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rity of personal piety they have, but piety is not wisdom, reverence is not wisdom. There is no wisdom without them, but they may be found without deep wisdom. So are we to interpret this dream of deliverance of the race from the pangs of disease by ether and chloroform, sent from the bounty of the Father.

We must have a medical science which shall dispense with the apothecary's shop, and the laboratory of the chemist. It is as absurd to look in the mineral, or the vegetable, or the chemical kingdom for a science to transmute disease into health, and remove the pain of disorganizations, as was the search of alchemy for the philosopher's stone. Seem they searches not one and the same? Only one of them is our delusion, and the other that of the dead alchymists. Nay, the positive cure of disease and restoration of health by medicine is impossible in the laws of the kingdom of spirit; the philosopher's stone is possible in the laws of the kingdom of matter. We are upon a hunt more absurd than that of the alchymists.

We cannot aid the nature of life by studying the effect of poisons upon life. What wise physicians are our clear instincts, if we will hear them prescribe. How remedial, how renewing is nature let alone. The pain of all natural disease is tolerable; the torture of nauseous medicine, the sickness of medicated disease is intolerable. How we torment the bed of sickness by the doctor. We learn that one whom all loved is dead: and when they tell us the medical details of the sick chamber, the drugs, the blisters, the bleedings, the leeches, the poultices, the tortures not to be enumerated, and the post mortem examination completing the whole, in unity, what a thing does death become? We have by an effort to put it all away from our remembrance, or the whole thing seems profaned and broken up. Where is a natural death in the chamber of sickness in our practice? We read with wonder and horror of the tortures endured at death by Indian captives. But death in the civilized sick chamber, in the heart of home, is a death of torture by prescription of science, taking place about us every day.

Many have come to this point of wisdom-when they are sick, they take no medicine, do the best they can to bear the sickness, with help of water and regimen, and consider. What evil have we or our ancestors done, what disorder have we or our ancestors committed? they ask, as the befitting question for the crisis; never, what medicine shall we take? Wise they who can say thus much of their attainment. Sickness comes not for naught; sickness is not a misfortune; there is no fortune, no hap, no accident about it. It is a folly, a transgression, the result of laws of health violated, violated nature struggling to get well. Its philosophy lies in the region of final causes. We are always

better after a sickness in which we have taken no medicine. Chronic diseases succeeding acute ones may be distinctly traced to medicines. The personal experience of a most sensible living physician may fitly close this article, drawing the ends of all its threads together, and tying them into a knot. He is a man, who, after three several attacks of insanity in mature life, abandoned the practice of his profession. His brother physicians said at each of his attacks of insanity, that his body was sick, and gave him medicine to cure him. His insanity was

probably the result-first, of distracting intellectual exercises upon the hap-hazard administration of medicine in the trade he had learned, called the science of his profession; second, conflict in his moral nature about the rectitude of practising and assuming to know what he knew he knew not-and, thirdly, and underlying all, a waste of seminal vital power in youth by a fatal habit, common in civilization, taking down the standard of our manhood. After having abandoned his profession, he often spoke of its practice and philosophy. Once speaking of childbirth, he said, in substance, this: "When I was a young man, first beginning my practice, in all cases of midwifery I was full of distrust and anxiety, considering that dreadful things were to happen, and that I must be doing something all the time to help the matter, and show myself useful. After years of practice, all this changed. I became calm and clear, and trustful in this. When I went to the chamber, I felt that it was my calling to give trust and courage to the mother, as the instrument of God's manifestations, and leave God to do his work in his own way and time, waiting myself till I could know that my aid was needed in the way of Providence. I felt that God was in the chamber of birth, and I must be still, and wait and see his work. I began to practise in this faith in midwifery. Then things went well. Then I found I was seldom needed, except to give the strong assurance to the mother, that God would do his work."

