The Sketcher.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 230, 5 February 1876, Page 4

The Sketcher.

PONDERABLE GHOSTS.* (From the Pall Mall Gazette.) The mild and very diluted twaddle which forms the staple of the French spiritist doctrine is likely to meet with formidable competition "in the recent utterances from the original cradle of the new belief. We wish to state with the utmost explicitness with reference to the most curious work which we propose to introduce to our readers, that we entirely decline the function of godfather, whether to bring Mr. Olcott to the gallows or to the font. The ordinary means by which it is possible to test the bona fide of an English book are absent in this case. We possess neither the topographical, the personal, nor the literary acquaintance with the places, names, and works cited that are requisite in order to form an opinion of their weight. Even the ordinary amount of reliance that may be placed on the character of a publisher is eliminated in the case of the work in question by a notice that it is not sold at the book stores, but that an agent will call on intending purchasers. As to the internal evidence, apart from the main point of the credibility of the statements per se, the education and literary ability of the writer are of a very low order, judged from our standpoint in this country. How far this defect may be personal, or have a wider range, it is not for us to say. The net result of the impression left by mere turn-over perusal of the book is that a man with no intention to deceive, but no objection to raise a sensation, is struggling with a new set of phenomena that are. too much for him. But, then, this is the very impression that a skilled literary artist would wish to produce if he wrought after the manner ef Defoe. We, therefore, bring forward Mr. Olcott to speak for himself, without intending to hint a single word either for or against his credibility. Having said thus much, it will be unnecessary to add those usual safeguards as to each assertion that would otherwise be requisite. Zephaniah Eddy, a farmer living at Weston,

*People from the other World. By Henry S. Olcott. Profusely illustrated by Alfred Kappes and T. W. Williams. Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company. 1875.

Vt., married one Julia Ann Macoms, a girl o£ Scotch descent, who was born in the same town. Mrs. Eddy inherited from her mother the gift known in Scotland as second sight ; and not only had previsions of future events, but was able to see, and to converse with, forms invisible to other persons. Her mother before her possessed the same faculties in some degree, and her great-great-great grandmother was actually sentenced to death as a witch at Salem, in 1692, although she escaped from gaol and took refuge in Scotland. Z. Eddy took up his abode at the present residence of his children, at Chittenden, Butland, in 1846. On the birth of the first child the abnormal phenomena attending on Julia Ann Eddy became quite uncontx*ollable. As the family increased, strange sounds filled the house, and the infants were often lifted from their beds and floated about the room by invisible agency. Neigbors, whose names are given, were called in to exorcise the haunting spirits by prayer, but without success. Blows and ill-usage, freely bestowed on mother and children, were equally inefficacious. When the children grew old enough to go to school, they were soon expelled, in consequence of the raps heard on the desks and benches. After public attention had been called to the Rochester knockings in 1847, Z. Eddy attempted to turn the curse on his family to his personal advantage, by hiring three or four of his children to a showman. They were thus taken to nearly all the principal cities of the United States, and " for a brief season " to London, experiencing much ill-usage by the way. Z. Eddy died in 1860 ; his wife died in 1873. In the December of that year a room was added to the farmhouse at Chittenden for the purpose of accommodating the visitors who thronged to attend the seances given by Horatio and William Eddy, the occupants of the farm. On the Ist of June, 1874, this room was opened. On this occasion the materialised spirits of Mrs. Eddy, Mrs. Eaton (an old lady from New York State), Mrs. Whealer (late of Utica), Dr. Horton (also late of Utica, who brought his two infants, and addressed his widow, who was present), uttered addresses and prayers. Since that time, a dark circle for materialisation has been held every evening, Sundays excepted. The date of the publication of this account is January, 1875; and the book contains the promise made by the spirits that, from the 19th of September in the same year, the manifestations, which are described as being made in a low dim light, should take place in full daylight. Mr. Olcott declares that he carefully examined not only the exhibition-room, with its low platform, and the little closet behind it, in which William Eddy sat during the performance, but the rooms below, the roof above, and the whole of the apartments. He says that it was impossible for confederates to enter in any surreptitious manner; or for any masks, garments, disguises, or theatrical properties to be introduced unawares. A shawl was hung across the small doorway leading