aye, and the baronet's house, too, shines in all the splendour of gas-illumination!

Phil. I grant that the ridicule with which phrenology has been treated argues nothing against it, and proves only its wide departure from preconceived ideas; but you have not answered my remark, that there are no distinguished names among the votaries of your doctrine, the weight of whose reputation might afford some reason for condescending to examine it.

Phren. You have admitted its novelty; and you are aware that men who possess reputation in physiology or mental philosophy would appear to lose rather than gain renown, were they to confess their present ignorance of the functions of the brain and the philosophy of mind, an almost necessary prelude to their adoption of phrenology; and the subject does not lie directly in the department of other scientific men. In this manner it happens, oddly enough, that those who are most directly called upon by their situation to examine the science, are precisely those to whom its triumph would prove most humiliating. Locke humorously observes on a similar occasion, "Would it not be an insufferable thing for a learned professor, and that which his scarlet would blush at, to have his authority of forty years standing, wrought out of hard rock, Greek and Latin, with no small expense of time and candle, and confirmed by general tradition and a reverend beard, in an instant overturned by an upstart novelist? Can any one expect that he should be made to confess, that what he taught his scholars thirty years ago was all error and mistake, and that he sold them hard words and ignorance at a very dear rate? What probabilities, I say, are sufficient to prevail in such a case? And who ever, by the most cogent arguments, will be prevailed with to disrobe himself at once of all his old opinions and pretences to knowledge and learning, which with hard study he hath all his time been labouring for, and turn himself out stark-naked in quest afresh of new notions? All the arguments that can be used will be as little able to prevail, as the wind did with the traveller to part with his cloak, which he held only the faster."* Human nature, sir, is the same now as in the days of Locke.

Book iv. c. 20, § 11.

Phil. Your allusions, sir, are impertinent. You will never convert mankind to phrenology by such means.

Phren. Pardon, sir; I made no individual application of these remarks. There is, however, another answer to your observations, to which I solicit your attention. Some individuals are born princes, dukes, or even field-marshals; but I am not aware that it has yet been announced that any lady was delivered of a child of genius, or an infant of established reputation. These titles must be gained by the display of qualities which merit them; but if an individual quit the beaten track pursued by the philosophers of his day, and introduce any discovery, although stupendous and new, do you not perceive that his reputation is necessarily involved in its merits? Harvey was not a man of high reputation before he discovered the circulation of the blood, but became such in consequence of having done so. What was Shakspeare before the magnificence of his genius was justly appreciated? The author of Kenilworth represents him attending as a humble and comparatively obscure suitor at the Court of Queen Elizabeth, and receiving a mark of favour in an "Ah! Will Shakspeare, are you there?" And he most appropriately remarks, that here the immortal paid homage to the mortal. Who would now exchange the greatness of Shakspeare for the splendour of the proudest lord that bowed before the Maiden Queen? Or imagine to yourself Galileo, such as he was in reality, a feeble old man, humble in rank, destitute of political power, unprotected by the countenance or alliance of the great-poor, in short, in every thing except the splendid gifts of a profound, original, and comprehensive genius-and conceive him placed at the bar of the Roman pontiff and the seven cardinals—men terrible in power, invested with authority to torture and kill in this world, and, as was then believed, to damn through eternity; men magnificent in wealth, and arrogant in the imaginary possession of all the wisdom of their age-and say who was then great in reputation-Galileo or his judges? And who is now the idol of posterity-the old man or his persecutors? The case will be the same with Gall. If his discoveries of the functions of the brain, and of the philosophy of the mind, stand the test of examination, and prove to be a correct interpretation of nature, they will surpass, in substantial importance to mankind, the discoveries even of

Harvey, Newton, or Galileo; and this age will in consequence be rendered more illustrious by the introduction of phrenology, than by the butcheries of Bonaparte, or the victories of Wellington. But besides, I could easily shew that the assertion that no men of note have embraced phrenology is not supported by fact.

Phil. There may be some truth in these observations; but what I principally alluded to is the fact, that all the disciples of phrenology are persons ignorant of anatomy and physiology. You delude lawyers, divines, and merchants, who know nothing about the brain; but all medical men, and especially teachers of anatomy, are so well aware of the fallacy of your doctrines, that you make no impression on them. They laugh at your discoveries as dreams.

