nourable, also find an undeviating course in it to be impracticable.

And no wonder, for it is the very nature of man to deviate from all Malthusian rules which war against his native inclinations, and are wholly at variance from those strong impulses which the ever active humours of his body operate upon his organic structure, tending to fruition.

"Our Maker bids increase: who bids abstain But our destroyer, foe to God and man?" PARADISE LOST.

In despite of the changes at the Reformation, the two cum privilegio Universities maintain still, in their observances

Reformation, that the people are indebted to this extent for their liberty of conscience. The church establishment cannot prosecute, but it can expel -it cannot "excommunicate," but it can exclude from admission; and in virtue of its exclusiveness, it leaves the Jews, the Papists, the Quakers, all denominations of dissenters, even the unitarians and free-thinkers, to the expenses of their own worship, taking, however, inclusively, tithe from all, and even from the atheist.

and laws, no small spice of papal arrangement. Not to go further into the matter than touches the present topic, it is sufficient to observe that their "fellows" (and fine fellows no doubt many

of them are!) are constrained to "single blessedness." No sooner do they marry and become bed-" fellows," than they cease to be fellows of the colleges, a change in fellowship which is no doubt borne with becoming equanimity and a gallantry rivalling that of the facetious barrister, who when told on his marriage that it would impede his progress at the bar, replied, that it might be so, but that he should have a pleasant equivalent in increasing his "chamber practice." But, restrained from marriage, can it be thought that such fellows, many of them at or beyond their grand climacteric, have spent their college days, or lived their "life in London," in the constraint of perfect continence?

If then it is found, as is unquestion

ably the case, that notwithstanding the austerity of probation and the ascetic tenor of life, despite also of the ruin and personal danger which attends any known transgression, that Roman Catholic ecclesiastics not unfrequently fall into temptation, and, commit the sins of adultery or fornication; and if the virtuous fellows of the colleges are equally prone; whilst now and then such default is attributed even to married clergymen of the Establishment: and, indeed, not like "angels' visits," why should it be believed, why relied upon, that medical men only, of all mankind, are immaculate and stand firm in virtue; that practising on the flesh they abjure and have no zest nor relish for the practices of the flesh, whether they be old or young, married or single men?

Really, as the fact of the sex seems to be so wholly forgotten, it may be suggested as a wholesome regulation, that every man-midwife, on his entering a

woman's chamber, should distinctly avow and make known his gender, by thus addressing the patient, and proclaiming, in the apt words of Bottom

"Ladies, or fair ladies,"

* " If

you

think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life: no, I am no such thing; I am a man as other men are."

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.

By force of such a man-trap," notice, or caution, a consciousness of the sex of the operator, which is now assuredly forgotten, might be induced; and some sense of indelicacy, and of a possible danger might supervene, however little it may be expected at present, that the tide of custom is likely to ebb.

Even admitting, in corollary from all the several arguments and various considerations which are contained in this and the previous chapters, and upon every point of possibility attending or having relation; that there are some practitioners who from a sense of proprieties and of

duty, a sense of honour, or the force of the moral principle; some from indifference and coldness of constitution, some from satiety and over-abundance of objects, some from fastidiousness in the choice of objects, some from not choosing to spare time from their profitable and enlarged practice, and some again from timidity, or mere worldly caution and prudence; - who neither libidinously touch the female, nor improperly digitate; who neither seek, nor are willing to take the extreme advantage of opportunities what follows? Why simply, and at the very best, that such virtuous, staid, satiated, fastidious, prudent, or cautious men of the profession-ay even the very best of them-are but as safe as women, provided they were as proper for the practice; for their greatest excellence, and only use, under the observance of even the chastest conduct the practice by possibility admits of, consists in acting prudently, carefully,