expense of half-a-crown a month. Turn the cock, and you see your face-your smiling face-in the liquid mirror; true to nature, yet of the most delicate flattery, and ever pleasant reflections. Nay, there are many cocks. Turn one-out gushes soft water for washing; another-hard, for tea and toddy; a third-cream for tart and pudding; a fourth—hippocrene; a fifth-Glenlivet. The fact of the matter is, that you are the inhabitant of a Fairy palace, and are served by the hands of Invisibles. Sweet voices whisper to you of all that is going on in the everyday world, and all the Elements are Contributors.

Change the image; and, instead of a Fountain-Head, suppose people addicted to a Brown Study. Who out of Grub Street would be a Book-worm? Think not that happiness is to be found in calfskin, or Russia binding. O Lord preserve us! what a multitude of blockheads are confined in a large book-case,- -as Mr Wordsworth says of the tea-drinkers about the Lakes- -all silent, and all damned! You view the matter in a different light? Well then, what is the use of a seraglio of ten thousand volumes? The octavos ogle at you all in vain the clumsy quartos get absolutely disgusting—folios fat, fair, and forty-look all comely flabby-and you devoutly wish the little teasing twelvemos at the devil. You would be happy were they all bound in Russia together; and exclaim, with Solomon, in a similar situation, all is vanity. But Maga -divine Maga-she blooms in immortal youth. Custom cannot stale her infinite variety-increase of appetite grows on what it feeds on,-and you hug her in uncloyed transports to your heart, a faithful Subscriber, Contributor, and Monogamist!

We had intended this for a twenty-four page Article like that celebrated one, by the same or another hand, on Selby's Ornithology. But a devil is at the door; and as this is positively the eighth article-short and long-that we have undertaken to write for this month's Maga, without once being ready with copy according to appointment-there is nothing else for it, but to cut it off with a shilling. Buy the Work, facetious reader; for you have six plates, each containing five Illustrations (thirty capital things), for eight shillings plain, and twelve shillings coloured. If you are the man we take you for, you will have all Cruikshank's Works, for they are

almost all chefs-d'œuvre-and the worst of them is more than worth double its price. But these Illustrations of Time are about the very best things George has ever done; and if, on purchasing them, you are disappointed, why, have your revenge by giving up Blackwood and taking Colburn, and thus prove yourself to be a man of the most correct taste, but no genius. The truth, however, is, that the dullest of dogs are amused with Mr Cruikshank's sketches. There is a vein of nature about them that is visible to all human eyes; and it was no farther back than yesterday that we thought a worthy friend. of ours, almost as complete a dunce as breathes, would absolutely have burst a blood-vessel on beholding "TIME THROWN AWAY," in which half-a-dozen washerwomen are endeavouring with might and main to whiten an Ethiopian, who, as he sits in the tub, strongly reminds us of the late Lord Molineux.Do, George, visit Edinburgh, and become one of the Noctes Ambrosianæ, which, being interpreted, signify Ambrosial Knights. Sally! bring our nightcap.

NOTE. The attack on Shakespeare's fairies and witches in this Essay is not to be accepted as Professor Wilson's serious and deliberate judgment. It appears from a MS.memorandum that it was his intention to "write an equally eloquent answer to all about the fairies, &c. in this paper." This intention was never fulfilled; but its execution had been to some extent anticipated in an early number of Blackwood's Magazine (vol. iii. 608), where he says: "It is most true that everything about the Witches, as they are painted in this drama, is terrible as poetry can render superstition."

HEALTH AND LONGEVITY.1

[JANUARY 1828.]

LET no man abuse the Doctors, either of Religion or Medicine. We love the healing tribe, because we love our own souls and our own bodies. The soul being considered, on the whole, a superior article to the body, it might be said that we ought to prefer a parson to a physician. But no such inference can be logically drawn from such premises. For, in the first place, we do not positively know that the soul is a superior article to the body. That is a mere conjecture. Secondly, we do not positively know that the soul is a different article from the body. Here we are-soul and body it may be—or merely a Something which should in our humility be nameless -a something which thinks, feels, fears, loves, hates, goes mad, and dies; and that is all we know about it, whether we choose to call ourselves Materialists or Immaterialists. As long as we believe that we are the children of God, and strive to act accordingly, in that creed we are safe. But thirdly, making use of the common distinction of soul and body, and giving the usual superiority to the former, still we need not prefer the parson to the physician. And that for many reasons. First, we know-men in general we mean-more of our own souls than we do of our own bodies-and therefore cannot surrender our judgment so entirely to the one professional man in black as to the other. Secondly, the soul is often sick and sore-sadly out of sorts-without our being aware of it—whereas no ailment assails the body without our shrewdly suspecting that something is amiss. For once, therefore, that we call in a parson, professionally, we send twenty times for a physician. Who ever heard, except in

1 Sure Methods of Improving Health and Prolonging Life, &c. By a PHYSICIAN.

extreme cases, of knocking up a parson, out of his warm bed at midnight, to visit a sick patient? Thirdly, the spiritual Pharmacopoeia is very meagre. The ablest practitioner-can he minister to a mind diseased? 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 are very bad indeed-quite shockingthey 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 prima via are obstructed-when we shiver in an ague—or in the delirium of fever "6 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 Shakespeare 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 and penitentially sensible of its sins, without wishing to obtrude its sufferings 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 than of their souls. We all fear to die, and at the slightest tap from the finger of Death