It is in their Shasta, or Shastabad, written three thousand years before the vulgar era, that you, my dear reader, will discover the doctrine of purgatory. The rebel angels, of whom the history was copied among the Jews in the time of the rabbin Gamaliel, were condemned by the Eternal and His Son, to a thousand years of purgatory, after which God pardoned and made them men. This we have already said, dear reader, as also that the Brahmins found eternal punishment too severe, as eternity never concludes. The Brahmins thought like the Abbé Chaulieu, and called upon the Lord to pardon them, if, impressed with His bounties, they could not be brought to conceive that they would be punished so rigorously for vain pleasures, which passed away like a dream: Pardonne alors, Seigneur, si, plein de tes bontés, Je n'ai pu concevoir que mes fragilités, Ni tous ces vains plaisirs que passent comme un songe, Pussent être l'objet de tes sévérités; Et si j'ai pu penser que tant des cruautés. Puniraient un peu trop la douceur d'un mensonge. --EPITRE SUR LA MORT, au Marquis de la Fare. QUACK (OR CHARLATAN). The abode of physicians is in large towns; there are scarcely any in country places. Great towns contain rich patients; debauchery, excess at the tables, and the passions, cause their maladies. Dumoulin, the physician, who was in as much practice as any of his profession, said when dying that he left two great physicians behind him--simple diet and soft water. In 1728, in the time of Law, the most famous of quacks of the first class, another named Villars, confided to some friends, that his uncle, who had lived to the age of nearly a hundred, and who was then killed by an accident, had left him the secret of a water which could easily prolong life to the age of one hundred and fifty, provided sobriety was attended to. When a funeral passed, he affected to shrug up his shoulders in pity: "Had the deceased," he exclaimed, "but drank my water, he would not be where he is." His friends, to whom he generously imparted it, and who attended a little to the regimen prescribed, found themselves well, and cried it up. He then sold it for six francs the bottle, and the sale was prodigious. It was the water of the Seine, impregnated with a small quantity of nitre, and those who took it and confined themselves a little to the regimen, but above all those who were born with a good constitution, in a short time recovered perfect health. He said to others: "It is your own fault if you are not perfectly cured. You have been intemperate and incontinent, correct yourself of these two vices, and you will live a hundred and fifty years at least." Several did so, and the fortune of this good quack augmented with his reputation. The enthusiastic Abbé de Pons ranked him much above his namesake, Marshal Villars. "He caused the death of men," he observed to him, "whereas you make men live."