116 CRITICAL NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



pulse which makes it spring from the bosom of the earth with an 

 upright jet of eight or nine feet of elevation, from the aperture in 

 the rocky crust underneath the building raised over it ?" A central 

 fire, is the solemn response. The Sprudel, then, is the ardent off- 

 spring of an unquiet and relentless agent, which fills the atmosphere 

 with hot vapours, and impetuously over-runs all the bounds whereby 

 art has vainly attempted to restrain its endless throes. The size, 

 height, and appearance of its jettings is for ever varying; and in 

 its upward and downward course it is accompanied by a noise com- 

 bining that of the splashing of a falling cataract and of the boiling of 

 a vast cauldron of water — a noise which, like the stream of water it 

 accompanies, has ceaselessly continued for numberless centuries — a 

 noise which, in times of darkness and superstition, would have in- 

 duced man to fall pi-ostrate, offering to its cryptic cause the homage 

 of his amazement and adoration. 



One pint of the Cai'lsbad thermal water contains 311 grains of 

 solid saline substances, and a large proportion of these consists of 

 glaubcr and common salt, with carbonate of soda, and traces of iron 

 and iodine : its aeriform fluids are said to be carbonic acid gas and 

 sulphuretted hydrogen, but this last is doubtful. It emerges from 

 its source at 170°, F., of temperatui'e. This water emits an ani- 

 vial smell ; its first taste is saltisli, its after-taste becomes alkaline. 

 The Sprudel spring is useful in some classes of complaints ; it dissi- 

 pates adhesions; but " it is the despondent, dejected, misanthropic, 

 fidgety, pusillanimous, irritable, outrageous, morose, sulky, weak- 

 minded, whimsical, and often despairing hypochondriac — made so by 

 continued indigestion, by obstinate and unremitting gout, by affec- 

 tions of the nerves of sympatliy and of the gastric region, and by 

 other equally active causes — that Carlsbad seems jjre-eminently to 

 favour." The companion of Dr. G.'s two sons drank of all the 

 springs ; he attacked the Sprudel at once, and in quantities of several 

 goblets, and the condition of the system which followed was always 

 one of comfort. 



Great must be the delight derived by the philanthropic spirit from 

 meditation on a scene of the Sprudel at the balmy hour of morn, so 

 favourable to the creations of ideality and devotion. By Dr. Gran- 

 ville a scene of this sort and the scenery are thus depictured : — 



" The eacerness with which the different people of Carlsbad, of both sexes, 

 rush towards the S])rudel at siK o'clock in the morning, to partake of its sa- 

 lutary waters, is an interesting sight. In its ajipearance the motley throng 

 is quite theatrical, and the many-shaped and many-coloured costumes worn 

 bv them form a living .Ikistration of geography. The multitudinous faces of 

 ■which that throng consists — their divers modes of drinking the hot mineral 

 fluid — the various effects produced by it on their countenances— the accumu- 

 lation of individual cases of disease concentrated under one roof, among 

 which the eye of the medical man detects not a few disorders that are canker- 

 ing their victims — all these things I saw and felt at my first visit. The 

 company assembled was very numerous : the colonnade in front of the source 

 was full. The restless nudlilude moved to and fro in ever\' jiart and in 

 every direction of that covered jiromenade, which runs between a narrow 



