INSUBORDINATION OF MODERN STOMACHS.

"SIR," said Dr. Longwind, beginning one of his usual periods with more thau his customary pomposity," no one can develope the inscrutable affinities which connect the moral and physical world, occasioning them perpetually to act and re-act upon one another: how do you explain, you who pretend to explain

suppose nature to be less provident in this respect than men? We admit all the affections of our nature to emanate from the heart, which is coming very near to the stomach, and consequently to the truth; while we absurdly give the head credit for the higher exercises of an intellectual faculty, which we do not by any means admit in our vulgar parlance. The truth of the phrase may, perhaps, be hardly deemed a sufficient excuse for its coarseness when the common people familiarly say of a stupid fellow, that he has "no guts in his brains,' yet it may be defended as a shrewd, sound, and pertinent expression, spite of its cacophony to fastidious ears polite. Nay, do not they who even affect purism in their discourse, almost unconsciously assign all our emotions to the intestinal region, when they habitually say of a coward, that he has no stomach for fighting, and of themselves when any thing lingers unpleasantly in their recollection, that it sticks in their stomach? and have they not warrant of authority from our best authors for making this important ventrical the organ of almost every human affection? Spenser could even read the expression of a man's stomach in his face---"Stern was his look, and full of stomach;" Shakspeare, wishing to give an idea of Wolsey's ambitious mind, tells us that he was a man" of an unbounded stomach;" and speaking elsewhere of two pugnacious adversaries, he exclaims "High-stomach'd are they both and full of ire," whence in all probability arose our term of belly-gerent powers applied to parties in a state of hostility. Butler talks of the trumpet and drum, "That make the warrior's stomach come," thus using the word as synonymous with courage; and, in this figurative sense, it is obvious that the sick Hibernian perpetrated no bull when he consented to have a blister put upon his back, although, as he said, "it went quite against his stomach."

the belly, which they could not have done, had not the latter been considered the head; and we are moreover told in history, that Menenius Agrippa appeased an insurrection of the populace, simply by reminding them that the senate was as much entitled to their obedience, as was the stomach to the implicit subserviency of all the members, including the head:---Happy the people who listen with such reverence to the dictates of the digestive ventricle!

But we have still higher authority for the opinions of the ancient nations upon this subject, some of whom seem to have invested it with divine honours, Philip expressly asserting, "There are many whose god is their belly." If we search the Jewish Proverbs again for the popular opinion as to the seat of the soul, we shall find it distinctly indicated in the following passage: "The words of a tale-bearer go down into the innermost part of the belly, and wound the very bottom of the soul;" and in another place, "Preserve the lessons of wisdom; if thou keep it within thy belly, in thine heart, it will not break out upon thy lips."---Many people, perhaps, are not aware that they have a sort of Boa Constrictor within them, the great alimentary canal being generally six times the length of the body to which it appertains, though it always lies coiled up like a serpent; and if we reflect that the reptile which it so closely resembles, was in ancient times the great type of wisdom and subtilty as well as of eternity, we shall be the less surprised that they sagaciously domiciliated the soul in this snake-like intestine. With what contradictory reluc tance do we moderns, affording justice by halves, make the stomach responsible for our melancholy thoughts, while all our "nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes," must forsooth be emanations from the skull, a body in its very nature bulbous, Do we not currently say of a 'person inert, opaque. Heavens! what heapeddeficient in compassion, that he has no up libels are thrown upon the spleen, one bowels? and when we sympathise with of the most innocent of our viscera! for others in distress, is it not customary to what fantastic and yet melancholy capricmake use of a very sensible phrase, and ex- cios is it not indicted; Pope himself, no claim that our bowels yearn towards them? very credulous personage, not hesitating When we have laid our spirit in the Red to accuse it of converting men into talkaSea, or, in other words, when we have tive goose-pies, and maidens into bottles! drowned our stomach, and consequently our And thou, too, recipient of the liver, muchreason, in Burgundy, we adapt ourselves to injured Hypochondre! have not maligners a vulgar error, and declare that the wine charged thee with gloom, wretchedness, has got up into our heads, whereas it is no- horror, and every atrabilarious enormity torious that it has gone down into the in- with which we are afflicted, even up to testines. Such are the absurdities to which madness itself, as if the stomach could we are driven in our attempts to bolster up deprive us of reason without having the a preposterous and untenable system. In power to confer it? What infatuation the good old republican times of Rome, possesses us? When we are deficient we know that the limbs rebelled against in virtuous courage we arraign our intes