Phren. This objection, like many others, is remarkable more for boldness than for truth. I have already demonstrated the unavoidable ignorance of medical gentlemen of the old school regarding the functions of the brain, and you may easily satisfy yourself by a little inquiry that this representation was correct. For my own part, before adopting phrenology, I saw Dr Monro, Dr Barclay, and other anatomical professors, dissect the brain repeatedly, and heard them declare its functions to be an enigma, and acknowledge that their whole information concerning it consisted of "names without meaning." This circumstance, therefore, puts the whole faculty, who have not studied phrenologically, completely out of the field as authorities. The fact, however, is the very reverse of what you state. Drs Gall and Spurzheim are now pretty generally admitted to be admirable anatomists of the brain, even by those who disavow their physiology; and in the list of the Phrenological Society, out of 86 members, you will find 13 doctors in medicine, and 11 surgeons-a proportion considerably larger than that of the medical profession to society in general.

Phil. Well-but this is a vain discussion, and I have too much to engage my attention at present to listen to any more of your odd opinions. Good morning!

THE TURNIP STORY.*

ON the authority of Blackwood's Magazine for May 1823, the following dialogue took place among certain gentlemen, declared enemies of phrenology and phrenologists, assembled in a pot-house :

"Odoherty. What did your friend Brodief die of, Mr Tickler?

"Tickler. Apoplexy, I suppose. His face was as black as my hat.

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Hogg. Lucky Mackinnon's bonny face was black too, they were saying.

"Dr Mullion. Yes; black, but comely.' I saw her a day or two afterwards,—very like the print.

"Tickler. These infernal idiots the phrenologists, have been kicking up a dust about her skull, too, it appears. Will those fellows take no hint?

"Odoherty. They take a hint! Why, you might as well preach to the Jumpers, or the Harmonists, or any other set of stupid fanatics. Don't let me hear them mentioned

again.

"Dr Mullion. They have survived the turnip. What more can be said?

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Hogg. The turnip, doctor? "Dr Mullion. You haven't heard of it, then ?—I thought all the world had. You must know, however, that a certain ingenious person of this town lately met with a turnip of more than common foziness in his field; he made a cast of it, clapped it to the cast of somebody's face, and sent the composition to the Phrenological, with his compliments, as a fac-simile of the head of a celebrated Swede, by name Professor Tornhippson. They bit,-a committee was appointed, a report was drawn up,-and the whole character of the professor was soon made out as completely secundum artem, as Haggart's had been under the same happy auspices a little before. In a word, they found out that the illustrious Dr Tornhippson had been distinguished

Vol. i. No. 1. p. xviii.

+ Brodie was a notorious criminal, executed for systematic and long-continued theft and housebreaking.

+ Proh pudor!

for his Inhabitiveness, Constructiveness, Philoprogenitiveness, &c.-nay, even for "Tune," "Ideality," and " Veneration."

"Odoherty. I fear they have heard of the hoax, and cancelled that sheet of their Transactions. What a pity!

"Hogg. Hoh, hoh, hoh! The organization of a fozey turnip! Hoh, hoh, hoh, hoh! the like o' that! The Swedish turnip the celebrated Swede !"-P. 593.

This ignoble discourse was published, by the respectable interloquitors, in the knowledge that the true tale of that "weak invention of the enemy," the turnip, was as follows:

In April 1821, a medical gentleman in Edinburgh, aided by a landscape painter, fashioned a turnip into the nearest resemblance to a human skull which their combined skill and ingenuity could produce. They had a cast made from it, and sent it to Mr G. Combe, requesting his observations on the mental talents and dispositions which it indicated; adding, that it was a cast from the skull of a person of an uncommon character. Mr C. instantly detected the trick, and returned the cast, with the following parody of "The Man of Thessaly" pasted on the coronal surface:

There was a man in Edinburg,
And he was wond'rous wise;
He went into a turnip-field,
And cast about his eyes.

And when he cast his eyes about,
He saw the turnips fine;

"How many heads are there," says he,
"That likeness bear to mine!

"So very like they are indeed,
No sage, I'm sure, could know
This turnip-head that I have on
From those that there do grow."
He pull'd a turnip from the ground;
A cast from it was thrown:
He sent it to a Spurzheimite,
And pass'd it for his own.

And so, indeed, it truly was

His own in every sense;

For CAST and JOKE alike were made

All at his own expense.

The medical gentleman called on Mr Combe next day, and assured him that he meant no offence, and intended only a joke. Mr C. replied, that he treated the matter en