36 The terrible phrase of Proudhon would | great difficulty. Would there be an invathen be remembered: "Revolutions are sion of the barbarians? Perhaps, or rather no longer to be made at the Hôtel de an opportunity for the rise of a new CaVille, but at the Bank of France." The sar. The military spirit of France, her people would become the executioner of tendency to intrust to a despot the guidthe selfish bourgeoisie, risen above them ance of the democratic aspirations which the better to oppress them. Property are in her, the traditions of authority which, rightly or wrongly, is regarded as transmitted by custom and history, her the source of all suffering, would be the ignorance of political life, and her aversion first object of attack, the great ledger of for its duties, altogether make it possible the public debt would be thrown into the that France, like the Roman Empire, with flames, the floating-debt wiped out with which she has so many points of resema word, and the railroads declared the pro- blance, is destined to perish by military perty of the State. There would be a ca- despotism ever-recurring after incessant taclysm, a kind of deluge, from which the revolutions. new world would not be evolved without From Chambers's Journal, HOW I BECAME A PHYSICIAN. I HAVE been from my youth of a restless | been thistle-down. How I blessed my As a lad I patron, and how efficiently I served him, temper or temperament. wished not only to be head of my class, may be guessed from the fact that I was but head of the school. Whatever any soon the center of that powerful system, boy could do, I wished to do, and to do The Daily Looker-on. better than any one else; this kept my powers always on the stretch. I sat up nights; I neglected exercise; I pored over my Greek till I was no longer an Englishman, but thought in the tough old Hellenic tenses. I worked out problems till I was a walking Euclid. I have spent the night over a problem with a patience and perseverance worthy of a sister of charity; and I have worked at a copy of Greek verses till the paper seemed to my excited optics to be one blaze of light. This I did as a boy, what would I be I will tell you. I likely to do as a man? took to authorship and attics, and served my apprenticeship to a crust without beer, and a bed without blankets. Finally, I made a "hit" with a political pamphlet, and got a place on the staff of a daily 66 I was a man of mark." Lord paper. Redtape was grateful for my timely advoof his favorite measure, and his balmy breath wafted me into the place I had long prayed for as easily as if I had cacy 66 The heart is not of more importance to the circulation of the blood, or the pineal gland to the brain and nervous system. Day and our party." than I became to night I wrought at my desk, and "devils" Copy, sir," said an were my familiars. imp with an evil name, and I worked on as if I were a machine. My apprenticeship to poverty and failure have been very bitter, and had not prepared me properly The mere fact of success to bear success. was an exhilaration far beyond wine or strong drink, and my nervous system was as much taxed by it as by my incessant labor. The first and greatest misery attendant on my success was sleeplessness; I say the greatest, because it was the parent of In the few hours I dediso many more. cated to repose, I courted sleep more sedulously than lover ever courted the coyest maiden. Just in proportion as my spirit longed for the renovation of rest, my excited brain refused for a moment to be quiet. When I lay down, there was a rushing, roaring sound in my ears; and when I rose, it was a ringing worse than Bow bells. At first, I thought that the roaring sound came from the street; it seemed like the tramp of life along the great thoroughfare on which I lived. But I soon observed that when all the world outside was hushed and asleep, the roar and tramp continued to thrash against my throbbing brain. Then there seemed a band of iron bound tightly round my head, and pressing intolerably against my forehead. Then I became dizzy when I raised my head from my pillow in the morning, which was not removed till I had smoked a cigar or drunk a cup of coffee. Next came dimness of sight and vertigo when I stooped and rose again quickly. The morning was my worst time. I was weary as death when it was time to rise, and it was not long before I had never left my bed till I had taken some one of my accustomed stimulants. When the day was well begun, I could work till a late hour; indeed, I dreaded to stop. My hours in bed were most miserable, and I often wished that sleep had never been invented to mock me. At last it occurred to me that I was going on badly, and must have