tence on so great a point, even if our personal culture were large and specific enough for the purpose. The great heart of the world is just and we leave him to its final impulses without alarm.

The person of David Scott was unusually expressive of what was within the mask. The inner man had fashioned its bodily semblance with extraordinary power and precision. Those who knew him only in the sore decay of his latter end cannot form any conception of the uncommon beauty of his face and form. His fellowstudent, Steell the sculptor, carved a somewhat idealised bust of him at twenty-five; in the reproduction of which that skilful artist is now engaged, with the intention of placing it in the possession of the Scottish Academy as his presentation-work; a work of genius and of love. Scott painted a severe and simple portrait of himself about the same age. It is in these that the look of his

prime is to be seen.

He was a little above the middle size; slender, but not emaciated; lean and stript for the contest, but full of vigour tempered by nervous irritability; spare, but energetic. His shape was handsome, and his hands remarkable for their approach to sculpturesque perfection. His countenance was pale and thin, but lighted up with poetical intelligence. The chin was of that fine mould which usually denotes sensibility, not blunted by the animal passions of our nature. The eye came forward, and was somewhat conical in form: its colour was a peculiar blue, the blue of night rather than of day. The brows were ample, and they projected over the outlooking eyes. His forehead retired, without sinking, under a loose and copious mass of brown-black hair, which it was his way to toss about his temples with a degree of carelessness, perhaps not unmindful of effect. His head was not very

large, especially behind. But the most noticeable feature of all were his exquisitely chiselled lips. The lower was full and round: the upper wavered; and, in later years, it seemed to curl with something not unlike the shadow of disdain. There was an air about him, which forbade the too near approach of any other man. There was a singular unearthliness and spirituality, in fine, in the total expression of his physiognomy. It was the suitable apparel of so purged and exalted a spirit.

PURE as a maiden, simpler than a child;
Wilful as both, in life as well as art;
Still as a priest, in manner, not in heart;
Prouder than any chief, yet more than mild,
Yea, very meek and humble when he smiled,
With awful joy, before the shrine of duty;

That shrine which was to him the home of beauty-
Beauty, austere indeed, but undefiled.

So walkt and workt and worshipt through the world
Our painter true. His crescent brow half seen,
His shadowy night of hair, his star-blue eyne,
His melancholy lip, which sadly curled
In chill contempt of everything below it,
Expressed the man he was, and that was POET.

ON THE THEORY OF SMALL DOSES.

(JOURNAL OF HOMEOPATHY.-No. III.)

THE homoeopathic method of cure is not an absolute novelty. The irregular administration of specific remedies is the oldest way of healing wounds and removing inward maladies; and it was practised long before the art of medicine had assumed a professional character. Bacon blamed the physicians of his age for overlaying the traditionary records concerning the special virtues of simple herbs by their 'magisterial, multi-compounded and confounding prescriptions.' Physicians, however, have not always contradicted, instead of elaborating, the crude conception implied in the ancient popular practice. On the one hand, many of the best of them have devoted themselves to the cultivation of the medical sciences, willing to leave the art as they found it, and instinctively aware that scientific knowledge had to become more extensive and precise before it could be translated into rational practice; and, on the other, the great improvements which have been made from time to time by the distinguished benefactors of the healing art, do actually come under the homoeopathic formula, when investigated with a view to scientific classification. The astonishing effects, as testified by Willis, of the exhibition of sudorifics in carrying off the fatal sweating sickness of 1485, at a time when it had been destroying ninety-nine cases

out of a hundred; the old practice of applying rosewater in diseases of the eye; the successful prescription of spirituous liquors in purely inflammatory fevers, of mercury in syphilis, of peruvian bark in intermittent fever, and of sulphur in itch, and the practice of vaccination, are so many exemplifications of the homœopathic principle of cure. A medical reader, who will take the pains to study the learned introduction to the Organon of the Healing Art, will be astonished to find how easily a multitude of the best-attested and most striking cases of the happy treatment of disease in the annals of medicine arrange themselves under the same category; while he will at least allow that, if it be not necessary to have recourse to the particular hypothesis in question for the purpose of rendering these cases intelligible, another must be discovered, for they fall under no formula yet invented. One might even assert with safety, that the very existence of the phrase contraria contrariis, with its logical antithesis similia similibus, in the terminology of the profession, shows that the initiative idea of homoeopathy has never been wanting. Accordingly, it is by no means wonderful that Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, Stahl, de Haen, Boulduc, Detharding, Bertholon, Thoury, Störck, and others, have successively inculcated the maxim embodied in the latter with more or less of generality. It was the ingenuous, learned, and synthetical Hahnemann, however, as all the world is aware, who so strongly felt its practicable meaning as to abandon, once for all, the routine practice upon the prevalent principles, mixed and motley as he found them in the schools, and to follow the long-known clue into the arcana of the labyrinth, inspired by the faithful hope of discovering some high and homogeneous theory of therapeutics, which might enable him to restore the oldest practice of the

world on the foundation of a scientific basis at once extended and profound. Many admirable men had become aware of the comparative uselessness of the practice of physic, and even suspected it not innocent of aggravating disease and hastening death; but this truly great physician had the precision to solidify his instinctive apprehension into a conviction of the understanding, the honesty to act on his decision, the bravery to face the overwhelming difficulties of a new investigation, and the reward of eventually succeeding to his own satisfaction. Whether all or any of his great conclusions be founded on the immutable truth of nature or not, the satisfaction with his own results, of such a man, is worthy of the most steadfast consideration by the world.

There are very few medical men now-a-days but become more and more diffident of their art, as well as more and more willing to trust the unimpeded operations of restorative Nature, the older they grow in the service of the profession; and, indeed, a whole country of physicians seem to have, in some degree, and tacitly, come to the conclusion, that it is better to defer the invention of a therapeutic art, till the advancement of physiology and pathology shall enable them to enter on the work under more propitious auspices, while meantime they will practise their médecine expectante, watching and gently guiding the progress of diseases. These French physicians repose upon the authority of ancient and classical usage; for it is a fact, that the practice of Hippocrates was liker the quiet skilfulness of a judicious nurse, than the energetic counteraction of a modern doctor. The very worst that can be said, then, of the method of Hahnemann is that, while it is consistent with a coherent hypothesis of the healing powers of medicines, and appears to revive and methodise the primitive practice