from the platform to the closet. Mr. Eddy was accustomed to enter the closet, to sit down on the chair which formed its only furniture, and apparently to sink into a profound sleep. Lively tunes were played by some of the persons present on a "parlor organ" and other instruments, and then the materialised spirits issued from the cabinet and walked about the stage, addressing the audience, and conducting themselves, with one or two remarkable exceptions, much as ordinary human beings would do under similar circumstances. The part of the story which, if the book be not altogether a skit, will attract the most intense curiosity is this. Not only do the family ghosts of Mr. Eddy and others continually appear and address ponderous exhortations to the visitors, but the ancient genii loci take advantage of the facilities afforded them for revisiting the glimpses of the moon. Gigantic Bed Indian warriors stalk over the stage ; and among many Indian squaws who also appear, one, named Honto, is a very constant visitant. She dances and romps over the platform, she smoked a real pipe presented by a visitor ; she stepped on a weigh-ing-machine, and allowed herself to be weighed. On more than one occasion, however, when she had been so long visible as to exhaust the power obtained from the medium, she collapsed; sinking down into the floor, till her head only was visible, which finally dissolved and disappeared. After a little time, however, she came out from the cabinet as if nothing had! occurred. Her chief occupation appears to be making shawls out of nothing ; to which, however, they unfortunately return. Indian chiefs and squaws, however inexplicable may be their appearance or conduct, are not the chief attraction to Chittenden. What draws to this remote spot a gathering of more people than the Eddy family can by any means' accommodate is the belief that the departed personal friends and relatives of the visitants readily take the occasion to communicate with those they have left behind. Husbands, wives, mothers, children, step out from the little cabinet on to the dimly lighted stage, stretch forth their arms to their astonished survivors, and converse with them with more or less freedom. Sometimes their visitors are those whom the expectant most desires to see. At other time some strange and whimsical form connected with some bygone chapter of biography, emerges from the gloom. Thus a Russian lady, who is hinted at as an accomplished mistress of hidden knowledge, was the occasion of the appearance on Mr. Eddy's platform of a full-dressed Kurdish warrior, with a plumed spear twelve feet long, and a three-parts naked African magician, with a head-dress garnished with four enormous horns. Several hundred different impersonations are vouched for by Mr. Olcott. He tells us that the light in the room was so low as to prevent distinct observation of the features of the spectral guests, but that their forms and outlines were readily distinguishable. Personal recognition, however, was constant between relations and those whem they had lost. The voices sounded full and natural, and every circumstance, except that of the dimness

of the light, is represented as satisfactory. As to that, as we have said, an improvement was promised, which by this time must either have been verified or falsified. Not having visited Chittenden, and not being absolutely certain whether that hamlet may not itself be a spectral illusion, we are not prepared to enter into ths various theories propounded by Mr. Olcott and his fellow-be-lievers. One thing, however, is clear. Either the book is a farrago of monstrous lies, or anything like vulgar human trickery is out of the question. The general idea conveyed by the writer, and indeed very commonly held by spiritualists, is that some atmosphere or exhalation proceeding from persons known as mediums forms a sort of nucleus or nascent embodiment, which can be grasped by disembodied spirits, who can thus, in a few seconds, form around themselves a temporary body resembling, in all but its evanescent quality, that permanent body which under ordinary circumstances the growth of fifteen or twenty years forms from water, carbonic acid, and ammonia, with faint traces of other chemical elements. The medium is supposed to be passive in the operation, although his physical energies are exhausted by the pabulum which they° furnish to the ghosts. But in another case, that of Mrs. Elizabeth J. Compton, of Havana, Schuyler county, New York, Mr. Olcott tells us that the medium is actually transfigured. Bound to a chair in a dark cabinet, and further secured to the chair by the original contrivance of a thread passed through the holes pierced for earrings, and sealed to the back of a chair, this magical personage disappears from the cabinet while a ghost is on the stage, but is found, as secured, after the apparition has retreated. If the ghost were seized by some violent investigator, it is said that it would instantly resolve itself into the personality of Mrs. Compton, but that the shock might be at the risk of life. It is obvious that that theory possesses great elasticity and convenience. It is perhaps hardly yet in a state for public discussion. A piece of white tissue cut from the robe of one of the youthful and graceful revenants who do