IN the biographies of the Seven Sages of Greece, some interesting incidents have escaped even the discursive and vigilant erudition of Bayle. All of these worthies, in fact, being original members and perpetual vice-presidents of the Fogie Club, they were, naturally, as prosy octogenarians as the amber of history ever preserved for the admiration of posterity. But Thales of Miletus we imagine to have easily outstripped his six compeers in soporific garrulity; because an author whose name, while it would be Greek to the illiterate, is sufficiently familiar, without being mentioned, to the scholar, and who flourished long enough after the people of whom he speaks to give weight to his statements, has particularly recorded, that the Ionic philosopher was universally called by his friends, behind his back, "Old Hygrostroma." This euphonical and distinctive epithet we have discovered, by dint of deep study, to mean, very literally, Old Wet-Blanket.' Assigning an equal value to ancient and modern phraseology, the portrait of the Milesian, so characterised, wears an ugly aspect. Our own martyrdom, under the relentless persecutions of his legitimate successors, concentrates, by an instinctive process of mental association, all their worst features in the single physiognomy of their prototype.

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many luxuriant posies of fancy and humour, ready to burst into brilliant blossom, have irrecoverably droopedhow many

"Fair occasions, gone for ever by," of refreshing a laborious day by the evening carnival of nonsense-how many glorious "high jinks," infandum renovare dolorem, have been stifled-beneath the dank suffocation of this water-kelpy of social enjoyment ! It is proper, therefore, in order to be just, to ascertain whether the stigma which Thales carried about with him can be traced to the same causes which hang similar

labels round the necks of men in our own day, or whether a term of reproach or of ridicule may not here, as in many other instances, have been widely diverted from, or excessively aggravated in, its original signification.

Now, it happened that the mind of the wise man was filled by a crotchet, which absorbed all other ideas. He announced to the world that water is the primal element, the essence, the seed, the embryo of all matter. Every thing, throughout the whole area of the universe, however ponderous or substantial, however complex or varied, was not merely evolved from the liquid laboratory, but was actually part and parcel of the radical fluid itself. Earth and fire, the azure heaven and the golden stars, marble and brass, birds and beasts, fruits and flowers, ay, men and women, were dew-drops, in different phases of configuration, and different stages of condensation. Such a doctrine, inculcated with endless iteration and intolerable prolixity, could not but exhaust the patience of the gay and dissipated Ionians, whose habits, we know, were far from being circumscribed by the rules and regulations of a total abstinence society. And although, even when the topic had become nauseously stale, a little hilarity might be excited by the old gentleman falling easily iuto the trap, and answering in harmony with his favourite theory, when tauntingly asked, if the glowing forms before him, whose witchery of grace had passed into a proverb, were indeed emanations from the muddy Mæander; or if the neighbouring Latmus, where

"the moon sleeps with Endymion, "And would not be wak'd,"

was no more than a pitcherful of the Ægean; or if the pyramids, whose altitude he had measured for the wondering priests of Isis, were but bubbles of the Nile. Still the echo of the merriment thus provoked was faint and feeble beside the vociferous uproar which shook the voluptuous

chambers when young Anaximander, in whom Thales fondly thought he saw a disciple, ere yet the shadow of his deluded master had glided over the threshold, filled a ruddy bumper to the brim, and dashed down with a shout his libation to Bacchus, in thankfulness that at last they were rid of "Hygrostroma." Flesh and blood could not bear for ever "the dreadful noise of water in their ears;" and so, most deservedly and fitly, Thales got the name of "Wet-Blanket," and bequeathed it, we regret to acknowledge, to an infinite line of descendants, who, in dealing with other themes, daily and hourly, after their own fashion, stabilitate and eclipse his renown.

From the days of Thales, which may be fixed, according to the nicest calculations, about four-and-twenty hundred years ago, water was generally understood to have found its level. Occasionally, no doubt, it made vigorous spurts to revindicate its prominency, but never mounted to the alarming flood-mark which it had reached in the Ionic philosophy. It certainly has had little reason to complain of the position from which it cannot be displaced. Covering entirely three-fifths of the surface of the globe, few are the specks of land, and these few shunned by man, where its influence is not paramount. Permeating the vast economy of nature through its grandest and its minutest ramifications; nursing from its myriad fountains and reservoirs the vitality of creation; affecting and controlling the salubrity of climates, the purity and temperature of atmospheres, the fertility of soils; moistening the parched lips, and requickening the energies of vegetation; bearing all the necessaries and all the luxuries of life, all that industry can furnish or opulence procure, into the centre of immense continents, and up to the doors of populous cities; generating, with the help of a strong ally, the most gigantic power which human ingenuity has ever tamed to the uses, and comforts, and improvements of mankind; rolling the rampart of its sleepless tides round the shores and the independence of mighty empires, and stretching out its broad waters as the highway of amicable intercourse between all nations, this colossal and beneficent