INSUBORDINATION OF MODERN STOMACHS.

dnes, accusing ourselves of being lily or pigeon-livered and lacking gall; an insult sticks in our gizzard; we speak of learning as the food of the mind, of pedants who have swallowed more reading than they can digest; and although no metaphor can make the fumes of water mount into the head, we talk of à poet who, has once tasted the Pierian spring, as having his imaginative faculty instantly inspired. We attribute to the stomach, in short, all the functions of the soul, and yet deny its residence where these its magisterial powers are perpetually exercised. Verily we are a fantastical generation.

303

upon us, and all our miseries are condemn-
ed to go upon the stomach. Sir John Bar-
leycorn, the leige lord of our sturdy pro-
genitors, is proscribed and excommunicated
by our modern anti-bilious doctors; one
forbids solids, another liquids; fish, flesh,
and fowl, are alternately under ban and
prohibition; this sends us to Cheltenham,
that to Harrogate, a third to Tunbridge;
we pay all and obey all, and finally all re-
turn as bilious, blue-pillish, and blue-
devilish as ever, while the birds and
beasts that surround us are most provok→
ingly gormandizing without the smallest
necessity for calling in Abernethy, or
consulting Wilson Philip. Ostriches,
since that celebrated one of old who swal-
lowed the key of the cellar, continue their
ferrugivorous propensities with impunity;
fouls, for the purpose of triturating their
food, swallow and digest small flints, which
Mr. M'Adam should look to, if, as it is
rumoured, his pounding process is to be in-
troduced into the Poultry; and cormo-
rants will swallow half a dozen times their
own weight in a day without the aid of
Lady de Crespigny's dinner-pills. It is
really too much that we should be at the
same moment half choked with bile, and
ready to burst with envy.

Having, as we flatter ourselves, satisfactorily restored this dementated ventricle to its due honours, we shall have the less to say upon the insubordination of modern stomachs, because it is to be feared there are very few of our readers sufficiently ventripotent to deny the fact. Our omnivorous ancestors, fearless of bile and defying indigestion, made every thing disappear before them; the coats of their stomach were dreadnoughts, they had nothing to do but enact the words of the song which we can only quote, and "Masticate, denticate, chump, grind, and swallow," while victuals could be found and jaws would wag. How have we fallen off And what is the hidden cause of this from the sprightly appetite and loyal visce- recent change in our system, of this inapra of the Emperor Clodius Albinus, who peaseable spirit of rebellion in our inteswould swallow for his breakfast 300 figs, 100 tines? This is the question we must peaches, 10 melons, 20 pounds weight of previously decide if we would apply an grapes, 100 gnat-snappers, and 400 oysters efficient remedy to the disease. Some have --a meal which moveth Lipsius irreve- attributed it to the great increase of riches rently to ejaculate, Fie upon him; and consequent diffusion of luxury, whereGod keep such a curse from the earth!" by indolence of limbs and activity of jaws, Our Danish Sovereign Hardiknute was so perilous concomitants for the health, have indiscriminate a gormandizer, that he was been united in a greater number of indicalled by an historian Bocca di Porco, or viduals than formerly; some to the vilswine's mouth; and our records are by lanous adulteration of all our victuals; no means deficient in instances of men to some to the lateness of our dinner-hours, whom a similar compliment might justly whence the alimentary region is alternatebe applied. But we pigmy-bowelled per- ly irritated by inanition, and burthened formers of the present day are a squeam- with over-repletion. Shrewd and plausiish and qualmy race, living in perpetual ble surmises are these, perhaps true to a terror of the tyrant Bile, and in subjection limited and subsidiary extent, but still far to the night-mare Indigestion; poring over from embracing the paramount cause of Peptic Precepts, Cook's Oracles, Accum's the evil. No; if we would fathom this mysPoison in the pot, and Philip's Treatise tery to the bottom, we must bear in mind on the Stomach, and yet after all unable what has been already so happily establishto bring that eternal focus of revolt and ed---videlicit, that the stomach is the seat disorder, that Ireland of our bodily system, of thought; and if we only allow it the into the peaceful performance of its peris- same power of sympathy as the rest of taltic duties. Stomach-ichs for stomach- our system is known to possess, we shall be aches are by no means lacking: calomel instantly furnished with a clue to the whole we gulp in all its manifold modifications; enigma. If we can tell from the odour and pills of all calibres and constructions, or discolouration of a vessel what liquor it like so many balls and bullets, do we fire in successive volleys against our mutinous viscera, but all in vain. "They bear a charmed life;" the curse of the serpent is

