winds of heaven were scattered pell-mell,
helter-skelter, by the unhesitating hand of
Dr. Hill, all the amenities, all the decencies,
all the proprieties, of society, of science, of
philosophy, of literature. His sarcasms were
squandered abroad indiscriminately. Even
Martin Folkes, staunchest of kindly supporters,
passed not unscathed. All the scientific
collectors were jeered at, in succession. The
Antiquarian Society had its members derided
as medal-scrapers and antediluvian knife-
grinders. The conchologists were depicted
as cockle-shell merchants. The naturalists
were described as recording pompous
histories of sticklebacks and cockchafers. One
of the foremost of the living entomologists,
Henry Baker, was represented under the
ludicrous aspect of a person displaying the
peristaltic motion of the bowels in a louse, by the
aid of the microscope. The doctorial Pasquin,
the Quack Juvenal, played off his fantastic
tricks against the learned, variously, under
his own name, under a false name, and, at
times also, and these frequent times,
anonymously. Among the pseudonyms of Dr. Hill
in this way, were the purely imaginary
names of Dr. Crine and Dr. Uvedaile.

But where he acquitted himself most
effectively was in his grand attack upon the
Royal Society by which he conceived himself
to have been most shamefully aggrieved.
It was an attack that commenced with a
humorous prose satire of Hill's, entitled
Dissertation on Royal Societies, in a letter
(to his friend) from a Sclavonian Nobleman.
This production was rapidly followed
up by a ponderous quarto volume, in
external appearance and internal arrangement
as like as two peas to a volume of the
Philosophical Transactions: the name of the
second and, in every respect, the far weightier
sarcasm, being simply, A Review of the Royal
Society, in Eight Parts: several of the
divisions being suggestive, in the midst of all
their facetious absurdities (as in the
instance of the proposed plan for forming a
Hortus siccus), of considerable, and some
of it really valuable, information. The
crowning vengeance of all found vent in
the richest hoax, perhaps, ever played off
upon a solemn council of grave and reverend
seigneurs. Happily for us, Horace
Walpole has told the tale, and told it too
with piquancy in one of the drollest
fragments of his motley and voluminous
correspondence. The pleasantest version of
it, however, because the one marked by
the most fantastically punctilious particularity
in regard to the details, is the narrative
of it given by Sir John Hill's historian in
the Biographie Universelle.

It happened in the thick of Bardana
Hill's squabbles with the Royal Society,
that much was daily talked in society
and printed in the newspapers, about the
marvellous cures effected by the employment
of tar-water, eau de goudron. One
morning the postal delivery from the
provinces brought to the Secretary of the
Royal Society a letter addressed to him in
his official capacity by a certain so-called
medical practitioner at Portsmouth. The
communication related how the writer of
it had recently had confided to his care,
a poor sailor whose leg had been broken,
by a fall from the mast-head. The Secretary
was further informed by his correspondent
that, having brought the broken
parts together and properly adjusted them,
by means of bandages, the writer had then
carefully bathed them with tar-water—and
such, continued the Portsmouth physician
had been the miraculous effect already
produced by the application, that within a
few days, the sailor had been enabled
to use his leg as well as he had ever
used it before the accident. At the very
next meeting of the Royal Society this
remarkable document was submitted to its
consideraiton. It was read, and immediately
originated an animated discussion which,
we are informed by contemporary
authorities, was yet in active progress when
another letter, stamped with the Portsmouth
postmark, was delivered into the
hands of the Secretary. A letter, this was,
in which the imaginary doctor informed the
Royal Society that he had omitted to mention
one trifling circumstance in connection with
the cure: namely, that the sailor's leg was
a wooden leg!

Bardana Hill, Sir John, Dr. Crine, Dr.
Uvedaile, call him what you will—for he, of
course, was this wicked, hypothetical, sea-
side Esculapius—had avenged himself.

Mr. CHARLES DICKENS
WILL READ AT ST. MARTIN'S HALL:

On WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, JUNE 23rd, at Three, The
Story of Little Dombey.

On THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE 24th, at Eight, The
Christmas Carol.

Each Reading will last Two Hours.

PLACES:—Stalls (numbered and reserved), Five
Shillings; Area and Galleries, Half-a-crown; Unreserved
Seats, One Shilling. Tickets to be had at Messrs. Chapman
and Hall's, Publishers, 193 Piccadilly; and at
St. Martin's Hall, Long Acre.

Now ready, price Five Shillings and Sixpence,
bound in cloth,

THE SEVENTEENTH VOLUME
of
HOUSEHOLD WORDS

Containing the  Numbers issued between the Nineteenth
of December last year, and the Twelth of June in
the present year.

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