or canopy over London, what a mass of smoke would then stick to it!  This fuliginous crust now comes down every night on the streets, on our houses, the waters, and is taken into our bodies.  On the water it leaves a thin web or pellicle of dust dancing upon the surface of it, as those who bath in the Thames discern, and bring home on their bodies.”  Evelyn has detailed the gradual destruction it effects on every article of ornament and price; and “he heard in France, that those parts lying south-west of England, complain of being infected with smoke from our coasts, which injured their vines in flower.”  I have myself observed at Paris, that the books exposed to sale on stalls, however old they might be, retained their freshness, and were in no instance like our own, corroded and blackened, which our coal-smoke never fails to produce.  There was a proclamation, so far back as Edward the First, forbidding the use of sea-coal in the suburbs, on a complaint of the nobility and gentry, that they could not go to London on account of the noisome smell and thick air.  About 1550, Hollingshed foresaw the general use of sea-coal from the neglect of cultivating timber.  Coal fires have now been in general use for three centuries.  In the country they persevered in using wood and peat.  Those who were accustomed to this sweeter smell declared that they always knew a Londoner, by the smell of his clothes, to have come from coal-fires.  It must be acknowledged that our custom of using coal for our fuel has prevailed over good reasons why we ought not to have preferred it.  But man accommodates himself even to an offensive thing whenever his interest predominates.

Were we to carry on a speculation of this nature into graver topics, we should have a copious chapter to write of the opposition to new discoveries.  Medical history supplies no unimportant number.  On the improvements in anatomy by Malpighi and his followers, the senior professors of the university of Bononia were inflamed to such a pitch that they attempted to insert an additional clause in the solemn oath taken by the graduates, to the effect that they would not permit the principles and conclusions of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, which had been approved of so many ages, to be overturned by any person.  In phlebotomy we have a curious instance.  In Spain, to the sixteenth century, they maintained that when the pain was on the one side they ought to bleed on the other.  A great physician insisted on a contrary practice; a civil war of opinion divided Spain; at length, they had recourse to courts of law; the novelists were condemned; they appealed to the emperor, Charles the Fifth; he was on the point of confirming the decree of the court, when the Duke of Savoy died of a pleurisy, having been legitimately bled.  This puzzled the emperor, who did not venture on a decision.