no ailments to make him seek the Doctor's advice; his occasional indispositions were but slight, and he treated them in his own way. That way was sometimes merely superstitious, sometimes it was whimsical, and sometimes rough. If his charms failed when he tried them upon himself, it was not for want of faith. When at any time it happened that one of his eyes was bloodshot, he went forthwith in search of some urchin whose mother, either for laziness, or in the belief that it was wholesome to have it in that state, allowed his ragged head to serve as a free warren for certain " small deer." One of these hexapeds William secured, and " using him as if he loved him," put it into his eye; when according to William's account the insect fed

upon

what

it found, cleared the eye, and disappearing he knew not where or how, never was seen more.

His remedy for the cholic was a pebble posset; white pebbles were preferred, and of these what was deemed a reasonable quantity was taken in some sort of milk porridge. Upon the same theory he sometimes swallowed a pebble large enough as he said to clear all before it; and for that purpose they have been administered of

larger calibre than any bolus that ever came from the hands of the most merciless apothecary, as large indeed sometimes as a common sized walnut. Does the reader hesitate at believing this of an ignorant man, living in a remote part of the country? Well might William Dove be excused, for a generation later than his John Wesley prescribed in his Primitive Physic quicksilver, to be taken ounce by ounce, to the amount of one, two, or three pounds, till the desired effect was produced. And a generation earlier, Richard Baxter of happy memory and unhappy digestion, having read in Dr. Gerhard "the admirable effects of the swallowing of a gold bullet upon his father," in a case which Baxter supposed to be like his own, got a gold bullet of between twenty and thirty shillings weight, and swallowed it. "Having taken it," says he," I knew not how to be delivered of it again. I took clysters and purges for about three weeks, but nothing stirred it; and a gentleman having done the like, the bullet never came from him till he died, and it was cut out. But at last my neighbours set a day apart to fast and pray for me, and I was freed from my danger in the beginning of that day!"

CHAPTER XXV. P. I.

Hiatus valde lacrymabilis.

Time flies away fast,
The while we never remember
How soon our life here

Grows old with the year

That dies with the next December!-HERRICK.

I MUST pass over fourteen years, for were I to pursue the history of our young Daniel's boyhood and adolescence into all the ramifications which a faithful biography requires, fourteen volumes would not contain it. They would be worth reading, for that costs little; they would be worth writing, though that costs much. They would deserve the best embellishments that the pencil and the graver could produce. The most poetical of artists would be

worthily employed in designing the sentimental and melancholy scenes; Cruikshank for the grotesque; Wilkie and Richter for the comic and serio-comic; Turner for the actual scenery; Bewick for the head and tail pieces. They ought to be written; they ought to be read. They should be written-and then they would be read. But time is wanting:

Eheu! fugaces Posthume, Posthume,

Labuntur anni!

and time is a commodity of which the value rises as long as we live. We must be contented with doing not what we wish, but what we can,―our possible as the French call it.

One of our Poets-(which is it?)-speaks of an everlasting now. If such a condition of existence were offered to us in this world, and it were put to the vote whether we should accept the offer and fix all things immutably as they are, who are they whose voices would be given in the affirmative?

Not those who are in pursuit of fortune, or of fame, or of knowledge, or of enjoyment, or of happiness; though with regard to all of

these, as far as any of them are attainable, there is more pleasure in the pursuit than in the attainment.

Not those who are at sea, or travelling in a stage coach.

Not the man who is shaving himself.

Not those who have the tooth ache, or who are having a tooth drawn.

The fashionable beauty might; and the fashionable singer, and the fashionable opera dancer, and the actor who is in the height of his power and reputation. So might the alderman at a city feast. So would the heir who is squandering a large fortune faster than it was accumulated for him. And the thief who is not taken, and the convict who is not hanged, and the scoffer at religion whose heart belies his tongue.

Not the wise and the good.

Not those who are in sickness or in sorrow.
Not I.

But were I endowed with the power of suspending the effect of time upon the things around me, methinks there are some of my

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