from Dupuytren's work on Skin Diseases, and is as follows: Purified beef-marrow, 3 viij. Fashion has frequently been taxed to contribute to the revenue of the state, and the absurd fashion, hair-powder, was one of the tastes thus placed under contribution. The origin of the tax, as we learn from Wraxall's Posthumous Memoirs, was as follows, -The fourteenth Duke of Norfolk was at all times a singular personage, but was remarkably so whilst Earl of Surrey. He had many good points, and was certainly in no respect the slave of fashion, or of its creators, the tailors. "Nature," writes Wraxall, "had not bestowed on him any of the insignia of illustrious descent; he might have been mistaken for a grazier or a butcher by his dress and appearance, yet his intelligence was marked in his features, which were likewise expressive of frankness and sincerity." To this man may be attributed the suggestion of two once very important taxes, those on race horses and hair powder. About the year 1785, every body who was any body, wore hair powder-white, golden, brown, any color suited to the complexion. A well dressed man devoted at least one hour to the arranging of his hair; a woman spent half the day under the hands of her frizeur. Indeed a story is told that a regiunent preparing for inspection, and being short of hair dressers, were obliged to have their heads arranged over night, and were forced to sleep on their faces, lest they should disarrange the handi-work of the artist. In 1785 the Minister proposed to lay a tax on female servants, and thereupon the Earl of Surrey proposed as an amendment, that the new tax should be laid on hair powder. The motion was received with shouts of laughter, but the large revenue to be derived from it was by no means to be despised; the tax was accordingly adopted, and then every buck and belle contributed to the support of the Exchequer. So important did the revenue from this one item appear, that during the administration of William Pitt, Francis, fifth Duke of Bedford, being offended with the Cabinet, ordered his four and twenty footmen to comb out their powder, thus proposing to vex the Minister, and help towards stopping the supplies. Another tax connected with our subject was that on the use of human hair, in wigs and other adornments; this tax, at a shilling per lb., produced in the year 1827, according to Sir Henry Parnell, in his well known letter on Financial Reform, nearly three thousand pounds sterling. We must here end our paper upon Hair; in a future number we shall return to another branch of the subject-Wigs and Beards. DR. MADDEN'S PHANTASMATA. Phantasmata, or Illusions and Fanaticisms of Protean Forms, Productive of Great Evils. By R. R. Madden, F.R.C.S., Eng., M.R.I.A., &c., &c. Author of "Travels in the East," "Shrines and Sepulchres," "Life of Savonarola," "Memoirs of Lady Blessington," etc. London: Newby, 1857. To a man plunged in the midst of the dull and unvarying realities of business or professional life, it is no mean pleasure to steal away for a while from the smoke and turmoil of the murky city, and relax the rigid tension of his mind in the far country. Pleasent to him to lie upon the newly mown grass, to watch the lark piercing the blue vault, and scattering showers of melody as he rises; pleasant, by some purling stream, and "under the shade of melancholy boughs," to "lose and neglect the creeping hours of time;" pleasant, too, to mount the neighbouring hill, and seated on a moss-grown rock, look down with calm complacency on the distant city, and watch the great cloud of smoky incense, which rolls up daily from its thousand altars to the great spirit of trade and labor. Pleasant too, to watch the ships gliding over the great hosom of the sea, bound upon their various courses; carrying the emigrant in search of fortune, the criminal of concealment, the opulent of health and excitment; bearing from shore to shore the mutual interchange of products, and joining as it where in friendly grasp, across the wide expanse of sea, the hands of distant relatives and friends. It is then that the imagination, freed from the restraints of the practical cares of life, compensates itself for previous restraint, and delights to wander free and uncontrolled. Ranging far and wide it brings back to the poet, the newest and freshest flowers of fancy; to the philosopher, still higher and holier views of science and human life; to the artist, yet nobler inspirations and designs; and even to the drudging money-getter, some faint, dim vistas of future days, when money-getting shall not be the sole aim of his existence, but something shall be given to the poetry and intellect of life. Such recreations of fancy are not without their benefit and profit; they purify and elevate the mental organization, soften the heart, and fill it with sympathy and kindness, and send a man back to the practical routine of business with increased zest for vigorous exertion. In such recreations, the habitual dweller in cities is rarely permitted to indulge. When chimney-pots and housetops greet his waking glances in the morning, and chimney-pots and housetops cast their shadows over him at night, it is not easy to indulge in those dreams, and build up those airy castles, which are the favorite work of fancy. Cræsus, toiling in his dingy counting-house, sneers at such vain imaginings, which are, he thinks, of no use to any man; no help in the pursuit of wealth, and yet we know that to such musings and such abandonments of thought, we owe many of our brightest