tors. May he long enjoy the emoluments and the honours, which he has so justly earned; and may the laurel, which he has planted, thicken around him, and may it's verdure comfort and enliven his declining years, and may it's branches over-shadow and shelter his posterity to the remotest generations!!

But before we pay our tribute of unlimited applause and honour to a discerning Public -for having sensibly felt and encouraged the incomparable merit of such an ornament to society, as Dr. Contagion, let us pause a moment, and survey the same rewards and the same honours bestowed upon Dulness, Deceit, and Ignorance.

Richard Consumption was the consequence of a little bit of pastime between a Cinderwench and a Shoe-black. Richard was, at first, intended for his father's profession, which, however, he had not a capacity sufficiently acute to learn with promptitude, and dispatch.-Wherefore, he was turned over as a servant-boy to a School-master in the vicinity of London. Here Dick was taught to read and write by one of the school-boys, for

whom he used to pilfer any scraps of belly. timber from the pantry, on which he could' lay his hands.

It so happened, that in process of time, the Usher of the School died, and the Master appointed Consumption to fill his place, be cause he could get Richard at a cheaper rate, than he could hire any other drudge. By the most obsequious flattery and meanness, whereby he obtained frequent presents from the boys, and, now and then, an extraordinary sixpence from the Master, he contrived, after some years spent in discharging the functions of an Assistant at a School, professedly set apart for the purpose of giving youth a liberal Education, to pick up money enough to enable him to go down to Edin burgh, and be done into a Dr. of Medicine.

Dr. Consumption, then, sate himself down in London, and has, actually, contrived to get himself appointed Physician to a public Hospital, and to thrust himself into extensive practice, by wearing a very plain garb, and ornamenting his heavy, dull countenance, not unlike that of a bull, with a powdered wig consisting of six tiers of curls; by trotting

from one place of public worship to another,that is, from the Jews Synagogue to the Quakers Meeting, from thence to the Tabernacle of the Methodists, etc. etc. by constantly attending, as a Member, and speaking a prodigious quantity of unintelligible absurdity in two or three Medical Spouting Societies, in London; by delivering Lectures on the practice of Physic; and lastly, by being brought to bed monthly of a miserable compilation of nonsense and trumpery, which he is pleased to call Medical Facts and Obser

vations.

Do we need any further proof of the immediate necessity of a reformation in all the Departments of Medicine, when such Physicians as Gabble, Cawdle and Consumption are enabled to drive their own carriages along the streets of our Metropolis, hugging themselves in the success of their petty schemes, and contemptible artifices, which have carried them through all the dirty defiles and filthy avenues, of Dulness, Audacity, and Ignorance, to the habitation of wealth, and all it's concomitant power of mischief, which it infallibly engenders in the hands of knaves and fools?

For shame, for shame, my countrymen; cleanse the Augean stable, purge away all the filth of Medical Establishments, by directing the streams of knowledge and the rivers of learning to take their course through the Schools of Esculapius. Do we hesitate at lopping off a few useless limbs when the lifeorgans are in danger of being gangrened? Can the rays of Philosophy and the beams of Science illumine and adorn the page of Medicine, while Genius and Learning are suffered to languish and to wither in the absence of that sun-shine of Public Honour and Reward, which are all employed in fostering Stupidity and Ignorance, in encouraging Bigotry and Error?

ESSAY CXXVIII.

MISCELLANEOUS ANECDOTES.

A MR. HOPKINS a zealous Clergyman in the County of Sussex, a little, short, squat, thick-set man, whose abilities in boxing and cudgel-playing were, by no means, contemp tible, one evening, over a jug of ale and a pipe of tobacco, quarrelled with a huge, brawny fellow, who professed himself to be a free-thinker. A scuffle ensued, in which the parson knocked down his antagonist, and, as he, with his right knee, pinned him to the ground, pummelled him without mercy, crying out, "I understand, Sirrah, that you are an Atheist, and if so, you dog, I will beat a God into you."

A Lieutenant in a marching regiment paid his addresses to the daughter of a Quaker; the damsel had no objection to her lover, but old Broad-brim was very averse from any family connection with the soldier, on ac