st practitioners of Frankfort, are most liberally
remunerated, and the whole retinue of the establishment is maintained
on a footing of even extravagant expenditure. Of course, I need scarcely
say that its benefits, if such they be, are reserved for the wealthy
only. Indeed, I have been told that the cost of 'this lying in state'
exceeds that of the most expensive funeral fourfold. Sometimes there is
great difficulty in obtaining a vacant bed. Periods of epidemic disease
crowd the institution to such a degree that the greatest influence is
exerted for a place. Now, one naturally asks, What success has this
system met with to warrant this expenditure, and continue to enjoy
public confidence? None whatever. In seventeen years which one of the
resident doctors passed there, not _one_ case occurred of restored
animation; nor was there ever reason to believe that in any instance
the slightest signs of vitality ever returned. The physicians themselves
make little scruple at avowing the incredulity concerning its necessity,
and surprised me by the freedom with which they canvassed the excellent
but mistaken notions of its founders.

To what, then, must we look for the reason of maintaining so strange an
institution? Simply to that love of life so remarkably conspicuous
in the people of Frankfort. The failure in a hundred instances is no
argument to any man who thinks his own case may present the exception.
It matters little to him that his neighbour was past revival when he
arrived there; the question is, What is his own chance? Besides that,
the fear of being buried alive--a dread only chimerical in other
countries--must often present itself here, when an institution is
maintained to prevent the casualty; in fact, there looks a something of
scant courtesy in consigning a man to the tomb at once, in a land where
a kind of purgatorial sojourn is provided for him. But stranger than all
is the secret hope this system nourishes in the sick man's heart, that
however friends may despond, and doctors may pronounce, he has a chance
still; there is a period allowed him of appealing against the decree
of death--enough if he but lift a finger against it. What a singular
feature does the whole system expose, and how fond of the world must
they be who practise it! Who can tell whether this House of Recovery
does not creep in among the fading hopes of the death-bed, and if, among
the last farewells of parting life, some thoughts of that last