But the red letters in this volume have led me from its contents; and before I proceed to enter upon them in another chapter, I will conclude this, recurring to the similitude at its commencement, with an extract from one of Yorick's Sermons. “It is very remarkable,” he says, “that the Apostle St. Paul calls a bad man a wild olive _tree_, not barely a branch,” (as in the opposite case where our Saviour told his disciples that He was the vine, and that they were only branches)—“but a Tree, which having a root of its own supports itself, and stands in its own strength, and brings forth its own fruit. And so does every bad man in respect of the wild and sour fruit of a vicious and corrupt heart. According to the resemblance, if the Apostle intended it, he is a Tree,—has a root of his own, and fruitfulness such as it is, with a power to bring it forth without help. But in respect of religion and the moral improvements of virtue and goodness, the Apostle calls us, and reason tells us, we are no more than a _branch_, and all our fruitfulness, and all our support, depend so much upon the influence and communications of God, that without Him we can do nothing, as our Saviour declares.” CHAPTER CCXVII. SOME ACCOUNT OF D. OLIVA SABUCO'S MEDICAL THEORIES AND PRACTICE. _Yo—volveré A nueva diligencia y paso largo, Que es breve el tiempo, 's grande la memoria Que para darla al mundo está á mi cargo._ BALBUENA. Carew the poet speaking metaphorically of his mistress calls her foot, the precious root On which the goodly cedar grows. Doña Oliva on the contrary thought that the human body might be called a tree reversed, the brain being the root, and the other the bark. She did not know what great authority there is for thinking that trees stand upon their heads, for though we use vulgarly but improperly to call the uppermost of the branches the top of a tree, we are corrected, the learned John Gregory tells us, by Aristotle in his books _De Animâ_,[1] where we are taught to call the root the head, and the top the feet. [Footnote 1: Quære? Lib. ii. c. ii. § 6. _αἱ δὲ ρἵζαι τῷ στόματι ἀνάλογον κ. τ. ἑ._]