advice. I acted on my resolution as hastily as I had made it; I just spared myself time to call on a very skillful physician on my way to a dinner given by my noble patron. "My dear sir," said I, "just give me something to steady my nerves for this evening." "Your nerves!" said the doctor; "you should leave nerves to the ladies." "I wish I could," I answered, "for they have leisure, and I have not. I am in the greatest possible haste now, but I am afraid my head will fail me to-night, and I really can not spare it at the present crisis in public affairs, to say nothing of my own private need for it. The fact is, I have got a bad habit of being dizzy at times, and Then I hastily ran over the symptoms I have detailed. The physician listened attentively, and not mechanically, remarking, when I ceased speaking, "You sum up a case well; you do not waste time;" and then he was silent till I was impatient; and, with a hasty and uneasy movement, I said: "Well !" "You must stop all brain-work, and go into the country and rest," said he. I laughed in his face. "I stop, and go into the country and rest!" I exclaimed. "My dear sir, the thing is simply impossible. I am head, brain, heart, and center of The Daily Looker-on. If the center fails, what is to become of the circumference? I leave you to calculate the consequences if I should stop; for though I took high honors in mathematics, I can not tell how much two and two make, and I am not sure that I could count my fingers correctly." "And yet you keep on taxing your brain, and stimulating to keep up to your work, with seven signs of apoplexy, which you have just detailed to me." "Seven signs of apoplexy ?" said I with a start, for I was deeply shocked, as the doctor intended I should be. I put a piece of tobacco into my mouth. I always did this when I felt uneasy, which was some dozens of times in a day. "Yes, seven signs of apoplexy," said the doctor, "and that tobacco is the eighth, and worst, for you screw yourself up to your work with that, and increase all your bad symptoms." "But the seven signs?" said I. "A band of iron across your forehead, a rushing or roaring sound in your ears, dizziness, dimness of sight, or entire loss of vision when you stoop and rise again quickly, a blaze of light on your paper when you write in the night, sleeplessness, the obliteration of your mathematical power, which used to be great, and the necessity for stimulants, in order to work at all. I tell you, you must stop, and go into the country and rest." "Rest!" said I, bitterly. "My dear sir, I tell you I am to dine at Lord Redtape's to-night. I am expected to talk, and to talk brilliantly. At twelve tonight, I shall write a leader for to-morrow. When all this is done, I will think of what you have said; but I can not spare time even to think of it till to-morrow;" and I gave him my hand with a guinea in it. "To-morrow may be too late," said the man of science sorrowfully. "Do not frighten a fellow to death," said I, cheerfully; "and do take time to tell me the cause of this rushing and roaring sound in my ears." The doctor smiled. "If I take time to tell you, I suppose you will take time to listen," said he. "I would almost lose my dinner to learn the cause of my torment—rush, rush night and day. I like to rattle over the | and no fresh breeze fanned my hot face as hardest pavement, because it somewhat I came out into the air. I felt as if my drowns that horrid sound in my head. blood were molten lead, it was at once so Just explain it, doctor, and consider me hot and so heavy. I was glad to divest your debtor everlastingly." myself of dress garments, which are never comfortable except when one is under the eye of the public. I was glad to lie down, for I was too heavy to carry myself. With my windows broad open, and a single linen sheet over me, I fell asleep. I awoke with a sensation of cold, as if I were frozen to death. I tried to raise myself, thinking I would draw up the bed-clothes that lay across the foot of the bed. I found that my right side was immovable. I put my left hand over to my right hand and arm, and felt them. The hand and limb, and indeed the whole of my right side, were as though they were the members of another person, and not mine at all. "You expect me to explain a complex scientific problem, when you do not know the alphabet of the science," said the doctor; "but I will try. Roaring in the ears is caused by the weakness, and consequent relaxation of the carotid artery. The size of this artery depends on the contractile power of the nerves that belong to its coats. When these nerves are weakened, the artery is relaxed, and becomes expanded, and the current of the blood surges against the bony