two of the more clever and informing passages. First, take a bishop at Gotha, and part of his sabbath occupations :-

First Sunday I have spent in Saxony. Can trace the effects of Luther's labours; all the sincerity of religion without the cant, and without the lugubrious garb, which, like the fog, envelops the day in London. No cold dinners and long solemn faces. The hausfrau puts forth her best skill, and all the good folks at one o'clock sit down to a hot dish; if but one, it is "Ein Gericht

Und ein freundliches Gesicht."

Afternoon is spent in the neighbouring villages. The Walk Mühle is the favourite resort of the good Gotha folk, where a band of music is in attendance. The ladies knit, embroider, and sip coffee, while the men smoke and drink beer, all al fresco, enjoying the fine view of the Thuringian forest and hills; even the Bishop, Dr. Bretschneider, does not think it infra dig. to smoke his cigar and tipple his beer with the rest. Fancy the Bishop of London whiffing a cigar over a pot of stout in a tea-garden near London! and yet Bishop Bretschneider loses none of the respect due to his high and sacred character, nor does his reputation as a learned Greek and Hebrew scholar suffer in consequence. The grand secret of which is, that here people are not slaves to appearances as in England, and agree with the Italians, L'abito non fa monaco.

Character and manners of the Thuringians :

In physical development, the Thuringians, though not so colossal as we find their ancestors described by the old historians, are nevertheless fine powerful men, robust and hardy, varying in height from five ten inches to six feet and upwards: possessed of great muscular strength, frequently carrying from the mountain to the village three hundred weight at once. The women are likewise tall, and in early years are fair and pretty; but they lose their beauty soon. Although of one common stock, there is a wonderful variety, both moral and physical, in the Wäldner. Almost every mountain-village has its peculiarities of dialect and dress, its appropriate fête, and original customs. There is as much diversity in the little mountain-districts of Thuringia as in the cantons of Switzerland; and it extends even to the monies, of which there are current many different kinds. The following characteristic qualities may, however, be universally applied: primitive simple manners; frugal and industrious habits; naturally gay and fond of society, as their numerous fêtes well prove; rarely, if ever, guilty of excess; high moral character; (a capital offence has not been committed in the Duchy these fifty years.) No people in the world can be more passionately fond of music, in which they practically excel. Almost every peasant plays upon some instrument, and they frequently meet at each other's cottages to join in a cordial harmony of voice and instrument. Their songs are usually accompanied with the cithern or mountain-lyre, of which thousands are made at Kräwinkle, a small hamlet in the heart of the forest they are very elegant in shape, like the old English guitars; and, in compliance with the taste for ornament which prevails among the pea

:

sants, they are painted with various colours, and gilt with great display; and you would scarcely credit me when I name the price-a Prussian dollar, or about three shillings English. They frequently play three and four together, and produce the most harmonious sounds, which blend softly with their songs.

*

Their love of music is only equalled by their taste for flowers, in which Thuringia's hills and forest-glades are pre-eminently rich, and their skill in teaching birds, especially the bull finch tribe, to whistle popular melodies. Not a cottage is without a cage or two of warblers. A year's savings will be readily given by the peasant for a good schläger or whistler; one that whistles the Härzer Doppleschlag, or gute Weingesang, they value at a cow. Of the four hundred different kinds of birds found here, eighty may be seen encaged. Many of their feathered scholars are sent for sale to London and to Paris, where they fetch a high price.

Mr. Stanford had some intercourse with Professors; and although in the passage which we shall last of all quote, we find him declaring that he hates praising princes, yet he hesitates not to present to his readers the following fulsome eulogy, taken from a certain Professor's letter:-" Prince Albert has received and profited by a thoroughly intellectual education. Speak to him in Latin, French, English, or Italian, and he will reply with facility in those languages. Talk of politics, jurisprudence, natural science, physics, chemistry, antiquities, archæology, you will find him at home. He does not judge like an automaton, but like a judicious thinker. With all this the young Prince excels in all the fine arts. He is a painter, musician, loves and writes poetry, and dances like an angel, rides like a devil, swims like a dolphin, and skaits like a ducal dandy. But hear the Rambler's own direct testimony as respects Prince Albert's accomplishments:

Invited to dine at the Palace-felt nervous as to what I should say by way of congratulation; so whilst rumbling along in the old coach prepared an impromptu address of congratulation on the approaching nuptials of his Serene Highness the Prince. His Serene Highness acknowledged the compliment very graciously, and presented me to his Serene Highness the Prince; and although my expectations were very great, still they were more than realized. I hate praising princes, because it appears all fudge; but I can't help saying, that his Serene Highness's manners are most elegant, and in person is enough to turn the heads of all women that are not blind, or who choose to cry sour grapes; dances to perfection; speaks English, French, and of course German, thoroughly well, the Italian slightly; sings well, and in moments of leisure composes musical bagatelles; paints really well; and what is better than all, his heart is in the right place: of this fact I have had repeated proof.

Now, we believe that the Prince has far too much merit, and has been too well educated, to be pleased with flattery which it is unworthy of a man to receive. It would lower our estimation of

him, if after perusing the present pages he afforded the Master of Arts many more proofs of how or where his heart is placed. Did the Prince's principles and attainments require to be published it would not be to the Rambler's feeble rhapsodies that we should turn for illustration; but to the sensible, direct, and earnest conduct as well as language of His Serene Highness, on those occasions when he has taken the chair at public meetings for the furtherance of benevolent and enlightened purposes. Can we do better than relieve ourselves of Mr. Stanford's conceit and twaddle by quoting two or three of the sentences which fell from the Prince when he the other day presided among the patrons of the Literary Fund Society? He thus, in one of his brief speeches, expressed himself:

The toast which I have now to propose is, "Prosperity to this Institution," an institution which stands unrivalled in any country, and which ought to command our warmest sympathies, in providing for the exigencies of those who, feeling only the promptings of genius, and forgetting every other consideration, pursue the grand career of the cultivation of the human mind, and the promotion of the arts and sciences. It is surely right gratefully to acknowledge the benefits we have derived from the disinterested exertions of those great and good men, and cheerfully to contribute to their wants and aid their necessities. I conclude with a warm wish that the object for the promotion of which we have assembled this day may be responded to in the most ample and generous manner. I propose "Success to the Literary Fund."