element needs not to aspire higher than the eminence where it must be raised by such a contemplation of its virtues and its strength. Regarding it, however, with a homelier eye, we cannot conceal our opinion that too many men, women, and children, have underrated its serviceable qualities in connexion with their personal and domestic welfare. Nor shall our observations, desultory as they may be, conclude without some serious reflections on this subject, applicable to our own country and our own times; for even in the relaxing warmth and idlesse of autumn, when nothing very grave is very palatable, we must coax our friends to swallow a thin slice of instruction along with our jests and their grouse. But in the mean time, casting a rapid glance from the Ionian era, whence we started, downwards to the present century, over the aquatic propensities which have distinguished successive generations in the intervening ages, it can scarcely be affirmed with truth that the efficacy of water, as an useful, agreeable, and a sanative boon from Providence to man, has been neglected and despised. The Greeks, the Romans, and the Orientals require no justification. Their bathing, shampooing, and anointing have survived the downfall of thrones and the extinction of dynasties. And if the inhabitants of less benign regions, who must sometimes smash the ice in their tubs before commencing a lavation, do not evince the same beadlong predilection for continual immersion and ceaseless ablution as do their kindred of the genial South and blazing East, we confess that their apology seems to us to be remarkably clear and satisfactory. What do we think of Scotland?-is a query from which a sensitive patriotism, perhaps, might shrink. It does not abash us at all. All ducklings do not plunge into the pond or the stream exactly at the same age-one exhibiting, in this respect, a rash precocity, while another will for a long time obstinately refuse to acknowledge that

"Her march is on the mountain wave, Her home is on the deep."

Had Caledonia been as tardy as she is alleged to have been in the prac

tice of scrupulous cleanliness, we should easily have found good reasons for defending and palliating her procrastination. But the charge against her is absolutely a vulgar error—a popular delusion-a senseless clamour. Take the country. Is it likely that the national poet, who knew the customs and dispositions of our peasantry, being one of them himself, intimately and practically, would have enumerated among the dearest reminiscences of childhood, that

"We twa hae paidl't i' the burn

Frae mornin' sun till dine," if such an occupation were not the delight of the whole rural population? Take the town. Does there ever come down a torrent of rain, making the streets the channels of mighty rivers, that there is not seen instantly a colony of young Argonauts emerging, like flies from the Tweed, out of the very water, and exploring the unknown profundities of the gutter, as from lamp-post to lamp-post they go, "sounding on their dim and perilous way?" Take every wellregulated family on Saturday night. Where is the fortunate urchin who shall escape the rude purgation of the Girzy, nor be sent to bed red as a lobster, and clean as a whistle? Take the far-reaching seabeach from Newhaven to Joppa. Are those tremendous scenes which have lately riveted the gaze of a whole country on the sands of Portobello characteristic of a people animated by a feline antipathy to moisture? The verdict is so unquestionably for us, that we decline to adduce any further evi

dence.

In short, Europe continued to maintain most amicable relations, while Asia cultivated the closest intimacy with water, hot and cold, fresh and salt. America is too young yet to be included in the argument; and as for Africa, crocodiles, hippopotami, and sharks, usurp a monopoly of the favourite pools so exclusively, that the returns of its bathing statistics are most uncertain. In this course, matters ran on smoothly for cycles and cycles of years, races of men following races, as waves follow waves. Any perceptible alteration. in the relative positions of man and water, at the same time, was in the

direction of stricter and more frequent communication between them. Cleanliness became fashionable-an event which, without snapping the connexion somewhat loosely subsisting between the purifying element and the inferior grades of society, rapidly and widely diffused a knowledge of its capabilities and its amiabilities among the higher circles. Well, on the dawn of a glorious morning, when the sun, and all the seas, lakes, and rivers of the globe were playing at battledore and shuttle-cock with the beams of the orb of day, water suddenly found itself, at a bound, lifted to a pinnacle only a little beneath the summit on which Thales of yore enthroned it. Matter, on this occasion, it was not announced to be-but the cure of all the afflictions with which matter could be visited.

