It has not yet been satisfactorily explained why doctors are such shrewd and genial men, and, when they appear in the literary field, such charming writers.  This is one of the curious problems of the day, and undoubtedly holds its own answer in solution, but has not yet seen fit to make an observable precipitate.  Perhaps this is because the times are stirring, and the facts cannot settle.  A delightful exhibition is made of something extremely good to take, which we swallow unscrupulously:  in other words, we can only guess how many scruples, and of what, this blessed medicine for the mind contains.  As it is eminently fit for every American to have an hypothesis upon every subject, we might now, with proper recklessness, rush into print with a few unhesitating suggestions upon this singular phenomenon of doctors gifted and graceful with the pen.

We observe, at any rate, that it is something independent of climate and locality, and not at all endemic.  Otherwise it might be true that the restless and inquisitive climate of the Atlantic coast, which wears the ordinary Yankee to leanness, and “establishes a raw” upon the nervous system, does soften to acuteness, mobility, and racy corrugation in the breast of its natural ally, the Doctor.  For autocratic tempers are bland towards each other, and murderous characteristics can mutually impart something homologous to the refining interchange of beautiful souls.  Therefore we do not yet know how much our climate is indebted to our doctors.  It may be suspected that they understand each other, as the quack and the fool do, whose interests are identical.

But this will not account for the literary talent of the doctors.  For they write books in England and Scotland, in France and temperate Germany, in every latitude and with a good deal; they are, however, defective in longitude, which is remarkable, when we consider how they will protract their cases.  With their pens they are prompt, clean, humane in the matter of ink, their first intention almost always successful, their thought expelled by natural cerebral contraction without stimulus, (we speak of ergot, but of “old rye” we know nothing,) their passion running to its crisis in the minimum of time, and their affections altogether pleasanter than anything of the kind they accuse us of having, as well as less lingering.  But with their pills—­well, we all know how our ills are nursed by medicine.  Is it a relief that their precept is less tedious than their practice?  It is good policy for us, perhaps, if our minds are to be under treatment from their books,—­and it grows plainer every day that no person of mind can well escape from them,—­that our bodies should continue subject to their boluses.  Thus we may die daily, but our incorporeal part is better acclimated in the invisible world of truths and realities.