us subscription;" or to that still more reprehensible class who will neither subscribe nor "owe subscription ?"

In thirty or forty years we hope to make our gallery so complete that posterity may possess the likeness of every celebrated individual of the nineteenth century. We pause no longer "in limine," but present the expectant reader with

Portly Mr. Williams! It is a privilege to look upon such greatness as yours—though only "done in little," by that curious "scrap”seraper, Johnston, who has hitherto set the country in a roar by an annual exhibition of fun,* but who is now engaged monthly to illuminate the pages of this, our world-renowned periodical, by engraved "flashes of merriment!" Look at him! Eyes-observe the oculist. There he stands, with greater self-possession than that of the elderly gentleman by the side of a murmuring stream, for he holds, as Counsellor Phillips's Napoleon did a sword and a fire-brand, his hat "in one hand" and his cane "in the other." But, to get fairly at the position in which the artist has chosen to represent the occult oculist, we must aspire to the honour of becoming his memorialist, and ecstatify the world by a recountal of a few of the adventures of one, concerning whom it might with peculiar appositeness be said—

"He was a man, take him for all in all,
Eye shall not look upon his like again."

To give his biography would be a task of unnecessary supererogation. To tell who and what he is, we need not; for, "breathes there a man" in our country "with soul so dead," so obscure, so willing to be argued unknown, as not to be familiar with "the fame of the name" of the celebrated John Williams, oculist in ordinary to Louis XVIII., Charles X. and King Phillippe !-Not his Indian Highness-but Phillippe, king of the French--Phillippe the cool, who stands as little in awe of his evil genius as did Brutus of oldPhilippe the more than Ajax invulnerable, who defies all manner of

Vide "Scraps by D. C. Johnston," Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, passim, not

pass him.

infernal machines, the oculist's included? He is a great man, that King Phillippe; but not so great as his " oculist in ordinary."

This extraordinary oculist is now performing a progress, truly triumphal, through these United States. Lafayette's was poor in comparison; for the one has been accompanied by the smiles, and the other by the tears, of a grateful people. The erudite self-diplomaed Doctor's first appearance in our country was, not to be too circumstantial, towards the conclusion of the year 1835, in the famous city of New-York, where he arrived, as they say in friendly epistles, in "pretty good health and spirits," after having, by his fascinating manners and conversation, rendered the passage

"O'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,"

in the estimation of all who had the felicity to be on board of the same vessel, the shortest ever made from France or elsewhere. The hour of the day of the month of his arrival we have not been able to ascertain with any greater certainty than the day of the month itself, but those who are fond of the eyedeal, may form some conjecture thereof by consulting the almanack; since the Doctor was heard to say, in his classical vernacular, that they "harrived at 'igh water." This "'igh water" was probably as effectual as that administered by the Doctor to his patients. It is rumoured that he applied it to the dead lights of the vessel, when he was about halfseas over, with such effect, that the stars could be seen through them in the darkest night.

As faithful memorialists it becomes and behoves us to record a sad accident with which the landing of the illustrious oculist to their majesties was attended. Such an event may truly be called portentous of the various mishaps and persecutions which have beset his benevolent peregrinations through those towns inhabited by the perversely blind Yankees. Scarcely had he left the vessel's side, and trod once more upon terra firma, when, like that Brutus who played the fool and expelled the Tarquins, he "kissed his mother earth"-though after a different fashion; for his heels, or his "'eels" as he called them, being slippery, flew upwards, and left their place to be usurped by a pair of "unwhisperables," as Boz happily entitles them.

"Oh! what a fall was there, my countrymen !"

Yet, fell he not "like Lucifer, son of the morning," nor “like a bright exhalation in the evening;" but he fell like a man that could not help it; and he rose-he rose like a male Ceres, not bearing indeed a wheat sheaf and a sickle, but emblems equally appropriate, a

wry face and a pickle-of mud;-but, sooth to say, he comported himself less like a Heathen deity than a mortal Christian, for he was mindful only of " his latter end”—and felt with the poet,

"More are men's ends marked, than their lives before."

