job-has given the brightest examples ;-Woman, who endures the severest trials, with a meekness and submission, unheard of amongst men, the quaker excepted, who merely said, when his throat was being cut rather roughly-" Friend, thee dost haggle."

It must not be concealed, however, as regards irritability of temper in the sick-room-there are faults on both sides-captious nurses as well as querulous nurselings. Cross-patches themselves, they willingly mistake the tones and accents of intolerable anguish, naturally sharp and hurried, for those of

anger and impatience and even accuse pain, in its contortions, of making faces, and set up their backs at the random speeches of poor delirium! Then there are your lecturers, who preach patience in the very climax of a paroxysm, when the sermon can scarcely be heard, certainly not understood-as if a martyr, leaping mad with the toothache, could be calmed by reading to him the advertisement of the American Soothing Syrup! And then there is the she-dragon, who bullies the sufferer into comparative quiet! Not that the best of attendants is the smooth-tongued. Our invalid objects wisely to the sick being flattered, in season or out, with false hopes and views. As much panada, sago, or arrowroot as you please, but no flummery.

"Let the nurse avow that the medicine is nauseous. Let the physician declare that the treatment will be painful. Let sister, or brother, or friend, tell me that I must never look to be well. When the time approaches that I am to die, let me be told that I am to die, and when. If I encroach thoughtlessly on the time or strength of those about me, let me be reminded; if selfishly, let me be remonstrated with. Thus to speak the truth with love is in the power of us all."

And so say we. There is nothing worse for soul or body than the feverish agitation kept up by the struggle between external assurances and the internal conviction; for the mind will cling with forlorn pertinacity to the most desperate chance, like the sailor, who, when the ship was in danger of sinking, lashed himself to the sheet-anchor because it was the emblem of Hope. Till the truth is known there can be no calm of mind. It is only after he has abandoned all prospects of pardon or reprieve, that the capital convict sleeps soundly and dreams of green fields. So with ourselves, once satisfied that our case was beyond remedy, we gave up without reserve all dreams of future health and strength, and prepared, instead, to compete with that very able invalid who was able to be knocked down with a feather. Thenceforward, free of those jarring vibrations between hope and fear, relieved from all tantalizing speculations on the weather's clearing up, our state has been one of comparative peace and ease. We would not

give one of our Pectoral Lozenges to be told, we are looking better than a month ago—not a splinter of our broken crutch to be promised a new lease of life—a renewal of our youth like the eagle's! Such flatteries go in at one ear, the deaf one, and out at the other. We never shall be well again, till broken bones are mended with "soft-sawder."

Are we, therefore, miserable, hypped, disconsolate? Answer, ye book-shelves, whence we draw the consolations of Philosophy, the dreams of Poetry and Romance-the retrospections of History; and glimpses of society from the better novels; mirth, comfort, and entertainment even for those small hours become so long from an unhealthy vigilance. Answer, ye pictures and prints, a Portrait Gallery of Nature!—and reply in your own tones, dear old fiddle, so often tuned to one favorite sadly-swee. air, and the words of Curran :

"But since in wailing
There's naught availing,
But Death unfailing
Must strike the blow,
Then for this reason,
And for a season,

Let us be merry before we go!

It is melancholy, doubtless, to retire, in the prime of life, from the whole wide world, into the narrow prison of a sick-room. How much worse if that room be a wretched garret, with the naked tiles above and the bare boards below-no swinging bookshelf—not a penny colored print on the blank wall! And yet that forlorn attic is but the type of a more dreadful destitution, an unfurnished mind! The mother of Bloomfield used to say, that to encounter Old Age, Winter, and Poverty, was like meeting three giants; she might have added two more as huge and terrible, Sickness, and Ignorance-the last not the least of the Monster Evils; for it is he who affects pauperism with a deeper poverty-the beggary of the mind and soul.

"I have said how unavailing is luxury when the body is distressed and the spirit faint. At such times, and at all times, we cannot but be deeply grieved at the conception of the converse of our own state, at the thought

of the multitude of the poor suffering under privation, without the support and solace of great ideas. It is sad enough to think of them on a winter's night, aching with cold in every limb, and sunk as low as we in nerve and spirits, from their want of sufficient food. But this thought is supportable in cases where we may fairly hope that the greatest ideas are cheering them as we are cheered; that there is a mere set-off of their cold and hunger against our disease; and that we are alike inspired by spiritual vigor in the belief that our Father is with us-that we are only encountering the probations of our pilgrimage-that we have a divine work given us to carry out, now in pain and now in joy. There is comfort in the midst of the sadness and shame when we are thinking of the poor who can reflect and pray-of the old woman who was once a punctual and eager attendant at church-of the wasting child who was formerly a Sunday-scholar—of the reduced gentleman or destitute student who retain the privilege of their humanity-of 'looking before and after.' But there is no mitigation of the horror when we think of the savage poor, who form so large a proportion of the hungerers-when we conceive of them suffering the privation of all good things at once-suffering under the aching cold, the sinking hunger, the shivering nakedness-without the respite or solace afforded by one inspiring or beguiling idea.

“I will not dwell on the reflection. A glimpse into this hell ought to suffice (though we to whom imagery comes unbidden, and cannot be banished at will, have to bear much more than occasional glimpses); a glimpse ought to suffice to set all to work to procure for every one of these sufferers, bread and warmth, if possible, and as soon as possible; but above everything, and without the loss of an hour, an entrance upon their spiritual birthright. Every man, and every woman, however wise and tender, appearing and designing to be, who for an hour helps to keep closed the entrance to the region of ideas-who stands between sufferers and great thoughts (which are the angels of consolation sent by God to all to whom he has given souls), are, in so far, ministers of hell, not themselves inflicting torment, but intercepting the influences which would assuage or overpower it. Let the plea be heard of us sufferers who know well the power of ideas-our plea for the poor-that, while we are contriving for all to be fed and cherished by food and fire, we may meanwhile kindle the immortal vitality within them, and give them that ethereal solace and sustenance which was meant to be shared by all, without money and without price." "

6

Never, then, tell a man, permanently sick, that he will again be a perfect picture of health when he has not the frame for it— nor hint to a sick woman, incurably smitten, that the seeds of her disease will flourish and flower into lilies and roses. Why deter them from providing suitable pleasures and enjoyments. to replace those delights of health and strength of which they

must take leave for ever? Why not rather forewarn them of the Lapland Winter to which they are destined, and to trim their lamps spiritual, for the darkness of a long seclusion? Tell them their doom; and let them prepare themselves for it, according to the Essays before us, so healthy in tone, though from a confirmed invalid-so wholesome and salutary, though furnished from a Sick Room.