they could not have done, had not the latter been considered the head; and we are moreover told in history, that Menenius Agrippa appeased an insurrection of the populace, simply by reminding them that the senate was as much entitled to their obedience, as was the stomach to the implicit subserviency of all the members, including the head:-Happy the people who listen with such reverence to the dictates of the digestive ventricle! But we have still higher authority for the opinions of the ancient nations upon this subject, some of whom seem to have invested it with divine honours, Philip expressly asserting, "There are many whose god is their belly." If we search the Jewish Proverbs again for the popular opinion as to the seat of the soul, we shall find it distinctly indicated in the following passage: "The words of a tale bearer go down into the innermost parts of the belly, and wound the very bottom of the soul;" and in another place," Preserve the lessons of wisdom; if thou keep it within thy belly, in thine heart, it will not break out upon thy lips."-Many people, perhaps, are not aware that they have a sort of Boa Constrictor within them, the great alimentary canal being generally six times the length of the body to which it appertains, though it always lies coiled up like a serpent; and if we reflect that the reptile which it so closely resembles, was in ancient times the great type of wisdom and subtlety as well as of eternity, we shall be the less surprised that they sagaciously domiciliated the soul in this snakelike intestine. With what contradictory reluctance do we moderns, affording justice by halves, make the stomach responsible for our melancholy thoughts, while all our "nimble, fiery and delectable shapes," must forsooth be emanations from the skull, a body in its very nature bulbous, inert, opaque. Heavens! what heaped-up libels are thrown upon the spleen, one of the most innocent of our viscera! for what fantastic and yet melancholy capriccios is it not indicted; Pope himself, no very credulous personage, not hesitating to accuse it of converting men into talkative goose pies, and maidens into bottles! And thou too, recipient of the liver, much-injured Hypochondre! have not maligners charged thee with gloom, wretchedness, horror, and every atrabilarious enormity with which we are afflicted, even up to madness itself, as if the stomach could deprive us of reason, without having the power to confer it? What infatuation possesses us? When we are deficient in virtuous courage we arraign our intestines, accusing ourselves of being lily or pigeon-livered and lacking gall; an insult sticks in our gizzard; we speak of learning as the food of the mind, of pedants who have swallowed more reading that they can digest; and although no metaphor can make the fumes of water mount into the head, we talk of a poet who has once tasted the Pierian spring, as having his imaginative faculty instantly inspired. We attribute to the stomach, in short, all the functions of the soul, and yet deny its residence where these its magisterial powers are perpetually exercised. Verily we are a fantastical generation. Having, as we flatter ourselves, satisfactorily restored this dementated ventricle to its due honours, we shall have the less to say upon the insubordination of modern stomachs, because it is to be feared there are very few of our readers sufficiently ventripotent to deny the fact. Our omnivorous ancestors, fearless of bile and defying indigestion, made every thing disappear before them; the coats of their stomach were dreadnoughts, they had nothing to do but enact the words of the song which we can only quote, and "Masticate, denticate, chump, grind, and swallow," while victuals could be found and jaws would wag. How have we fallen off from the sprightly appetite and loyal viscera of the Emperor Clodius Albinus, who would swallow for his breakfast 500 figs, 100 peaches, 10 melons, 20 pounds weight of grapes, 100 gnat-snappers and 400 oysters—a meal which moveth Lipsius irreverently to ejaculate, "Fie upon him; God keep such a curse from the earth!" Our Danish Sovereign Hardiknute was so indiscriminate a gormandizer, that he was called by an historian Bocca di Porco, or swine's mouth; and our records are by no means deficient in instances of men to whom a similar compliment might justly be applied. But we pigmy-boweled performers of the present day are a squeamish and qualmy race, living in perpetual terror of the tyrant Bile, and in subjection to the night-mare Indigestion; poring over Peptic Precepts, Cook's Oracles, Accum's Poison in the pot, and Philip's Treatise on the Stomach, and yet after all unable to bring that eternal focus of revolt and disorder, that Ireland of our bodily system, into the peaceful performance of its peristaltic duties. Stomach-ichs for stomach-aches are by no means lacking: calomel we gulp in all its manifold modifications; and pills of all calibres and constructions, like so many balls and bullets, do we fire in successive volleys against our mutinous viscera, but all in vain. They "bear a charmed life;" the curse of the serpent is upon us, and all our miseries are condemned to go upon the stomach. Sir John Barleycorn, the liege lord of our sturdy progenitors, is proscribed and excommunicated by our modern anti-bilious doctors; one forbids solids, another liquids; fish, flesh, and fowl, are alternately under ban and prohibition; this sends us to Cheltenham, that to Harrogate, a third to Tunbridge; we pay