he says, "been many arguments, _pro_ and _con_, on the dreadful disease their bite produces--it is enough to prove that multitudes of men, women, and children have died in consequence of having been bitten by dogs. What does it matter whether they were the victims of bodily disease or mental irritation? The life of the most humble human being is of more value than all the dogs in the world--dare the most brutal cynic say otherwise?"

Dr Kitchiner always travelled, it appears, in chaises; and a chaise of one kind or other he recommends to all his brethren of mankind. Why, then, this intense fear of the canine species? Who ever saw a mad dog leap into the mail-coach, or even a gig? The creature, when so afflicted, hangs his head, and goes snapping right and left at pedestrians. Poor people like us, who must walk, may well fear hydrophobia--though, thank Heaven, we have never, during the course of a tolerably long and well-spent life, been so much as once bitten by "the rabid animal!" But what have rich authors, who loll in carriages, to dread from dogs, who always go on foot? We cannot credit the very sweeping assertion, that multitudes of men, women, and children have died in consequence of being bitten by dogs. Even the newspapers do not run up the amount above a dozen per annum, from which you may safely deduct two-thirds. Now, four men, women, and children, are not "a multitude." Of those four, we may set down two as problematical--having died, it is true, _in_, but not _of_ hydrophobia--states of mind and body wide as the poles asunder. He who drinks two bottles of pure spirit every day he buttons and unbuttons his breeches, generally dies _in_ a state of hydrophobia--for he abhorred water, and knew instinctively the jug containing that insipid element. But he never dies at all _of_ hydrophobia, there being evidence to prove that for twenty years he had drank nothing but brandy. Suppose we are driven to confess the other two--why, one of them was an old woman of eighty, who was dying as fast as she could hobble, at the very time she thought herself bitten--and the other a nine-year-old brat, in hooping-cough and measles, who, had there not been such a quadruped as a dog created, would have worried itself to death before evening, so lamentably had its education been neglected, and so dangerous an accomplishment is an impish temper. The twelve cases for the year of that most horrible disease, hydrophobia, have, we flatter ourselves, been satisfactorily disposed of--eight of the alleged deceased being at this moment engaged at various handicrafts, on low wages indeed, but still such as enable the industrious to live--two having died of drinking--one of extreme old age, and one of a complication of complaints incident to childhood, their violence having, in this particular instance, been aggravated by neglect and devilish temper. Where now the "multitude" of men, women, and children, who have died in consequence of being bitten by mad dogs?

Gentle reader--a mad dog is a bugbear; we have walked many hundred times the diameter and the circumference of this our habitable globe--along all roads, public and private--with stiles or turnpikes--metropolitan streets and suburban paths--and at all seasons of the revolving year and day; but never, as we padded the hoof along, met we nor were over-taken by greyhound, mastiff, or cur, in a state of hydrophobia. We have many million times seen them with their tongues lolling out about a yard--their sides panting--flag struck--and the whole dog showing symptoms of severe distress. That such travellers were not mad we do not assert--they may have been mad--but they certainly were fatigued; and the difference, we hope, is often considerable between weariness and insanity. Dr Kitchiner, had he seen such dogs as we have seen, would have fainted on the spot. He would have raised the country against the harmless jog-trotter. Pitchforks would have gleamed in the setting sun, and the flower of the agricultural youth of a midland county, forming a levy _en masse_, would have offered battle to a turnspit. The Doctor, sitting in his coach--like Napoleon at Waterloo--would have cried "_Tout est perdu--sauve, qui peut!_"--and re-galloping to a provincial town, would have found refuge under the gateway of the Hen and Chickens.

"The life of the most humble human being," quoth the Doctor, "is of more value than all the dogs in the world--dare the most brutal cynic say otherwise?"

