door, what a spectacle was presented! All I remember at first was, rushing to a trunk hard by, and rolling over its brass nails in an agony of laughter.

On the floor by the window lay my water-loving friend; his head and shoulders peeping from out the muslin curtains of his overset shower-bath, like the peak and jagged sides of a mountain above a thin veil of mist. Drops of water were coming from his hair; his gaze was rueful in the extreme; and the floor was a miniature Bay of Biscay, with strong symptoms, in one corner, of a patent boot-jack swimming off in fine style.

"Really, Fred, this is unkind," cried Bob to me, "making sport of misery-stop your laughing and help me up.”

I begged his pardon, and extricated him from his Marius-like situation among the ruins, (I'm sure he looked as forlorn as the exiled Roman does in the Art Union plate!)

He scrambled between the sheets of his bed, and shivering all over, pointed to the bath.

I raised it.

"Deuce take the horrid thing!" he commenced; "and this is my reward for laying awake nearly all night, waiting for the day-light to come, and thinking of the luxury awaiting me. Up I got a quarterhour since ;-John had just knocked at the door with his two pails of water, (on my soul I believe the rascal had been icing them.) In shorter time than I tell of it I pumped the water into the basin ; got inside; adjusted the curtains tightly; and-rash man that I was— pulled the string with a jerk." Here he shivered all over, like a captive prince is supposed to shake in ballads and choice poetry, when the fetters are being placed upon him; and then continued, "Down came the water upon me like a torrent from Caucasus; it was as if I had been struck with an iceberg, and, like a gallant ship, was going to pieces! Without looking well for the opening in the curtains, I made a spring in my desperation-springing against the curtains, and oversetting the deuced machine, while I fell with it.”

I was again on the trunk, rolling with laughter, and my friend swearing again at my unfeeling habit. Of course, at breakfast time, everybody (although ignorant of Bob's mishap) was inquiring about the bath.

"I shall have to send it away," answered its owner, very dryly; "the patent is a failure, for it leaks." It was fortunate that a piece of omelet stuck in my throat at this juncture and stifled my laughter, or the joke might have leaked out as well as the water.

From this it may be supposed, that my friend Nosey took an everlasting disgust to water in general, and shower-baths in particular. But he could not surrender the former, although he openly denounced the latter. It became a theory with him that cold bathing was highly prejudicial to the bodily economy of man. He now swore by warm baths-vapor baths-sulphur baths, &c. &c.

The mercantile houses we were connected with sent us one spring to England on commercial business. We went by packet-Bob Nosey and I; and the fourth day out, my water-loving friend caught

a severe cold while trolling over the poop with a bit of salt pork, in hopes to catch a shark. The cold was a kind of fish he did not like, and he bethought him of his great remedy, the vapor-bath. But this, in a vessel at sea, seemed as impossible of attainment as shooting marbles on a treadmill. However, "Bob" was never disconcerted at trifles. Here was he going about the cabin, wheezing and coughing like a fat dog; a vapor-bath would cure him, and a vapor-bath he would have! We all laughed at him; but he begged us to suspend judgment, and went out for deliberation, and was seen in a few minutes deep in consultation with the cook.

Keeping within "social hall," as the narrow passage-way from the deck to the cabin was called, we had a good look out upon his oper ations. He had rolled out an empty water-cask, and was cutting out a hole in the "head" of it. Presently he jumped into the cask and commenced disrobing; tossing his clothes out upon the forecastle hatchway. Forward came the cook; while some of the sailors, idling in the vicinity, looked on in strange amazement, as our friend looked upon them in turn, with gaze expressive of interested satisfaction. The cook was heading his body in, sans the head, as if he were a Chinese malefactor about to undergo the tub punishment. It was clear now that the hole in the head was to keep his neck in place, and keep down the vapor from his mouth and nose.

But how was that to get in?

Next came the cook, bringing one of the immense teakettles of the ship!

Selecting a small cask, (it was evident he was acting implicitly under instructions the while,) the cook sat the kettle upon it, and proceeded to insert the nozzle of the spout well through the bung-hole of the cask. The water was boiling hot, and the moment the steam touched "Bob" in a tender place, there arose over the still ocean a cry, which must have startled the Nautilus in its frail boat miles and miles away!

