month in which it is said by a pleasant author that Englishmen hang and
drown themselves. In truth, this work has a tendency to alarm us with
symptoms of public suicide. However, there is one comfort to be taken
even from the gloomy time of year. It is a rotting season. If what is
brought to market is not good, it is not likely to keep long. Even
buildings run up in haste with untempered mortar in that humid weather,
if they are ill-contrived tenements, do not threaten long to incumber
the earth. The author tells us (and I believe he is the very first
author that ever told such a thing to his readers) "that the _entire
fabric_ of his speculations might be overset by unforeseen
vicissitudes," and what is far more extraordinary, "that even the
_whole_ consideration might be _varied whilst he was writing those
pages."_ Truly, in my poor judgment, this circumstance formed a very
substantial motive for his not publishing those ill-considered
considerations at all. He ought to have followed the good advice of his
motto: "_Que faire encore dans une telle nuit? Attendre le jour_." He
ought to have waited till he had got a little more daylight on this
subject. Night itself is hardly darker than the fogs of that time.

Finding the _last week in October_ so particularly referred to, and not
perceiving any particular event, relative to the war, which happened on
any of the days in that week, I thought it possible that they were
marked by some astrological superstition, to which the greatest
politicians have been subject. I therefore had recourse to my Rider's
Almanack. There I found, indeed, something that characterized the work,
and that gave directions concerning the sudden political and natural
variations, and for eschewing the maladies that are most prevalent in
that aguish intermittent season, "the last week of October." On that
week the sagacious astrologer, Rider, in his note on the third column of
the calendar side, teaches us to expect "_variable and cold weather";_