This question is not put to us; for so far from being the most brutal Cynic, we do not belong to the Cynic school at all--being an Eclectic, and our philosophy composed chiefly of Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Peripateticism--with a fine, pure, clear, bold dash of Platonicism. The most brutal Cynic, if now alive and snarling, must therefore answer for himself--while we tell the Doctor, that so far from holding, with him, that the life of the most humble human being is of more value than all the dogs in the world, we, on the contrary, verily believe that there is many a humble dog whose life far transcends in value the lives of many men, women, and children. Whether or not dogs have souls, is a question in philosophy never yet solved; although we have ourselves no doubt on the subject, and firmly believe that they have souls. But the question, as put by the Doctor, is not about souls, but about lives; and as the human soul does not die when the human body does, the death of an old woman, middle-aged man, or young child, is no such very great calamity, either to themselves or to the world. Better, perhaps, that all the dogs now alive should be massacred, to prevent hydrophobia, than that a human soul should be lost;--but not a single human soul is going to be lost, although the whole canine species should become insane to-morrow. Now, would the Doctor have laid one hand on his heart and the other on his Bible, and taken a solemn oath that rather than that one old woman of a century and a quarter should suddenly be cut off by the bite of a mad dog, he would have signed the warrant of execution of all the packs of harriers and fox-hounds, all the pointers, spaniels, setters, and cockers, all the stag-hounds, greyhounds, and lurchers, all the Newfoundlanders, shepherd-dogs, mastiffs, bull-dogs, and terriers, the infinite generation of mongrels and crosses included, in Great Britain and Ireland--to say nothing of the sledge-drawers in Kamtschatka, and in the realms slow-moving near the Pole? To clench the argument at once--What are all the old women in Europe, one-half of the men, and one-third of the children, when compared, in value, with any one of Christopher North's Newfoundland dogs--Fro--Bronte--or O'Bronte?

Finally, does he include in his sweeping condemnation the whole brute creation, lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, camelopardales, zebras, quaggas, cattle, horses, asses, mules, cats, the ichneumon, cranes, storks, cocks-of-the-wood, geese, and how-towdies?

"Semi-drowning in the sea"--he continues--"and all the pretended specifics, are mere delusions--there is no real remedy but cutting the part out immediately. If the bite be near a blood-vessel, that cannot always be done, nor when done, however well done, will it always prevent the miserable victim from dying the most dreadful of deaths. Well might St Paul tell us to '_beware of dogs_.' First Epistle to Philippians, chap. iii., v. 2."

Semi-drowning in the sea is, we grant, a bad specific, and difficult to be administered. It is not possible to tell, _a priori_, how much drowning any particular patient can bear. What is mere semi-drowning to James, is total drowning to John;--Tom is easy of resuscitation--Bob will not stir a muscle for all the Humane Societies in the United Kingdoms. To cut a pound of flesh from the rump of a fat dowager, who turns sixteen stone, is within the practical skill of the veriest bungler in the anatomy of the human frame--to scarify the fleshless spindle-shank of an antiquated spinstress, who lives on a small annuity, might be beyond the scalpel of an Abernethy or a Liston. A large blood-vessel, as the Doctor well remarks, is an awkward neighbour to the wound made by the bite of a mad dog, "when a new excision has to be attempted"--but will any Doctor living inform us how, in a thousand other cases besides hydrophobia, "the miserable victim may always be prevented from dying?" There are, probably, more dogs in Britain than horses; yet a hundred men, women, and children are killed by kicks of sane horses, for one by bites of insane dogs. Is the British army, therefore, to be deprived of its left arm, the cavalry? Is there to be no flying artillery? What is to become of the horse-marines?

Still the Doctor, though too dogmatical, and rather puppyish above, is, at times, sensible on dogs.

"Therefore," quoth he, "never travel without a good tough Black Thorn in your Fist, not less than three feet in length, on which may be marked the Inches, and so it may serve for a measure.

"Pampered Dogs, that are permitted to prance about as they please, when they hear a knock, scamper to the door, and not seldom snap at unwary visitors. Whenever _Counsellor Cautious_ went to a house, &c., where he was not quite certain that there was no Dog, after he had rapped at the door, he retired three or four yards from it, and prepared against the Enemy: when the door was opened, he desired, if there was any Dog, that it might be shut up till he was gone, and would not enter the House till it was.

"_Sword_ and _Tuck Sticks_, as commonly made, are hardly so good a weapon as a stout Stick--the Blades are often inserted into the Handles in such a slight manner, that one smart blow will break them out;--if you wish for a _Sword-Cane_, you must have one made with a good Regulation Blade, which alone will cost more than is usually charged for the entire Stick.--I have seen a Cane made by Mr PRICE, _of the Stick and Umbrella Warehouse, 221, in the Strand_, near Temple Bar, which was excellently put together.

"A powerful weapon, and a very smart and light-looking thing, is _an Iron Stick_ of about four-tenths of an inch in diameter, with a Hook next the Hand, and terminating at the other end in a Spike about five inches in length, which is covered by a Ferrule, the whole painted the colour of a common walking-stick; it has a light natty appearance, while it is in fact a most formidable Instrument."