Medicine, Law, and Divinity are called the liberal professions. The wonder is, how physicians in the round of their practice, ministers in their pulpits and parishes, and judges in criminal courts, can go on, day after day, and year after year, administering to the symptoms of evil in their respective spheres, and never touching their causes, trying to cleanse the waters in the stream, and never going back to the sources. The German judge, who came down from the criminal bench, and established himself in a school of reformation for abandoned children; and the American minister who left his parish and pulpit, and went out at large among the poor and miserable in the city; and the physician who leaves his drugs for the water-cure, or for a dietetic and physiological reform; each of these seems only to have taken the natural and inevitable course for a hearty man in his profession, and yet these instances are very rare. The wonder is, that all the liberal professions, so called, do not confess themselves, and lay down their robes. But a liberal educa- · tion, so called, does not make us free; it is apt to leave us in a slavish connection with learning, instead of presenting us to wisdom. The professions are apt to make us coldly or hotly conservative. They are without the wisdom of origins; reform is their jest and laughing-stock. But reform is always coming; and when it is become established, and old, and meet to die and go away, and give place to new-born truth, then the professions will study it in "the books," as their authority. To-day's jest and laughing-stock will become to-morrow's learning, whereby, as a standard, the professions will condemn the next day's propositions of truth. And so the world goes on, the truth lives, and the jesters die and are forgotten.

THE ECНО.

BY C. CHAUNCEY BURR.

SWEET echo, that liv'st unseen, Within thy fairy shell, That lingers o'er the margin green, Or in the violet dellWhere the lovelorn nightingale, Mourneth her silver song, Nightly singing in the vale, Until the blush of morn; Canst tell me, little minion, While on thy viewless pinion

Where are the spirits of the dead?

Dwell they in flowery dales?

Or sleep in a downy bed,

High wafted on the gales? Hark! sweet echo, merry twirls Along the ether there!

Oh, it is the voice of girls, Playing mischief in the air; Like sweet spirits light and gay, In a fairy roundelay.

Again, I hear the echo's note,
Soft swelling on the breeze!
'Tis the song of birds afloat,
Among the dewy trees:
"Tis a whisper of sweet peace,
From nature's happy soul,
That echoes along the beach,
Like a still quiet toll

Of the little fairy bells
That are ringing in the dells.

Tell me, sweet echo, of the dead!
O! I have listen'd long,
Since that angel form has fled,
To hear the spirit's song;
I have gazed away my hopes,
On space and silence there,
But no spirit-whisper floats
Along the voiceless air-
Come, ye echo-sainted throng!
Breathe that dearest angel's song.

Ah, there! there. far in the sky,
I see my angel now;
Love still beaming in her eye-
She smiles her faithful vow:-
Yes, yes, Mary, I will come!
Yes, I will come to-night-
Come to your heavenly home
In a bold spirit-flight,
And sit with you in the skies,
'Midst the heavenly harmonies.

POETIC CHARACTER.

BY C. CHAUNCEY BURR.

It is a fond and sympathetic heart that flutters in the poet's bosom. Strangely alive to every impulse from without; trembling for ever like a leaf in the slightest breeze-the sport and plaything of the very elements. This gift has ever been marked by a too delicate sensibility, thoroughly unfitting its possessor to battle with the storms of life, while there is none, alas! more frequently forced to the encounter. Every fibre seemeth to be surcharged with fire, waiting for the blast to fan it to a flame.

An anecdote may be told of the incomparable Shelley, who is, perhaps, the finest illustration of poetic character that the history of modern literature contains. He seemed to be a machine of imagination and sensibility, moved perpetually by the slightest touch.

It was at Pisa, I think, when Shelley was spending an evening with Leigh Hunt, and other poetic spirits, that a terrible story was related of some supernatural and horrible spectacle of suffering. Shelley sat ⚫ several moments after the narration was ended, transfixed, breathless, deadly pale, his bosom heaving like one in dread, until at length he rushed out of the room as if speeding from the awful presence of forbidden spirits. They followed him immediately, and found him lying in a state between life and death; the forehead and face were covered with large drops of cold sweat, the muscles rigid, and the whole system paralyzed and motionless.

"He lived not in himself, but did become

A portion of that around him.'

Shelley spent all the days of his brief and bright career in pleasant dreams about the perfectability of man-of a period when all the different creeds and systems of the world should be amalgamated into one; when crimes should disappear, and man, free from all shackles, bow before the throne of his own aweless soul. Wild and visionary, destitute of truth and hopeless as his speculations were, they sprang from a mind enthusiastic in its wishes for the good of man.

His "Prometheus Unbound," "The Cenci," and "Hellas," though abounding with gloomy errors, are still among the proudest monuments of genius in the literature of the world. But the most perfect of all his compositions is his "Adonais," where he draws among other mourners at the funeral of his poet-friend, this portrait of himself

"Midst others of less note, came one frail form,

A phantom among men; companionless

As the last cloud of an expiring storm,

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