obtaining neither of its objects--a friend, not an author,
will at such a moment be the better companion.

The last chapter in Fuller's work contains much curious
reading on the ancient physicians, and their gymnastic
courses, which Asclepiades, the pleasantest of all the ancient
physicians, greatly studied; he was most fortunate in the
invention of exercises to supply the place of much physic, and
(says Fuller) no man in any age ever had the happiness to
obtain so general an applause; Pliny calls him the delight of
mankind. Admirable physician, who had so many ways, it
appears, to make physic agreeable! He invented the _lecti
pensiles_, or hanging beds, that the sick might be rocked to
sleep; which took so much at that time, that they became a
great luxury among the Romans.

Fuller judiciously does not recommend the gymnastic courses,
because horse-riding, for persons of delicate constitutions,
is preferable; he discovers too the reason why the ancients
did not introduce this mode of exercise--it arose from the
simple circumstance of their not knowing the use of stirrups,
which was a later invention. Riding with the ancients was,
therefore, only an exercise for the healthy and the robust; a
horse without stirrups was a formidable animal for a
valetudinarian.

LITERARY SCOTCHMEN.

What literary emigrations from the North of young men of genius,
seduced by a romantic passion for literary fame, and lured by the
golden prospects which the happier genius of some of their own
countrymen opened on them. A volume might be written on literary
Scotchmen, who have perished immaturely in this metropolis; little
known, and slightly connected, they have dropped away among us, and
scarcely left a vestige in the wrecks of their genius. Among them some
authors may be discovered who might have ranked, perhaps, in the first
classes of our literature. I shall select four out of as many hundred,
who were not entirely unknown to me; a romantic youth--a man of
genius--a brilliant prose writer--and a labourer in literature.

ISSAC RITSON (not the poetical antiquary) was a young man of genius,
who perished immaturely in this metropolis by attempting to exist by
the efforts of his pen.

In early youth he roved among his native mountains, with the battles
o