nturer" gives a
very entertaining account of the "Transmigrations of a Flea."
There is also a poem on this subject by Dr. Donne, full of
strength and wit. It traces a soul through ten or twelve births,
giving the salient points of its history in each. First, the soul
animates the apple our hapless mother Eve ate, bringing "death
into the world and all our woe." Then it appeared

14 Sera Numinis Vindicta: near the close.

15 Spectator, No. 343.

successively as a mandrake, a cock, a herring, a whale, "Who spouted
rivers up as if he meant o join our seas with seas above
the firmament." Next, as a mouse, it crept up an elephant's sinewy
proboscis to the soul's bedchamber, the brain, and, gnawing the
life cords there, died, crushed in the ruins of the gigantic
beast. Afterwards it became a wolf, a dog, an ape, and finally a
woman, where the quaint tale closes. Fielding is the author of a
racy literary performance called "A Journey from this World to the
Next." The Emperor Julian is depicted in it, recounting in Elysium
the adventures he had passed through, living successively in the
character of a slave, a Jew, a general, an heir, a carpenter, a
beau, a monk, a fiddler, a wise man, a king, a fool, a beggar, a
prince, a statesman, a soldier, a tailor, an alderman, a poet, a
knight, a dancing master, and a bishop. Whoever would see how
vividly, with what an honest and vigorous verisimilitude, the
doctrine can be embodied, should read "The Modern Pythagorean," by
Dr. Macnish. But perhaps the most humorous passage of this sort is
the following description from a remarkable writer of the present
day:

"In the mean while all the shore rang with the trump of bull
frogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine bibbers and wassailers,
still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake;
who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal
tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave,
mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor. The most
aldermanic, with his chin upon a heart leaf, which serves for a
napkin to his drooling chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a
deep draught of the once scorned water, and passes round the cup
with the ejaculation tr r r oonk, tr r r oonk! and straightway
comes over the water from some distant cove the same password
repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped down to
his mark; and when this observance has made the circuit of the
sh