literary gems, with the smallest of which we would not be willing to part for all the wealth that Cræsus may amass from this hour until that which sees his body consigned to that congenial dust, which shares, we are tempted to. think, a part of the formation of his soul. To deprive us wholly of imagination would be to rob our existence of one of its greatest pleasures. To see nothing in the finest prospect but an assemblage of trees, fountains, rocks, hills, and vallies; to stand upon classic ground, and see nothing but the grass beneath our feet and the sky over head; to read the finest poem and wonder at the strange audacity of the writer, in asking us to credit such fancies, would certainly be to degrade our nature, and bring it down near the level of mere animal existence. There is more solid enjoyment in the pursuit of agreeable ideas, than would be at first blush supposed. It can, moreover, be enjoyed almost at all times, at the mere wish, and the pleasure produced by its indulgence is both inexpensive and exhilarating. There is a subtle moral in the Barmecides' Feast of the Arabian Nights. Ah! the Arabian Nights are a suggestive subject here. Ah! well do we remember with what intense and absorbing pleasure we pored upon these pages in our early youth, and tasted our first pure draught of real romance. How with Haroun Alraschid we roved disguised through the streets of Bagdad, quaffed sherbet in the delicious gardens of the suburbs, and glided in the light river boats down the current of the Bosphorus, " I see rich Bagdad once again, With its turrets of Moorish mould, A man may be doomed to dwell in an obscure and secluded spot, where neither change of scene, nor varied intercourse with his fellow men, break the dull routine of existence; he may be plunged in a gloomy dungeon and shut out from light and life; his means may be straitened, and his health be impaired, and to the casual observer his mind will appear oppressed and dark; but his imagination is not dead, and he has all her charms to soothe and solace him. Though his liberty is restrained, the world is before him, and in fancy he ⚫ visits its remotest and its fairest spots. He roams through the sandy deserts of Arabia, reposes on the banks of the Ganges, and worships in the Temple of the Sun. He views the sun rising, from the summit of Mont Blanc, and watches his parting rays in the sweet valley of Chamouni. Though deprived of books, he holds animated converse with the spirits of the illustrious dead, and at his bidding, poets, historians, novelists, and philosophers, throng around him and interchange thoughts with him. Though pent up in narrowrooms, in a moment he is kneeling in the vast spacious centre of a continental cathedral, in which the light of a thousand tapers faintly reveals the lofty arching of the overhanging roof, while the deep swell of the pealing organ fills the vast space, and lifts up the soul upon its rolling waves of harmony. But it is chiefly when sorrow wrings the heart or pain the brow that imagination lends its kindest aid; not indeed so often in that of the sufferer himself, as in that of others through the medium of books. Pain, sorrow and disappointment will each find somewhere in the stores of literature, whether in history, philosophy, or poetry, some share of solace. The mind exhausted and depressed is unequal to the effort of creating consolation for itself, but it finds it in communion with the minds of other men, with those whose genius has illuminated, whose knowledge hasinstructed, whose humor has beguiled, whose pathos has softened; and to the end of time they will fulfil their noble office, and soothe and instruct and charm, till imagination's reign is over and everything is real. Experience, however, teaches us that there may be danger in indulging too long or too frequently in these excursions of fancy. There is no doubt that many an intellect has wandered so often and so far into the realms of imagination, as at length to fix its permanent abode there and desert for ever the regions of common sense. We often see this happen to men of very sober demeanour. We are acquainted with more than one who, originally addicted to exaggeration and boasting, has by mere force of habit arrived at an extraordinary state of mind, in which he actually believes in the precise truth of the incredible fictions to which he gives utterance. Not a soul who listens gives of course the slightest credence, no one but the deceiver is deceived, and him it would be impossible to convince of his own mendacity. This is but another phase of that not uncommon state to which men are frequently brought by too close and intense contemplation of any particular subject. Our lunatic asylums are crowded with inmates, who, save on one topic, are as sensible as any man in the country. They will converse with perfect recollection and collectedness on general topics, and one unacquainted with their state of mind, and happening to avoid the one subject, might meet and converse with them for months without entertaining the slightest suspicion of a disordered intellect. The occurrence of such cases only strengthens the difficulties of that most important branch of medical and legal investigation, the character of insanity and the treatment of the insane, a subject, which in practice at least, receives from the legislature and executive in these countries far too small a share of attention. We are not about to enter upon an analysis of the nature of insanity, or a discussion of the various theories advanced in |