benighted precincts no homeopathic practitioner was to be found, and in desperation deigned to consult an allopathic doctor, whom, in a tremor, he called up, to know whether he could do anything for him. The mystic tube was placed in the doctor's hands. The ignorant doctor looked at the globules in despair. At length he poured a dozen or two into his palm, and said, “My friend, I cannot save you, but I can die with you!" He swallowed them; and nothing coming of it, the patient took heart of grace, departed in peace, slept soundly, and was cured of his nervous fancies and his dread of the despotic globules at the same moment.

Forgive me, in conclusion, if I just hint that the bold exhibition of your medicines, and the writing of " Defences" of homoeopathy by utterly unprofessional folks, gives your system an undeniably empirical appearance to the world in general. It looks as if you thought medicine the only thing that may be understood without study or experience; that instead of being the most difficult, it is nearly the easiest of the sciences. Here are you, for example, a good lawyer certainly, but ignorant of the very elements of all those sciences which lie at the basis of the successful practice of Medicine,—of Anatomy, Physiology, Botany, Chemistry, —yet becoming quite a homœopathic knight-errant or evangelist; prescribing at any distance, and sending your all-saving globules by post! I think, if I were a homoeopathic doctor, I should say of all such amateurs "Non tali auxilio."

Yours truly,

R. E. H. G.

LETTER LXXII.

To Alfred West, Esq.

London, Oct. 1854.

My dear Friend,

The recovery of your casket was very remarkable; and I am sure you ought to reverence hereafter the "Electric Tele

graph," for without that you might never have seen it again. Certainly it plays the part of Puck to admiration; and perhaps in time, to the shame of the nimble Ariel himself, will put a girdle round about the earth, not in forty, but in less than five minutes. I remember prophesying to an engineering friend, when the wires were first laid down a few miles out of London, that in all probability some twenty years hence we should be able to transmit a message to Calcutta in seven minutes. He did not shake his head in grave doubt, but shook his sides in laughter of incredulity at the seeming extravagance of the thought; but when the first few miles of submarine telegraph were completed, he came over to my opinion, and declared his belief that the thing might be.

Even in that case, however, we shall probably be as much struck with the limitations imposed on man's power, as with the extent of it; these will still be quite enough to keep him humble, if anything could keep him so. You send home a message, for example, that troops are instantly to be sent to India; but as they cannot be sent by "Electric Telegraph," they will make their appearance some three months after date, and perhaps as many after the crisis is over in which alone they could be of service. You send word for the "Vulcan" or the "Gorgon," or some other of those great war-steamers with the amiable names, to come home immediately. The mandate reaches them in five minutes; they instantly obey, as far as the sluggish nature of steam permits (oh! ye powers! that ever "steam" should be so spoken of); and three months after, the lumbering old hulks (still by comparison I speak) make themselves visible at Spithead or the Nore. It is as though you sent a monkey to a sloth, bidding him look about him and be brisk! The lightning of the "Telegraph" flashes from hence to India, from one end of heaven to the other, in a moment, and the report follows a quarter of a year afterwards. But all is typical of human conditions still; it is the old contrast between promise and fulfilment-thought and execution—the tongue and the hand-swift imagination and slow-paced reality. The electric flash is quick, but the flash of

thought is quicker still; and yet, with inert matter to deal with and vanquish, what years often elapse between a bright conception like that of Watt, and the tardy realisation!

Certainly some of the minor achievements of the "Telegraph” are very amusing,—as in your case. To be sure, you would not call it so; it was, to you, a grand feat, considering the value of the recovered waif. Perhaps, too, the fond mother to whom the following happened, would think the like in her own case. She was travelling by express, and her little girl, feverish and thirsty, asked for a little water just as they were leaving a certain station. The mother threw open the window, and called to the guard to order a glass. But the inexorable train was just starting. "No time, madam," said the guard; "but I will tell them to telegraph for one at the next station." No sooner said than done; and at the next station, with due ceremony, out came the glass of water ready for her, though at rather a high price. Yet she thought it cheap enough.

