Ferdinand and Isabella, whose impolitic zeal acquired for the Spanish crown the title of Most Catholic, at the cost of the depopulation and impoverishment of their kingdom.

The woman's husband, who was by, understood the drift of this reply, and said to him, "Friend licentiate Vidriera," (for he had given himself that name, to denote his vitreous composition), "thou art more knave than madman."

"I care not a straw," returned he, "so that I am not a fool."

One man asked him, what advice or consolation he should give to a friend of his who was in great grief because his wife had eloped with another man.

To which he answered, "Tell him to thank God for having permitted his enemy to be carried from his house." "Then, must he not go in search of her?" said the other.

"Let him not think of it," replied Vidriera; "for if he were to find her, he would find an incontrovertible and perpetual testimony to his dishonour."

'Well," said the other, "be it so: but what shall I do to keep at peace with my wife?"

He answered--" Give her whatever is necessary for her, and let her command all thy household; but never suffer her to command thee."

A boy said to him, "I want to run away from my father, for he often beats me:"and he answered-" Mark well, my son, that the stripes which fathers give to their children are an honour, but those of the hangman are a disgrace."

Standing at the door of a church, he saw a rustic entering it, one of those who, boasted, like Sancho Panza, of being old Christians; that is, that their veins were free from Moorish, and above all, Jewish blood; and behind him eame one of those who was not held in such good opinion. The licentiate called aloud to the first, saying, "Stop Sunday, until Saturday is gone by."

Another asked him, what he thought of those good ladies whose profession it is to facilitate a certain order of intrigues. He answered, that the public ones were by no means so bad as the private ;-meaning, no doubt, that it is possible for a kind female relative or friend, or even a servant, to bring a clandestine correspondence to a crisis, almost as cleverly as if they had practised that kind of business all their lives.

For a fuller and better display of our madman's satirical humour, we must refer our readers to the ensuing chapter;

in which, being carried to Valladolid by a novel mode of conveyance, he makes his appearance in that city, where the Spanish court was then residing.

CHAPTER III.

THE fame of poor Vidriera's madness, with that of his answers and sayings, was spread through all Castile, and coming to the knowledge of a grandee who was residing at Valladolid, he wished to see him; and commissioned a friend of his, a gentleman residing at Salamanca, to send the mono-maniac to him. Accordingly, meeting him one day in the street, the gentleman said to him,—

"Mr. licentiate Vidriera, you must know, that a great personage at court wishes to see you."

To which he replied,-" Sir, you will be pleased to make my excuses to that great personage, for truly, I am not fit for court, being modest, and not knowing how to flatter."

Nevertheless the gentleman sent him to the capital; and to carry him thither, made use of this expedient. He had him put in a pannier, such as glass was carried in; balancing the mule's load with stones, and putting some articles of glass in the straw about him, to give him to understand that they were carrying him along as a glass vessel.

It was night when they arrived with him at Valladolid ;-they unpacked him in the house of the nobleman who had sent for him, and who received him kindly, saying-" Welcome Mr. licentiate Vidriera. I hope you have had a good journey; I hope you are well."

To which he answered-" No journey is bad which we come to the end of, except that which leads to the gallows. I am not very well; for my pulse and my brain have been at variance."

The next day, seeing on a number of perches many falcons and other game birds, for which there was a kind of rage among the Spanish nobility of that day, he said that the sport of falconry was one worthy of princes and nobles; but that they should at the same time remember, that the pleasure exceeded the profit by more than a thousand to one. Coursing, he said, was very fine sport, especially when the dogs were borrowed.

His host was entertained by his madness and his satirical sallies; and let him go about the town, under the care and protection of a man who prevented him from being annoyed by the boys, to whom, as to all the town, he was known in less than a week and at every step,

in every street, and at every corner, he answered all the questions that were put to him.

Amongst others, a student asked him if he was a poet; as it seemed to him that he had a genius for everything.

He answered,-"Hitherto, I have neither been so foolish nor so fortunate."

"I don't know what you mean by being so foolish or so fortunate," said the student; and Vidriera replied

"I have not been so foolish as to become a bad poet, nor so fortunate as to be a good one."

Being asked by another student in what estimation he held poets, he answered, that he had great esteem for their art, but none for themselves.

They asked him his reason; and he said, that of the vast number of poets which there were in Spain, so few were good, that they were hardly to be mentioned: and that therefore, there being no good poets, there were none for him to esteem: but that he admired and revered the art of poetry, because in it were included all other arts; since all others were subservient to it, contributing to adorn and polish it, and develope its wonderful powers, to the advantage, the delight, and wonder of the world. He continued:-"I well know in what manner a good poet should be esteemed; for I remember those lines of Ovid

Cura Deum fuerunt olim regumque Poetæ, Præmiaque antiqui magna tulere chori, Sanctaque majestas, et erat venerabile nomen Vatibus; et large sæpe dabantur opes.

