e universe, and that there was no
other paradise than the Elysian fields. He was burnt alive, after having
first had his tongue pierced, and his hand cut off. Thus perished an
ardent and learned youth, who ought only to have been condemned as a
Bedlamite.

Dr. More, the most rational of our modern Platonists, abounds, however,
with the most extravagant reveries, and was inflated with egotism and
enthusiasm, as much as any of his mystic predecessors. He conceived that
he communed with the Divinity itself! that he had been shot as a fiery
dart into the world, and he hoped he had hit the mark. He carried his
self-conceit to such extravagance, that he thought his urine smelt like
violets, and his body in the spring season had a sweet odour; a
perfection peculiar to himself. These visionaries indulge the most
fanciful vanity.

The "sweet odours," and that of "the violets," might, however, have been
real--for they mark a certain stage of the disease of diabetes, as
appears in a medical tract by the elder Dr. Latham.

ANECDOTES OF FASHION.

A volume on this subject might be made very curious and entertaining,
for our ancestors were not less vacillating, and perhaps more
capriciously grotesque, though with infinitely less taste, than the
present generation. Were a philosopher and an artist, as well as an
antiquary, to compose such a work, much diversified entertainment, and
some curious investigation of the progress of the arts and taste, would
doubtless be the result; the subject otherwise appears of trifling
value; the very farthing pieces of history.

The origin of many fashions was in the endeavour to conceal some
deformity of the inventor: hence the cushions, ruffs, hoops, and other
monstrous devices. If a reigning beauty chanced to have an unequal hip,
those who had very handsome hips would load them with that false rump
which the other was compelled by the unkindness of nature to substitute.
Patches were invented in England in the reign of Edward VI. by a foreign
lady, who in this manner ingeniously covered a wen on her neck.
Full-bottomed wigs were invented by a French barber, one Duviller, whose
name they perpetuated, for the purpose of concealing an elevation in the
shoulder of the Dauphin. Charles VII. of France introduced long coats to
hide his ill-made legs. Shoes with very long points, full two feet in
length, were invented by Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Anjou, to conceal a
large excrescence on one of