condition of the doating parent, when he shall find (as find he must,) that, instead of giving birth to a paragon of wisdom and war, he has incurred the "sharp-toothed" sarcasm of the satirist; "Montes parturiunt, et mus ridiculus nascitur!" And the mouse shall be forth coming. But to drop the language of metaphor, and resort to that of sober narrative.

In the summer I think of 1824, a brief course of lectures on Phrenology was delivered in the city of Washington, and immediately on its close, a Phrenological Society established. Of that society I believe, but am not confident, that Dr. Sewall was a member. I am confident however that he expressed himself favourably toward the science-but whether sincerely or dissemblingly, subsequent occurrences rendered doubtful. About a year and and a half afterward (I think in the spring of 1826) another course of Phrenological lectures was delivered in Washington, by invitation of the society, and under its sanction. That course Professor Sewall attended, under the semblance of entire friendliness to the doctrines taught in it. About the termina

tion of the course, or shortly afterward, a slight event fell out, in no shape connected with either Phrenology, or any other branch of science, at which the Professor took offence. That offence was pointed at first toward the lecturer. Like other forms of flame and fiery me. teors, however, it was probably forked; and while one streak of it fastened on the deliverer of the lectures, the other passed by him, or diverged from him, and made war on the science which he had taught. And that war is still raging; and the two lectures recently published, and now before me, are but a brace of the thunderbolts

the Professor has been forging, during the last twelve or thirteen years, for the demolition of heresy.

Be this an accurate representation of the chain of cause and effect or not, it is certainly true, that soon after the time of the offence referred to, Professor Sewall delivered to a class (but what class I know not) two or three lectures in opposition to Phrenology. But though I do not know of whom the Professor's class did, I well know of whom it did not, consist. Not a member of the Washington Phrenological Society belonged to it. As I have been informed, and believe to be true, not a member of the society was even apprized of the Doctor's intention to lecture on Phrenology, until after he had already done so. Nor did any one of them consider him competent to the task.

Not satisfied with the clandestine course Professor Sewall had thus pursued, for the purpose of discrediting the science in the estimation of those who had no knowledge of it, the Phrenological Society requested, and even challenged him, to redeliver his lectures, and allow the members of the society to make a part of his audience. With this request or challenge he promised to comply, and I think appointed the hour of meeting. His engagement, however, was violated — perhaps more than once. The lectures were not redelivered. The members of the society, dissatisfied at being thus sported with, and deeming Professor Sewall's whole conduct in the matter unbecoming and exceptionable, took immediate action on it, and published their proceedings, which contained somewhat of the statement I have here repeated. A copy of the publication was transmitted to myself. Unfortunately, however, I have lost or mis

laid it, and have not a distinct recollection of all its particulars. But I well recollect that it was neither respectful toward Dr. Sewall, nor creditable to him. I think I may add, that it chagrined and mortified him.

If I have done the doctor injustice in this narrative, it is unintentional. And if I have been in anything incorrect, I doubt not that a copy of the proceedings of the Washington Phrenological Society referred to, can be found; and that will furnish the narrative accurately. How far the offence unintentionally given to Dr. Sewall, (for it was unintentionally given) has been instrumental in rendering him hostile to Phrenology, I pretend not to know. Nor, unversed as I am in casuistry of the kind, shall I take any concern in the solution of the problem. From the circumstances of the case, one of two points appears certain. The doctor was distrustful of either the solidity of the cause he had espoused, or of his own ability to handle it; else he would not have withheld from the members of the Phrenological Society, many of whom were his fellow practitioners of medicine, and all of them his neighbours and acquaintances, the privilege and gratification of listening to his lectures. There appears to have been something unsound at the fountain-head of his antiphrenological career; and, as was to be expected, that taint has more or less polluted the entire stream.

From the year 1826 until the summer of 1837, eleven long years, it was my fortune, good or bad as the case may turn out, to be an entire stranger to the movements of Professor Sewall, in his favourite enterprise of erecting barricadoes, to protect the world from the heresies of Phrenology. And even after possessing myself of the

two lectures I am now examining, (the first fruits of his love and labours) I allowed many months to pass away, (believing my other engagements of higher importance) before doing more than hastily glancing my eye over them. Nor should I ever have turned to the pages of them again, so trivial and commonplace, false and trashy did I find them, had I not been given to understand, that, by many people, they were differently estimated; and that, among persons unqualified to judge of them, they were exciting prejudices against Phrenology. Such are the reasons why I did not commence the present scrutiny at an early period; and, having commenced it, I have motives sufficient to induce me to make it as severe and definitive, as truth will authorize, and my time and other resources will admit.

As far as industry and labour may be deemed virtues, (and they are highly valuable ones, when applied, from correct motives, to correct purposes) Professor Sewall is entitled to praise. I know not when I have looked through seventy octavo pages more toilsomely thrown together, or exhibiting marks of more apparently extensive reading and research by their author, than the Professor's "Two Lectures." I say " apparently extensive"—not really so; for I am convinced that the writer has read himself but few of the works to which he has referred. His knowledge of them is derived from second-hand sources. Still however, scanty as I believe his original research to have been, did his lectures contain evidence of a corresponding amount of candour, judgment and talent, they would be a production of some merit. But in these attributes they are deplorably wanting. Morally considered, they are

a mass of falsehood, spurious pretension, and studied artifice, thrown together for selfish and other unbecoming purposes. In an intellectual point of view, they are a caput mortuum - a body without a soul—a bloated aggregation of garbled and perverted matter, assorted and arranged without either judgment or genius, tact or scholarship. From beginning to end, they do not contain a mark of profundity, or an original thought. Their objections to Phrenology, instead of being new, as their author professes them to be, are nearly as old as the science itself. They are among the very first that were contrived and presented by the antiphrenologists of Europe and America. And since their first conception, they have been repeated and re-repeated, confuted and re-confuted, until they have contracted the staleness of a ten-times-told tale. For they have been literally told and refuted, more, I doubt not, than fifty times. If Professor Sewall does not know this, he is more ignorant of the history of Phrenology than I have supposed him to be; and infinitely more so than, as a lecturer and a writer on it, he ought to be. And if he does know it, I leave to others to judge of his motive in bringing again before the public such miserably vapid and time-battered commonplace. To pass by other and higher causes, self respect alone should have restrained him from thus exposing himself, clad but in the tattered cast-clothes of his predecessors.

For full information on all these points, if indeed he is deficient in it, and desirous of attaining it, he is referred to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, the writings of Gall, Spurzheim, and the two Combes, and the Edingburgh Phrenological Journal, from its commence