there is actually a system of medicine,
advancing in reputation, which is founded on
the principle of contraries. The famous
Doctor Hahnemann, who was born at Massieu
in Saxony, was the founder of it, and, strange
to say, medical men, who are notorious for
entertaining contrary opinions, have not yet
agreed among themselves whether he was a
very great quack or a very great philosopher.
Be this as it may, the founder of this system,
which is called HOMŒOPATHY, when translating
an article upon bark in Dr. Cullen's Materia
Medica, took some of this medicine, which had
for many years been justly celebrated for the
cure of ague. He had not long taken it, when
he found himself attacked with agueish
symptoms, and a light now dawned upon his
mind, and led him to the inference that
medicines which give rise to the symptoms of
a disease, are those which will specifically
cure it, and however curious it may appear,
several illustrations in confirmation of this
principle were speedily found. If a limb be
frost-bitten, we are directed to rub it with
snow; if the constitution of a man be impaired
by the abuse of spirituous liquors, and he be
reduced to that miserable state of enervation
when the limbs tremble and totter, and the
mind itself sinks into a state of low muttering
delirium, the physician to cure him must go
again to the bottle and administer stimulants
and opiates.

It was an old Hippocratic aphorism that
two diseases cannot co-exist in the same
body; wherefore, gout has actually been cured
by the afflicted person going into a fenny
country and catching the ague. The fatality
of consumption is also said to be retarded by
a common catarrh; and upon this very
principle depends the truth of the old saying, that
ricketty doors hang long on rusty hinges. In
other words, the strength of the constitution
being impaired by one disease has less power
to support the morbid action of another.

We thus live in a world of apparent
contradictions; they abound in every department
of science, and beset us even in the
sanctuary of domestic life. The progress of
discovery has reconciled and explained the
nature of some of them; but many baffle our
ingenuity, and still remain involved in mystery.
This much, however, is certain, that the most
opposed and conflicting elements so combine
together as to produce results, which are
strictly in unison with the order and harmony
of the universe.

AN IRISH PECULIARITY.

THE characteristics attributed by one
nation to another are never patented without
some foundation in truth; but, in time, by
means of successive overlays of jest,
constant repetition, and the heaping up of one
exaggeration upon another, national
portraiture flashes forth into glaring caricature.
If we were to believe old plays and old novels,
we should suppose that, only a half century
since, every Englishman fed exclusively on
roast beef and plum-pudding—rattled his
guineas in ample pockets, tightened by the
portly protuberance of his figure, and rapped
out oaths against "frog-eating Mounseers"
with the same energy with which, after dinner,
he imbibed crusted port to the health and
prosperity of Church and State. On Sunday
morning we view him, through the same
medium, standing upright in his red-cushioned
pew, pronouncing the responses with the ore
rotundo of Sir Roger de Coverley, and, like
that worthy baronet, looking daggers at little
boys whom he catches napping.

The Scotchman of the same authorities was
invariably a long, lean, raw-boned, hungry,
grey-eyed Sawney, with high cheek-bones,
reddish hair, and a diffused aroma of brimstone
pervading his threadbare garments.
Pertaining to him also, by inalienable birth-right,
was an insatiable appetite for oaten-cakes,
haggis, and singed sheep's head; of which
viands the supply usually fell very far short
of the demand. No matter what his rank in
life might be, he was forced, as a necessary
condition of his existence, to talk "braid
scots," and to look sharply after the "siller."
Somehow, he regularly found his way to
London, where a lucrative place, and a rich
wife, to whom he continually proclaimed the
glories of the "Land o' Cakes," gratified and
rewarded his cautious persevering endeavours
to replenish his "pouch" and "sporran;" for
all Scotchmen were Highlanders, and were
supposed only to have abandoned their kilts
in deference to decency and English prejudice
while in the act of crossing the border.

The Irishman of novel, tale, or comedy,
was a Phelim or a Patrick, always either
immersed in love or drink and often the
victim of both these exciting predicaments:
—telling humorous lies, making unheard-of
blunders, winning money by his tricking
cleverness, and losing it by his unaccountable
folly; leading a good-humoured, reckless,
rollicking life, breaking the hearts and
emptying the purses of maid, wife, and
widow; and carrying off every shade of
embarrassment with the cut-and-dry exclamation,
"By the powers!" —"Arrah, honey!"
—or, "Och, my jewel!"

All this served very well to amuse the
juvenile minds of our grand parents, but, in
these days when the wandering jewish
propensity to travel over the face of the earth,
has attained its full development, we find it
to be a well-ascertained fact that there are
Englishmen who affect fricassees more than
roast beef, drink French wines, and dress in
the French fashion; that Scotchmen may be
found, even in Scotland, who have neither
caution in their heads, avarice in their hearts,
nor kilts round their bodies. Facility of
intercourse has done this. The ancient
prophecy is being daily fulfilled:—"Many shall
run to and fro, and knowledge shall be