may as well be done on one day as another. But the right day to be bled is when you want bleeding; the right day for taking physic is when physic is necessary."

more fixed stars than were known to us, yet these also must have their influence; and moreover that the most learned professors differed upon some of the most important points. Nevertheless, so many causes and

to be once in doubt

Is once to be resolved.

There is, however, a state of mind, or to speak more accurately, a way of thinking, in which men reverse the Welshman's conclusion in the old comedy, and instead of saying "it may be, but it is very impossible," resolve within themselves that it is very impossible, but it may be. So it was in some degree with Peter Hopkins; his education, his early pursuits, and his turn of mind, disposed him to take part with what was then the common opinion of common men, and counterbalanced, if they did not, perhaps, a little preponderate against the intelligence of the age, and his own deliberate judgment, if he had been called upon seriously to declare it. He saw plainly that astrology had been made a craft by means whereof knaves practised upon fools; but so had his own profession; and it no more followed as a necessary consequence from the one admission that the heavenly bodies exercised no direct influence upon the human frame, than it did from the other that the art of medicine was not beneficial to mankind.

In the high days of astrology, when such an immediate influence was affirmed upon the then undisputed authority of St. Augustin, it was asked how it happened that the professors of this science so frequently deceived others, and were deceived themselves? The answer was that too often, instead of confining themselves within the legitimate limits of the art, they enlarged their phylacteries too much. Farther, that there were many

SEXTUS PYTHAGORAS,

connected, that men, whether astrologers or not, drew from them their own conclusions, and presaged accordingly: Mirum non est, si his et similibus solerter pensiculatis, non tam astrologi quam philosophi, medici, et longâ experientiâ edocti agricolæ et nautæ, quotidie de futuris multa vera prædicunt, etiam sine astrologiæ regulis de morbis, de annonâ, deque tempestatibus.

All persons in Peter Hopkins's days believed that change of weather may be looked for at the change of the Moon; and all men, except a few philosophers, believe so still, and all the philosophers in Europe could not persuade an old sailor out of the belief. And that the tides have as much influence over the human body, in certain stages of disease, as the moon has over the tides, is a popular belief in many parts of the world. The Spaniards think that all who die of chronic diseases breathe their last during the ebb.† Among the wonders of the Isle and City of Cadiz, which the historian of that city, Suares de Salazar, enumerates, one is, according to P. Labat, that the sick never die there while the tide is rising or at its height, but always during the ebb: he restricts the notion to the Isle of Leon, but implies that the effect was there believed to take place in diseases of any kind, acute as well as chronic. "Him fever," says the Negro in the West Indies, "shall go when the water come low. Him alway come hot when the tide high."

If the Negroes had ever heard the theory of the tides which Herrera mentions, they would readily believe it, and look upon it as completely explaining the ground of their assertion; for according to that theory the tides are caused by a fever of the sea, which

+ Dame Quickly, in tehing of Falstaff's death to Bardolph, says: "A parted even just between twelve and one, e'en at turning o' the tide." - Henry V. Act 11. Scene iii.

rages for six hours, and then intermits for as many more.

But the effect of the tides upon the human constitution in certain states is not a mere vulgar opinion. Major Moor says that near the tropics, especially in situations where the tide of the sea has a great rise and fall, scarcely any person, and certainly no one affected with feverish or nervous symptoms, is exempted from extraordinary sensations at the periods of spring tides. That these are caused by the changes of the moon he will not say, for he had never fully convinced himself, however plausible the theory, that the coincident phenomena of spring tides, and full and change of the moon, were cause and effect; but at the conjunction and opposition, or what amounts to the same, at the spring tides, these sensations are periodically felt. There is an account of one singular case in which the influence was entirely lunar. When Mr. Galt was travel ling in the Morea, he fell in with a pea sant, evidently in an advanced stage of dropsy, who told him, that his father had died of a similar complaint, but differing from his in this remarkable respect the father's continued to grow regularly worse, without any intervals of alleviation; but at the change of the moon the son felt comparatively much easier. As the moon advanced to the full, the swelling enlarged; and as she waned, it again lessened. Still, however, though this alteration continued, the disease was gaining ground.