The man at the wheel was in a position to well observe the whole thing; and what wonder if his attention was so distracted from his duty, that he suffered the ship for a moment to come broadside to the sea. It was just the instant that the steam was scalding our poor friend; and a mountain wave from the sea-trough plunged over the bows of the ship like another Niagara-lifting up the cask with poor Bob Nosey in it, as if it were a mere bottle of which his head was the stopper.

And over the bulwarks went cask, Bob and all. The look when the steam touched him—the look in the old time when happened his shower-bath mishap, were nothing to that now seen and seen, meteor-like, for an instant on his countenance, as he disappeared over the side.

"'Bout ship!" vociferated the mate, who had been eying the manoeuvre, thus disastrously terminated by the negligence of the helms

man.

And "bout ship" it was, as a dozen men, at a look from the captain, who rushed out, followed by all of us, sprang to the boats.

Looking out from the quarter-deck, we saw the cask plunging and bobbing about in the waves. Fortunately the sea was not very high, and the water running into the bung-hole weighted the lower end of the cask, and enabled Bob to keep in a perpendicular position. Under other circumstances, it would have been a ludicrous sight!

The boat's crew soon came up to him; unheaded him; dragged him out, and brought him on board more dead than alive.

Ever afterwards he eschewed vapor-baths, as he had tabooed and anathematized shower-baths. But not the steaming nor the briny dip he had in his marine cask, &c., could cure him of his love for water. By and by he got the idea that his liver was affected, and was persuaded to enter an hydropathic hospital, where he was ducked and played the douce with, and rolled up in wet sheets and flannel counterpanes, and pounded and bent, until it became a matter of doubt whether he was to be left with any liver at all-let alone an inflamed one!

I have not heard from him this many a day. He is said to have traveled to the Spas at Baden-Baden; to have translated Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton's tract on the Water Cure into very readable Russian; and is more than suspected to be the author of a Life of Preissnitz, that has been published anonymously.

But wherever he is, and if chancing to meet this little essay, should call all these mishaps to mind, I conjure him to fill a glass, as I do, at parting with the reader, in the most fruity of "Dudley Bean's" port wine, to the "DISADVANTAGES OF WATER.

ART. III.-SUPPOSITITIOUS REVIEWS.

TIERRA DE GUERRA.-NO. III.

Ir is no part of the design of these papers to follow our AngloSpanish author through the sometimes dull details of his book; but before quoting the passages we have penciled, it would be as well to show what sort of a prison he was literally caged in for the time, with (subsequent) permission to go sight-seeing under the ciceronage of a very unprepossessing native.

"The room was quite empty, but at the farther end appeared another door, on pushing which I discovered my prison, whether by design or not, was less contracted than I had supposed. A few stone steps led to a terrace, below which appeared another, neglected in culture, but absolutely loaded with flowers, from the gorgeous scarlet blossoms of several species of cactus, to the faint blue balls of the mimosa. The terraces, enclosed by strong network, had formed an aviary on a grand scale; there were traces of walks among the dwarfed trees, and tracing one of these to its termination, through the open screen, a broad square or court was visible, with the great teocalli close at hand. The setting sun shone full on the front and side, and I saw distinctly the lineaments of the hideous idol seated in a crouching

posture, the mouth open and tongue lolling out, and on the summit a small structure like a dwarfish temple. During the night I frequently heard the sound of a horn, and a voice repeat a few unknown words in the direction of this temple; and the sonorous call falling from aloft through the stillness of the dark hours, enhanced the solemnity attaching to the large deserted building in which I was immured: these criers were the teopixqui (priests) who announced the passing time, from sunset to sunrise."