all and obey all, and finally all return as bilious, blue-pillish, and blue-devilish as ever, while the birds and beasts that surround us are most provokingly gormandizing without the smallest necessity for calling in Abernethy, or consulting Wilson Philip. Ostriches, since that celebrated one of old who swallowed the key of the cellar, continue their ferrugivorous propensities with impunity; fowls, for the purpose of triturating their food, swallow and digest small flints, which Mr. Macadam should look to, if, as it is rumoured, his pounding process is to be introduced in the Poultry; and Cormorants will swallow half a dozen times their own weight in a day without the aid of Lady de Crespigny's dinner-pills. It is really too much that we should be at the same moment half choked with bile, and ready to burst with envy. And what is the hidden cause of this recent change in our system, of this inappeasable spirit of rebellion in our intestines? This is the question we must previously decide if we would apply an efficient remedy to the disease. Some have attributed it to the great increase of riches and consequent diffusion of luxury, whereby indolence of limbs and activity of jaws, perilous concomitants for the health, have been united in a greater number of individuals than formerly; some to the villainous adulteration of all our victuals; some to the lateness of our dinner-hours, whence the alimentary region is alternately irritated by inanition, and burthened with over-repletion. Shrewd and plausible surmises are these, perhaps true to a limited and subsidiary extent, but still far from embracing the paramount cause of the evil. No; if we would fathom this mystery to the bottom, we must bear in mind what has been already so happily established-videlicet, that the stomach is the seat of thought; and if we only allow it the same power of sympathy as the rest of our system is known to possess, we shall be instantly furnished with a clue to the whole enigma. If we can tell from the odour or discoloration of a vessel what liquor it has contained; if the face of man is so modulated by his spirit as to become the index of his soul; if the inspirer, in short, invariably stamps its character upon the organ, we have only to inquire the mental peculiarity of the age, in order to know with certainty its effect upon the stomach, which is the seat of the mind. And what is the predominant passion of modern times, but rebellion, revolution, Radicalism, Carbonarism, and moral disorder, whence by sympathy we have the physical riots of bile, livercomplaints, sourness, grumbling in the gizzard, rejection of legitimate food, vomitings, nausea, stubbornness, and in one word Insubordination of the stomach? How can we have intestine commotions in our provinces without expecting them in our bowels? or hold ourselves entitled to digest our food, when we are daily violating some digest of political law? This is the secret of all our visceral derangements, from dysentery to constipation, from the pericardium to the peritonæum; and having pointed out the real seat and cause of the evil, we will not travel beyond our province, but leave to others the suggestion of the proper remedy. To us it appears a case that may especially come within the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Society, for the preservation of our bodily is surely not less important than that of our political constitution; and as our stomachs have manifestly been disordered by the action of our minds, so may our deceased minds be best medicated by re-action of the viscera. The Society has long gone against the stomach of the nation; and if they wish to take their revenge, at the same time that they render themselves really useful, they should henceforward go against the nation's stomach. TO ANNE. THIS scene, fair Anne, this starry hour, To smile upon-and smiles on thee. The clouds, that dimm'd the day, have ceased Shewing that Nature owns, at least, One tint that emulates thine eye. The Zephyr's breath, so like thine own And timid aspen-leaf alone, To wanton 'mid thy lighter hair. The dews that on the hare-bells seem Dear as thyself the world seems now, C. L. LETTERS FROM THE EAST.-NO. XI. Alexandria. AT an early hour on the following day, we quitted this Arab camp. The wilderness through which we travelled, afforded a variety of romantic scenes. In a few hours we came to a long and steep defile, and soon afterwards reached a well, the only one in the surrounding region: it was in the sand, and a flight of steps descended to it. The Arabs stopped to give their camels water here, and said we should soon be at their camp. It was near mid-day when we arrived at it. It consisted of fourteen tents ranged in a line, the chief's being at the end; he gave us the tent adjoining his own, and we took possession of our new abode. All these tents had only three sides, were flat at top, and quite open in front. Each contained a family, by whom these wanderers were received with joy; indeed they seemed to feel that they were now at their own home and their own threshold. But such a home as that Arab camp was, has probably been but rarely seen; it was a perfect prison of nature, and stood in the midst of a naked valley of white sand, about three hundred yards broad and a mile in length, and was inclosed on every side by black and lofty precipices: we had entered it by a winding and narrow defile, and it appeared to have no outlet. It was useless for our captors to keep a strict eye over our