Who has not had a cold? or rather, who has not had many colds? Who does not know that malady which commences with slight chilliness, an uneasy feeling of being unwell, which does not justify abstinence from the ordinary business and occupations of the day, but deprives one of all satisfaction and enjoyment in them, and takes away all the salt and savor of life, even as it deprives the natural palate of its proper office, making all things that should be good to eat and drink vapid and tasteless? Who does not know the pain in the head, the stiff neck, the stuffy nose, the frequent sneeze, the kerchief which is oftener in the hand than in the pocket? Such, with a greater or less amount of peevishness, are the symptoms of the common cold in the head; which torments its victim for two or three days, or perhaps as many weeks, and then departs, and is forgotten. Few people take much notice of colds; and yet let any one, who is even moderately liable to their attacks, keep an account of the number of days in each year when he has been shut out by a cold from a full perception of the pleasures and advantages of life, and he will find that he has lost no inconsiderable portion of the sum total of happy existence through their malign influence. How many speeches in Parliament and at the Bar, that should have turned a division or won a cause, have been marred because the orator has had a cold which has confused his powers, stifled his voice, and paralyzed all his best energies! How many pictures have failed in expressing the full thoughts of the artist, because he has had a cold at that critical stage of the work when all his faculties of head and hand should have been at their best to insure the fit execution of his design! How many bad bargains have been made, how many opportunities lost in business, because a cold has laid its leaden hand upon them, and converted into its own dull nature what might have resulted in a golden harvest! How many poems--but no: poetry can have nothing in common with a cold. The Muses fly at the approach of flannel and water-gruel. It is not poems that are spoiled, but poets that are rendered of impossible existence by colds. Can one imagine Homer with a cold, or Dante? But these were southerns, and exempt by climate from this scourge of the human race in Boreal regions. But Milton or Shakspeare, could they have had colds? Possibly some parts of "Paradise Regained" may have been written in a cold. Possibly the use of the handkerchief in "Othello," which is banished as an impropriety by the delicate critics of France from their version of the Moor of Venice, may have been suggested by familiarity with that indispensable accessory in a cold. Colds are less common in the clear atmosphere of Paris than in the thick and fog-laden air of London; and this may account for the difference of national taste, on this point. It is said of the great German Mendelssohn, that he always composed sitting with his feet in a tub of cold water.