duty, turn and turn about with Mrs. Compton, was found to fit a hole in that lady's black stuff gown. It was not explained why the bit cut out did not revert to its original condition at the same time as the rest of the garment. Perhaps Mr. Olcott's book would have done better if the attempted defence of Katie King and the new phenomena of Mrs. Compton had been deferred till the public taste had been educated up to the level of these indescribable wonders. THE MAN WHO HAS COME INTO A FORTUNE. (By " Old Chum," in the Queenslander.) Many years ago, when I was a little boy at school, the buttons on my waistcoat used to be frayed and worn by a constant application of the thumb and forefinger to each in succession, whilst the cabalistic words, "Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, ploughboy, apothecary, gentleman, or thief" were severally repeated as each button was touched. The object of this mysterious process was, I believe, to ascertain the profession I should eventually adopt, as a means of propelling myself through the world. "Tinker" and "thief" generally turned out to be the favorite professions. I am led into this retrospect from reviewing the peculiar constitution of the society generally to be found on any new diggings in Australia. The gold fever is impartial in its attacks. The soldier, reckoning from the colonel to the drummer ; the lawyer, from Q.C., to Mr. Pell ; the doctor, including the drunken village apothecary ; post-cap-tains, to captains of the black-list men's gigs ; and gentlemen of all sorts of pretentions, have been, and are still to be found, delving, toiling, tugging, and straining, at the pick, the shovel, the axe, the windlass, and the Californian pump, in the struggle for the precious nuggets, or the lovely gold-quartz of the Australian mines. Of all the army of hard up or lucky diggers, how many are constantly living in hopes of a legacy from home —of a rich aunt or a distant relative abandoning this earthly sphere, and leaving his or her worldly wealth to the far-off toiler, or, it may be, scape-grace ? On stations, in shops, in towns, and in the bush, afloat and ashore, we constantly meet men who would not be surprised if the next day's post should bring them news of an immense fortune being left them. Someone wrote, " What will he do with it ?" This question has been asked over and over again when a neighbor has suddenly had a windfall, in the shape of a thumping legacy. Jones, who works as a sawyer with a gang of sawyers " to the manner born," is a gentleman. That is to say, Jones was born of gentle parents ; and not being able to persuade anyone at home that he is worth employing, he comes to Australia, bringing with him, as his quota towards the working plant of his chosen colony, a splendid constitution, an aptitude for billiards, and an overweening opinion of his condescension in placing his valuable abilities at the service of the colony. Somehow, the colony doesn't see the thing from Jones' point of view ; and after knocking about town for some months, during which time he acquires colonial slang, and relieves himself of his superfluous cash, he decides that he will try country air. Accordingly, a few days see him in some bush township tailing cattle for a poundkeeper. Tired of this, he tries droving cattle for a butcher, and eventually takes to butchering for himself. He works himself out of the butchering trade, and then takes a round of employments, all of which he abandons, until at last he is seen hanging about the public-house. From a patron he becomes the patronised ; and now behold poor Jones, sans money, sans credit, sans self-respect; worst of all minuses, out at elbows and out of luck ; his sole ambition, to hold a horse and earn a nobbier. Presto J The mail arrives. Jones gets a letter. A draft of £IOO is in it, as an earnest of more to follow. Jones has come into a fortune. What will he do with it ? This is

Jones' programme : —First, he will be a good fellow and give a grand spree —champagne to all his friends. What a lot of friends Jones has got, to be sure. Wherever he goes, it is " Hallo, Jones, old man ! Why don't you come and see a fellow ?"—" Come and have a drink, Jones, old boy." It isn't Jones' letter and his legacy which raises up these friends. Oh dear no ! It's Jones himself who was always so proud ; but then, of course, he was a swell, and wouldn't associate with people beneath him. But they'd drink his health, and wish him joy of his luck. Pine fellow, Jones ! So Jones, poor driveller, takes it all as due to his own merits, and gives a tremendous champagne supper to all whom it may or whom it may not concern. With the balance of his hundred pounds he rigs himself out, and provides liquid wants till the grand mail day, when he is to receive a much larger sum. What will he do with it ? Why, he'll go home to England, and be a swell, and give dinners, and get a wife, and take her to the opera, and dress her in impossible silks, and keep a carriage, and a town and country house, and lots of servants, &c, &c, &c. Poor Jones ! Another instalment arrives; but the sole result is a succession of sprees. He has plenty of friends now, who will help him to spend his money. He carries a chequebook about with him, and he has only to be boldly attacked with, " I