with overcolouring the sufferings which
await the spendthrift. It is painful to own that such cases are but too
common in society. Think of an extravagant man married to an extravagant
woman--the mean and contemptible conduct to which they are driven--the
insolence and cruelty with which they are baited through large towns,
hunted down into an obscure cottage in the country, or chased into exile.
Think of the hateful reflections which, sooner or later, must overtake such
sufferers--either in their moody solitude in the country, or amidst the
forced delights of a crowded city on the continent. In the one all nature
is free, whilst the debauchee frowns on her laughing landscapes; in the
other, conscience and her busy devils are at work--yet thousands thus
embitter life's cup, and then repine at their uncheery lot. With such men,
all must be _Clouds_--a winter of discontent--for who will envy their
_Sunshine_.

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS

* * * * *

NOSES.

_Observations on the Organ of Scent. By William Wadd, Esq., F.L.S._

"Non cuicunque datum est habere nasum."--MARTIAL.

"I have a nose."--PROBY.

It has often struck me as a defect in our anatomical teachers, that in
describing that prominent feature of the human face, the organ of scent,
they generalize too much, and have but one term for the symmetrical arch,
arising majestically, or the tiny atom, scarcely equal to the weight of a
barnacle--a very dot of flesh! Nor is the dissimilarity between the
invisible functions of the organ, and the visible varieties of its external
structure, less worthy of remark. With some, the sense of smelling is so
dull, as not to distinguish hyacinths from assafoetida; they would even
pass the Small-Pox Hospital, and Maiden-lane, without noticing the
knackers; whilst others, detecting instantly the slightest particle of
offensive matter, hurry past the apothecaries, and get into an agony of
sternutation, at fifty yards from Fribourg's.

Shakspeare, who was a minute observer of the anatomical and physiological
varieties of the human frame, did not allow this dissimilarity to pass
unnoticed; and, moreover, he starts a query that has never been
satisfactorily answered, from his time to the present; viz. "Canst thou
tell why one's nose stands i' the middle of one's face?"[4] And his nice
discrimination about noses extends also to shape and co