We cannot charge our memory with this instrument, yet had we seen one once, we hardly think we could have forgot it. But Colonel de Berenger in his _Helps and Hints_ prefers the umbrella. Umbrellas are usually carried, we believe, in wet weather, and dogs run mad, if ever, in dry.

So the safe plan is to carry one all the year through, like the Duke.

"I found it a valuable weapon, although by mere chance; for, walking alone in the rain, a large mad dog, pursued by men, suddenly turned upon me, out of a street which I had just approached; by instinct more than judgment, I gave point at him severely, opened as the umbrella was, which, screening me at the same time, _was an article from which he did not expect thrusts_; but which, although made at guess, for I could not see him, turned him over and over, and before he could recover himself, his pursuers had come up immediately to despatch him; the whole being the work of even few seconds; but for the umbrella the horrors of hydrophobia might have fallen to my lot."

There is another mode, which, with the omission or alteration of a word or two, looks feasible, supposing we had to deal not with a bull-dog, but a young lady of our own species. "If," says the Colonel, "you can seize a dog's front paw neatly, and immediately squeeze it sharply, he cannot bite you till you cease to squeeze it; therefore, by keeping him thus well pinched, you may lead him wherever you like; or you may, with the other hand, seize him by the skin of the neck, to hold him thus without danger, provided your strength is equal to his efforts at extrication." But here comes the Colonel's infallible _vade-mecum_.

"Look at them with your face from between your opened legs, holding the skirts away, and running at them thus backwards, of course head below, stern exposed, and above all growling angrily; most dogs, seeing so strange an animal, the head at the heels, the eyes below the mouth, &c., are so dismayed, that, with their tails between their legs, they are glad to scamper away, some even howling with affright. I have never tried it with a thorough-bred bull-dog, nor do I advise it with them; though I have practised it, and successfully, with most of the other kinds; it might fail with these, still I cannot say it will."

Thus armed against the canine species, the Traveller, according to our Oracle, must also provide himself with a portable case of instruments for drawing--a sketch and note-book--paper--ink--and PINS--NEEDLES--AND THREAD! A ruby or Rhodium pen, made by Doughty, No. 10, Great Ormond Street--pencils from Langdon's of Great Russell Street--a folding one-foot rule, divided into eighths, tenths, and twelfths of inches--a hunting-watch with seconds, with a detached lever or Dupleix escapement, in good strong silver cases--a Dollond's achromatic opera-glass--a night-lamp--a tinder-box--two pair of spectacles, with strong silver frames--an eye-glass in a silver ring slung round the neck--a traveller's knife, containing a large and a small blade, a saw, hook for taking a stone out of a horse's shoe, turnscrew, gun-picker, tweezers, and long corkscrew--galoches or paraloses--your own knife and fork, and spoon--a Welsh wig--a spare hat--umbrella--two great-coats, one for cool and fair weather (_i.e._ between 45 and 55 of Fahrenheit), and another for cold and foul weather, of broad cloth, lined with fur, and denominated a "dreadnought."

Such are a few of the articles with which every sensible traveller will provide himself before leaving _Dulce Domum_ to brave the perils of a Tour through the Hop-districts.

"If circumstances compel you," continues the Doctor, "to ride on the outside of a coach, put on two shirts and two pair of stockings, turn up the collar of your great-coat, and tie a handkerchief round it, and have plenty of dry straw to set your feet on."

In our younger days we used to ride a pretty considerable deal on the outside of coaches, and much hardship did we endure before we hit on the discovery above promulgated. We once rode outside from Edinburgh to London, in winter, without a great-coat, in nankeen trousers _sans_ drawers, and all other articles of our dress thin and light in proportion. That we are alive at this day, is no less singular than true--no more true than singular. We have known ourselves so firmly frozen to the leathern ceiling of the mail-coach, that it required the united strength of coachman, guard, and the other three outsides, to separate us from the vehicle, to which we adhered as part and parcel.

All at once the device of the double shirt flashed upon us--and it underwent signal improvements before we reduced the theory to practice.

For, first, we endued ourselves with a leather shirt--then with a flannel one--and then, in regular succession, with three linen shirts.