say, Jones, lend us a fiver, old chap ; I've left my cheque-book at home," to instantly fill out a cheque for ten, and with lordly indifference decline to accept an acknowledgement of the debt. Of course, he sets up a buggy and trotting horse at once, and is great at races. Somehow, he never seems to be able to make a start on his proposed journey ; and the end of it is, that Jones' fortune melts into air and leaves him a greater wreck, and a greater object of pity and contempt than he ever was before. Like many others of his type, he at last takes intermittently to bush work, and earns the price of a spree by sawing. I knew a Jones whose fortune of £2OOO lasted exactly one year after its reception. Finally, the seclusion of a bush sawyer's camp is the choice of many of the Joneses. But all who come into a fortune in this way are not of the Jones' type. Griper was down the shaft the other day when his mate brought him his letter. Griper had come into a fortune. What would he do with it ! Griper was a middle-aged man. He had once been comfortably off, but had lost all he had in ti-ade before coming to Australia. He had studied arithmetic until he knew precisely how many blue beans would make five. Griper worked on during that shift, and that night he abandoned gold-mining. He sold out to his mates, and quietly shipped himself back to the old country. To live there ? Not at all. For years Griper had been studying how to make a fortune, but he required money to carry out his ideas. Now the money had come, and Griper seized the opportunity. He went home. The freaks that some men get into their heads, in coming into money in this country, are most extraordinary. I know of one man who bought a lot of Angora goats for a fabulous sum, and then found he had a Avhite elephant which ruined him to keep. Another (this was a £40,000 man) laid in a stock of port wine, and for the rest of his life (two years) was in a state of drunken idiocy. Some have gone mad with the excitement produced by being suddenly raised from chronic penury to affluence. Some have committed themselves in such a way that they dare not return to their native land ; and, in desperation, squander their wealth in the most reckless manner, invariably ending with a drunkard's death. The prevailing idea of men who are about to receive a legacy is to "go Home." You meet in a sea-port town a man whom you had last seen some hundreds of miles away in the bush. He tells you in the most nonchalant manner, " I'm going Home." " Going Home !" you ejaculate. "Yes ; fact is, I've come into some money." You congratulate him, and bid him goodbye. Weeks afterwards you meet the same man, looking shabby and dirty. You tell him you thought he had gone Home. Well, he was going, but hadn't been able to arrange his affairs ; but next mail he would • make a start. That man never goes Home. Arranging his affairs means, with him, purchasing delirium tremens, and a small freehold in the colonies (dimensions, 6 x 8 x 2), at the most exorbitant rate which he can pay for such commodities. There are men who, on coming into a fortune, have made periodical starts to get Home, but have never succeeded in getting further than Sydney or Melbourne, perhaps no further than Brisbane ; and they never will get further. Their progress is barred by the most powerful and unyielding of all bars—the public-house bar ; and the publican is, in reality, the man who indirectly has come into the fortune. THE POSSIBILITIES OF LIFE. (From the Graphic!) The possibilities of life are, of course, greatest in youth. A young man has the world before him. If he have a high ambition, what may he not achieve ? If he have, which is happily unusual at that season, a mere instinct for money getting, what wealth may he not attain ? Love, too, has allurements even greater than ambition, and the dreams of early manhood are more exquisite and more precious than the realities of later years. Strange to say, however, the youth does not always know his own blessedness, and despondency is more often visible at twenty than at forty. The brevity of fife too is felt more keenly at an earlier age. What the Germans term Weltschmerz, and what we know as Byronism, is thrown off by every healthily-constituted man as he advances in manhood, but in our early days it is cherished and petted as if it were something to be proud of. Nevertheless, there is one ground, not wholly unreasonable, for youthful despondency. On first entering life we do not know our own powers. We attempt higher flights than our strength

