of plants, “appropriating,” says he, “to every part of the body, (from the crown of the head, with which I begin, and proceed till I come to the sole of the foot,) such herbs and plants whose grand uses and virtues do most specifically, and by signature thereunto belong, not only for strengthening the same, but also for curing the evil effects whereunto they are subjected:—the signatures being as it were the books out of which the ancients first learned the virtues of herbs; Nature, or rather the God of Nature, having stamped on divers of them legible characters to discover their uses, though he hath left others without any, that after he had shewed them the way, they, by their labour and industry which renders every thing more acceptable, might find out the rest.” It was an opinion often expressed by a physician of great and deserved celebrity, that in course of time specifics would be discovered for every malady to which the human frame is liable. He never supposed, (though few men have ever been more sanguine in their hopes and expectations,) that life was thus to be indefinitely prolonged, and that it would be man's own fault, or his own choice, if he did not live for ever; but he thought that when we should thus have been taught to subdue those diseases which cut our life short, we should, like the Patriarchs, live out the number of our days, and then fall asleep,—Man being by this physical redemption restored to his original corporeal state. Then shall like four straight pillars, the four Elements Support the goodly structure of Mortality: Then shall the four Complexions, like four heads Of a clear river, streaming in his body, Nourish and comfort every vein and sinew: No sickness of contagion, no grim death, Or deprivation of health's real blessings, Shall then affright the creature, built by Heaven, Reserved for immortality.[2] [Footnote 2: FORD.] He had not taken up this notion from any religious feeling; it was connected in him with the pride of philosophy, and he expected that this was one of the blessings which we were to obtain in the progress of knowledge.