the spirit of obstinate resistance in which all
useful measures are met by the gentlemen of the
vestry.

"We can predict in what kind of localities
cholera will be the most virulent, if it
does come." (Since this report was written
cholera has come. A fatal case occurred a
few days ago, within a quarter of a mile of the
Vestry Hall.) "Its presence will depend on
atmospheric and other causes, over many of
which you have no control; the extent to which
we, as a parish, shall suffer from it will depend
in a great measure upon circumstances over
many of which you have control. It has been
found that cholera, when introduced into a
community, chiefly attacks persons who are
breathing impure air, who are drinking impure
water, or who are committing excesses in diet
or drink, or else those who are much depressed
by fatigue or fever. Very much may be
done to render the air purer in dwellings,
especially of the poor, by improved drainage,
by attention to ventilation, cleanliness,
and the removal of all refuse." The doctor
then mentions various places in Kentish
Town and Highgate that are without sewerage,
and recommends that all such places should
be at once provided with sewers; that all
houses be made to communicate with sewers
by properly constructed drains, that all open
sewers be completed and covered, that badly
acting sewers be repaired, and that all
the sewers, be kept carefully cleansed and
flushed.

Now mark how this report and other sensible
recommendations were received by the gentlemen
of the vestry. The very mild paragraph
relating to the character of the parish was
designated as "a piece of impertinence," and
the medical officer was denounced as "a
quack."

The gentlemen of the vestry have also a
great antipathy to the coroner, because that
functionary occasionally takes an opportunity to
lecture them upon their duties. Several inquests
have lately been held upon persons who have
met their death in consequence of the bad state
of the roads. A cab-wheel jerked against
a rut, and the driver was pitched into the canal
and drowned. It was not known what had
become of the poor man for two days, when his
body was found floating in the canal. Another
man was thrown out of his cart, and so severely
injured that he died. The evidence before the
coroner went to show that the road was very
unevenly paved. A juror said that he had seen
fourteen horses fall in a day on this road, in
consequence of the irregularity of the stones.
"This is a parish where we pay good rates,"
said the juryman, "and yet they will not do
what is wanted." "No," said another juryman,
"the vestry is all talk, and will not do
anything."

Verily, the gentlemen of the vestry are all
talk and nothing else. And such talk! In
doing nothing they murder the Queen's
subjects; in talking, they murder the Queen's
English. All society is in the jury-box with a
verdict of guilty against them. May they be
speedily executed, and made an end of!

PROPHETIC FITS—AND MISFITS.

IT has been boldly asserted in a recent work,
made up of highly entertaining and more or
less authentic anecdotes, that the mind of one
of the foremost men of the age, impressed as it
is with a tinge of fatalism, has suffered
considerable disturbance from a prophecy of Doctor
Michael Nostradamus.

Granted the existence of this prophecy, the
fact may be as stated; for though the influence
of the "vaticinations of Mrs. Snipton, Robert
Nixon, and other practitioners of the humbler
class, is not distinctly traceable in the political
history of their time, Michael was, from his
youth, a man of mark, and could at all times
command a hearing. It is by no means
impossible that such a presage, if delivered,
should have attracted imperial notice.

This is its alleged substance:

"At the period when the younger branch of
the primeval royal family of France shall be
bowed down, it will happen that a man belonging
to a house which once for a short time gave
a decisive turn to the fate of France will attain
the rule—for fifteen years will hold in his hands
the highest power—but will then be murdered,
not far from Paris, and a member of his family
march to the supreme power over his corpse
and that of his son."

There is something so clear, positive, and
altogether un-Nostradamic in this, that the
writer, entertaining grave—or, let him say,
joyful doubts as to its authenticity, and
having the prophetic tome at hand, devoted
the half of a winter's evening to its perusal.
The search through twelve "centuries," each
containing a hundred quatrains, for an especial
prophecy, is rendered more difficult by the
artful obscurity with which friend Michael—
more than any of his brother seers—was
accustomed to invest his foreshadowings of future
events. So well were these warnings (as a
general rule) adapted to different eventualities,
that the sarcastic M. Naudé compared them
to the shoe of Theramenes, which, unlike
Cinderella's, fitted every foot. Another sceptic,
M. Delandine, was heard to declare that,
whereas the common folks regarded Doctor
Michael Nostradamus as knowing as much of
the future as of the past, he, M. D., would go
the length of admitting that he was just as well
acquainted with the one as with the other!

However that may be, no such alarming
prophecy as that above quoted is to be found
among the twelve hundred translated by the
ingenious Doctor Garencières from the obscure
French into still obscurer English; nor do we
believe that it lurks anywhere beneath those
darker sayings of which that learned gentleman
truly remarks, that there are many "very
hard to be understood, and others impossible at