"The moon," Mr. Galt observes, "has, or is believed to have, much more to say in the affairs of those parts, than with us. The climate is more regular; and if the air have tides, like the ocean, of course their effects are more perceptible."

In an early volume of the Philosophical Transactions are some observations made by Mr. Paschal on the motions of diseases, and on the births and deaths of men and other animals, in different parts of the day and night. Having suspected, he says, that the causes of the tides at sea exert their power elsewhere, though the effect may not be so sensibly perceived on the solid as on the

fluid parts of the globe, he divided, for trial of this notion, the natural day into four senaries of hours; the first consisting of three hours before the moon's southing, and three after; the second, of the six hours following; and the third and fourth contained the two remaining quarters of the natural day. Observing then the times of birth and death, both in human and other subjects, as many as came within the circle of his knowledge, he found, he says, none that were born or died a natural death in the first and third senaries (which he called first and second tides), but every one either in the second or fourth senaries (which he called the first and second ebbs). He then made observations upon the motions of diseases, other circumstances connected with the human frame, alterations of the weather, and such accounts as he could meet with of earthquakes and other things, and he met with nothing to prevent him from laying down this as a maxim-that motion, vigour, action, strength, &c., appear most and do best, in the tiding senaries; and that rest, relaxation, decay, dissolution, belong to the ebbing ones.

This theorist must have been strongly possessed with a favourite opinion, before he could imagine that the deep subterranean causes of earthquakes could in any degree be affected by the tides. But that the same influences which occasion the ebb and flow of the ocean have an effect upon certain diseases, is a conclusion to which Dr. Pinckard came in the West Indies, and Dr. Balfour in the East, from what they observed in the course of their own practice, and what they collected from the information of others. "In Bengal," Dr. Balfour says, "there is no room to doubt that the human frame is affected by the influences connected with the relative situations of the sun and moon. In certain states of health and vigour, this influence has not power to show itself by any obvious effects, and in such cases its existence is often not acknowledged. But in certain states of debility and disease it is able to manifest itself by exciting febrile paroxysms. Such paroxysms

show themselves more frequently during the period of the spring tides, and as these advance become more violent and obstinate, and on the other hand tend no less invariably to subside and terminate during the

recess.

I have no doubt, says this practitioner, that any physician who will carefully attend to the diurnal and nocturnal returns of the tides, and will constantly hold before him the prevailing tendency of fevers to appear at the commencement, and during the period of the spring; and to subside and terininate at the commencement and during the period of the recess, will soon obtain more information respecting the phenomena of fevers, and be able to form more just and certain judgments and prognostics respecting every event, than if we were to study the history of medicine, as it is now written, for a thousand years. There is no revolution or change in the course of fevers that may not be explained by these general principles in a manner consistent with the laws of the human constitution, and of the great system of revolving bodies which unite together in producing them.

Dr. Balfour spared no pains in collecting information to elucidate and confirm his theory during the course of thirty years' practice in India. He communicated upon it with most of the European practitioners in the Company's dominions; and the then Governor General, Lord Teignmouth, considered the subject as so important, that he properly as well as liberally ordered the correspondence and the treatise, in which its results were embodied, to be printed and circulated at the expense of the government. The author drew up his scheme of an astronomical ephemeris, for the purposes of medicine and meteorology, and satisfied himself that he had "discovered the laws of febrile paroxysms, and unfolded a history and theory of fevers entirely new, consistent with itself in every part, and with the other appearances of nature, perfectly conformable to the laws discovered by the immortal Newton, and capable of producing important improvements in medicine and meteor

ology. He protested against objections to his theory as if it were connected with the wild and groundless delusions of astrology. Yet the letter of his correspondent, Dr. Helenus Scott, of Bombay, shows how naturally and inevitably it would be connected with them in that country. "The influence of the moon on the human body,” says that physician, "has been observed in this part of India by every medical practitioner. It is universally acknowledged by the doctors of all colours, of all castes, and of all countries. The people are taught to believe it in their infancy, and as they grow up, they acknowledge it from experience. I suppose that in the northerr latitudes this power of the moon is far les sensible than in India. Here we universally think that the state of weakly and diseased bodies is much influenced by its motions. Every full and change increases the number of the patients of every practitioner. That the human body is affected in a remarkable manner by them I am perfectly convinced, and that an attention to the power of the moon is highly necessary to the medical practitioner in India."

