s day, who promised to cure every disease.
Reading their advertisements, he is astonished that the English patient
should be so obstinate as to refuse health on such easy terms. We find
from Swift that astrologers and fortune-tellers were very plentiful in
these times. The following lament was written towards the end of the
last century upon the death of one of them--Dr. Safford, a quack and
fortune-teller.

"Lament, ye damsels of our London City,
Poor unprovided girls, though fair and witty,
Who masked would to his house in couples come,
To understand your matrimonial doom;
To know what kind of man you were to marry,
And how long time, poor things, you were to tarry;
Your oracle is silent; none can tell
On whom his astrologic mantle fell;
For he, when sick, refused the doctor's aid,
And only to his pills devotion paid,
Yet it was surely a most sad disaster,
The saucy pills at last should kill their master."

The travels of Baron Muenchausen were first published in 1786, and the
esteem in which they were held, and we may conclude their merit, was
shown by the numbers of editions rapidly succeeding each other, and by
the translations which were made into foreign languages. It is somewhat
strange that there should be a doubt with regard to the authorship of
so popular a work, but it is generally attributed to one Raspi, a German
who fled from the officers of justice to England. As, however, there is
little originality in the stories, we feel the less concerned at being
unable satisfactorily to trace their authorship--they were probably a
collection of the tales with which some old German baron was wont to
amuse his guests. A satire was evidently intended upon the marvellous
tales in which travellers and sportsmen indulged, and the first edition
is humbly dedicated to Mr. Bruce, whose accounts of Abyssinia were then
generally discredited. With the exception of this attack upon
travellers' tales there is nothing severe in the work--there is no
indelicacy or profanity--considerable falsity was, of course, necessary,
otherwise the accounts would have been merely fanciful. We have nothing
here to mar our amusement, except infinite extravagance. The author does
not claim much originality, and he admits an imitation of Gulliver's
Travels. But, no doubt, something is due to his insight in selection,
and to his ingenuity in telling the stories well and circumstantially;
otherwise this book would never