flesh with them, they did enough to show that war may be reckoned a good as well as an evil, and a great battle looked upon as a public blessing. A similar disposition (to continue the subject) of their mortal flesh might be, with great propriety, required, in this land, of all politicians and office-holders, from the vice-president down to the county collector; who, being all patriots, would doubtless consent to a measure that would make them of some use to their country. As for the president, we would have him reserved for a nobler purpose; we would have him boiled down to soap, according to the plan recommended by the French chymists, to be used by his successor in scouring the constitution and the minds of the people. In this manner, I repeat, the great bulk of human bodies could be profitably appropriated; but other methods should be taken with particular classes of men, who might claim a more distinguished and canonical disposition of their bodies. The rich and tender would esteem it a cruelty to be disposed of in the same way with the multitude. I would advise, therefore, that their bodies should be converted into _adipocire_, or spermaceti, to be made into candles, to be burnt at the tops of the lamp-posts; whereby those who never shone in life might scintillate as the lights of the public for a week or two after. Their bones might be made into rings and whistles, for infant democrats to cut their teeth on. The French and Italian philosophers, as I have learned from the newspapers, have made sundry strange, and, as I think, useful discoveries, in relation to the practicability of converting the human body into different mineral substances. One man changes his neighbour's bones into fine glass; a second turns the blood into iron; while a third, more successful still, transforms the whole body into stone. If these things be true, and I have no reason to doubt them, seeing that I found them, as I said before, in the newspapers, they offer us new modes of appropriation, applicable to the bodies of other interesting classes. Lovers might thus be converted into jewels, which, although false, could be worn with less fear of losing them than happens with living inamoratos; or, in case of extreme grief on the part of the survivers, into looking-glasses, where the mourners would find a solace in the contemplation of their own features. The second process, namely, the conversion of blood into iron, would be peculiarly applicable in the case of soldiers too distinguished to be cast into corn-fields; and, indeed, nothing could be more natural than that those whose blood we buy with gold, should pay us back our change in iron. The last discovery could be turned to equal profit, and would do away with the necessity of employing statuaries in all cases where their services are now required. But I would confine the process of petrifaction to those in whom Nature had indicated its propriety by beginning the process herself.