ART. X.-1. Homœopathy. By a Disciple of the System. 2. The Cold Water Cure. London: Strange.

IT is a fact that the science of Medicine has gained some of its most brilliant results by listening to the suggestions of those who were not its professed students. It was from the observations of simple rustics, that Jenner took the first hint of vaccination. The ingenious idea of injecting the Eustachian tube, in cases of deafness, was suggested, we believe, and put in practice upon his own person, by a postmaster of Lyons. Many, who have hung in rapture over the pages of "Faust" and "Werter," are ignorant, that Goethe was the discoverer of the intermaxillary bone in the human embryo, and one of the first who developed the singular doctrine, now received among the truths of transcendental anatomy, that the cranium is but a series of vertebræ, modified from the original type to accommodate the expanded nervous columns.

But while the suggestions of a few persons who were not the professed students of Medicine, have been serviceable to the science, the fact is still more notorious that many who have had nothing to add to its complicated nature, have troubled the world by announcing their vagaries. Mankind and womankind have shown themselves

prone to meddle with its principles as well as its practice, and with consummate assurance have propagated new quackeries which have astounded and misled the public for a series of years, and until the preposterous claims of the empirics have been exposed, if not by direful experience, at least by deceptive issues. The multitude for a time are apt to be misguided, and in no department more so than as concerns the health of the body. But the false is always at length detected, although the same persons may be ready to fall into the snare, whenever the empiricism assumes a new name and shape; the pretenders generally making a lavish use of the history of such persecuted discoverers as Galileo and Harvey to mislead the ignorant and the credulous.

Now, we are inclined to rank among the medical quackeries of the age, or at least unsound systems, and inoperative for good, that of Homœopathy, and also its successor, Hydropathy; although we are convinced that each of them have their honest disciples. It seems but fair, at any rate, that their pretensions should be weighed, and if possible judged of, as tested by experience as well as theory. The following are the Homoeopathic pretensions as set forth by one of the ablest of the advocates for the system, and which we have gathered from the Spectator newspaper, allowing the Disciple to speak in his own person.

Upon its very first announcement, Homoeopathy was received by the medical reviewers of the day with an amount of derision almost equal to that which was bestowed upon the discoveries of HARVEY, JENNER, and GALL; and, following the course of these discoveries, it has, in the face of the prejudices thus excited, maintained its onward way.

Although the system can now claim in every class of society a large body of unwavering disciples, to the majority of the public, even at the present day, Homoeopathy is known only by name. By many it is still regarded as the dream of a German enthusiast; and by those who are prone to rely with unsuspecting credulity upon the representations of others rather than to derive their opinions from the results of careful induction, it is mostly considered to be a system that must, from some inherent absurdity, soon sink into oblivion. It has therefore been greatly laughed at and little studied; nor will this appear a matter of surprise when we bear in mind that the public must necessarily have gained from the periodical press their first information upon the subject, and that among all the notices of Homoeopathy and Homœopathic works which have hitherto appeared, there is scarcely an instance where the principles of the system have been stated with the slightest regard to common fairness. Whether these misrepresentations have been the result of accident or design, it is not in my province to inquire. The notices in question proceeded, it is probable, in most instances

from contributors of established reputation in the medical profession, well acquainted with the necessity for precision in explaining any point of theory or practice, and from whom, therefore, misrepresentations from either of these causes could hardly have been expected. It is enough for me to remark, that by the suppression or misstatement of important facts the system has upon every occasion been converted into a legitimate subject for idle satire. That the public should ridicule doctrines which have thus been dressed up and palmed upon them under the name of Homœopathy, cannot therefore be a subject of complaint; but it is right that they should be enlightened wherever the columns of an impartial journal can be made available for the purpose, as to the source whence their amusement is derived. With this view, I am desirous of laying the following observations before the readers of the Spectator.

The Homoeopathic doctrine is one of the plainest kind, and the principles which it involves may be stated thus:

1. That all medicines, when received into the human organization, respectively possess the power of exciting specific morbid symptoms.

2. That when the human organization is in a disordered state, the restoration of health can most safely and certainly be effected by the administration of medicines which possess the power of exciting symptoms analogous to those which are exhibited by the patient, and which characterize his disease. Upon the universal truth of these propositions the system of Homoeopathy entirely rests. The points which have arisen out of the application of these principles are,

A. That medicines administered in obedience to the foregoing law (2) act with greater force and rapidity than when they are administered upon any other principle.

B. That medicinal agents exhibit higher power after they have been subjected to a process of friction, than they are capable of exerting in their original state.

It will be seen that these points are merely points of practice, involving the question as to the quantity of medicine to be administered in any given case, but in no way interfering with the law under which the selection of that medicine is made.

The first statement-viz. that all medicines, when received into the human organization, respectively possess the power of exciting specific morbid symptoms-will call for little explanation. As far as I am aware, no doubt has ever been entertained of the fact; and the reason why the peculiar symptoms which each of our most common medicines is respectively capable of exciting had not been discovered previously to the discovery of Homoeopathy, must be found in the circumstance that up to that time these medicines had been