motions, as they had hitherto done, for every attempt at escape would have been in vain. They gave us some bread and dates for dinner, and we then strove to amuse ourselves as well as we could. But so destitute was this place of all resources, either for the imagination or the senses, and so dreary was its aspect, that our spirits sunk involuntarily, and the hours passed most heavily along. Could the eye but have rested on one cheering object, a spot of verdure or shade, even a lonely palm-tree, there would have been something to have solaced our tædium; but from morning till night nothing was to be seen but the precipices and the bright sand, on which the sun glared so fiercely, that it was often painful to gaze upon. The other sheiks now parted from Hassan, and went to their homes. In the evening we sat round the fire at the door of our tent, drank coffee, and smoked a pipe to pass the time, and the Arabs sometimes joined us. The hatred these people bear to the monks is excessive; they made use of every oath in their language when abusing them, and a chief took a piece of brown bread from his vest and held it up-" Is this good,” said he, "for us to eat, while in the convent they have it so white ?” The sons of devils and of perdition, they declared, should not be feasting within their walls in that manner. Another cause of their hatred was the Book of Might, which they protested and believed the priests kept in the convent, and buried it for the greater part of the year in the earth. They said this book had power, whenever it was opened and exposed to the air, to bring rain upon the earth, so that their hearts were made glad, and their deserts refreshed. But the priests, out of the malice they bore to the Arabs, kept it in general buried deep; in consequence they were seldom blessed with any rain. The ignorance of these Bedouins was very great; they professed to be Mohammedans, but they never made use of prayer, nor was the least appearance of devotion ever observable amongst them. Even in this secluded spot so inveterate is the force of habit, that the Arab women, whenever they made their appearance, had their faces closely veiled. Hassan had two wives, Amra and Mirrha, the one young and the other elderly, and we often heard their voices in the adjoining tent; sometimes they appeared to be in altercation, from the shrill and scolding tone of the senior bride. To vary the scene, I sometimes climbed up the rocks, and sat for hours, but the view was bounded by the narrow glen beneath, and the precipices above, behind which the sun sunk at an early hour; and when the gloom of evening fell, and the air became chill, we were glad to assemble in our tent round a fire. It is said that men in a state of extreme hunger often dream of banquets and tables of luxury :—the imagination was here perpetually wandering to scenes of verdure and loveliness; often Crusoe's lonely island floated before me, and groves of orangetrees, sweet fountains, and banks of perfume, became almost embodied in this scene of desolation. There was no water nearer to the camp than the well at which we stopped on our approach, and the camels were sent there every day. No situation could be better adapted to the Bedouins than this: it was scarcely possible for a stranger to discover it, and it was still more difficult to attack it. Yet their condition possessed few things to attach them to it, save its unbounded liberty: surrounded by lands of despotism, they were beyond the reach of power or pursuit, and might truly call these wild and waste regions their own. In appearance these men were light and active, though very slender, and had all of them expressive dark eyes and beautiful teeth. The quantity of food they consumed was excessively small, little else than coarse cake baked in the embers, and a little coffee twice a day. They were not very cleanly in their way of eating; for their favourite dish, of which they invited us to partake, consisted of a number of warm cakes, broken up into a large wooden vessel, a quantity of warm water was then poured on them, and, some fat being also mixed, the whole was stirred well with the hand; and then the Arabs formed in a circle round the dish, and plunged their dark hands promiscuously into it. After they had devoured about half the contents, they rose, and another circle took their place and finished them. One evening, however, they killed a goat, which they procured from the mountains, for our supper, and we formed in a large party about it; and though the pieces of meat and bones into which the poor animal was dissected, were by no means sightly or delicate, the whole was devoured without ceremony. These people appeared to live on the most kind and amicable terms with each other, as if they formed but one large family. But the silence of the camp was very oppressive, the human voice was not often heard, and the tread of the foot was scarcely distinguishable on the soft sand. The women sometimes passed the door of our abode, but they dared not stop even to gaze. One evening, as we were sitting in the tent and engaged in conversation, the curtain of Hassan's tent was slowly lifted up behind, and a dark hand, the wrist loaded with massive bracelets of silver and horn, made its appearance, and, soon after, the countenance of the young wife of Hassan. The girl gazed earnestly at the Christians, of whose nation she had probably never seen one before, and then pointed expressively to her eyes, and waved her hand to and fro; she |