and with a single tap on the sconce send him skirling and
skeltering down the staircase. And, to pass from great things to small, we
avouch that the gaunt and diverting man of medicine of whom frequent and
honourable mention is made in the pages of Omoo, did inspire us with a
notion of his reality, of which, up to the present time of writing, we
have been unable wholly to divest ourselves. When we first took up Dr
Coulter's narrative of adventure in America and the Southern Seas, it was
with the hope, almost with the expectation, that the original Dr
Longghost, encouraged by his former shipmate's example, had temporarily
exchanged scalpel for goosequill, and indited an account of the dangers he
had run since his affectionate parting with Typee on the pleasant shores
of Tahiti. We were disappointed. To say nothing of diversity of dates, and
other circumstances, rendering identity improbable, Longghost of the
"Julia" would have written, we are well assured, a far quainter and more
spicy book than that lately launched by Coulter of the "Stratford." It
would have been of fuller flavour, and also more elegant, the result of
the goblin mediciner's wild seafaring life, grafted on his old Lucullian
reminiscences, on the shadowy _souvenir_ of those happy days when he fed
on salmis, and flirted with duchesses, long, long before he dreamed of
cruising after whales, and sharing the filthy inconveniences of little
Jule's detestable forecastle. It would have been, to the narrative of John
Coulter, M.D., as ripe Falernian or racy hock, to ale of some strength but
middling flavour, where there is no stint of malt, but which has been
somewhat spoiled in the brew. We are quite certain that the tales of
Caffrarian lion-hunts, with which Longghost cheered the dull watches of
the night, and beguiled the Julia's mariners of their wonder, were of very
different kidney to the pig-and-nigger-killing narratives of Mr Coulter.
Of this, we repeat, we are morally certain; but as we like, unnecessary
though it be, to have our convictions confirmed through the medium of our
optics, we now summon Doctor Longghost to commence, the very instant this
number of the _Magazine_ reaches his hands--and reach them it assuredly
will, though his present abode be in farthest Ind or frozen Greenland--a
detailed and _bona fide_ history of his Life and Adventures, from the day
he chipped the shell up to that upon which he shall send to press the last
sheet of his valua