Addison lays it down as a maxim, that when a nation abounds in physicians it grows thin of people. Fillibuster Henninpen seems to have agreed with the essayist, or he would hardly have informed General Walker, in one of his dispatches, that "Doctors Rice and Wolfe died of the cholera, and Dr. Lindley sickened, after which the health of the camp visibly improved." Intentionally or not, the stout-hearted soldier suggests that the best way of getting rid of the cholera is to make short work of the doctors. Among the obituary notices in a weekly paper, not many months ago, there appeared the name of a certain publican, with the following eulogium appended to it: "He was greatly esteemed for his strict probity and steady conduct through life, he having been a subscriber to the 'Sunday Times' from its first number." This is a worthy pendant to Miss Hawkins's story of the undertaker writing to the corporation of London, "I am desired to inform the Court of Aldermen, Mr. Alderman Gill died last night, by order of Mrs. Gill;" and not far short, in point of absurdity, is Madame Tussand's announcement of the exhibition of the effigy of the notorious Palmer, "who was executed at Stafford with two hundred other celebrities." [{274}] The modern fashion of naming florists' flowers must be held responsible for the very dubious paragraph we extract from a gardening paper: "Mrs. Legge will be looked after; she may not be so certain as some, but she was nevertheless very fine in the early part of the season. Lady Popham is useful, one of the old-fashioned build, not quite round in the outline, but makes up well."
Thackeray seems to have had an intense dislike to the trouble of revision, for his popular works, especially those published periodically, abound in trivial mistakes, arising from haste, forgetfulness, and want of care. The novelist mortally wounds an old lady with a candle instead of a candlestick, and afterwards attributes her death to a stone staircase. Newcome senior is colonel and major at one and the same time; Jack Belsize is Jack on one page and Charles on another; Mrs. Raymond Gray, introduced as Emily, is suddenly rechristencd Fanny; and Philip Fermor on one occasion becomes transformed into the author's old hero, Clive. With respect to the last-mentioned gentleman, author and artist seem to have differed, for while Mr. Thackeray jests about Clive's beautiful whiskers and handsome moustaches, Mr. Doyle persists to the end in denying young Newcome's possession of those tokens of manhood.
It is not often that an author is satirical upon his own productions; but Charles Dickens has contrived to be so. Describing the old inns of the Borough, in his "Pickwick Papers," he says they are queer places, with galleries, passages, and staircases wide enough and antiquated enough "to furnish materials for a hundred ghost-stories, supposing we should ever be reduced to the lamentable necessity of inventing any. " How little could Boz have anticipated certain charming Christmas books witching the world a few years later! So, also, "American Notes," Mr. Jefferson Brick, and the transatlantic Eden lay unsuspected in the future, when he made Old Wellor suggest Mr. Pickwick's absconding to America till Dodson & Fogg were hung, and then returning to his native land and writing "a book about the 'Merrikens as 'ill pay all his expenses and more, if he blows 'em up enough!"
From The Month.
SAINTS OF THE DESERT.
BY THE REV. J. H. NEWMAN, D.D.
1. Abbot Antony said: The days are coming when men will go mad; and, when they meet a man who has kept his senses, they will rise up against him, saying, "You are mad, because you are not like us."
2. While Arsenius was still employed in the imperial court, he asked of God to lead him in the way by which he might be saved.
Then a voice came to him: "Arsenius, flee the company of men, and thou art in that saving way."
3. Abbot Agatho said: Unless a man begin with the observance of the Precepts, he will not make progress in any one virtue.