This concluded the Series of Shirts. Then commenced the waistcoats. A plain woollen waistcoat without buttons--with hooks and eyes--took the lead, and kept it; it was closely pressed by what is, in common palaver, called an under-waistcoat--the body being flannel, the breast-edges bearing a pretty pattern of stripes or bars--then came a natty red waistcoat, of which we were particularly proud, and of which the effect on landlady, bar-maid, and chamber-maid, we remember was irresistible--and, fourthly and finally, to complete that department of our investiture, shone with soft yet sprightly lustre--the double-breasted bright-buttoned Buff. Five and four are nine--so that between our carcass and our coat, it might have been classically said of our dress--"Novies interfusa coercet." At this juncture of affairs began the coats, which--as it is a great mistake to wear too many coats--never exceeded six. The first used generally to be a pretty old coat that had lived to moralise over the mutability of human affairs--thread-bare--napless--and what ignorant people might have called shabby-genteel. It was followed by a plain, sensible, honest, unpretending, commonplace, everyday sort of a coat--and not, perhaps, of the very best merino. Over it was drawn, with some little difficulty, what had, in its prime of life, attracted universal admiration in Princes Street, as a blue surtout. Then came your regular olive-coloured great-coat--not braided and embroidered _a la militaire_--for we scorned to sham travelling-captain--but _simplex munditiis_, plain in its neatness; not wanting then was your shag-hued wraprascal, betokening that its wearer was up to snuff--and to close this strange eventful history, the seven-caped Dreadnought, that loved to dally with the sleets and snows--held in calm contempt Boreas, Notus, Auster, Eurus, and "the rest"--and drove baffled Winter howling behind the Pole.

The same principle of accumulation was made applicable to the neck. No stock. Neckcloth above neckcloth--beginning with singles--and then getting into the full uncut squares--the amount of the whole being somewhere about a dozen: The concluding neckcloth worn cravat-fashion, and flowing down the breast in a cascade, like that of an attorney-general. Round our cheek and ear, leaving the lips at liberty to breathe and imbibe, was wreathed, in undying remembrance of the bravest of the brave, a Jem Belcher Fogle--and beneath the cravat-cascade a comforter netted by the fair hands of her who had kissed us at our departure, and was sighing for our return. One hat we always found sufficient--and that a black beaver--for a lily castor suits not the knowledge-box of a friend to "a limited constitutional and hereditary monarchy."

As to our lower extremities--One pair only of roomy shoes--one pair of stockings of the finest lamb's-wool--another of common close worsted, knit by the hand of a Lancashire witch--thirdly, Shetland hose. All three pair reaching well up towards the fork--each about an inch-and-a-half longer than its predecessor. Flannel drawers--one pair only--within the lamb's-wool, and touching the instep--then one pair of elderly casimeres, of yore worn at balls--one pair of Manchester white cords--ditto of strong black quilt trousers, "capacious and serene"--and at or beneath the freezing-point, overalls of the same stuff as "Johnny's grey breeks"--neat but not gaudy--mud-repellers--themselves a host--never in all their lives "thoroughly wet through"--frost-proof--and often mistaken by the shepherd on the wold, as the Telegraph hung for a moment on the misty upland, for the philibeg of Phoebus in his dawn-dress, hastily slipt on as he bade farewell to some star-paramour, and, like a giant about to run a race, devoured the cerulean course of day, as if impatient to reach the goal set in the Western Sea.

DR KITCHINER.

FOURTH COURSE.

Pray, reader, do you know what line of conduct you ought to pursue if you are to sleep on the road? "The earlier you arrive," says the Doctor, "and the earlier after your arrival you apply, the better the chance of getting a good bed--this done, order your luggage to your room. A travelling-bag, or a 'sac de nuit,' in addition to your trunk, is very necessary; it should be large enough to contain one or two changes of linen--a night-shirt--shaving apparatus--comb, clothes, tooth and hair brushes, &c. Take care, too, to see your sheets well aired, and that you can fasten your room at night. Carry firearms also, and take the first unostentatious opportunity of showing your pistols to the landlord.

However well-made your pistols, however carefully you have chosen your flint, and however dry your powder, look to the priming and touch-hole every night. Let your pistols be double-barrelled, and with spring bayonets."

Now, really, it appears to us, that in lieu of double-barrelled pistols with spring bayonets, it would be advisable to substitute a brace of black-puddings for daylight, and a brace of Oxford or Bologna sausages for the dark hours. They will be equally formidable to the robber, and far safer to yourself. Indeed we should like to see duelling black-puddings, or sausages, introduced at Chalk-Farm;--and, that etiquette might not be violated, each party might take his antagonist's weapon, and the seconds, as usual, see them loaded. Surgeons will have to attend as usual. Far more blood, indeed, would be thus spilt, than according to the present fashion.

