thus thrown to a point, the instrument enters the structures, and perhaps causes death. But the misfortune is, that poisons swallowed for the sake of the agreeable sensations they occasion owe this effect to their action upon the nervous system; and the action must be kept up by a constantly increasing dose till the constitution is irremediably injured. In the case of arsenic, as we have seen, so long as the excitement is undiminished all is apparently well; but the point is at length reached when to proceed or to turn back is alike death. The moment the dose is diminished or entirely withdrawn, symptoms of poison appear, and the victim perishes because he has shrunk from killing himself. It is just so when the stimulant is alcohol. The morning experience of the drinker prophesies, on every succeeding occasion, of the fate that awaits him. It may be pleasant to get intoxicated, but to get sober is horror. The time comes, however, when the pleasure is at an end, and the horror alone remains. When the habitual stimulus reaches its highest, and the undermined constitution can stand no more, then comes the reaction. If the excitement could go on _ad infinitum_, the prognosis would be different; but the poison-symptoms appear as soon as the dose can no longer be increased without producing instant death, and the drunkard dies of the want of drink! Many persons, it can not be denied, reach a tolerable age under this stimulus; but they do so only by taking warning in time—perhaps from some frightful illness—and carefully proportioning the dose to the sinking constitution. “I can not drink now as formerly,” is a common remark—sometimes elevated into the boast, “I _do_ not drink now as formerly.” But the relaxation of the habit is compulsory; and by a thousand other tokens, as well as the inability to indulge in intoxication, the _ci-devant_ drinker is reminded of a madness which even in youth produced more misery than enjoyment, and now adds a host of discomforts to the ordinary fragility of age. As for arsenic-eating, we trust it will never be added to the madnesses of our own country. Think of a man deliberately condemning himself to devour this horrible poison, on an increasing scale, during his whole life, with the certainty that if at any time, through accident, necessity, or other cause, he holds his hand, he must die the most agonizing of all deaths! In so much horror do we hold the idea, that we would have refrained from mentioning the subject at all if we had not observed a paragraph making the round of the papers, and describing the agreeable phases of the practice without mentioning its shocking results. A CHILD’S HISTORY OF KING JOHN’S REIGN. BY CHARLES DICKENS.