ement,
which in reality comprised a sketch of half the ills that the flesh
is heir to. Maladies of heart, brain, liver, lungs, the nerves, the
arteries, even the bones, contributed their aid to swell the dreary
catalogue, which, indeed, contained the usual contradictions and
exaggerations incidental to such histories. We could not assuredly
expect from our reader the patient attention with which Billy listened
to this narrative. Never by a word did he interrupt the description;
not even a syllable escaped him as he sat; and even when Sir Horace had
finished speaking, he remained with slightly drooped head and clasped
hands in deep meditation.

"It's a strange thing," said he, at last; "but the more I see of the
aristocracy, the more I 'm convinced that they ought to have doctors
for themselves alone, just as they have their own tailors and
coachmakers,---chaps that could devote themselves to the study of physic
for the peerage, and never think of any other disorders but them that
befall people of rank. Your mistake, Sir Horace, was in consulting the
regular middle-class practitioner, who invariably imagined there must be
a disease to treat."

"And you set me down as a hypochondriac, then," said Upton, smiling.

"Nothing of the kind! You have a malady, sure enough, but nothing
organic. 'Tis the oceans of tinctures, the sieves full of pills, the
quarter-casks of bitters you 're takin', has played the divil with you.
The human machine is like a clock, and it depends on the proportion the
parts bear to each other, whether it keeps time. You may make the spring
too strong, or the chain too thick, or the balance too heavy for the
rest of the works, and spoil everything just by over security. That's
what your doctors was doing with their tonics and cordials. They didn't
see, here's a poor washy frame, with a wake circulation and no vigor. If
we nourish him, his heart will go quicker, to be sure; but what will his
brain be at? There's the rub! His brain will begin to go fast too,
and already it's going the pace. 'T is soothin' and calmin' you want;
allaying the irritability of an irrascible, fretful nature, always on
the watch for self-torment. Say-bathin', early hours, a quiet mopin'
kind of life, that would, maybe, tend to torpor and sleepiness,--them's
the first things you need; and for exercise, a little work in the garden
that you 'd take interest in."

"And no physic?" asked Sir Horace.

"Sorra screed! not as much a