Gimp, stiff and starched, the subdued English
teacher, the snuffy French governess, the
stocks, the backboard, the pinafores, the bread
and butter, and the French mark? Or do
the young ladies wear trencher caps and
black gowns? Do they go to chapel in
surplices, and fudge impositions, and have wine
parties, and slang bargees, and cap proctors,
and sport their oak? Are they rusticated if
they are naughty? Are they ever plucked
for their little-go? I should like to see a
young lady plucked for her little-go.

As for the boys' schools, their name begins
with an L and ends with an N. Plenty of
colleges of course; Reverend Doctors, M.A.'s,
Graduates of the university willing to take
charge of, &c., Gentlemen who have
devoted some years to the instruction of, &c.,
Clergymen most anxious to recommend an,
&c., Capri is one huge trap hung with toasted
cheese, and the poor little boy-mice are
caught in it incessantly. It is good to see
the little lads disporting themselves on the
beach, or at cricket in the fields, or filing
along the cliff, two and two, in every variety
of cap and jacket, looking lovingly in at the
pastrycooks.' I should like to have boys at
school at Capri, that I might come down on
Saturday, and tip them, and give them tarts
at Button's. Yet there are some boys I see
in these scholastic processions, who make me
melancholy. Fatherless boys; boys with dark
eyes whose parents are far away in burning
India, and who have found but a hard step-
school-father in Doctor Spanker. They have
an ugly habit too, of sending sick boys to
school at Capri—poor wizen, pale-faced
children who limp wearily on crutches after the
healthful crew, or are drawn along in the
wake of the young band in invalid-chairs, all
muffled up in shawls and bandages, and gaze,
ah! so wistfully, at the gambolling children
and caracoling horses, and come here to
be doctored and taught—to learn their
lessons—and die.

The College of Physicians, the Royal College
of Surgeons, the Company of Apothecaries,
the Faculty of Homoepathists; the
confraternity of Hydropathists, the Hygeian heretics,
or College of Health-Arians, the great
Professorial guild of Pill and Ointment
vendors; nay, even the irregular Cossacks of
medical science—the Bardolphs, Nyms, and
Pistols of Field-Marshal Sangrado's army—
rubbers, scrapers, counter-irritators, pitch-
plaisterers, brandy-and-salt dosers, and similar
free lances of physics—known sometimes, I
believe, by the generic name of quacks—all
these flourish at Capri, a very forest of green
bay-trees, and wax exceeding rich. For
there are so many really sick people who
come to this Capri in search of health, that
the convalescent natives, perhaps in deference
to their visitors, perhaps by that contagious
fancy which leads people to throw themselves
off the Monument, and write five-act
tragedies, and start High Tory newspapers,
straightway either imagine that they have
something the matter with them, and call in
the doctor forthwith, or feel that the mantle
of Esculapius has descended upon their
shoulders; and, purchasing a second-hand
mortar and half-a-dozen globular bottles, set
up as doctors on their own account. To
be a doctor, or to be doctored, are the two
conditions of existence at Capri. When a
man hasn't a bad leg of his own, he bethinks
him of his next-door neighbour, who has one
of fifteen years' standing, and insists upon
curing it. Come to Capri, and you shall at
length know who are the purchasers of
Professor Swalloway, and Professor Methusaleh,
and Doctor Druggem and Widow Wobble's
pills; who are the persons who invest capital
in old Doctor Isaac Laquedem's Tonic of
Timbuctoo, and Messrs. Mullygrubbs'
medicated ginger-beer, and Madame de Pompadour's
farinaceous food; and how the
patentees of those inestimable medicines acquire
colossal fortunes. In the stream of equipages
in the streets, the doctors' sly brougham
spots the gay procession like pips on an ivory
domino. Call on your rich aunt; you are
almost sure to meet the dentist coming in,
or the chiropodist coming out, or Mr. Wollop
the great gymnastic doctor's carriage (he
makes five thousand a-year by kneading
people's joints, and cannot spell) at the door.
In the remote slums of Capri (for even Capri
has slums), in tarry little by-lanes and fishy
hovels, where barricades of seines and nets
hung out to dry impede the passage, and the
little children toddle about in bucket-boots
and sou'-wester hats, you may discover,
grizzling over saucepans or mumping on
patchwork counterpanes, preposterous old
women in pea-jackets and Welsh-wigs,
always infirm, often bed-ridden—magging,
obstinate, superstitious, ignorant crones—who
yet possess wonderful reputations as
doctoresses, and are the holders of dire medicaments;
grim recipes, "as was took by his
blessed majesty for the innards," and
warranted to work marvellous cures. They
cannot read or write, these ancient ladies;
they moan in their own sick-beds, and dun
the parish surgeon for doctor's stuff; yet they
cure all bodily complaints of others. Solemn
housekeepers come to Cod's Head Alley or
Hard Roe Lane, sent by the Marchioness of
Capri, to consult these old women. If they
cannot cure, at least they have the
consolation of knowing that they thwart the
regular physician, and counteract the effect
of his medicines, and render his guinea-visit
null and void. Do I call people simpletons
for running after quacks here at Capri, or
throughout the mortal world? No—not I.
How do we know—what do we know?
Goody Fishbone's salted roe of a herring,
beaten up in a glass of rhubarb and gin, and
swallowed fasting, may do us good. A man
believes in quacks, as a man believes in
ghosts; and how many of the wisest of us