isease is half its cure." People will pore over its sea of calamities
till they almost fall into the fire, or get scalded with the water from a
kettle, and then turn to the Index, Scalds, page 326: perhaps this is a
good plan to test the practical value of a book, as the surgeon scalded
two fingers and plunged one into turpentine and the other into spirits of
wine to test their respective services in case of a scald.

Here too we may notice a cheap _Companion to the Family Medicine Chest,_
with an alphabetical arrangement of Medicines, their properties, and plain
rules for taking them; with the Cholera, of course, as a rider, and
cautions respecting suspended animation and poisons. The little
shillingsworth is in its fifteenth edition, so that many thousand persons
must have taken many million doses by its prescription, and in some cases
become their own medicine chests, with this book as their companion.

* * * * *

HERBERT'S COUNTRY PARSON, &c.

Readers who delight to slake their thirst for knowledge from the deep and
pure wells of our olden literature will rejoice to hear of a cheap and
elegant reprint of this beautiful little book. Perchance some book-buyer
need be told that the above is a book to live by--an invaluable legacy of
a parish priest to his brethren and the world. The author George Herbert,
was born in 1593, near Montgomery, in the castle that had been
successively happy in the Herberts, as Isaak Walton observes, "a family
that hath been blest with men of remarkable wisdom." Herbert was educated
at Cambridge, where he obtained the friendship of "the great secretary of
nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam," who consulted
Herbert "before he would expose any of his books to be printed, and
dedicated a version of the Psalms to him as the best judge of divine
poetry." Herbert was patronized by James I. who, for an elegant Latin
oration, gave him a sinecure of 120_l_. a-year, for in those days the only
Royal Society of Literature was in the palace; it is now among subjects,
and too little in the Court. Upon the death of James, Herbert's Court
hopes died also, and he betook himself to a retreat from London. In this
retirement, "he had many conflicts with himself, whether he should return
to the painted pleasures of court life or betake himself to the study of
divinity, and enter into sacred orders." He chose the latter. He married
well. In 1630 he was induc