“For Anaxagoras, long agon,
    Saw hills, as well as you i’th’ moon,
    And held the sun was but a piece
    Of red hot iron as big as Greece. 
    Believ’d the heavens were made of stone,
    Because the sun had voided one: 
    And, rather than he would recant
    Th’ opinion, suffered banishment.”

A difficulty surrounds the subject, however we view it. Aerolites, as they have been designated, have now been found in almost every region and climate of the globe—­from Arabia to the farthest point of Baffin’s Bay; and this very circumstance would seem to be opposed to their aerial origin, unless we are to suppose that they can be formed in every state, and in the opposite extremes of the atmosphere.  The Brahmin assigns them a lunar origin, and adds, “our party were greatly amused at the disputations of a learned society in Europe, in which they undertook to give a mathematical demonstration, that they could not be thrown from a volcano of the earth, nor from the moon, but were suddenly formed in the atmosphere.  I should as soon believe, that a loaf of bread could be made and baked in the atmosphere.”

The “gentleman farmer and projector,” being attacked, during their visit, with cholera morbus, and considering himself in extremis, a consultation of physicians takes place, in which one portrait will be obvious—­that of Dr. Shuro, who asserts disease to be a unit; and that it is the extreme of folly, to divide diseases into classes, which tend but to produce confusion of ideas, and an unscientific practice.  The enthusiasm of the justly celebrated individual—­the original of this portrait, was so great, that the slightest data were sufficient for the formation of some of his most elaborate hypotheses—­for theories they could not properly be called; and, accordingly, many of his beautiful and ingenious superstructures are now prostrated, leaving, in open day, the insufficiency of their foundation.  One of the most striking examples of this nature, was his belief that the black colour of the negro is a disease, which depletion, properly exercised, might be capable of remedying—­a scheme not a whit more feasible, than that of the courtiers of La Reine Quinte, referred to by Rabelais, “who made blackamoors white, as fast as hops, by just rubbing their stomachs with the bottom of a pannier.”

The satire here is not so fortunately displayed, as in other instances, owing probably to the difficulty of saying any thing new on so hackneyed a subject; for it has ever happened, that,—­

    “The Galenist and Paracelsian,
    Condemn the way each other deals in.”

The affair concludes, by the Doctors quarrelling; and, in the mean time, the patient, profiting by some simple remedies administered by the Brahmin, and an hour’s rest, was so much refreshed, that he considered himself out of danger, and had no need of medical assistance.