The Doctor, as might be expected, makes a mighty rout--a prodigious fuss--all through the Oracle, about damp sheets; he must immediately see the chambermaid, and overlook the airing with his own hands and eyes.

He is also an advocate of the warming-pan--and for the adoption, indeed, of every imaginable scheme for excluding death from his chamber. He goes on the basis of everything being as it should not be in inns--and often reminds us of our old friend Death-in-the-Pot. Nay, as Travellers never can be sure that those who have slept in the beds before them were not afflicted with some contagious disease, whenever they can they should carry their own sheets with them--namely, a "light eider-down quilt, and two dressed hart-skins, to be put on the mattresses, to hinder the disagreeable contact. These are to be covered with the traveller's own sheets--and if an eider-down quilt be not sufficient to keep him warm, his coat put upon it will increase the heat sufficiently. If the traveller is not provided with these accommodations, it will sometimes be prudent not to undress entirely; however, the neckcloth, gaiters, shirt, and everything which checks the circulation, must be loosened."

Clean sheets, the Doctor thinks, are rare in inns; and he believes that it is the practice to "take them from the bed, sprinkle them with water, fold them down, and put them into a press. When they are wanted again, they are, literally speaking, shown to the fire, and, in a reeking state, laid on the bed. The traveller is tired and sleepy, dreams of that pleasure or business which brought him from home, and the remotest thing from his mind is, that from the very repose which he fancies has refreshed him, he has received the rheumatism. The receipt, therefore, to sleep comfortably at inns, is to take your own sheets, to have plenty of flannel gowns, and to promise, and take care to pay, a handsome consideration for the liberty of choosing your bed."

Now, Doctor, suppose all travellers behaved at inns on such principles, what a perpetual commotion there would be in the house! The kitchens, back-kitchens, laundries, drying-rooms, would at all times be crammed choke-full of a miscellaneous rabble of Editors, Authors, Lords, Baronets, Squires, Doctors of Divinity, Fellows of Colleges, Half-pay Officers, and Bagmen, oppressing the chambermaids to death, and in the headlong gratification of their passion for well-aired sheets, setting fire so incessantly to public premises as to raise the rate of insurance to a ruinous height, and thus bring bankruptcy on all the principal establishments in Great Britain. But shutting our eyes, for a moment, to such general conflagration and bankruptcy, and indulging ourselves in the violent supposition that some inns might still continue to exist, think, O think, worthy Doctor, to what other fatal results this system, if universally acted upon, would, in a very few years of the transitory life of man, inevitably lead! In the first place, in a country where all travellers carried with them their own sheets, none would be kept in inns except for the use of the establishment's own members. This would be inflicting a vital blow, indeed, on the inns of a country. For mark, in the second place, that the blankets would not be long of following the sheets. The blankets would soon fly after the sheets on the wings of love and despair. Thirdly, are you so ignorant, Doctor, of this world and its ways, as not to see that the bed-steads would, in the twinkling of an eye, follow the blankets? What a wild, desolate, wintry appearance would a bedroom then exhibit!

The foresight of such consequences as these may well make a man shudder.

We have no objections, however, to suffer the Doctor himself, and a few other occasional damp-dreading old quizzes, "to see the bed-clothes put to the fire in their presence," merely at the expense of subjugating themselves to the derision of all the chambermaids, cooks, scullions, boots, ostlers, and painters. (The painter is the artist who is employed in inns, to paint the buttered toast. He always works in oils. As the Director-General would say--he deals in buttery touches.) Their feverish and restless anxiety about sheets, and their agitated discourse on damps and deaths, hold them up to vulgar eyes in the light of lunatics. They become the groundwork of practical jokes--perhaps are bitten to death by fleas; for a chambermaid, of a disposition naturally witty and cruel, has a dangerous power put into her hands, in the charge of blankets. The Doctor's whole soul and body are wrapt up in well-aired sheets; but the insidious Abigail, tormented by his flustering, becomes in turn the tormentor--and selecting the yellowest, dingiest, and dirtiest pair of blankets to be found throughout the whole gallery of garrets (those for years past used by long-bearded old-clothesmen Jews), with a wicked leer that would lull all suspicion asleep in a man of a far less inflammable temperament, she literally envelopes him in vermin, and after a night of one of the plagues of Egypt, the Doctor rises in the morning, from top to bottom absolutely tattooed!

