and suffered in the change." No less marvellous is another story, related by the same author, of a madman," who, in one of his frantic fits, flung himself out of a window three stories high; but accidentally pitching upon a drawwell, he fell plum down into the water; and being taken up, was perfectly recovered to the use of his senses again. It was computed he fell near thirty fathom before he came to the surface of the water, and the well was about six fathom deep under water." Sure nothing can be more surprising than this, if we consider either the length or the manner of the fall! We may allow thirty feet from the window to the mouth of the well; then there will remain about 150 feet for him to fall within the well, before he reached the surface of the water; and the force his body must by this time have acquired, would, I think, plunge him pretty deep into the water. Now, dear sir, do but reflect on the lucky hit of falling plum into the well; then of the providential escape of beating out his brains in banging from one side to the other, before he reached the water; but, above all, the miracle of getting out again; and I am sure you will agree with me, 'that it is as marvellous a case as ever appeared * New System of the Spleen and Vapours, p. 399. (I will not say in the history of physic, but) in any history whatsoever! Your constant reader and admirer, EPHRAIM QUIBUS, M. D. Memoirs of the Society of Grub-street, That the marvellous and irrelevant in medical literature are not less common in the present day than in the year 1730, must be strikingly apparent to every one conversant with the recent illiberal controversy on the subject of the cow-pox. Such a mass of abuse, falsehood, and folly, was, perhaps, never before accumulated on any subject in the annals of medicine. As a specimen of the marvellous, which perfectly eclipses the cases of Dr. Nicholas Robinson, I shall quote a few lines from a pamphlet, intitled "A Warning Voice to the United Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland; in which the Origin, Nature, and Effects of the Lues Bovilla, or Cow-pox, are clearly explained, and the Report of the College of Physicians completely confuted, by Mr. Ferdi nand Smith Stuart." "Among the numerous shocking cases of cow-pox,” observes Mr. Stuart," which I have heard of, I know not whether the most horrible of all has been yet published; viz. of a child at Peckham, who, after being inoculated with the cowpox, had its former natural disposition absolutely changed to the brutal; so that it ran upon all fours like a beast, bellowing like a cow, and butting with its head like a bull!!" p. 57, 58. This notable description realises the very apprehensions and imagery of the author of the "Vaccine Phantasmagoria," who humorously exclaims: O Mosely! thy books, nightly phantasies rousing, Full oft make me quake for my heart's dearest treasures; There, nibbling at thistles, stand Jem, Joe, and Mary; On their foreheads (oh horrible!) crumpled horns bud a Here Tom with a tail, and poor William all hairy, Reclin❜d in a corner and chewing the cud! No. XII. Hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini Hanc Remus et frater; sic fortis Etruria crevit, VIRGIL. The frugal Sabines thus their acres till'd; WARTON. } HAVING given my countrymen a short account of the civilities and ceremonies of politeness in use amongst the Romans; * for their farther information, I shall now proceed to shew how they parcelled out their time in the daily and ordinary course of a private life. Under their kings, the people, as yet uncorrupted with affluence, gloried in frugality; and the greatest simplicity of manners was accounted most fashionable: their time was almost wholly taken up in providing for the necessities of life, and in supporting the fatigues of war, during the term of above two hundred years. Under the consuls, as often as they had no foreign wars to fear, they found themselves at leisure to foment intestine broils. The desire * See No. ix. of rule amongst the patricians, and the love of liberty in the plebeians, kept Rome in a perpetual ferment, which threatened destruction to the commonwealth in its infancy. These two orders of citizens, transgressing alike the bounds of moderation, lived in a mutual distrust one of the other; so that, as soon as they perceived they were in no danger from enemies abroad, their principal care was to defeat the cabals of each other. Thus, through the course of about five hundred years, the main attention, the vigour, and the virtue of the Romans, was employed in defending themselves against the hostilities of their neighbours, and in composing their domestic feuds. If they enjoyed any intermissions from these cares, they then applied themselves entirely to agriculture. In these happy intervals of tranquillity, no man thought it beneath him to set his hand to the plough: the patrician and the plebeian, whose conditions and whose business so widely differed in the city, had one occupation in the country; and the greatest, in common with the meanest Roman, was not ashamed to be styled a labourer. We have many examples of this laudable simplicity, not only in the early times of the republic, when it was customary to send for consuls and dictators from their farms, to assist in the arduous |