alities against truth, may
for a time prevail and keep her at the bottom of her well, from whence
nevertheless she emergeth sooner or later, and strikes the eyes of
all who do not keep them shut." I cannot resist the temptation of
illustrating the bishop's belief in the wonderful powers of his remedy,
by a few sentences from different parts of his essay. "The hardness
of stubbed vulgar constitutions renders them insensible of a thousand
things that fret and gall those delicate people, who, as if their skin
was peeled off, feel to the quick everything that touches them. The
tender nerves and low spirits of such poor creatures would be much
relieved by the use of Tar Water, which might prolong and cheer their
lives." "It [the Tar Water] may be made stronger for brute beasts, as
horses, in whose disorders I have found it very useful." "This same
water will also give charitable relief to the ladies, who often want it
more than the parish poor; being many of them never able to make a good
meal, and sitting pale, puny, and forbidden, like ghosts, at their own
table, victims of vapors and indigestion." It does not appear among the
virtues of Tar Water that "children cried for it," as for some of our
modern remedies, but the bishop says, "I have known children take it
for above six months together with great benefit, and without any
inconvenience; and after long and repeated experience I do esteem it
a most excellent diet drink, fitted to all seasons and ages." After
mentioning its usefulness in febrile complaints, he says: "I have had
all this confirmed by my own experience in the late sickly season of the
year one thousand seven hundred and forty-one, having had twenty-five
fevers in my own family cured by this medicinal water, drunk copiously."
And to finish these extracts with a most important suggestion for the
improvement of the British nation: "It is much to be lamented that our
Insulars who act and think so much for themselves, should yet, from
grossness of air and diet, grow stupid or doat sooner than other people,
who, by virtue of elastic air, water-drinking, and light food, preserve
their faculties to extreme old age; an advantage which may perhaps
be approached, if not equaled, even in these regions, by Tar Water,
temperance, and early hours."

Berkeley died at the age of about seventy; he might have lived longer,
but his fatal illness was so sudden that there was not time enough to
stir up a quart of the panacea.