his former existence in a tree of the same kind; or which was not less likely in the wanton ivy which had clasped one, or in the wild vine which had festooned its branches with greener leaves, or even in the agaric which had grown out of its decaying substance. And he would have quoted Wordsworth if the Sage of Rydal had not been of a later generation:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.

Other examples of men who have doated upon particular trees he accounted for by the same philosophy. But in the case of the Consul Crispus he was more inclined to hold the first supposition, to wit, that he had been a beech himself, and that the tree which he loved so dearly had sprung from his own mast, so that the feeling with which he regarded it was a parental one. For that man should thus unconsciously afford proof of his relationship to tree, was rendered more probable by a singular, though peradventure single fact, in which a tree so entirely recognised its affinity with man, that a slip accidentally grafted on the human subject, took root in the body, grew there, flourished, blossomed and produced fruit after its kind. "A shepherd of Tarragon had fallen into a sloe tree, and a sharp point thereof having run into his breast, in two years time it took such root, that, after many branches had been cut off, there sprang up some at last which bare both flowers and fruit." "Peiresc," as Gassendi the writer of his life assures us, “would never be quiet till Cardinal Barberino procured the Archbishop of that place to testify the truth of the story; and Putean the knight received not only letters testifying the same, but also certain branches thereof, which he sent unto him."

MAN is a Tree that hath no top in cares,
No root in comforts.*

This is one of the many poetical passages in which the sound is better than the sense ;yet it is not without its beauty. The same similitude has been presented by Henry More in lines which please the ear less, but satisfy the understanding.

The lower man is nought but a fair plant

Whose grosser matter is from the base ground. "A plant," says Jones of Nayland, “is a system of life, but insensitive and fixed to a certain spot. An animal hath voluntary motion, sense, or perception, and is capable of pain and pleasure. Yet in the construction of each there are some general principles which very obviously connect them. It is literally as well as metaphorically true, that trees have limbs, and an animal body branches. A vascular system is also common to both, in the channels of which life is maintained and circulated. When the trachea, with its branches in the lungs, or the veins and arteries, or the nerves, are separately represented, we have the figure

of a tree. The leaves of trees have a fibrous and fleshy part; their bark is a covering which answers to the skin in animals. An active vapour pervades them both, and perspires from both, which is necessary for the preservation of health and vigour. The vis vitæ, or involuntary, mechanical force of animal life, is kept up by the same elements which act upon plants for their growth and support."†

CHAPMAN.

†The reader of Berkeley will naturally turn to the

'Plants," says Novalis, "are Children of the Earth; we are Children of the Æther. Our lungs are properly our root; we live when we breathe; we begin our life with breathing." Plato also compared man to a Tree, but his was a physical similitude, he likened the human vegetable to a tree inverted, with the root above and the branches below. Antonio Perez allegorised the similitude in one of his epistles to Essex, thus, Unde credis hominem inversam arborem appellari? Inversam nostris oculis humanis et terrenis; rectam verò verè, viridemque, si radicem defixam habuerit in suo naturali loco, cœlo, unde orta. And Rabelais pursues the resemblance farther, saying that trees differ from beasts in this, Qu'elles ont la teste, c'est le tronc, en bas; les cheveulx, ce sont les racines, en terre; et les pieds, ce sont les rameaulx, contremont; comme si un homme faisoit le chesne fourchu.

The thought that man is like a tree arose in the Doctor's mind more naturally when he first saw the representation of the veins and arteries in the old translation of Ambrose Paré's works. And when in course of time he became a curious inquirer into the history of her art, he was less disposed to smile at any of the fancies into which Doña Oliva Sabuco Barrera had been led by this resemblance, than to admire the novelty and ingenuity of the theory which she deduced from it.

Bless ye the memory of this Spanish Lady, all ye who bear, or aspire to, the honour of the bloody hand as Knights of Esculapius! For from her, according to Father Feyjoo, the English first, and afterwards the physicians of other countries, learned the theory of nervous diseases; never, therefore, did any other individual contribute so largely to the gratification of fee-feeling fingers!

Feyjoo has properly enumerated her among the women who have done honour to their country: and later Spaniards have

Siris of that author- called by Southey in his life of Wesley "one of the best, wisest, and greatest men whom Ireland, with all its fertility of genius, has produced." Vol. ii. 260., 2nd Edit.

called her the immortal glory not of Spain alone, but of all Europe. She was born, and dwelt in the city of Alcaraz, and flourished in the reign of Philip II. to whom she dedicated in 1587 her "New Philosophy of the Nature of Man,"* appealing to the ancient law of chivalry, whereby great Lords and high-born Knights were bound always to favour women in their adventures. In placing under the eagle wings of his Catholic Majesty this child which she had engendered, she told the King that he was then receiving from a woman greater service than any that men had rendered him, with whatever zeal and success they had exerted themselves to serve him. The work which she laid before him would better the world, she said, in many things, and if he could not attend to it, those who came after him peradventure would. For though there were already all too-many books in the world, yet this one was wanting.