Still less can I forget the high quality of poets, since Plato calls them interpreters of the gods; and Ovid says of them—

Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo. And also,

At sacri vates, et divûm cura vocamur. This is said of good poets: what shall be said of bad ones, of poetasters, but that they are the most arrant idiots and coxcombs in the world!"

He added, ". -Oh! it is fine to see a new fledged bard when he wants to repeat a sonnet to some other bardlings about him, how he prepares them for the infliction, saying-Gentlemen, will you oblige me by hearing a little sonnet which I happened to compose last night, and which, though it is good for nothing at all, yet, in my humble opinion, possesses a grace—a turn-a peculiar kind of-something-of which I cannot convey to you an idea, except by repeating

it!' Then, twisting his lips, and arching his brows, he rummages his pocket, and from amongst a multitude of dirty, worn-out scraps of paper, containing a shoal of other sonnets, he draws forth the one he means to recite, and at length pronounces it with affectedly mellifluous tone. If his audience are so wicked or so ignorant as not to applaud it, then he says, Gentlemen, either you did not understand the sonnet, or I did not read it well; so I had better repeat it again; and be so kind as to pay a little more attention, for, upon my honour the sonnet deserves it, it does indeed;-and thereupon he gives it out again, with fresh pauses, and fresh grimaces.

And

"And then, to hear them criticising one another! Again, what shall we say of the barking of these upstart whelps at the great and venerable ancients? what of those who rail at some excellent and illustrious men, in whom shines forth the true light of poetry, and who, making it their recreation and diversion from their many important occupations, therein testify their sublime genius, and their exalted conceptions, in spite, and to the confusion of the ignorant and shortsighted, who judge of what they do not know, and condemn what they do not

understand? And what of those who would have us value and esteem the dulness that is pampered in palaces, or the ignorance that clings for support to the altar ?"

Another time, they asked him what was the reason that poets were, for the most part, poor? He answered, that it was because they chose to be so; for that

they had it in their power to be rich, if they would profit by the opportunities that occurred to them, since their mistresses were always extremely rich,-their hair being of gold, their foreheads of burnished silver, their eyes of emerald, their teeth of ivory, their lips of coral, their necks of transparent crystal, and their tears were liquid pearls; and that whatever ground they trod upon, how rude and sterile soever it might be, immediately produced roses and jessamines; that their breath was pure amber, musk, and civet: all which things were marks and evidences of their exceeding great wealth.

[As a remarkable instance of the literary folly of his time, which our licentiate here satirises, I am tempted to quote a sonnet, as translated by Lord Holland, from the Arcadia of Lope de Vega, the most popular of all the Spanish writers of that day.

Not high-wrought ebony can blacker seem; Nor bluer doth the flax its blossom rear; Not yellower doth the eastern gold appear; Nor purer can arise the scented steam Of amber, which luxurious men esteem; Nor brighter scarlet doth the sea-shell bear, Than in the forehead, eyebrows, eyes, and hair.

The breath and lips of my most beauteous queen,

Are seen to dwell, on earth, in face divine. And since like all together is my fair,

Lifeless elsewhere, alive in her are seen Ice, ebon, flax, gold, amber, and carmine.

Here we have, indeed, a perfect inventory of charms; the formidable array of nouns substantive at the end having, to borrow his lordship's comparison, very much the aspect of a line in the Propria quæ maribus. It may not be unfair to oppose to the above the following sonnet, from among those attributed to Lope's great English cotemporary, Shakspeare. My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red: If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her

head.

I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress
reeks.

I love to hear her speak,-yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go,-

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.]

All this, and more, he said of bad poets; but of good ones he always spoke in terms of the highest commendation.

He once leaned, with great caution, lest he should break himself, against the door of a bookseller's shop, and said to him-" This trade of yours would please me well, but for one fault which it has."

The bookseller asked him what that was; and he answered-" The grimaces you make when you buy the copyright of a book, and the trick which you put upon the author if he happens to publish it at his own cost; since, instead of fifteen hundred copies, you have three thousand printed; and when the author thinks, good man, that his own copies are selling, it is yours that are disposed of."

Here, one cannot help remarking how small a share of the boasted Castilian honour must have fallen to the lot of Spanish publishers in the days of Cervantes; for it is not to be supposed that so broad and unqualified a charge would have been brought by our rational luna

tic against the profession, had not the application been general. The days are gone by, in England, when it was thought a good joke to swindle an author: surely it is the same at this day, even in degraded Spain!

