"True," responded the venerable shade of Watt; and his voice grew even more full of majesty than before, as the future seemed to rise 66 his vision: upon true, and man must be elevated nearer to his Maker, before he can rightly use it. But the instruction will advance rapidly and irresistibly. The destructive agencies wear themselves out, and leave the green and beautiful world behind them, only the more beautiful in the end for the processes through which it has passed. The danger you speak of will increase as the rapidity of movement of the steam navy increases; until at last no skill nor precaution can suffice to avert the threatened attack. Country may burn and waste country-take and be taken with such ease at last, and to such little purpose, that men will discover the only work effectually done is their own destruction and ruin. From that moment war-and rumours of wars-must cease from the earth."

"Would I were alive again," exclaimed Fulton, "to promote that rapidity-I mean for that end."

A SONNET TO CHARLES DICKENS.

Он, potent wizard! painter of great skill!
Blending with life's realities the hues
Of a rich fancy; sweetest of all singers!
Charming the public ear, and at thy will

Searching the soul of him thou dost amuse,
And the warm heart's recess, where mem'ry lingers,
And child-like love, and sympathy, and ruth,

And every blessed feeling, which the world
Had frozen or repressed with its stern apathy
For human suffering! "crabbed age, and youth,"
And beauty, smiling tearful, turn to thee,
Whose "CAROL " is an allegory fine,

The burden of whose "CHIMES" is holy and benign.

CRIMES OF QUACKS.

THERE is a certain subject on which we are in much need of a book-we want a good Anatomy of Humbug. But it is much more profitable to practise than to teach that art and mystery; and the most competent are the least likely persons to write about

it.

And then, its branches are so numerous, that the dissection of each would require a special professor. No single rogue could compass such a work. Its composition would ask what managers call a galaxy of talent; a constellation of impostors. It would be properly accomplished only by a Grand Knave-Union, from the spiritual charlatan and slippery statesman, down to the advertising tailor; with the whole tribe of Pecksniff to boot. Truly their name would be legion, and a legion which it would be necessary to pay. Where is the enterprising publisher who would embark in such a speculation? But suppose the rash capitalist found— who, but the very rich, could afford his cyclopædia; for that is what it would come to? The volume of humbug would still be a sealed book to the public-those who would most profit by reading it. We cannot hope to see the subject treated at large; nor by the authors best qualified for the task, who, as aforesaid, have something better to do. All that can be looked for is an occa sional monograph, on a division of it, by somebody who has picked up the requisite knowledge. Something of this sort is what we are about to attempt. The phase of humbug which we shall endeavour to illuminate is that of the Patent Medicine Vender. This subject cannot be lightly passed over. there is not a right way of treating diseases. every magazine and pamphlet, is a vehicle for ments. Every hoarding is placarded with them. of patent medicines, government derives a revenue of upwards of £30,000 per annum. Their consumption, therefore, must be enormous. There must be a very great class of persons whose physician, in fact, is the quack. Now these medicines either do good or harm, or do neither harm nor good. If they do good, well; if they do harm, thousands are injured in health by them; if neither good nor harm, multitudes are cheated out of their

Either there is or Every newspaper, quack advertiseFrom the sale

money. We know that the proprietors of popular medicines make immense fortunes. Their wealth is the reward either of great usefulness or immense knavery. Are they the dispensers of health, the venders of poison, or simply rubbish-merchants? If their commodities are trash, how many constitutions are injured and lives lost from a dependence, in sickness, on such trash?

We have called the craft of the Patent-Medicine-Man, Humbug. It is true, we believe, that he slays his thousands and tens of thousands. We are satisfied that he is actuated by a mere spirit of self-aggrandisement-by selfish avarice. Yet we abstain from giving him hard names. We do not call him swindler, poisoner, murderous rogue. We are content with a milder epithet. Indeed, we regard him as being only one of that large class of persons whose aim it is to extract all they can out of their fellow-creatures by any process not forbidden by the statute-book. We class the quack with the cheap slop-seller. Neither is chargeable with malice prepense. Both are purely cold-blooded. One thinks not of how many he grinds to earth-the other of how many he consigns to it.