Ten thousand aromatic herbs gracefully adjusted their petals, ere they fell, and withered into rank and noisome weeds; ten thousand apothecaries were petrified in the act of braying poison in their mortars, and in that attitude remain, stony remembrances of their own villanies; physicians melted away by faculties and colleges;

"Nations ransom'd and the world o'erjoyed "

walked once more emancipated, as Milton sings,

"From colocynthine pains and senna

tea."

Numerous are the blunders under which humanity has reposed in incurious apathy. The sun gamboled round the earth so long, that, when they changed places and motions, the denizens at that moment of our planet were cheated out of several days in their sublunary or circumsolar career. What was that mistake in comparison with the disastrous error of having for centuries obdurately turned their backs on the inexhaustible laboratory in which alone health could be bought, and perversely purchased destruction from a series of quacks, whose infinite retails had caused more wholsale ruin than the pernicious wrath of Pelides? "Look here upon this picture and on this." Declining to accede to the unpleasant request we hurry to another pheno

tory temper of patients. To throw physic to the dogs, and be cleansed of all perilous stuff by a currycomb and a pail, might reconcile us to be assimilated to the horse. But alas! what do we discern in man," the paragon of animals," which will entitle us to conclude that his innumerable bodily frailties can be so overcome or expelled?

"Oh, mickle is the powerful grace that lies

In herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities."

Happy and painful experiences unite to prove it. It has cost the labour and the zeal, the intense concentration of the undivided energies, and, in memorable instances, the very lives of the erudite and the ingenious, the sagacious and the daring, engaged in an incalculable multiplicity of investigations, experiments, and observations, in all ages and in all countries, to explore, and test, and confirm what is valuable, trustworthy, and stable, in medical science. Even to-day it may be urged that much is still obscure, indefinite, unsteady, and liable to be overturned and dismissed by the clearer illumination of to-morrow. Be it so. But, in spite of all the lengths to which the objection can be pushed, there remain two points irrefragably settled in medicine. First of all, there are certain remedies ascertained, beyond the shadow of a doubt, to act efficaciously on certain diseases. In the second place-and by far the most important truth for us in this discussion-no one specific remedy has ever been discovered which applies efficaciously to all diseases, nor to the overwhelming majority, nay, nor to any majority of all diseases. A period of ten years never elapses without such a panacea being broached, paraded, and extinguished. The "impar congressus Achillei" is made manifest in every case. At the outset, accordingly, an advertisement of the Cold Water Cure as a specific brands it with a suspicion which has never been false before. To affirm that, from Galen to Abernethy, a veil of impenetrable ignorance shrouded the vision of all physicians, which prevented them from picking up the truth lying at their feet, is not to be more

arrogant than Holloway's ointment, or Morrison's pills. It is, however, to offer a statement for our acceptation which common sense and the practical testimony of more than two thousand years simultaneously reject. The question truly deserves no argument. The publication of the discovery of a panacea is sufficient. The remedy, whatever it is, cannot be what it pretends to be; although it may be worse or better than it is generally supposed to be. Those who have been restored to convalescence, to buoyancy of spirits, and agility of lim s, by cold water, are at perfect liberty to abjure and denounce all other cures. But the chasm in the reasoning is a yawning one, over which an adventurous leap must be taken, to stand firm on the other side upon the conclusion that what cured Richard of dyspepsia will deliver Thomas from typhus.

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It is not incumbent on us to enumerate Mr Lane's ailments. Blue pill and black draught, taraxacum and galvanism, were successively repelled by the stubborn enemy, whose entrenchments were to be neither sapped nor stormed. In a lucky hour, intimate friend of Sir E. Bulwer Lytton detailed, with generous eloquence, the great results of the Water-Cure in many cases; and his own characteristic benevolence prompted him to press upon me, as a duty, the visit of a month to Malvern." So there he goes. "The drive from Worcester to Malvern is not marked by any particular beauty, except the occasional glimpses of the hills, and the constant succession of rich orchards, at this time luxuriant in apple blossoms." The trifling exception to the monotony of the landscape, which does not escape his notice, almost suggests the possibility of the patient being a little better already.

"Here I am in the temple dedicated to Dame Nature and the Elixir Vitæ. The Doctor not at home, but a message that we are expected at a pic-nic at St Anne's Well. Too tired to go, we went to our comfortable double-bedded room, and, being refreshed, waited for the Doctor, who soon returned, and severely scrutinized me. He found my boy in exactly the state which he had expected, and rubbed his hands with