of wing will allow, and the sensation of finding ourselves in the mud when we hoped to be above the clouds is by no means agreeable. Imagination, " that forward, delusive faculty," as Bishop Butler daringly calls it, is so active, and the judgment necessarily so weak, that some blunders must be made while the boyman is putting his freshly-discovered powers to the test. He thinks that all the possibilities life offers may be grasped by a supreme effort, ignorant that everything of permanent worth must be gained by steady and painful toil. Wisdom of this sort can only be won by the discovery of error, and disappointment is perhaps the readiest means by which he may take the due measure of life. Those who will not learn by it blunder on like Mr. Micawber in hopeless incompetency. Some people act as if the prizes of life were to be won by waiting. They live for the day that is passing over them, and are satisfied if it yields a certain amount of ease or jollification. Good, simple souls ! they know little of the excitement that belongs to natures more finely touched, but pursue their steady way with few objects of thought beyond the common routine of business. Like the immortal Mr. Woodhouse, they sustain their vegetable existence upon water gruel. Energy and ambition, on the contrary, although often misdirected, forbid torpor. Apathy produces nothing ; zeal, whether wise or extravagant, does at least prevent the waters of life from becoming stagnant. Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife ! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name. Success in life is earliest achieved by the man who is best able to estimate his power. Disposition and character and circumstances must be consulted, for to swim against the stream, and to oppose all one's strongest instincts is almost always a fruitless effort. The round man can never fit into the square hole, and yet years are often wasted in trying to do what cannot possibly be done. Southey tried two or three professions before he lived the life for which Nature had formed him. Goldsmith, who cut a poor figure as a physician, was in his own line inimitable; Johnson, an indifferent schoolmaster, rose to the first rank as a man of letters; Garrick, who would probably have had but a small income had he continued in the wine trade, followed the bent of his genius, and became the greatest actor of his age. On the other hand, mere inclination is sometimes mistaken for special qualification, and a man paints pictures, or spins verses, or " wags his head in a pulpit," who would have had a happier and more useful life as a shopkeeper or artisan. It is scarcely needful to observe that the common objects of ambition—wealth, official dignity, admission into what is called "society," may be gained more readily than the rewards coveted by the poet and statesman, the artist, and the man of science. Wealth is an advantage which no sane person will despise. It enlarges a thousandfold the possibilities of life. Money will not give brains, or health, or friends ; it cannot minister directly to our highest nature, but the service rendered by it indirectly is all but inestimable. " Poverty's unconquerable bar" has retarded, if not wholly obstructed, the course of men who might have rendered the highest services to their country. The man has no doubt a mean nature who, as Burns says, hangs his head for shame at honest poverty, but in another sense he cannot help hanging his head and stooping his back also, for the burden is always weighty and sometimes crushing. Poverty ennobles a few men of generous dispositions, but, so weak is human nature, it depresses most, and takes the elasticity from life. Sufficient means enable a man to cultivate friendship, to cultivate his mind, to develop whatever faculties he may possess, to obtain the recognition that he merits ; with such means he has, at all events, an open road, and is not foiled by difficulties at the very beginning of his journey. Many are the possibilities of life to the man with £2,000 a year. Useful, however, as money is, it is of vastly less importance than health. A strong frame and a strong digestion are almost essential for climbing the precipitous hill that leads to fortune or to fame. Almost every professional career demands bodily, as well as mental, power, and in some occupations physical strength is taxed to the uppermost. It is no light matter in these days to do the work demanded of a conscientious bishop or successful barrister, to gain a place among statesmen, or to sustain the pressure that taxes a popular physician. Professional success brings immediate profit, so that reputation may be estimated by guineas, but amongst the possibilities of life must be reckoned achievements, call them rather victories, which afford infinite delight, prove, perhaps, of untold service, and cannot be judged by auy monetary estimate. The artist, the poet, the man of science can either invent new worlds or discover them, and in the moments of inspiration or of discovery, the sense of power, the realisation of what has hitherto been perhaps a waking dream, gives to life a marvellous fulness and charm. Think what such men as Jenner, Harvey, and Simpson must have felt when they first realised the Value of their discoveries. Think what an astronomer like Herschel must feel when " a new planet swins in his ken," think of the joy of the painter who is able to express on canvas the loveliest vision of his fancy, think of the poet's boundless delight as he puts the last strokes to a poem which he would fain hope may prove immortal, think of the benevolent and self-denying deeds of men whose faith, like that of Howard, has been strong enough to remove mountains, and you will acknowledge that in such moments of achievement and victory the possibilities of life may appear to be almost boundless. As men advance in age the possibilities of life naturally diminish, but it is no mean advantage to be aware of this. If much of the glamour that once allured us has gone, the beauty and the blessedness of life remain.