I remember, a few months ago, leaving by express that great trysting-place of railway trains-Normanton, where sometimes, for a few moments, there is a charming chaos of passengers and luggage to be despatched a thousand different ways. A lady, who did not know that she was to break her journey there, was suddenly summoned from her trance of satisfaction, and hastily quitting the carriage, left in the netting a nice silk umbrella. A few moments after she left I noticed it, and remarked to a gentleman sitting by me, that we must remember, when we got out, to point it out to the guard, and describe the person who had left it. On getting to my destination, some thirty miles further on, I had no sooner deposited my portmanteau on the platform than I turned to look for some official that I might point out the stray property to him. I saw a guard standing at the door of the carriage I had just left, and told him: "All right, sir," said he, "I have got it. It has been telegraphed for from Normanton." But was it not too bad, to be thus balked in this attempt to do a little bit of kindness and honesty by that thief of a telegraph? But I think the most curious fact, taken altogether, that I ever

heard of the electric telegraph, was told me by a cashier of the Bank of England. You may have heard of it. It may have been in print. I am sure it deserves to be. "Once upon a time," then, on a certain Saturday night, the folks at the Bank could not make the balance come right by just 1007. This is a serious matter in that little establishment: I do not mean the cash, but the mistake in arithmetic; for it occasions a world of scrutiny. An error in balancing has been known, I am told, to keep a delegation of clerks from each office at work sometimes through the whole night. A hue and cry was of course made after this 1007., as if the old lady in Threadneedle Street would be in the Gazette for want of it. Luckily on the Sunday morning, a clerk (in the middle of the sermon, I dare say, if the truth were known) felt a suspicion of the truth dart through his mind quicker than any flash of the telegraph itself. He told the chief cashier on Monday morning, that perhaps the mistake might have occurred in packing some boxes of specie for the West Indies, which had been sent to Southampton for shipment. The suggestion was immediately acted upon. Here was a race lightning against steam! and steam with eight-and-forty hours' start given. Instantly the wires asked, "Whether such a vessel had left the harbour?" "Just weighing anchor," was the answer. "Stop her!" frantically shouted the electric telegraph. It was done. "Have up on deck certain boxes marked so and so: weigh them carefully." They were weighed; and one-the delinquent was found heavier by just one packet of a hundred sovereigns than it ought to be. "Let her go," said the mysterious telegraph. The West Indian folks were debited with just 1007. more, and the error was corrected without ever looking into the boxes or delaying the voyage by an hour. Now that is what may be called "doing business."

Yours,
R. E. H. G.

My dear Friend,

LETTER LXXIII.

To a Mesmeric Enthusiast.

Your "furor mesmericus amuses me.

I quite agree with you that there is no possibility of arguing against facts; it is their amount and significance alone that I question in the present case. I have no manner of doubt in the world that you have witnessed, as you say, the artificial production of some curious phenomena. They seem to me to resemble in many respects those which somnambulism spontaneously presents, and probably depend on similar conditions. I doubt, however,-see my moderation, the entire phenomena of "clairvoyance," as you call it; and also whether even those more limited phenomena, the occurrence of which I do not doubt, are referrible to any mysterious influence proceeding from those who profess to exercise the function of mesmerists; whether there be any "nervous emanation" issuing from them, or any incomprehensible dominion exerted over the will of their patients, or indeed any other influence whatever than is implied in activity of imagination and susceptibility of nerves in the latter. It seems to me that it is within and not without, that the true causes of the phenomena, so far as they are real, are to be sought; in the advantage which the condition of the patient gives the operator, not in any power which proceeds from him; not in the pokings and wavings, called "passes," of the operator's fingers. Of course the stronger the belief in his mystical power the greater will be the operator's chance of success; but all such predisposing causes are the patient's contributions to the result, not those of the mesmerist. In a word, I believe the fortress is surrendered, not taken by assault.

And this, I think, accounts in part for the capricious character of the phenomena; that one man is not at all affected, another slightly; this man soon, another slowly;-I think, I say, it ac