sal mania of our century, and we may expect that one
day, our vigorous pursuit of knowledge on the subject will allow us
to be honourably classed with the equally intelligent seekers for the
philosopher's stone. With this great feature of the time, then, nothing
was easier than to comply. The little realm of Hesse-Homburg might not
have attractions of scenery or society; its climate might, like most of
those north of the Alps, be nothing to boast of; its social advantages
being a zero, what could it possess as a reason--a good, plausible
reason, for drawing travellers to its frontier? Of course, a
Spa!--something very nauseous and very foul smelling, as nearly as
possible like a warm infusion of rotten eggs, thickened with red clay.
Germany happily abounds in these; Nature has been kind to her, at least
underground, and you have only to dig two feet in any limestone
district to meet with the most sovereign thing on earth for stomachic
derangements.

The Spa discovered, a doctor was found to analyse it, and another to
write a book upon it. Nothing more were necessary. The work, translated
into three or four languages, set forth all the congenial advantages
of pumps and promenades, sub-carbonates, tables d'hote, waltzing, and
mineral waters. The pursuit of health no longer presented a grim goddess
masquerading in rusty black and a bald forehead, but a lovely nymph, in
a Parisian toilette, conversing like a Frenchwoman, and dancing like an
Austrian.

Who would not be ill, I wonder? Who would not discover that Hampshire
was too high and Essex too low, Devon too close and Cumberland too
bracing? Who would not give up his village M.D., and all his array of
bottles, with their long white cravats, for a ramble to the Rhine, where
luxurious living, belles, and balls abounded, and where _soit dit
en passant_, the _rouge et noir_ table afforded the easy resource of
supplying all such pleasures, so that you might grow robust and rich at
once, and while imbibing iron into your blood, lay up a stock of gold
with your banker? Hence the connection between Spas and gambling; hence
the fashionable flocking to those healthful spots by thousands who never
felt illness; hence the unblushing avowal of having been a month at
Baden by those who would flinch at acknowledging an hour in a 'hell';
and hence, more important than all, at least to one individual
concerned, the source of that real alchemy by which a grand-duke, like
Macheath, can