The Doctor, of course, is one of those travellers who believe that unless they use the most ingenious precautions, they will be uniformly robbed and murdered in inns. The villains steal upon you during the midnight hour, when all the world is asleep. They leave their shoes down stairs, and leopard-like, ascend with velvet, or--what is almost as noiseless--worsted steps, the wooden stairs. True, that your breeches are beneath your bolster--but that trick of travellers has long been "as notorious as the sun at noonday;" and although you are aware of your breeches, with all the ready money perhaps that you are worth in this world, eloping from beneath your parental eye, you in vain try to cry out--for a long, broad, iron hand, with ever so many iron fingers, is on your mouth; another, with still more numerous digits, compresses your windpipe, while a low hoarse voice, in a whisper to which Sarah Siddons's was empty air, on pain of instant death enforces silence from a man unable for his life to utter a single word; and after pulling off all the bed-clothes, and then clothing you with curses, the ruffians, whose accent betrays them to be Irishmen, inflict upon you divers wanton wounds with a blunt instrument, probably a crow-bar--swearing by Satan and all his saints, that if you stir an inch of your body before daybreak, they will instantly return, cut your throat, knock out your brains, sack you, and carry you off for sale to a surgeon: Therefore you must use pocket door-bolts, which are applicable to almost all sorts of doors, and on many occasions save the property and life of the traveller. The corkscrew door-fastening the Doctor recommends as the simplest. This is screwed in between the door and the door-post, and unites them so firmly, that great power is required to force a door so fastened. They are as portable as common cork-screws, and their weight does not exceed an ounce and a half. The safety of your bedroom should always be carefully examined; and in case of bolts not being at hand, it will be useful to hinder entrance into the room by putting a table and chair upon it against the door. Take a peep below the bed, and into the closets, and every place where concealment is possible--of course, although the Doctor forgets to suggest it, into the chimney. A friend of the Doctor's used to place a bureau against the door, and "thereon he set a basin and ewer in such a position as easily to rattle, so that, on being shook, they instantly became _molto agitato_." Upon one alarming occasion this device frightened away one of the chambermaids, or some other Paulina Pry, who attempted to steal on the virgin sleep of the travelling Joseph, who all the time was hiding his head beneath the bolster. Joseph, however, believed that it was a horrible midnight assassin, with mustaches and a dagger. "The chattering of the crockery gave the alarm, and the attempt, after many attempts, was abandoned."

With all these fearful apprehensions--in his mind, Dr Kitchiner must have been a man of great natural personal courage and intrepidity, to have slept even once in his whole lifetime from home. What dangers must we have passed, who used to plump in, without a thought of damp in the bed, or scamp below it--closet and chimney uninspected, door unbolted and unscrewed, exposed to rape, robbery, and murder! It is mortifying to think that we should be alive at this day. Nobody, male or female, thought it worth their while to rob, ravish, or murder us! There we lay, forgotten by the whole world--till the crowing of cocks, or the ringing of bells, or blundering Boots insisting on it that we were a Manchester Bagman, who had taken an inside in the Heavy at five, broke our repose, and Sol laughing in at the unshuttered and uncurtained window showed us the floor of our dormitory, not streaming with a gore of blood. We really know not whether to be most proud of having been the favourite child of Fortune, or the neglected brat of Fate. One only precaution did we ever use to take against assassination, and all the other ills that flesh is heir to, sleep where one may, and that was to say inwardly a short fervent prayer, humbly thanking our Maker for all the happiness--let us trust it was innocent--of the day; and humbly imploring his blessing on all the hopes of to-morrow. For, at the time we speak of, we were young--and every morning, whatever the atmosphere might be, rose bright and beautiful with hopes that, far as the eyes of the soul could reach, glittered on earth's, and heaven's, and life's horizon!

But suppose that after all this trouble to get himself bolted and screwed into a paradisaical tabernacle of a dormitory, there had suddenly rung through the house the cry of FIRE--FIRE--FIRE! how was Dr Kitchiner to get out? Tables, bureaus, benches, chairs, blocked up the only door--all laden with wash-hand basins and other utensils, the whole crockery shepherdesses of the chimney-piece, double-barrelled pistols with spring bayonets ready to shoot and stab, without distinction of persons, as their proprietor was madly seeking to escape the roaring flames! Both windows are iron-bound, with all their shutters, and over and above tightly fastened with "the cork-screw fastening, the simplest that we have seen." The wind-board is in like manner, and by the same unhappy contrivance, firmly jammed into the jaws of the chimney, so egress to the Doctor up the vent is wholly denied--no fire-engine in the town--but one under repair. There has not been a drop of rain for a month, and the river is not only distant but dry. The element is growling along the galleries like a lion, and the room is filling with something more deadly than back-smoke. A shrill voice is heard crying--"Number 5 will be burned alive! Number 5 will be burned alive!

