valent and ruinous modes of extravagance in her days. In this rank of life it sometimes happened, that a shopkeeper not only seized the garments themselves, but the peasant's cattle also to make up the payment of a debt thus contracted.

She thought it a strange want of policy that in a country where the corn failed for want of rain, the waters with which all brooks and rivers were filled in winter should be allowed to run to waste. Therefore she advised that great tanks and reservoirs should be formed for the purposes of irrigation, and that they should be rendered doubly profitable by stocking them with fish, such as shad, tench and trout. She advised also that the seed should frequently be changed, and crops raised in succession, because the soil loved to embrace new products and that new plants should be introduced from the Indies; where hitherto the Spaniards had been more intent upon introducing their own, than in bringing home from thence others to enrich their own country; the cacao in particular she recommended, noti

cing that this nut for its excellence had even been used as money.

Duels she thought the Christian Princes and the Pope might easily prevent, by erecting a Jurisdiction which should take cognizance of all affairs of honour. She would have had them also open the road to distinction for all who deserved it, so that no person should be debarred by his birth from attaining to any office or rank; this she said, was the way to have more Rolands and Cids, more Great Captains, more Hannibals and Tamerlanes.

Such were Doña Oliva's views of political reformation, the wretched state of law and of medicine explaining satisfactorily to her most of the evils with which Spain was afflicted in the reign of Philip II. She considered Law and Physic as the two great plagues of human life, according to the Spanish proverb,

A quien yo quiero mal,

De le Dios pleyto y orinal.

Upon these subjects and such as these the Spanish lady might speculate freely; if she had any opinions which "savoured of the fryingpan," she kept them to herself.

CHAPTER CCXXI.

THE DOCTOR'S OPINION OF DOÑA OLIVA'S PRACTICE

AND HUMANITY.

Anchor dir si potrebber cose assai
Che la materia è tanto piena et folta,
Che non se ne verrebbe à capo mai,
Dunque fia buono ch'io suoni à raccolta.
FR. SANSOVINO.

THE Doctor's opinion of Doña Oliva's practice was that no one would be killed by it, but that many would be allowed to die whom a more active treatment might have saved. It would generally fail to help the patient, but it would never exasperate the disease; and therefore in her age it was an improvement, for better is an inert treatment than a mischievous one.

He liked her similitude of the tree, but wondered that she had not noted as much resemblance

to the trunk and branches in the bones and muscles, as in the vascular system. He admired the rational part of her practice, and was disposed to think some parts of it not irrational which might seem merely fanciful to merely practical men.

She was of opinion that more persons were killed by affections of the mind, than by intemperance, or by the sword: this she attempts to explain by some weak reasoning from a baseless theory; but the proofs which she adduces in support of the assertion are curious. Many persons she says, who in her own time had fallen under the King's displeasure, or even received a harsh word from him, had taken to their beds and died. It was not uncommon for wives who loved their husbands dearly, to die a few days after them; two such instances had occurred within the same week in the town in which she resided: and she adds the more affecting fact that the female slaves of the better kind (esclavas abiles) meaning perhaps those upon whom any care had been bestowed, were frequently observed to pine

away as they grew up, and perish; and that this was still more frequent with those who had a child born to an inheritance of slavery. Mortified ambition, irremediable grief, and hopeless misery, had within her observation, produced the same fatal effect. The general fact is supported by Harvey's testimony. That eminent man said to Bishop Hacket that during the Great Rebellion, more persons whom he had seen in the course of his practice died of grief of mind than of any other disease. In France it was observed not only that nervous diseases of every kind became much more frequent during the revolution but cases of cancer also, moral causes producing in women a predisposition to that most dreadful disease.

Our friend was fortunate enough to live in peaceful times, when there were no public calamities to increase the sum of human suffering. Yet even then, and within the limits of his own not extensive circle, he saw cases enough to teach him that it is difficult to minister to a mind diseased, but that for a worm in the core there is no remedy within the power of man.