d that without
the aid of a line-of-battle ship, or at least a frigate, your position
was no longer tenable. From the moment, my dear H----, that you can
establish this fact, you start into life as an able and active Minister,
imbued with thoroughly British principles--an active asserter of what is
due to his country's rights and dignity, not truckling to court favor,
or tamely submitting to royal impertinences; not like the noble lord
at this place, or the more subservient viscount at that, but, in plain
words, an admirable public servant, whose reward, whatever courts and
cabinets may do, will always be willingly accorded by a grateful nation.

I am afraid this sketch of a special envoy's career will scarcely tempt
you to exchange for a mission abroad! And you are quite right, my dear
friend. It is a very unrewarding profession. I often wish myself that
I had taken something in the colonies, or gone into the Church, or some
other career which had given me time and opportunity to look after my
health,--of which, by the way, I have but an indifferent account to
render you. These people here can't hit it off at all, Harcourt; they
keep muddling away about indigestion, deranged functions, and the rest
of it. The mischief is in the blood,--I mean, in the undue distribution
of the blood. So Treysenac, the man of Bagneres, proved to me. There
is a flux and reflux in us, as in the tides, and when, from deficient
energy or lax muscular power, that ceases, we are all driven by
artificial means to remedy the defect. Treysenac's theory is position.
By a number of ingeniously contrived positions he accomplishes an
artificial congestion of any part he pleases; and in his establishment
at Bagneres you may see some fifty people strung up by the arms and
legs, by the waists or the ankles, in the most marvellous manner, and
with truly fabulous success. I myself passed three mornings suspended by
the middle, like the sheep in the decoration of the Golden Fleece, and
was amazed at the strange sensations I experienced before I was cut
down.

You know the obstinacy with which the medical people reject every
discovery in the art, and only sanction its employment when the world
has decreed in its favor. You will, therefore, not be surprised to hear
that Larrey and Cooper, to whom I wrote about Treysenac's theory, sent
me very unsatisfactory, indeed very unseemly, replies. I have resolved,
however, not to let the thing drop, and am determine