Is there no possibility of saving the life of Number 5?" The Doctor falls down before the barricado, and is stretched all his hapless length fainting on the floor. At last the door is burst open, and landlord, landlady, chambermaid, and boots--each in a different key--from manly bass to childish treble, demand of Number 5 if he be a murderer or a madman--for, gentle reader, it has been a--Dream.

We must hurry to a close, and shall perform the short remainder of our journey on foot. The first volume of the Oracle concludes with "Observations on Pedestrians." Here we are at home--and could, we imagine, have given the Doctor a mile in the hour in a year-match. The strength of man, we are given distinctly to understand by the Doctor, is "in the ratio of the performance of the restorative process, which is as the quantity and quality of what he puts into his stomach, the energy of that organ, and the quantity of exercise he takes." This statement of the strength of man may be unexceptionably true, and most philosophical to those who are up to it--but to us it resembles a definition we have heard of thunder, "the conjection of the sulphur congeals the matter."

It appears to us that a strong stomach is not the sole constituent of a strong man--but that it is not much amiss to be provided with a strong back, a strong breast, strong thighs, strong legs, and strong feet. With a strong stomach alone--yea, even the stomach of a horse--a man will make but a sorry Pedestrian. The Doctor, however, speedily redeems himself by saying admirably well, "that nutrition does not depend more on the state of the stomach, or of what we put into it, than it does on the stimulus given to the system by exercise, which alone can produce that perfect circulation of the blood which is required to throw off superfluous secretions, and give the absorbents an appetite to suck up fresh materials. This requires the action of every petty artery, and of the minutest ramifications of every nerve and fibre in our body." Thus, he remarks, a little further on, by way of illustration, "that a man, suffering under a fit of the vapours, after half an hour's brisk ambulation, will often find that he has walked it off, and that the action of the body has exonerated the mind."

The Doctor warms as he walks--and is very near leaping over the fence of Political Economy. "Providence, he remarks, furnishes materials, but expects that we should work them up for ourselves. The earth must be laboured before it gives its increase, and when it is forced to produce its several products, how many hands must they pass through before they are fit for use! Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employ more than nineteen persons out of twenty; and as for those who are, by the condition in which they are born, exempted from work, they are more miserable than the rest of mankind, unless they daily and duly employ themselves in that VOLUNTARY LABOUR WHICH GOES BY THE NAME OF EXERCISE."

Inflexible justice, however, forces us to say, that although the Doctor throws a fine philosophical light over the most general principles of walking, as they are involved in "that voluntary labour which goes by the name of exercise," yet he falls into frequent and fatal error when he descends into the particulars of the practice of pedestrianism. Thus, he says, that no person should sit down to a hearty meal immediately after any great exertion, either of mind or body--that is, one might say, after a few miles of Plinlimmon, or a few pages of the Principia.

Let the man, quoth he, "who comes home fatigued by bodily exertion, especially if he feel heated by it, throw his legs upon a chair, and remain quite tranquil and composed, that the energy which has been dispersed to the extremities may have time to return to the stomach, when it is required." To all this we say--Fudge! The sooner you get hold of a leg of roasted mutton the better; but meanwhile, off rapidly with a pot of porter--then leisurely on with a clean shirt--wash your face and hands in gelid--none of your tepid water. There is no harm done if you should shave--then keep walking up and down the parlour rather impatiently, for such conduct is natural, and in all things act agreeably to nature--stir up the waiter with some original jest by way of stimulant, and to give the knave's face a well-pleased stare--and never doubting "that the energy which has been dispersed to the extremities" has had ample time to return to the stomach, in God's name fall to! and take care that the second course shall not appear till there is no vestige left of the first--a second course being looked on by the judicious moralist and pedestrian very much in the light in which the poet has made a celebrated character consider it,--

"Nor fame I slight--nor for her favours call-- She comes unlook'd for--if she comes at all."

To prove how astonishingly our strength may be diminished by indolence, the Doctor tells us, that meeting a gentleman who had lately returned from India, to his inquiry after his health he replied, "Why, better--better, thank ye--I think I begin to feel some symptoms of the return of a little English energy. Do you know that the day before yesterday I was in such high spirits, and felt so strong, I actually put on one of my stockings myself?"

