182 Notes of the Month on [Fes. 
But let us turn from the church-yard to the mart—the crowded, gay, 
and living promenade of the saleable. 
Novels are well received in this shewy receptacle of all animated 
things ; but there are distinctions. The historic novel is at a formidable 
discount. Like an old belle of ton, it has walked the world so long 
that no one cares how soon it walks out of it. Like the Duchess of 
, it has rank, but not fashion ; its figure has a touch of the grand- 
mother more than borrowed from its costume ; and we unanimously wish 
it out of the troubles of this life as soon as possible. 
The novel of Character is likely enough to follow this venerable 
maiden—but not in decrepitude, but in disdain. It finds dandyism the 
rage, and it leaves the ladies to find out what charm their happy fancies 
can, in honey-water wigs, kid gloves, Caoutchouc slippers, a cheek tip- 
ped with carmine, and a tongue lisping alternately the language of the 
boudoir and the Newgate Calendar. ; 
Medical books are good.—* Cum grano ;” that is, “ good for the 
writer, bad for the reader.” We have known a peer and foot-ball 
player-of the first rank of calcitration, read himself into an irresistible 
belief that every toe in his machinery was only an elongation of a foot of 
pure chalk ; and a country squire, of the usual squiralty faculties—a 
helluo of beef and mutton—a feeder before whom a turkey and chine 
vanished, as if they had suddenly resumed their original legs and wings 
—a three course and three bottle man—demonstrably convinced, by a 
week’s study of the “ Art of prolonging Life,” that he had not ano- 
ther week to live—that he had no more digestion than a dormouse—that 
his lungs were cobwebs, the coats of his stomach isinglass, and his liver 
and spleen nonentities. Medical books are good for the faculty, who thus 
play the double card of making pages and patients together. But of these 
the very best are the treatises on the “digestive functions.” These are 
the things that come home to the heart and bosom after all. What are 
the West Indian Question, or the Greek Loan, to a man who cannot eat 
a three hours’ dinner without being called to account for it by a night- 
mare? What is it to the martyr in the cause of taste whether the Russians 
pull off the Turks’ caps, or the Turks pull off the Russians’ beards, if 
every moment of table-delight is to be darkened into an age of suffering 
in bed—if every slice of venison is to rise up in vengeance in the shape 
of a fiery scymitar in the hand of a bottle of champagne, transformed 
into a giant breathing red-hot coals—if his three gentle bottles of Car- 
bonel’s best are to pursue him over hill and heath, like another Orestes, 
in full chace before the three Furies—or a perigord-pie open, at its 
delicate incision, a perpetually-expanding bird’s-eye view of the bottom- 
less pit ? 
The world has often heard the inquiries for a new pleasure, and for 
the philosopher’s-stone. They would be both revealed in the book that 
could teach an additional faculty of reception to the stomach, without 
the penalty of dying of our supper. But for the fear of apoplexy, the 
life of an alderman would be as happy as the life of a hog. The writer 
who could give us the indulgence of eating two dinners where we now 
dare eat but one, would cheer innumerable bosoms distended with more 
than sighs, might raise for himself a statue of diamond on a pyramid of 
gold, and, when he died, leave the residue of his professional profits to 
pay the national debt, build a bridge from Calais to Dover, cut through 
the Isthmus of Darien, and even satisfy the Scotch peerage. 