It happened the same day, that six criminals were to be flogged through the streets; and when the crier began to publish their crimes, saying, "The first for a thief," Vidriera called out aloud to those who stood before him, saying, "Get out of the way, my friends, lest this reckoning should begin with some one of you."

There was present a chairman, who said to him, "Of us, Mr. Licentiate, you have nothing to say:"

"No," answered Vidriera, "except that each one of you knows more sins than a confessor; only, with this difference, that the confessor knows them, and keeps them secret; but you go and publish them in the taverns."

This was overheard by a mule-driver (for there were all sorts of people continually listening to him), and he said— "Of us, Mr. Bottle, there is little or nothing to be said, for we are honest men, and necessary in the commonwealth."

To which the licentiate answered"The honour of the master is reflected in the servant. Mark, therefore, whom you serve, and you shall know how much you are honoured. Yon fellows are the greatest blackguards upon the face of the earth. Once, before I was a man of glass, I went a journey on a hack mule; and I counted in it a hundred and twenty-one blemishes, all in the first degree, and inimical to the welfare of mankind. All mule-drivers are partly pimps or bullies, partly thieves, and partly buffoons. If their masters (for so they call those who ride their mules) be simple, unsuspecting people, they practise all sorts of tricks upon them. If they are foreigners, they rob them; if students, they curse them; if monks, they swear at them; but if soldiers, they tremble at them.

"They and sailors, waggoners, and carriers, lead an extraordinary sort of life, and one peculiar to themselves. The waggoner passes the greater part of his life within the space of a yard and a half, as it cannot be much more from the yoke of his mules to the front of his waggon. One half of the time he is singing, and the other half swearing, or giving the word of command to his mules; and if a wheel happens to sink

in the mire, two oaths are then of more service to him than three mules.

"Sailors are a rude and heathenish tribe that know no language but that which is used on ship-board. In fair weather they are diligent, and in foul weather they are idle. In a storm, many of them command, and few of them obey. Their god is their mess, and their pastime to see the passengers sea-sick.

"Carriers are a set of men that are divorced from the bed-clothes, and married to the pack-saddle. They are so diligent, and fearful of being too late, that rather than lose their journey, they will lose their souls. Their music is the noise of the mortar, in which they bruize their grain; their sauce is hunger; their matins, to get up and feed their mules; and their masses, never to hear any."

When he said this, he was at the door of an apothecary's shop (the apothecary being, as in those days he was in England also, merely a retailer of drugs and compounder of medicines); and, turning to the master of it, he said-"Sir, yours is a salutary calling, if it were not so hostile to the lamps."

"In what way is it an enemy to the lamps?" asked the apothecary; and Vidriera answered- -"Because, when any oil is wanting, you supply it from that of the lamps, which is nearest at hand; and there is another thing in this trade of yours, enough to ruin the reputation of the most skilful physician in the world."

Being asked what it was, he answered, that there was an apothecary who, because he was afraid to say that there was anything wanting in his shop which the physician prescribed, substituted for the things ordered in the prescription, others which he thought had the same virtue and quality, though they really had not: so that the medicine being ill-compounded, had an effect quite the reverse of that which it would have had, if mixed according to the prescription;-a result which many a poor Englishman at this day experiences from the ignorance and carelessness of country druggists, though in the present state of the profession, little of that kind can be apprehended from any regular apothecary.

He was then asked what he thought of physicians; to which he replied:

"Honora medicum propter necessitatem, etenim creavit eum altissimus, A Deo enim est omnis medicina, et à Rege accipiet donationem. Disciplina medici exaltabit caput illius, et in conspectu magnatum collaudabitur. Altis

simus de terrâ creavit medicinam, et vir prudens non abhorrebit illam.* Thus saith Ecclesiasticus, of physic, and of good physicians; and of bad ones might be said exactly the reverse; for there is no set of men more hurtful to the commonwealth than they. The judge may deny or delay justice; the advocate may exert his powers to establish an unjust claim; the tradesman may cheat us of our money;-in short, all those with whom we necessarily have dealings, may injure us in some degree: but to take our lives without fear of punishment is what none of them can do. Only the physician can, and does, slay us with safety and impunity, without unsheathing any other weapon than a recipe: nor are his offences to be discovered; because they are forthwith put under ground.