structure of the mastoid process. This process shields the auditory nerve, which is spread out in its internal chambers, and the roaring sound is produced by this great current impinging on the mastoid process, from the relaxation of the coats of the artery. In its normal condition, the artery just clears the process, and we hear nothing. But when one's nerves are weakened, as yours are, great irregularities occur in the circulation. Rest, my dear sir, will restore the integrity of your nerves, and your eye will cease to exaggerate light by means of a diseased optic nerve, and your ear to be tormented with the rush and roar of your own blood, surging against an excited auditory nerve at every pulsation of your heart." Very curious and interesting," said I, thinking more about the doctor's explanation than my own disease. "But I must be off to this tiresome dinner, my dear doctor;" and I rather unwillingly said "Good-day." I remember very little of what occurred at the dinner, except that there seemed a bright light around the head of a lady who sat opposite to me, and dark spots with bright edges floated before my eyes. I was told long afterward that I never talked so well, or made so many brilliant points as on that evening, and that just before I left I blazed up in such a superb manner, that Lord Redtape said to Sir Frederick Bluebook: "That man is the phenomenon of the age-the right man in the right place. He makes me hold my breath while I listen to him." I wrote a leader that night that was like the sound of a trumpet at a triumph. I went home to my lodgings at a late, or rather early hour. It was a warm night, One side of my tongue would not move. The whole right half of my body was as useless to me as if made of marble. I had Hemiplegia—that is, half of me was palsied. A vegetative life went on, but there was no power in the voluntary mucles. My will had ceased to be a commander over one half my material members. The servant came up with coffee at ten o'clock, as I had bidden him when I came in. He rapped, but as I could make no answer, he went away. What would I not have given to be able to call to John as I heard his receding footsteps! But the slightest sound was beyond my ability; I could only move my left hand and foot. I could still think, and there seemed no halfness in my thoughts, but there was a heaviness even in my anxiety, and I suppose I fell asleep. I awoke, or recovered my senses, I never knew which, with a feeling as if I had been stabbed, and saw a gentleman withdrawing a lancet from my arm. "'Ow black it is, and honly two drops!" said John, who was holding the bowl. Again I felt the sting of the lancet; but no blood followed its insertion. What is to be done next? thought I. I do not remember thinking again till I heard a rich, deep voice say: "He will revive; he has young blood in him.” "What would you advise, Sir Joseph," said a voice which I knew belonged to the person who had stabbed me. "It is impossible to bleed him." "And not necessary," said Sir Joseph. "He should be taken to Malvern Watercure.” The great man, who was not frightened at words, and who could see Philosophy in so-called empiricism, was obeyed. I was carried to Malvern. For thirty-six hours, I was alternately sweated and bathed. I was first wrapped in blankets, till profuse perspiration was induced, and then in this vapor-bath, from my own pores, I was sponged off with cold water, rubbed dry, and then again enveloped in blankets for another sweating. For thirty-six hours, this treatment was pursued; and at the end of this time, I could slightly move my right hand. "Bravo!" said the doctor; "you shall rest." And I did rest, and sleep. For hours my weary body and soul rested in a dreamless Elysium, of which I was only occasionally conscious for a moment, when a wet napkin was laid on my forehead. During three months I was sweated, and douched, and ate black-bread, and not overtender beef, and never once saw tea, cof fee, or tobacco. At the end of the three months, I left Malvern with the use of all myself, except that I could not pick up a pin with my right thumb and finger, though I could grasp a friend's hand heartily. I suspect I could not have writ ten a leader in my old, elegant, plain chirography. But I had no chance of attempting this, for during my absence, some one had stepped into my place on the treadmill of daily journalism, and I was no more missed, or wanted, than the fifth wheel of a coach. It is said that no man is ever missed in the great economy of Providence; and certainly that was my case in the small circle of what I had considered great affairs. The individual who had succeeded me was "the right man in the right place," and for aught