has contained; if the face of man is so
modulated by his spirit as to become
the index of his soul; if the inspirer, in
short, invariably stamps its character up-

on the organ, we have only to inquire wife had just presented him. Joseph the mental peculiarity of the age, in order offered to stand godfather, and the postto know with certainty its effect upon master thought the strange gentleman the stomach, which is the seat of the would be a more eligible godfather than mind. And what is the predominant pas- his cousin, the farmer, who was expect. sion of modern times, but rebellion, revo- ed. The ceremony commenced, the lution, Radicalism, Carbonarism, and mo- priest required the name of the godfa ral disorder, whence by sympathy we have ther. "Joseph!" said the stranger. the physical riots of bile, liver-complaints," Joseph --- and your family name?" sourness, grumbling in the gizzard, rejec- "Joseph is enough." "Joseph and notion of legitimate food, vomitings, nausea, thing else?" said the priest. "Well, stubbornness, and in one word Insubor- put Joseph the Second." "Well, Jodination of the stomach? How can we seph the Second, but what is your conhave intestine commotions in our provinces dition, profession, employ, or occupawithout expecting them in our bowels? tion?" "Say," replied the unknown or hold ourselves entitled to digest our Joseph II. " emperor." Here the priest food, when we are daily violating some and the assistants turned pale. The digest of political law? This is the secret post-master fell at his feet; and the emof all our visceral derangements, from peror consoled them for their fright, by dysentery to constipation, from the peri- leaving proofs of his generosity, and a cardium to the peritónæum; and having promise not to forget his godson. pointed out the real seat and cause of the evil, we will not travel beyond our province, but leave to others the suggestion of the proper remedy. To us it appears a case that may especially come within the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Society, for the preservation of our bodily is surely not less important than that of our political constitution; and as our stomachs have manifestly been disordered by the action of our minds, so may our diseased minds be best medicated by re-action of the viscera. The Society has long gone against the stomach of the nation; and if they wish to take their revenge, at the same time that they render themselves really useful, they should henceforward go against the nation's stomach.

New Monthly Mag.

Essence of Anecdote and Wit.

JOSEPH II. THE Emperor Joseph II. of Austria, when travelling, having reached a stage before he was expected, found no horses prepared. The post-master, not recognising the emperor, begged the gentleman to wait the return of his horses, because they were all sent out to fetch his friends and relations invited to the christening of a son, with whom his

LA FONTAINE.

WHEN one of his operas was performed at Paris, La Fontaine was found sleeping in a coffee-room by one of his friends. "Bless me!" said he, "how happens it that you are not at the ope ra? They are performing your drama."

Oh! I did go," replied La Fontaine, "and I stayed through the first act; but it was so tiresome I could bear it no longer."

SERJEANT ONSLOW.

DURING the last assizes at Lewes, a gentleman, ignorant of the law, asked Mr. Serjeant Onslow, "What was meant by an Alibi?" "Its A lie by which a rogue escapes hanging," replied the Serjeant.

HENRY IV.

HENRY IV. having bestowed the Cordon bleu on a nobleman at the solicitation of the Duke de Nevers, when the collar was put on, the nobleman made the customary speech: "Sire, I am not worthy." "I knew it well," said the king, "but I give you the order to please my cousin de Nevers."

LONDON ---Printed for WILLIAM CHARLTON WRIGHT, 65, Paternoster Row, and may be had of all Booksellers and Newsmen.

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