give a fiddlestick for the place of a physician. Yet they may in their new vocation enjoy some advantages peculiar to themselves. They are already admitted into the private and confidential parties of persons of fashion, and have many opportunities of studying their disorders. They are also not unfrequently called in to drown the shrieks and exclamations of persons afflicted with the diseases of the card table, and may improve their skill by the imagery of gambling-flats and sharps.

may

But whatever reluctance any of the parties concerned in this revolution show to promote it, individual interests must give way to the general good. If Mr. Lichtenthal can prove that all diseases may be cured by musick, there is no man who will be mad enough to be sick while he is within the sound of a fiddle. Besides the pleasure of this new mode of cure, which will give it a decided superiority over the old, much expence may be avoided in our new Materia Medica. Here is nothing that is perishable, nothing that is wasted. The same instruments and the same compositions may be applied in a thousand cases, without losing their original powers. The longest-lived practitioner will not wear out a genuine Cremona, even if he attends an hospital; and a

small supply of cat-gut can be no object to one who has played himself into a chariot. Imagination, indeed, furnishes so many delightful prospects from the art of curing diseases by this medicine, that it is impossible to listen to trifling objections. What pieces will be most frequently employed, Mr. Lichtenthal only knows. Some patients will, no doubt, recover with all the rapidity of a jig, while others will mend in minuet-time. A slight indisposition may be removed by a single air, while a more obstinate case may require an overture or a concerto. The inclinations of the patient, as in all other cases, must be consulted, or at least not wholly neglected. Country gentlemen, when confined, will experience much relief in a hunting-song: young men of the town will perhaps prefer an Anacreontic, or an old English Derry Down; while they who despise all advice, and choose no will but their own, may be suitably affected by an Ad Libitum. Hospital patients will, in general, be content with hand-organs, or hurdy-gurdies, and the poorer sort may be supplied with ballads at

their own houses.

Such a revolution as this it is surely delightful to contemplate, and every lover of Projects must wait with impatience for the full ex

planation of Mr. Lichtenthal's plan. It was my duty as a PROJECTOR and patron of PROJECTORS, to give this early notice of it, and to offer such conjectures on its nature, as may serve to raise the expectations of my readers, and at the same time evince my own impartiality. It will, probably, have to contend with prejudice, but prejudice must give way to public good; and surely the public good will be eminently promoted when our physicians' prescription shall be printed in music types, and we shall have nothing to swallow more nauseous than the words of a modern opera.

THE PROJECTOR. N° 77.

"Not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom."

MILTON.

my

December 1807.

FOR Some weeks past I have had reason to be alarmed for these lucubrations. So great a number of new PROJECTORS have started within that time, that, had they proceeded in their various plans, it would have probably been out

of my power to retain my situation any longer,

as I have no inducements to propose to my readers equal to what they have been pleased to hold forth to their subscribers. I have even received sundry letters from my correspondents, desiring to know to which of the Joint-stock Companies I give the preference. Others have been pleased to express a sort of complimentary surprize that they have not yet seen my name as committee-man, director, or chairman of any of the Projects which hold out the prospect

of procuring the necessaries and luxuries of life for nothing, and being paid for the trouble of consuming them. But my worthy correspondents have surely forgot that, in a very early stage of my PROJECTORATE, I formally disclaimed all connexion with mechanical schemers; and from the experience of the last six weeks, I have certainly had no reason to repent of a determination which enjoins me, as every man ought to be enjoined, to keep within the strict limits of my own province.

Yet, notwithstanding all this, I would not have that I am less careaders to suppose my pable of embarking in these vast undertakings than the greater part of the subscribers who have been eager enough to put down their names, and wise enough to make their deposits. Indeed I am not so disposed to depart from the dignity of my predecessors as for a moment to admit that their successor, however unworthy in other respects, might not have made a very good figure as a joint brewer, a joint linendraper, or a joint wine merchant. On the contrary, I very much question whether the most ingenious of the gentlemen who have made a distinguished figure at the head of these Projects, be absolutely more clever fellows than the least of my predecessors; or whether