hey do!_ We find that as _all_ the Prussian
cordons have been dissolved, _their vessels_ are excluded from entrance
into certain places on the Elbe. What a horrid state of things! But, as
a reference will shew, this was one of the things stated in my first
letter as likely to occur: it is surely a fit subject for immediate
arrangement between governments. In the mean time, we cannot but profit
by the great lesson just received from Austria.

I shall add no more on the present occasion, than that my last
information from Edinburgh notifies the death, from _Scotch cholera_,
of two respectable females in that city, after an illness of only a few
hours.

LETTER VI.

At a moment when the subject of cholera has become so deeply
interesting, the good of the public can surely not be better consulted
by the press than when it devotes its columns (even to the exclusion of
some political and other questions of importance) to details of plain
facts connected with the contagious or non-contagious nature of that
malady--a _question beyond all others regarding it, of most importance_,
for upon it must hinge all sanatory or conservative regulations, and a
mistake must, in the event of an epidemic breaking out, directly involve
thousands in ruin. In the case of felony, where but the life of a single
individual is at stake--nay, not only in the case of felony, but in the
case of a simple misdemeanour, or even in the simple case of debt--we
see the questions of yes or no examined by the Judges of the land with
due rigour; while, on the point to which I refer, and which affects
so deeply the dearest interests of whole communities, evidence has
been acted upon so vague as to make some people fancy that we have
retrograded to the age of witchcraft. Be it recollected that we shall
not have the same excuse as some of our continental neighbours had for
running into frightful errors--for we have their dear-bought experience
laid broadly before us; and to profit duly by it, it only requires a
scrutiny by a tribunal, wholly, if you please, non-medical, such as may
be formed within an hour in this metropolis; nothing short of this will
do. All, till then, will be vacillation; and when the enemy does come in
force, we shall find ourselves just as much at a loss how to act as our
continental neighbours were on the first appearance of cholera among
them; I say after its first appearance, for we find that they all
discovered, plainly enough