TEA AND TEA-DRINKING. (From the National Food and Fuel Reformer.) It is on women—on the mothers of our race v-that the evil effects of tea-drinking fall with the greatest weight. How many women, who think they cannot " get along" a single day without tea, owe to it their cold feet and hands, their liability to frequent colds, their peculiar difficulties, especially their weakening ones, and their habitual loss of appetite, rendering them a prey to " dinner-pills," or the absurdities termed " strengthening medicines," so long in vogue. No wonder that tea-drinkers are so frequently small eaters, when their tea has gradually destroyed their appetite ! But perhaps the worst use to which tea is applied by women is the practice of drinking copiously of strong tea during pregnancy, with the idea that it will render their milk abundant. A most unfounded, absurd, and disastrous practice. It is alike injurious to the mother and her offspring ; and it may originate the hereditary diseases of successive generations—far beyond the third and fourth. According to Dr. Wm. Alcott, one cause of a scrofulous constitution, by inheritance, is to be found in the use of tea by ancestors, and he reasons out the matter on sound physiological principles, observing that, whatever weakens the nerves—especially those of the stomach—in a mother, is sure to entail a tendency to disease on her offspring, which will not unfrequently prove to be scrofula, or that dismal and universal disease, tuberculous consumption. In our third article on this subject, we mentioned the striking transformation for the worse of the women of Scotland, engaged in mill-work, owing to their exchange of their porridge for tea ; and no stronger fact can be adduced against the use of tea by the working classes. There is also reason to infer that much of our modern eye disease and ear disease is caused by the tea-drinking habit of our populations. The hearing is affected, at least indirectly, by colds—so much more common than among our forefathers before the introduction of tea. This is an absolute necessity ; and it cannot be explained by any change in the climate for the worse ; anyhow, the fact is certain, and it is equally certain that the sudden heating produced by tea, as rapidly followed by refrigeration or chill, cannot fail to be a perpetual cause of the affection in question so often the precursor of consumption. To sum up. If tea affects the brain and the nerves, and produces not only that state of things which is everywhere known and called by the general term "nervousness," but also the severer forms of nervous disease ; if, moreover, it affects those avenues to knowledge—the senses—it is manifest that it must affect all those powers and faculties of the mind whose results we call intellect. And so this beverage is taken by thousands as a sharpener of the intellect, without giving heed to what all of them must constantly experience—the subsequent depression—the complete usefulness of tea as an indispensable aid to human nature than the experience of those who cake to brandy, tobacco, or opium, for the same purpose precisely. On the contrary, the very fact that tea, like the other substances, increases at first the vividness of the sensations—causes a preternatural activity of the ideas—and unlooses the tongue—only serves to show that it is an excitant, necessarily inducing a subsequent depression ; so that the mind must be made more dull and stupid in the end by its use. With regard to the imagined potency of tea to change us into a nation of teetotallers, it may be remarked that the very opposite effect seems more likely to result from the use of tea, besides the fact that, whereas the use of tea has vastly increased of late years among the lower classes, there is not the slightest indication that the consumption of alcoholic drinks is diminished, but strikingly the reverse. Physiologically, however, whatever keeps up or encourages a morbid and unnatural thirst in the community exposes to the danger of gratifying the thirst with extra stimulants. He who is in the habit of exciting his nervous system with tea, however slightly, in order to be able to labor or think the better for it, is already in the path of intemperance, in the strictest sense of the word, and can have no guarantee that he shall not advance in the high road he has entered, to its grosser and more destructive forms. There is a final observation of no little importance to be made on tea-drinking. "The caricature of Hogarth," as Dr. E. Smith observes, "in which a lady and gentleman approach in a very dainty manner, each holding an Oi'iental tea-cup of infantine size, implies more than a satire upon the porcelainpurchasing habits of our day, and shows that the use of tea was not only the fashion of the select few formerly, but the quantity of the beverage consumed was as small as the tea-cups." The same observation applies to the strength of the infusion which is drunk. While it is very weak in the tea shops of China and Japan, it is so weak in the cup of the professional tea-taster when pursuing his calling that only the weight of a sixpence is used at a time—and whilst it is still necessarily weak in the cup of the poverty-stricken wife, it is the fashion among the wealthy classes to make it so strong that a tea-cup of dry tea is thrown into the tea-cup, which is to produce, perhaps, half-a-dozen cups of the beverage. Now this change cannot be supposed to be without effect, excepting on the presumption that the action of tea is slight and unimportant within the limits of toleration, inJierent to our human nature. Such differences—so wide and so great —must have left their mark upon the physical, mental, and social habits of the day, whether they are regarded positively or negatively. "Whether in spite of them, or in consequence of them," says Dr. E. Smith, "the changes of the day have been towards health of body, activity of mind, cultivation of taste, and refinement of personal habits—that is to say, towards the subjugation of the body to the mind and conscience." Whilst we doubt exceedingly this Utopian view of the advance

of modern society, we cannot but express the conviction that tea-drinking can only be associated with it in the sense of bringing intellects more and oftener together in the necessary amelioration of society brought about by the development of the physical sciences and the arts of life. The consequent improvement of taste has improved morals, and the modern Englishman is, perhaps, in the main, a better man and a better citizen than his remoter ancestors —but decidedly inferior in the physique, in the vital stamina which shove back the hour of national decrepitude—- " decline and fall."