tion reaching to the sinews of the hand, and sensible even at the back. He was enchanted with his success! and although it was some hours before he regained the free use of his hand, yet the very intervening incapacitation engendered a species of joy, which none can conceive but those primary geniuses who are destined by nature to engender and originate a perfect novelty. He next made the experiment, with great caution, upon a point of his cranion; having a switch in his hand, by which to communicate with the perceptions of Gans. He found the action very powerful during the operation; and he perceived, that by immediately substituting the wine-glass, the effect was moderately but sensibly prolonged.

He reflected upon the necessary consequence of that same action, carefully, but regularly, continued. He tried it, with violence, on several dried skulls, which presently cracked under the ope

ration. He then tried it, very gently and very considerately, on the heads of numerous animals recently killed, and replete with their fluids; until at length, after various skilful experiments, he completely succeeded in ascertaining the precise degree of force which was sufficient for just soliciting a flexible upward tendency of the fibrous substance of the living cranion, without imparting to it any injury; and which might be retained and encouraged, by the mere application of the wine-glass

or common vacuum.

CHAPTER V.

HE REDUCES HIS PRINCIPLES TO PRAC

TICE HIS HEJIRA.

He was now in possession of two simple powers, compress and vacuum, equal to every end and object of encephalic practice. He thus found himself placed in the most enviable position in which man ever stood! He saw, in his prospect, every evil tendency of the mind vanish, and every valuable faculty rise into vigour, at his command. He had gained for himself a province, which embraced the final objects of all philosophies, physical and moral; and he had brought them all within his grasp, as entirely as he who turns the handle of an organ is master and producer of all its varieties of tune. Conscious of the purity and benevolence of his own heart, he blessed

Heaven that such a power, as dangerous by abuse as beneficial by use, had not fallen to the lot of any other individual; and he revelled in the honest ambition of effecting a revolution amongst the nations of Christendom, that should perfect their morals, exalt their genius, and extinguish all their animosities.

But he determined, first, to operate upon his own cranion; not only that he might be more intimately acquainted with, and more competent to record accurately, the progress of the two processes; but he thought that he was justly entitled to take the first benefit of his own discovery, and thus to gain a long step before all others, so that he could never afterwards be overtaken. It was therefore his determination to seclude himself from his family and the world during a space of two years, during which time he should subsist under the constant influence of his compress and vacuum; so that the ratios upon which he directed them should be re

spectively perfected in suppression and development, before any other persons should begin to derive the benefits of his discovery.

His

He had therefore to determine, on which ratio he should place the compress, and on which the vacuum. system had always been nervously excitable by every novel or remarkable object or circumstance; and though his temper was never affected, yet his own internal comfort was constantly disturbed by repeated calls from a composure

which he regarded as the summum bonum of life. Feeling this to be the point in which his own personal enjoyment was principally concerned, he was more than ever struck, at opening accidentally on those lines of Horace in which that great practical moralist affirms:

"Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici, 66 Solaque quæ possit facere et servare beatum.” "To lead a happy life if thou desire, "Numicius! cease for ever to admire."