I0 g English and American Physique. [February, 
whose opportunities for getting fadts on this theme are 
exceptionally good, and whose capacity for observing and 
for reasoning justly from his observations is very great that 
n nearly all parts of Germany there can be found at the 
present day, and that too without very much seeking, cases 
of functional nervous disease in res Pe*a * tyP“ of 
we see in America ; and there has been of late years an 
focrease in these disorders. Even Irishmen horn in this 
land or brought here early are not entirely safe from the 
chances of nervous contagion. Retain • the 
Prose style is dying or sleeping m Great Britain , the 
countrymen of Milton and De Qumcey must cross the 
Channel if they would seek for living models of the literary 
« for the dramatic art. Literature takes its inspiration from 
the multiplication table, the newspaper supplying at whqjesa e 
the words, phrases, and witticisms with which the author 8 
clothe their borrowed thoughts. Suggestions, intimations, 
and adumbrations of the literary art are seen, but the Y a j[ e 
crushed under mountains of everydayisms. What everybody 
will read within twenty-four hours, what nobody will read 
Ser twenty-four hours, is the motto that rules the best 
periodicals in Great Britain : each issue washes out the p 
ceding: • the monthlies follow each other with haste, like 
waves g beating upon the shore, and, like them, are quickly 
lost in the sea of forgetfulness everlasting. 
Science, which in its highest phases is but poetry and 
philosophy in harness, is, in Great Britain, better than its 
literature; but, in nearly all the great realms of science, 
England would starve were she not kept constantly nourished 
at the breast of Germany. Outside of the circle of men of 
pure genius, like Crookes, the scientific men of England feel 
that they have reached the highest possibilities when they 
have given popular ledtures on what Germany discovered 
from five to twenty-five years ago. The profession of 
medicine— a ' part of science— lies near the bottom of the 
mfddle class buried under successive strata from royalties 
and nobilities through the church, the army, the navy, the 
bar and successful trade. The descendants of Young and 
Newton and Harvey are organising to drive a part of expen- 
mental nhvsiology from the empire. . 
As literary art declines in England the oratorical art seems 
to rise. Even speakers of but little fame are, many of them, 
easv and flowing, at times rapid as well as clear m their 
utterances ; so much like Americans that only peculiarities 
nf sneech suggest the land of their birth. , . 
Fear of new sciences and philosophies is a most interesting 
