have even found it necessary to superadd to their fashionable follies,
artificial mineral waters, with whose fount the grossest duchess may in a
few days recover from the repletion of a whole season; and the minister,
after the jading of a session, soon resume his wonted complacency and good
humour.[2] Our aquatic taste is even carried into all our public
amusements; would the festivities in celebration of the late peace have
been complete without the sham fight on the Serpentine? To insure the run
of a melo-drama, the New River is called in to flow over deal boards, and
form a cataract; and the Vauxhall proprietors, with the aid of a
_hydropyric_ exhibition, contrive to represent a naval battle. This
introduction during the past season was, however, as perfectly
_gratuitous_ as that of the _rain_ was uncalled for. Had they contented
themselves with the latter, the scene would have been more true to nature.

[2] Even the greatest hero of the age, who has won all his glory _by
land_, has lately been drinking the Cheltenham _waters_. The proprietor
of the well at which he drank, jocosely observed that his was "the best
_well-in-town_."

We carry this taste into our money-getting speculations, those freaks of
the funds that leave many a man with one unfunded coat. The Thames tunnel
is too amphibious an affair to be included in the number; but the ship
canal project, the bridge-building mania, and the _penchant_ for working
mines by steam, evidently belong to them. The fashion even extends to
royalty, since our good King builds a fishing-temple, and dines on the
Virginia Water; and the Duke of Clarence, as Lord High Admiral, gives a
_dejeuné à la fourchette_ between Waterloo and Westminster bridges.

Whoever takes the trouble to read a paper in a late _Edinburgh Review_ on
the _Nervous System_, will doubtless find that much of our predilection