This passage tends to confirm, what, indeed, no judicious person can doubt, that the application of astrology to medicine, though it was soon perverted and debased till it became a mere craft, originated in actual observations of the connection between certain bodily affections, and certain times and seasons. Many, if not most of the mischievous systems in physics and divinity have arisen from dim perceptions or erroneous apprehensions of some important truth. And not a few have originated in the common error of drawing bold and hasty inferences from weak premises. Sailors say, what they of all men have most opportunities of observing, that the moon as it rises clears the sky of clouds: a puesta del sol, says a Spanish chronicler, parescio la luna, e comio poco a poco todas las nuves. The "learned and reverend" Dr. Goad, sometime master of the Merchant Taylors' School, published a work "of vast pains, reading and many years experience," which

P

he called "Astro-Meteorologia, or a Demonstration of the Influences of the Stars in the alterations of the Air; proving that there is not an Earthquake, Comet, Parhelia, Halo, Thunder-storm or Tempest, or any other phenomena, but is referable to its particular planetary aspect, as the sub-solar cause thereof."

CHAPTER XCIII.

REMARKS OF AN IMPATIENT READER ANTICIPATED AND ANSWERED.

Ὦ πολλὰ λέξας ἄρτι κανόνητ ̓ ἔπη, Οὐ μνημονεύεις οὐκέτ' οὐδέν ; SOPHOCLES. NOVEL readers are sometimes so impatient to know how the story is to end, that they look at the last chapter, and so- escape, should I say or forfeit that state of agitating suspense in which it was the author or authoress's endeavour to keep them till they should arrive by a regular perusal at the well-concealed catastrophe. It may be apprehended that persons of this temper, having in their composition much more of Eve's curiosity than of Job's patience, will regard with some displeasure a work like the present, of which the conclusion is not before them and some, perhaps, may even be so unreasonable as to complain that they go through chapter after chapter without making any progress in the story. "What care the Public," says one of these readers, (for every reader is a self-constituted representative of that great invisible body) — "what do the Public care for Astrology and Almanacks, and the Influence of the Tides upon diseases, and Mademoiselle de Roches's flea, and the Koran, and the Chronology of this fellow's chapters, and Potteric Carr, and the Corporation of Doncaster, and the Theory of Signatures, and the Philosophy of the Alchemists, and the Devil knows what besides! What have these things to do with the subject of the book, and who would ever have looked for them in a Novel?"

"A Novel do you call it, Mr. Reader?" "Yes, Mr. Author, what else should I call it? It has been reviewed as a Novel and advertised as a Novel.”

"I confess that in this very day's newspaper it is advertised in company with four new Novels; the first in the list being 'Warleigh, or the Fatal Oak,' a Legend of Devon, by Mrs. Bray: the second, ‘Dacre,' edited by the Countess of Morley; Mr. James's Life and Adventures of John Marston Hall,' is the third: fourthly, comes the dear name of 'The Doctor;' and last in the list, The Court of Sigismund Augustus, or Poland in the Seventeenth Century.'"

I present my compliments to each and all of the authoresses and authors with whom I find myself thus associated. At the same time I beg leave to apologise for this apparent intrusion into their company, and to assure them that the honour which I have thus received has been thrust upon me. Dr. Stegman had four patients whose disease was that they saw themselves double: "they perceived," says Mr. Turner, "another self, exterior to themselves!" I am not one of Dr. Stegman's patients; but I see myself double in a certain sense, and in that sense have another and distinct self, the one incog, the other out of cog. Out of cog I should be as willing to meet the novelist of the Polish Court, as any other unknown brother or sister of the quill. Out of cog I should be glad to shake hands with Mr. James, converse with him about Charlemagne, and urge him to proceed with his French biography. Out of cog I should have much pleasure in making my bow to Lady Morley or her editor. Out of cog I should like to be introduced to Mrs. Bray in her own lovely land of Devon, and see the sweet innocent face of her humble friend Mary Colling. But without a proper introduction I should never think of presenting myself to any of these persons; and having incog the same sense of propriety as out of cog, I assure them that the manner in which my one self has been associated with them is not the act and deed of my other self, but that of Messrs. Longman, Rees, Orme,