The Doctor then asserts, that it "has been repeatedly proved that a man can travel further for a week or a month than a horse." On reading this sentence to Will Whipcord--"Yes, sir," replied that renowned Professor of the Newmarket Philosophy, "that's all right, sir--a man can beat a horse!"

Now, Will Whipcord may be right in his opinion, and a man may beat a horse. But it never has been tried: There is no match of pedestrianism on record between a first-rate man and a first-rate horse; and as soon as there is, we shall lay our money on the horse--only mind, the horse carries no weight, and he must be allowed to do his work on turf. We know that Arab horses will carry their rider, provision and provender, arms and accoutrements (no light weight) across the desert, eighty miles a-day, for many days--and that for four days they have gone a hundred miles a-day. That would have puzzled Captain Barclay in his prime, the Prince of Pedestrians. However, be that as it may, the comparative pedestrian powers of man and horse have never yet been ascertained by any accredited match in England.

The Doctor then quotes an extract from a Pedestrian Tour in Wales by a Mr Shepherd, who, we are afraid, is no great headpiece, though we shall be happy to find ourselves in error. Mr Shepherd, speaking of the inconveniencies and difficulties attending a pedestrian excursion, says, "that at one time the roads are rendered so muddy by the rain, that it is almost impossible to proceed;"--"at other times you are exposed to the inclemency of the weather, and by wasting time under a tree or a hedge are benighted in your journey, and again reduced to an uncomfortable dilemma." "Another disadvantage is, that your track is necessarily more confined--a deviation of ten or twelve miles makes an important difference, which, if you were on horseback, would be considered as trivial." "Under all these circumstances," he says, "it may appear rather remarkable that we should have chosen a pedestrian excursion--_in answer to which, it may be observed, that we were not apprised of these things till we had experienced them_." What! Mr Shepherd, were you, who we presume have reached the age of puberty, not apprised, before you penetrated as a pedestrian into the Principality, that "roads are rendered muddy by the rain?" Had you never met, either in your experience of life, or in the course of your reading, proof positive that pedestrians "are exposed to the inclemency of the weather?" That, if a man will linger too long under a tree or a hedge when the sun is going down, "he will be benighted?" Under what serene atmosphere, in what happy clime, have you pursued your preparatory studies _sub dio_? But, our dear Mr Shepherd, why waste time under the shelter of a tree or a hedge? Waste time nowhere, our young and unknown friend. What the worse would you have been of being soaked to the skin?

Besides, consider the danger you ran of being killed by lightning, had there been a few flashes, under a tree? Further, what will become of you, if you addict yourself on every small emergency to trees and hedges, when the country you walk through happens to be as bare as the palm of your hand? Button your jacket, good sir--scorn an umbrella--emerge boldly from the sylvan shade, snap your fingers at the pitiful pelting of the pitiless storm--poor spite indeed in Densissimus Imber--and we will insure your life for a presentation copy of your Tour against all the diseases that leapt out of Pandora's box, not only till you have reached the Inn at Capel-Cerig, but your own home in England (we forget the county)--ay, till your marriage, and the baptism of your first-born.

Dr Kitchiner seems to have been much frightened by Mr Shepherd's picture of a storm in a puddle, and proposes a plan of alleviation of one great inconvenience of pedestrianising. "Persons," quoth he, "who take a pedestrian excursion, and intend to subject themselves to the uncertainties of accommodation, by going across the country and visiting unfrequented paths, will act wisely to carry with them a _piece of oil-skin_ to sit upon while taking refreshments out of doors, which they will often find needful during such excursions." To save trouble, the breech of the pedestrian's breeches should be a patch of oil-skin. Here a question of great difficulty and importance arises--Breeches or trousers? Dr Kitchiner is decidedly for breeches. "The garter," says he, "should be below the knee, and breeches are much better than trousers.

The general adoption of those which, till our late wars, were exclusively used by 'the Lords of the Ocean,' has often excited my astonishment. However convenient trousers may be to the sailor who has to cling to slippery shrouds, for the landsman nothing can be more inconvenient. They are heating in summer, and in winter they are collectors of mud. Moreover, they occasion a necessity for wearing garters. Breeches are, in all respects, much more convenient. These should have the knee-band three quarters of an inch wide, lined on the upper side with a piece of plush, and fastened with a buckle, which is much easier than even double strings, and, by observing the strap, you always know the exact degree of tightness that is required to keep up the stocking; any pressure beyond that is prejudicial, especially to those who walk long distances."