The brief and imperfect notices of this Lady's system, which the Doctor had met with in the course of his reading, made him very desirous of procuring her works: this it would not be easy to do in England at this time, and then it was impossible. He obtained them, however, through the kindness of Mason's friend, Mr. Burgh, whom he used to meet at Mr. Copley's at Netterhall, and who in great or in little things was always ready to render any good office in his power to any person. Burgh procured the book through the Rev. Edward Clarke, (father of Dr. Clarke the traveller,) then Chaplain to the British Embassador in Spain. The volume came with the despatches from Madrid, it was forwarded to Mr. Burgh in an official frank, and the Doctor marked with a white stone the day on which the York carrier delivered it at his house. That precious copy is now in my possession †; my friend has noted in it,

* It should seem by her name, as suffixed to the Carta Dedicatorie, that she was of French or Breton extraction, for she signs herself, Oliva de Nantes, Sabuco Barera. -R. S.

This curious book I unluckily missed at the Sale of Southey's Library. I was absent at the time, and it passed into private hands. It sold for thirteen shillings

as was his custom, every passage that seemed worthy of observation, with the initial of his own name — a small capital, neatly written in red ink. Such of his books as I have been able to collect are full of these marks, showing how carefully he had read them. These notations have been of much use to me in my perusal, leading me to pause where he had paused, to observe what he had noted, and to consider what had to him seemed worthy of consideration. And though I must of necessity more frequently have failed to connect the passages so noted with my previous knowledge as he had done, and for that reason to see their bearings in the same point of view, yet undoubtedly I have often thus been guided into the same track of thought which he had pursued before me. Long will it be before some of these volumes meet with a third reader;

never with one in whom these vestiges of their former owner can awaken a feeling like that which they never fail to excite in me!

But the red letters in this volume have led me from its contents; and before I proceed to enter upon them in another chapter, I will conclude this, recurring to the similitude at its commencement, with an extract from one of Yorick's Sermons. "It is very remarkable," he says, "that the Apostle St. Paul calls a bad man a wild olive tree, not barely a branch," (as in the opposite case where our Saviour told his disciples that He was the vine, and that they were only branches,)—" but a Tree, which having a root of its own supports itself, and stands in its own strength, and brings forth its own fruit. And so does every bad man in respect of the wild and sour fruit of a vicious and corrupt heart. According to the resemblance, if the Apostle intended it, he is a Tree, has a root of his own, and fruitfulness such as it is, with a power to bring it forth without help. But in respect of religion and the moral improvements of

only. See Catalogue, No. 3453. The title is as follows: Sabuco (Olivia) Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del hombre, no conocida ni alcançada de los Grandes Filosofos Antiguos. FIRST EDITION. Madrid, 1587.

On which the goodly cedar grows. Doña Oliva on the contrary thought that the human body might be called a tree reversed, the brain being the root, and the other the bark. She did not know what great authority there is for thinking that trees stand upon their heads, for though we use vulgarly but improperly to call the uppermost of the branches the top of a tree, we are corrected, the learned John Gregory tells us, by Aristotle in his books De Animâ*, where we are taught to call the root the head, and the top the feet.

The pia mater according to her theory diffuses through this bark by the nerves that substance, moisture, sap, or white chyle which, when it flows in its proper course, preserves the human vegetable in a state of well being, but when its course is reverted it becomes the cause of diseases. This nervous fluid, the brain derived principally from the air, which she held to be water in a state of rarefaction, air being the chyle of the upper world, water of the inferior, and the Moon with air and water, as with milk, feeding like a nursing mother, all

* Quære? Lib. ii. c. ii. § 6. ai dì pílas tÿ stóμATI ἀνάλογον κ. τ. έ.

sublunary creatures, and imparting moisture for their increase, as the Sun imparteth heat and life. Clouds are the milk of the Moon, from which, if she may so express herself, she says it rains air and wind as well as water, wind being air, or rarefied water rarefied still farther. The mutation or rarefac tion of water into air takes place by day, the remutation or condensation of air into water by night this is shown by the dew, and by this the ebbing and flowing of the sea are caused.

In the brain, as in the root of the animal tree, all diseases, according to Doña Oliva, had their origin. From this theory she deduced a mode of practice, which if it did not facilitate the patient's recovery, was at least not likely to retard it; and tended in no way to counteract, or interfere with the restorative efforts of nature. And although | fanciful in its foundation, it was always so humane, and generally so reasonable, as in a great degree to justify the confidence with which she advanced it. She requested that a board of learned men might be appointed, before whom she might defend her system of philosophy and of therapeutics, and that her practice might be tried for one year, that of Hippocrates and Galen having been tried for two thousand, with what effect was daily and miserably seen, when of a thousand persons there were scarcely three who reached the proper termination of life and died by natural decay, the rest being cut off by some violent disease. For, according to her, the natural termination of life is produced by the exhaustion of the radical moisture, which in the course of nature is dried, or consumed, gradually and imperceptibly; death therefore, when that course is not disturbed, being an easy passage to eternity. This gradual desiccation it is which gives to old age the perfection of judgment that distinguishes it; and for the same reason the children of old men are more judicious than others, young men being deficient in judgment by reason of the excess of radical moisture, children still

more so.