I know, Lord Redtape held his breath when he listened to him. I was left at liberty to confirm my health by good habits, and to gain a new position by ability or good fortune. I had begun the study of human physiology with my own brain and nervous system; I continued it with a zeal born of suffering, and a humane and compassionate sympathy, founded on a knowledge of what my fellow-creatures were suffering all around me from ignorance of physical laws. Providence had spared my life, and I resolved to dedicate it to the service of that most unfortunate class, the literary and the learned, who know nothing of the laws of life and health, who ignorantly destroy both, and then look to the physician to create them again by some miraculous power, which does not exist in science. The patient must coöperate with his physician, and both must coöperate with the laws of God in the human constitution, or it is as vain to expect health to succeed disease, as it was to pursue the chimera of the philosopher's stone or the elixir vitæ. is not that Englishmen are impatient of criticism. They rather challenge and enjoy it. They throw open the whole country to inspection. A foreigner may go anywhere and everywhere, without let or hindrance. Dockyards, factories, lawcourts, mines, markets, are all patent to scrutiny. Free speech is one of the institutions of the land. A man may stand on the floor of the House, or on the more humble arena of the parish vestry, and denounce the policy of his best friend without offense. It is the glory of an Englishman to be able to give people "a bit of his mind," and he expects others to claim the privilege which he does not scruple to use. The Englishman is not like the American, morbidly sensitive to remark. You can never praise an American enough. Suggest an imperfection in his political or social system, and you wound him to the quick. He winces under advice. You are his sworn enemy if you hint that he expectorate somewhat too freely, or that he is not solemnly appointed by genius and destiny to "whip creation." The Englishman is not so thin-skinned. He is not without amour propre. He has a considerable conceit of his institutions. He quietly assumes that his nation infinitely transcends every other upon earth. But he is open to advice. Honest reproof does not irritate him. He is sensible of his faults; and a foreigner who should criticise those faults in a fair and manly spirit would command the respect of every honest man from John o' Groat's to the Land's End. pletives. He beats his wife. When tired A story is told of three philosophers, a German, an Englishman, and a Frenchman, who agreed severally to produce a treatise on the natural history of the camel. The German, laying in an immense stock of tobacco, retreated to his study, where, in a dense atmosphere of smoke, he proceeded to construct the ideal of a camel from the depths of his own consciousness. The Englishman, hastily packing his knapsack, journeyed forthwith to the East, to spend twelve months in the study of the animal in its native home. The Frenchman, gayly lighting his cigar, betook himself to the Jardin des Plantes, Such foreigners, however, are rare. where half an hour's examination of the Frenchmen, in particular, seem perfectly captive beast sufficed to furnish him with incapable of forming a common-sense es- the materials of his treatise. It is just timate of England. They come over to this intense superficiality, so characteristic us crammed with prejudice, and return to of the French mind as a whole, which their native land bursting with spleen. A gives to a Frenchman's estimate of EngFrenchman rarely recovers the voyage land the meager and incorrect tone by across the Straits. He views England which, in most instances, it is distinguishunder the influence of bile; his tempered. The traveler reaches London in a is not improved by a perpetual fog. Indifferent to facts, and satisfied with a most superficial study of our habits and character, he follows his predecessors in their estimate of the nation. To the French mind, the traditional Englishman is an oger. He is a man who hates foreigners. His soul is swallowed up in the shop. He devotes his leisure to beer and beefsteaks. He eats raw meat. He garnishes every utterance with fearful ex November fog, is bullied and fleeecd by a cabman, puts up at a fourth-rate hotel near Leicester Square, is driven to dyspepsia by the cuisine, visits that most melancholy pile, the British Museum, forms his views of our military system from an outside contemplation of the Horse Guards, and goes home, as he thinks, the master of his subject. But, perhaps, the erroneous judgments of our foreign visitors are not to be at |