asked, under the idea that pestilential fever is atmospherical, what is proposed for its mitigation and prevention, I must reply, that this question involves another of a more extensive nature, namely, what kinds of constitution are most susceptible of pestilential influence? This must depend, in a great measure, on the nature of the epidemic. In cases of low, and what are called typhus fevers, I believe persons who are weak, and irritable, and whose constitutions have been debilitated by too low diet, bad food, and the depressing passions, are most liable, and that, consequently, the opposite state of constitution should be maintained as a preven tative but here I must remark an important distinction to be made between a low and enfeebling diet, and a spare one; and likewise between a vigorous and healthy circulation upheld by exercise, pleasurable ideas, and good food; and a state of high vascular action, maintained by the habitual use of spiritous and other stimulants. A low diet, particularly of bad meat, and putrid substances, has a most decided tendency to induce that sort of weakness most to be dreaded, particularly when such a diet is accompanied by close confinement in jails, manufactories, &c. But a spare diet, that is to say, one in which no more food is taken than be necessary to nourish the body, is the greatest preservative against disease such a diet is compatible with healthy nourishment, and combined with good exercise will lead to vigorous health, and a state of the circulation capable to resist many epidemics, which would destroy the low and enfeebled. But the practice of upholding apparent health, by the use of wine, spirits, and other great stimulants, seems to produce a specious and only temporary appearance of healthiness, and to induce an exhausted state of the bodily powers, which renders the occurrence of distempers more dangerous, from the intractable nature of many diseases it is liable to bring on. Hence, in general, the mortality from pestilence will be greatest among the weak, and greatest of all among those whose weakness has supervened on habitual spiritous stimulation. A person who lives habitually rather low, may be more easily brought up by a little additional nourishment, when occasion requires, than one who, by habitually living high, has worn out the susceptibility to stimulus, and is sinking without the means of recovery: just as a man, to use a metaphor, who keeps about the base of a mountain, and reserves his strength, can easier ascend, when the air gets foul below, than one who has topped the hill, and is already descending, with overstrained and diminished powers.

Thus do we learn how weakness may be, more or less, a predisposing cause of some fevers, in proportion as it is derived from one or other of the above sources. We learn, also, how an excited state of the animal machine may be mistaken for one really strong

and healthy. It seems to result from people's acting on a mistaken view of the nourishment, necessary for the body, that Europeans often die of diseases and accidents from which Indians generally recover. The celebrated J. Hunter, whose sagacity and attention to physiology seems unparalleled, distinctly noticed this habit of living above par, as he called it, and regarded it as the reason why so many diseases became incurable.

Another observation may be made in regard to epidemics. Some of the more violent of them certainly affect soonest those individuals who are the most exposed out of doors. And yet, constantly being in the open air, is one of the undoubted modes of promoting health and longevity. On this head, I must observe, that there may be certain qualities of the air, during which, it would be better to be sheltered from its effects. But, certainly, of those who are infected with pestilence from exposure, those will be most affected whose previous habits have been indolence and close cofinement: from a well known principle of physiology, that the susceptibility varies inversely as the application of the stimulus.

For the cure of pestilential fever, when it has actually occurred, I would, by no means, omit the customary habits of using the bath, of bleeding, of purgatives, &c. &c. &c., according to the nature of the disease, and habit of body of the patient. But previous habits of taking stimulus render us less capable of using it medically, and also, on the other hand, render dangerous lowering processes necessary in other kinds of cases.

The principal thing, however, is to remove the patient from the source of the distemper; and what I have adverted to as a movable hospital is, that the Fever Institutions should, every where, rather make arrangements for moving away the patients into a better atmosphere, than to fix the spot of the hospital, which may happen to be in the place the most insalubrious, at the time of the epidemic since the sudden occurrence of these diseases, their periodical returns, the kind of persons they attack, their range and direction, and their spontaneous subsidence, under different modes of treatment, are circumstances which must incline one to regard them as caused, in a great measure, by a pestilential constitution of the atmosphere, operating more or less locally.

IMPATIENT to protest against doctrines which I only met with a fortnight since in Mr. Hughes's "Appeal" and "War in Greece," I have hastened to the goal without prancing about in periods; anxious to write fast rather than well, and to procure justice for the cause, not celebrity for the advocate of Greece. I have no time for an operation of such length as shortening my statement, or even for softening down what may offend those, who have been just confirmed in making religion an engine of persecution, by seeing the Catholic peers again exiled from their birthright, because they will not purchase justice by apostacy. If I have talked of sconcing those short commons of spiritual food, or, (since God sends meat

of spiritual cooks, on which the Irish episcopalians contrive to keep their souls alive; or have fancied the spoliation worse than the conversion of heretics, and an overfed hierarchy as bad as a sanitary inquisition; or have neglected to forget, that of the fugitive priests whom England charitably fed, some had been prelates wealthier and mightier than even "the primate of all Ireland;" I hope that these interwoven heresies will not prejudice the English jury against my clients. A man linked with no party, and privileged by insignificance to vacillate, may outgrow such morbid sentiments, but I am too new to authorship to have yet learned to hide them. An Englishman, and a Protestant, may surely blame a system which disgraces England, and almost desecrates Christianity, without denying the worth of many individual Irish clergymen, or assailing the English church, whose debtor and creditor account to the public good shows a balance in its favor; and which clinging to the fabric of the state, and growing out of the foundations of property, cannot be roughly handled without shaking both. But there are alternatives, which might calm the inflammation of Ireland; and a reform, which would not amount to revolution.

I have spoken contemptuously of Austria, for I had to consider her dealings with foreigners, which are usually mean or tyrannical; had I reviewed her domestic policy, I should have said, that exacting from her subjects a more than filial obedience, she treats them with almost parental mildness; and that her system of suffocating intellect as an enemy, and treating men like children, may suit a population better fed than taught, though it irritates those restless and sensitive Italians, who are suffering so severely for the crime of not being a homogeneous impenetrable mass.

I should have been more diffident in passing judgment, if I had originally meant to prefix to these pages a name, which forms their sole chance of attracting attention.

If any critical Ibis, whose beak checks the plague of literary serpents, should pierce this minute ephemeral production, though I may shrink from that sensitiveness, which the earliest and deepest trials of sensibility cannot raise us quite above, I shall never repent trying to redeem the character of England, and to promote the interests of Greece.

Portugal-street, August 3, 1822.