And again-" A strong wall formed one side of the cage, and the three others were enclosed by the copper net, which I found, on approaching, to be not as I had at first supposed of mere wire, but stout rods three or four inches apart. None but large birds could have been confined here, and this conjecture was confirmed by a gauzelike screen, visible at the opposite extremity of the palace; the intermediate space was occupied by a wilderness of tropical flowering and fruit-bearing plants; the mildness of the climate in this region, owing to its sheltered position and nearness to the equator, inducing successive vegetation, so that ripe fruits and young blossoms repeatedly load a single branch. On the third side the view was contracted by a thick grove of wide-spreading trees, and the fourth commanded the broad area in front of the teocalli; in the full light of day this last exhibited numerous details, which had escaped my attention the preceding afternoon. The base of the structure was little more than one hundred yards distant, the intervening court appearing unevenly divided by parallel walls scarcely hip high, extending from the foot of the first slope to the belt of trees forming a boundary on two sides; the teocalli itself resembled a steep pyramid, composed not of series of steps, but of six terraces, of smaller diameter and greater altitude as they approached the summit, stuccoed white externally, and diversified by two rows of hieroglyphics painted on the front, and a shallow trench, which ran from the feet of the idol to the plain, descending from steep to steep in a straight line. This idol was of enormous bulk, and could hardly have been chiselled from a single block, for although squatting on its hams on the fourth platform from the bottom, its head was nearly on a level with the next above, a height of perhaps forty feet; the face of the image was a hideous imitation of the human countenance, the eyes protruding, jaws half opened, and the limbs painted of a tawny green. Immediately above the monster's head, on the terrace, was a large altar, between the surface of which and the mouth of the former, a communication existed; and still higher, crowning the whole, appeared the fane or porch, whence issued the sound of horns at night. On gazing intently, I fancied I discerned a light flame at times in the last mentioned structure, which was open only towards the south, the teocalli facing the cardinal points, and this, as I subsequently learnt, was the sacred fire kept continually burning.

Not a living creature appeared during the morning, except a priest or two on the summit of the pyramid, who must have ascended by steps in the rear; and a few birds in the neighboring garden, some of whom occasionally descended to the stranger's cage, flitted from branch to branch, and then out into the free space again, with an ease tantalizing

to a prisoner; among them were several varieties of brilliant humming-birds, so tame that they scarce attempted to avoid my hand while hovering over a honey-flower. I caught them frequently, and held them like a jewel between the finger and thumb, while examining their delicate plumage, and restored them to liberty again, when they would seek the nearest cluster of blossoms, not at all disturbed by their brief bondage.

The cicerone before referred to, was called Atloe; and for reasons which afterwards appeared, inveigled our author into a sort of sightseeing rather trying to Saxon nerves. The festival of the serpent woman is horrible enough to give one the nightmare.

"Schoupal, the girl," cried Atloe, entering abruptly some days after, with a face of savage exultation.

"The Schoupal?" said I, interrogatively.

"Yes, yes, the little fool that let them go on the other side of the Sierra. But the chief of her village has given her up to pacify his powerful neighbors, who had taken her accordingly to sacrifice to Quitaztdi, the serpent woman, and that very night the festival would be kept."

I was shocked and distressed at this intelligence; the poor girl's liveliness and friendly disposition had at the first made a favorable impression, which resulted in hearty gratitude, when, unsolicited, she had rescued us from certain death; and now, for the first time, I bitterly regretted an expedition commenced at the cost of innocent blood.

"Ahti-you can go," Atloe said, eyeing me keenly. "It is a sight worth seeing." And our author did go; but we prefer to omit his prosy reasons for becoming a spectator, as well as the frightful details he gives of the revels themselves. Once afterward he was forcibly a witness to a somewhat similar orgie, and that alone should suffice to gratify all lovers of the strange and horrible. But before this, an attempt at escape is so full of adventure, we cannot slight the passage in immediate connection as it stands, with his subsequent lot. For all dry descriptions of customs, costumes, and the like, we refer the reader here, as elsewhere, to the book itself. Our object is to draw merely a few readable papers from the unknown pamphlet.

"ONE AFTERNOON, Atloe received some intelligence which seemed to disconcert him, and coming to me, said, that the Teocacixi was expected in a few hours, and I must at once return to my quarters, as it was necessary to have the inner door plastered over before he entered the palace. I solicited, without success, to be allowed my usual freedom until the pageant was over, but my otahl only replied doggedly in the negative, adding, that it was not possible to say when smiths could be sent to set up the new door in the wires, and I must consequently go in before the old was irremediably closed. The whole bearing of the man had been moody of late, and it seemed to me he only attended my steps from some evil motive, to form an opinion from the suppressed malice I more than once detected in his look and voice. As there was no help for it, I reluctantly returned with