She had never studied medicine, she said;

but it was clear as the light of day that the old system was erroneous, and must needs be so, because its founders were ignorant of the nature of man, upon which being rightly understood the true system must, of necessity, be founded. Hope is what supports health and life; fear, the worst enemy of both. Among the best preservatives and restoratives she recommended therefore cheerfulness, sweet odours, music, the country, the sound of woods and waters, agreeable conversation, and pleasant pastimes. Music, of all external things, she held to be that which tends most to comfort, rejoice and strengthen the brain, being as it were a spiritual pleasure in which the mind sympathises; and the first of all remedies, in this, her true system of medicine, was to bring the mind and body into unison, removing thus that discord which is occasioned when they are ill at ease; this was to be done by administering cheerfulness, content, and hope to the mind, and in such words and actions as produced these, the best medicine was contained. Next to this it imported to comfort the stomach, and to cherish the root of man, that is to say brain, with its proper corroborants, especially with sweet odours and with music. For music was so good a remedy for melancholy, so great an alleviator of pain, such a soother of uneasy emotions, and of passion, that she marvelled wherefore so excellent a medicine should not be more in use, seeing that undoubtedly many grievous diseases, as for example epilepsy, might be disarmed and cured by it; and it would operate with the more effect if accompanied with hopeful words and with grateful odours, for Doña Oliva thought with Solomon that "pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones."

the

Consequently unpleasant sounds and ill smells were, according to her philosophy, injurious. The latter she confounded with noxious air, which was an error to be expected in those days, when nothing concerning the composition of the atmosphere had been discovered. Thus she thought it was by their ill odour that limekilns and

charcoal-fires occasioned death; and that owing to the same cause horses were frequently killed when the filth of a stable was removed, and men who were employed in cleaning vaults. Upon the same principle, in recommending perfumes as alexipharmic, she fell in with the usual practice. The plague, according to her, might be received not by the breath alone, but the eyes also, for through the sight there was ready access to the brain; it was prudent therefore to close the nostrils when there might be reason to apprehend that the air was tainted; and when conversing with an infected person, not to talk face to face, but to avert the countenance. In changing the air, with the hope of escaping an endemic disease, the place to go to should be that from whence the pestilence had come, rather than one whither it might be going.

Ill sounds were noxious in like manner, though not in like degree, because no discord can be so grating as to prove fatal; but any sound which is at once loud and discordant she held to be unwholesome, and that to hear any one sing badly, read ill, or talk importunately like a fool was sufficient to cause a defluxion from the brain; if this latter opinion were well founded, no Speaker of the House of Commons could hold his office for a single Session without being talked to death. With these she classed the sound of a hiccup, the whetting of a saw, and the cry of bitter lamentation.

Doña Oliva, it may be presumed, was endued with a sensitive ear and a quick perception of odours, as well as with a cheerful temper, and an active mind. Her whole course of practice was intended to cheer and comfort the patient, if that was possible. She allowed the free use of water, and fresh air, and recommended that the apartments of the sick should be well ventilated. She prescribed refreshing odours, among others that of bread fresh from the oven, and that wine should be placed near the pillow, in order to induce sleep. She even thought that cheerful apparel conduced to health, and that the fashion of wearing black, which prevailed in her time, was repugnant to reason.

Pursuing her theory that the brain was the original seat of disease, she advised that the excessive moisture which would otherwise take a wrong course from thence should be drawn off through the natural channels by sneezing powders, or by pungent odours which provoke a discharge from the eyes and nostrils, by sudorifics also, exercise, and whatever might cause a diversion to the skin. When any part was wounded, or painful, or there was a tumour, she recommended compression above the part affected, with a woollen bandage, tightly bound, but not so as to occasion pain. And to comfort the root of the animal tree she prescribes scratching the head with the fingers, or combing it with an ivory comb, - a general and admirable remedy she calls this, against which some former possessor of the book, who seems to have been a practitioner upon the old system, and has frequently entered his protest against the medical heresies of the authoress, has written in the margin "bad advice." She recommended also cutting the hair, and washing the head with white wine, which as it were renovated the skin, and improved the vegetation.

But Doña Oliva did not reject more active remedies; on the contrary she advised all such as men had learned from animals, and this included a powerful list, for she seems to have believed all the fables with which natural history in old times abounded, and of which indeed it may almost be said to have consisted. More reasonably she observed that animals might teach us the utility of exercise, seeing how the young lambs sported in the field, and dogs played with each other, and birds rejoiced in the air. When the stomach required clearing she prescribed a rough practice, that the patient should drink copiously of weak wine and water, and of tepid water with a few drops of vinegar and an infusion of camomile flowers; and that he should eat also things difficult of digestion, such as radishes, figs, carrots, onions, anchovies, oil and vinegar, with plenty of Indian pepper, and with something acid the better to cut the phlegm which was to be got rid of; having thus