razors themselves to be, from their linear shape, peculiarly indicative of le Jardin de la Reine, or the Queen's garden, all along considered as the focus of fever and pestilence; though, undoubtedly, by the choice of such a symbol as a razor-blade, there might be further intention to point to the steely or brackish nature of bad water. And if this steely brackish quality of water is a main cause of the disease, as is insinuated as well by the razor-blades of figures, A 1, 2, 3, 4, as by what I take to be an open razor in the hand of D2, on one side of E; so the fish in the hand of D 1, on the other side, may allude to the corruption (again hinted by the figure's smelling to its fingers) with which the stagnant water is impregnated by the fish that die and putrefy in it at the time of such stagnation, of which enough has already been said, in treating of the mask of Comus.

It is by a method of invention similar to that which has been attempted to be unravelled in what has been above already said concerning this painting, that the particular disease in question is further therein indicated to be a fever, as may be

inferred from the characters G, G, &c. H, H, &c. which run nearly from top to bottom of the whole. What they are most like is the letter v, and thus each may denote the Roman numeral V; and as they are also alike the small letter r, they will together, whether read forward or backward, constitute the word fever, or five-r, (in French, fievre); just as the same thing seems hinted in the same manner by the Arabic numeral 5, coupled with the capital Saxon letter R, as exhibited at m, near the top of the central line of hieroglyphics. Of the characters immediately under consideration resembling the Roman numeral V, there are twelve in number on each side of the painting, and if they are construed into time, they each give five times twelve, or sixty minutes, or an hour; and as they are severally bordered parallel-wise by a graduated scale of twenty-four compartments, if when coupled with the former, these compartments also be construed into time, they will each give twenty-four times sixty minutes, twentyfour hours, or a day; if again that result be applied to the word fever, fixed as above, there will be, on

each side of the painting, a day of fever marked and if so, there will scarcely be any hesitation to believe that all the sharp instruments scattered through the central line of the hieroglyphics (bordered in like manner by the twenty-four compartments) were intended by an allusion to the French word for sharp, aigu, to mark a like period of ague. I conclude, therefore, that the middle part of the painting is intended to be expressive of a tertian fever (according to the definition of such a fever, as I find it in Mr. Tissot's Avis au Peuple, viz." dans la fievre tierce, les accès reviennent de deux jours l'un);" or, in other words (whatever alteration the disease might undergo, when grown putrid or otherwise exasperated), that in its simple primary state it was in truth no other than an ague; some confirmation of which arises from the consideration that the French have no other name for the ague than la fievre, distinguishing it by teirce, quarte, &c.

There is a circumstance, which as forming an appendage to all the figures of this painting, and other hieroglyphic paintings that regard the same

subject, would seem to call for particular observation, namely, the black head-dresses which are worn by them. Now though these, from their general shape as resembling that of a raven, have been supposed to have their prototypes indifferently either at the north or south ends of the Gulf of the West Indies, from the resemblance that either of those spaces as coupled with the Bay of Honduras has to that bird, yet I strongly incline to think that there is an intention also to intimate by them that the head is the principal seat of the complaint in question, and perhaps further that some of the medicaments for its cure should be applied to the head. The note subjoined may perhaps justify all these conclusions.*

* Let the following passages be considered together: Comus, "Braid your locks with rosy twine,

Dropping odours, dropping wine;"

105

"Or drag him by the curls to a foul death,
Curs'd as his life."

614

Till all thy magic structures rear'd so high

808

Were shatter'd into heaps o'er thy false head."

"And fair Ligea's golden comb,

890

whom I have been speaking. It is possible that criminals might have had their sentences remitted for undertaking the hazardous service in question, and that some curriers of the number, might have escaped the contagion. The oak-bark, which curriers use, may, by their constant immersion in the tan-pits, produce the same effect upon them as the Peruvian bark, when medically applied; and if that be true, the fact, that any one trade or calling is less subject to pestilential contagion than others, is undoubtedly of great importance.

When these remarks upon the fevers of America were first printed in the year 1805, the statement extracted from Dr. Mead's Book was inserted in a note with the remarks above, subjoined I have not chosen to make any alteration in it now, because it is possible that there may be some foundation for the conjecture concerning a frequent exposure to the effects of oak-bark: but the main reason why I have now inserted it in the text is on account of the very striking confirmation which results from it, of the remarks made above concerning the laquei or halters in the hands