But we must define humbug. It is not naked untruth. A draper's assistant, who tells a lady that a dress will wash when it will not, does not humbug-he merely cheats her. But if he persuades her to buy a good-for-nothing muslin, by telling her that he has sold such another to a Duchess, he humbugs her, whether he speaks truly or not. He imposes an inference, in favour of his commodity, through her large vanity, upon her small mind. Humbug thus consists in making people deceive themselves, by supplying them with premises, true or false, from which, by reason of their ignorance, weakness, or prejudices, they draw wrong conclusions. There is nothing essentially fraudulent in straight hair and rusty black; but the vulgar associate these externals with sanctity; accordingly they are assumed by the Stiggins class of humbugs. Thus the owl, by his mere exterior-involuntary humbug!-passed with the ancients for the bird of Pallas; thus is there, to the clown, wisdom in the wig which perhaps covers a numskull. And thus will professional costume cause a simpleton to be thought a Sydenham; a consideration in point to our subject-matter.

The old paraphernalia of quackery are now out of date. The empiric, attired like Dr. Syntax, would be followed, at this day, by boys, not patients. The quack, at present, dresses like other

folks. Moreover, he works unseen. Newspaper columns serve him for a platform, and he has cashiered his zany; his gull is his only fool. He disguises himself morally, not physically; in a theory instead of a coat. He avers that all diseases arise from the blood, the stomach, or the nervous system; and these propositions he couches in fine words, which, if they will not butter the parsnip, will fatten himself. The Quack may be within or without the pale of the medical profession. A diploma is no great guarantee that a man is not a fool, and it is certainly none whatever that he is not a knave. To obtain it he merely requires a knowledge of facts and opinions; of the true principles of disease he may know nothing at all. Of these, a fashionable physician may be as ignorant as the countess whom he bamboozles; common sense is required to comprehend, common honesty to act upon them; qualities no more universal among the "Faculty" than elsewhere.

It is chiefly to the unsettled state of medicine that we owe the quack. That"doctors differ " is as common a matter of observation as it is an adage. If everybody thought that medicine was as definite a thing as astronomy, we should have no more medical than astronomical quacks. But the public has lost confidence in systems of physic. It has also contracted the notion that remedies are discovered accidentally; and consequently has concluded, not unnaturally, that they are as likely to be found out by a "Clergyman of Cambridge University," or by an old woman, as by anybody else. For this impression on the public mind, the medical profession has to thank itself. Its ordinary practice has tended, and still tends, to make people think that drugs are antidotes to diseases, and that the great object of medicine is the discovery of specifics. Hence the continual questions, "What is good for rheumatism ?—“What should I take for a cough?" by which practitioners are pestered. It is not "What am I to do?" that patients ask; but "What am I to swallow ?"

Now, a disease is not a substance, an individual thing. It is not a poison requiring an antidote. It is not a malignant being —a fiend—which must be exorcised by a draught or pill. It is a state or condition of things, and when influenced by medicinal substances is so influenced by their placing the body in such a different state as to favour its termination. To effect this object medicine is often not necessary at all. Diet, regimen, exercise, will frequently produce the conditions favourable to recovery. Dis

eases, too, often so vary in different patients, and even in the same patient at different times, as to demand the production of different, and even opposite conditions. Wine may be necessary in inflammation; calomel may prove a cordial. We believe we may affirm, that there are but two diseases in which the corrective effects of medicines are at all uniform: one is ague, which generally yields to quinine; the other, a certain northern ailment, is pretty certainly extirpated by sulphur.

The postulate, quietly assumed by the quack, is, that particular diseases are to be cured by particular drugs. This, instead of being generally true, is nearly universally false. Look, now, at the pile of humbug of which it is the foundation.

The quack has started on a popular fallacy-he next tells a personal falsehood. He declares himself to have discovered some drug that will cure certain, or all, diseases. He advertises this pretended discovery, backed with all sorts of testimonials, duly signed and attested by Brown and Tomkins. The gudgeon bites instantly; but is not at once hooked-not exactly humbugged just yet. He is ill-no matter with what complaint. A pillvender promises relief. He does not take all that he is told for gospel. Not he! He knows better than that. But he doesn't mind trying an experiment. There can't be much danger so far. The proof of the pudding is in the eating after all. He will even try a dose; just one: he does it with his eyes open.

Does he? Unsuspecting innocent! They happen to be closed against the following truths:

First, that a large proportion of diseases end naturally in

Thirdly, that were a hundred patients, with common complaints, chosen at random, made to take a dose of blue-pill and colocynth all round, a very handsome per centage would be cured by it.

So he shuts his eyes and opens his mouth, and takes what the pill-vender sends him; and if, thereafter, he happens to get better, connects the pill and the recovery as cause and effect. Thousands of such experiments are tried with similar results. The recoveries are noised abroad-the failures are unknown. The idea is thus propagated that there is a specific relation between the remedy and disease or diseases. This is the false inference, the selfdeception, into which the quack seeks to inveigle his dupe. The humbug is complete, and the fox catches the goose.