"I remember that once, when I was a man of flesh, and not of glass, as I am now, a certain patient dismissed a secondrate physician whom he had employed, and took the advice of another; a few days after, the former happening to pass by the shop to which the latter sent his prescriptions, asked the apothecary how his late patient was going on, and whether the other physician had prescribed any purgative for him. The apothecary answered that he had a prescription for a purge which was to be taken the next day: he asked to look at it; and seeing that at the bottom of it was written Sumat diluculo, he said- All that this purge contains, appears to me to be very well, excepting only this diluculo; for it is too humid.'"

What a picture is here presented to us, of the state of medical practice in Spain in those days, which were also the days of barber-surgery and barbarous physic in England. Since then, every reader is aware that we have far outrun the Peninsular professors of the healing art.

In Spain, the faculty of medicine has never been in honour. It is not there as in England, where among the members of that faculty have been some of our most amiable scholars, most accomplished writers, and brightest ornaments of society. But indeed, were the science

in greater esteem, and were its professors ever so enlightened and skilful, the thick darkness of superstition in which that most catholic country is involved, would oppose an invincible obstacle to its successful practice. What can medicine hope to accomplish in a country where, although, after enduring many a pang, she did, indeed, some time ago expunge the use of bark and inoculation from the catalogue of mortal sins, yet if the plague appears in a city, the physicians are afraid to declare it infectious; and the only measures taken to prevent its ravages, are, to offer up certain prayers, and to bless the four cardinal winds with a fragment of the true cross, an image of the Virgin, or some relic equally potent -and where often in individual cases, under the idea of flattering the humour of some tutelary saint, or of one who is supposed to take especial interest in the: cure of that particular disease, the very means are resorted to, which in the course of nature are calculated either to aggravate the malady, or to produce a relapse.

(Concluded at p. 172).

MISCELLANIES.

PLANTS OF VARIOUS COUNTRIES.

It is generally known that cold countries have fewer species of plants than warm ones. A learned botanist shews that this difference constantly follows the progression of the temperature. In Spitzbergen there are only 30 species of plants; in Lapland, 534; in Iceland, 553; in Sweden, 1,500; in Brandenburg, 2,000; in Piedmont, 3,800; in Jamaica, 4,000; and in Madagascar, 5,000.

ANECDOTE OF NAPOLEON.

In his march from Gaza to Jaffa, Buonaparte having halted at Ibna, ordered the sheikh of the village to furnish him with a hundred oxen, a hundred loads of corn, and a hundred measures of flour. The Bedouin, forced to obey, humbly gave what the French general demanded. The knife was already at the throat of several of the oxen, when the sheikh, bursting into tears at the sight of his cattle ready to perish, said to Buonaparte, "O Sultan, do you see what your soldiers are about to do?" Touched by his tears and his simplicity, Napoleon restored him his oxen, his corn, and his flour, and contented himself with receiving his hospitality.-Correspondance de l'orient par Michaud et Poujoulat.

WAVES OF THE OCEAN.

After all the talk about the mountain billows of the ocean, the height of waves in a storm is only about twenty-four feet. Yet I have known practical sailors, who rated them at a hundred.

POETRY AND PASTRY.

A German poet, having lately written a gastronomic song upon the pastry of one of the best pastrycooks of his place, the latter thought he could not better testify his gratitude, than by sending him one of the objects he had celebrated in his song. The poet was at first enchanted with the work; but, O grief on finishing the last morsel! he recognised in the paper on which it lay when baked, the copy of his song with which he had testified his homage to the pastrycook. In a great rage he ran to his shop, and accused him with the crime of lasa poeticæ. "Oh, sir,” replied the artist, not in the least disconcerted, ." why so angry? I have only followed your example; you made a song upon my pastry, and I have made pastry upon your song."

WIT.

H. W.

If a person has a mind to be witty, he must shew it off neatly, or it will excite ridicule and contempt, instead of approbation and merriment. He must likewise carefully avoid personal observations which may be considered in the least degree offensive, lest he excite disgust and hatred :-The following has been considered a pretty good specimen of wit: A party of young friends were dining together at a tavern, and, as might be expected at such a meeting, were all in high good humour. One of the waiters made a false step; he tried hard to gain his balance, but in vain, and down he tumbled. Upon which, one of the company, who had observed him, cried out, "Ah, never mind; you fell not-withstanding." Shortly afterwards, an opportunity occurred for the waiter to repay this piece of wit by another. Having been in the same capacity at one of the universities, he had learned many words made use of there. As soon as the cloth was removed, the witty gentleman called out, "Waiter, bring us a bottle of "HIC HÆC HOC." Waiting some time, and no wine appearing, he called the waiter again. He came,-" Well, where's the HOC?"-"I beg your pardon sir," said the waiter; "but I thought, as you ordered it, you declined it!"

H. J.