Sacrificial Medicine, however, in its simpler and more easily recognizable forms, is undoubtedly on the wane, though a good deal of its spirit may still be traced in our behavior to the sick. To homœopathy (as to many another kind of heresy), we probably owe somewhat of the mitigation of orthodoxy; and children, noticing the busts of Hahnemann in the shop windows, may be properly taught to bless that great deliverer who banished from the nursery those huge and hateful mugs of misery,--black founts of so many infantine tears,--mugs of sobs and sighs and gasps and struggles unutterable, from one of which Madame Roland drew the first inspiration of that martyr spirit which led her onward to the guillotine, when she suffered herself to be whipped six times running, sooner than swallow the abominable contents. FOOTNOTES: [26] As the modern mind may be a little puzzled as to the mode in which some of these substances can be introduced into our internal economy, the following extract from the _Family Dictionary_ of Dr. Salmon (1696) may throw light on the subject: “CORAL, to prepare,--Take such a quantity as ye think convenient. Make it into a fine powder by grinding it upon a Porphyry or an Iron Mortar. Drop on it by degrees a little rosewater, and form it into balls for use. After this manner, Crabs’-Eyes, Pearls, Oister shells, and Precious stones are prepared to make up Cordials compounded of them and other suitable materials for the strengthening of the heart in fevers, or such like violent diseases, and to restore the Decays of nature.” Ebony is swallowed by rasping it in shavings and making a decoction. THE FITNESS OF WOMEN FOR THE MINISTRY OF RELIGION. Among the anomalies of our social state may be counted the fact that, while it is generally admitted that women are more religious than men, it is to men that in our age and country the Ministry of Religion is (with infinitesimal exceptions) exclusively committed. While nine persons out of ten are conscious that their earliest sentiments of piety have been derived from a mother, and that a sister or a wife has alone enabled the troubled faith of their latter years to survive the shocks of worldliness and doubt, there is yet not one recognized channel by which these waters of life, stored in the fountain of women’s hearts, can flow beyond the narrowest borders; while, on the contrary, it is not too much to surmise that to a very large number of clergymen, well-meaning, learned, and conscientious, the sense of dryness of soul in all that concerns the more spiritual part of their office is a perpetual self-reproach. _Habitans in Sicco_ writes every autumn in the newspapers to complain he can obtain no refreshment from his weekly sermon at any church in his neighborhood, while around him all the time are private wells and underground rivers of the purest element of feeling for which he thirsts. It is a case of “Water, water, everywhere, But not a drop to drink.”