This great fall was any thing but a windfall for the doctor, for its consequence was his confinement within doors for several weeks. His sovereign remedies, so designated from their cure of kings' evils, were ineffectual for himself; but, nevertheless, he recovered and set off, in the usual vulgar conveyances, for Boston—a city, which some wag, for what reason nobody ever knew, facetiously distin. guished as "the literary metropolis,"-Lucus à non lucendo. The doctor was sure that Boston would be the theatre of his most glo. rious success, for he had been informed that dimness of vision was so prevalent among the inhabitants, that many of them, after having vainly endeavoured from the base of Bunker Hill to discern the beautiful pyramidal peak of the monument there, have turned away ex. claiming, in the language of Macbeth,

"There's no such thing."

Immediately after his arrival in the justly so-named "city of notions," the erudite oculist lost no time in repairing to the "Institution for the Education of the Blind." With the sagacity of the elephant, he carried his trunk with him; which trunk was filled to overflowing with certificates of the Doctor's marvellous skill from all the most distinguished personages and learned societies of the old world. Of these he very kindly tendered to the director of the Institution the privilege of perusal--and here, courteous reader! here is the position in which he has been seized by the artist. He is pointing with his cane to the open trunk of certificates, and seems to have just wound up a grandiloquent speech on his own surpassing excellences!* Alas! such was the perversity of the director, springing altogether from prejudice in favour of the Medical Faculty, that, instead of permitting the distinguished operator to open the eyes of the pupils or the certificates so generously proffered, he merely suffered his own eyes to be opened; which was no sooner done, than, like “ open Sesame" in the Forty Thieves, it effected an opening of the street door, through which the great oculist, without further hint, disappeared. His successes in other quarters, however, consoled him for his defeat in this. Several elderly ladies, after paying twenty guineas each, were so effectually cured of blindness, that, though unable to distin

The autograph, with the title appended at the foot of the engraving, is from a letter addressed by the Doctor to the director of the Institution.

guish the perforations between the rounds of a ladder, or a hawk from a heron-shaw (corrupted, into hand-saw), they knew a charcoal man from a feminine vender of fish, provided their cries could be heard; and a wheelbarrow from a large-sized omnibus, if their rotatory movements were over big stones. All these marvellous cures the King-healing Doctor failed not to publish to mankind in magnificent phraseology-similar to that used by Napoleon in bulletins to his army-through the volumes of the Daily Gazettes. But, although numbers implicitly relied on the superior efficacy of the Doctor's prescriptions, there were a few over whose minds' eyes such cataracts had grown, that they could not clearly perceive why a slow cure, effected by the celebrated oculist for the dazzling sum of twenty-five guineas, was to be preferred to a rapid healing on application of remedies administered by some ignoble, regular physician for the contemptible sum of one dollar!

Among this stupid few was a Mr. L., who, being troubled with an inflammation of the visual organs, and in consequence thereof dazzled by the splendid promises of the oculist to some twenty-six majesties and imperial highnesses, repaired to this miraculous individual for advice. "Dangerous! most dangerous, is the vortex of agony into which you are about to be plunged!" asseverated the Doctor; "pay me twenty-five guineas and be cured." "Of course he put down the money," says the female reader. No! Miss Amelia Sophia, he put on his hat; and moreover, immediately betook himself to an ordinary leech, who probably had never attended any person of higher rank than a major-general of militia. How often do we see the heels of the noblest merit tripped up by its shadow! This miserable medical plebeian advised Mr. L. simply to lave his visual orbs in warm milk, and wear green goggles.

"And what followed?" tremulously demands the reader. The patient followed the advice, and was restored to perfect health in a week. But at what a sacrifice of self-gratification! "In one lit. tle month" he might have been cured by the most renowned oculist that ever flourished since the worship of eyedols. The same hand that had insinuated rays into the sightless eyeballs of half the crowned heads of Europe and the Sandwich Islands, would have administered to him 'igh-water at a guinea a drop; instead of which he ignominiously preferred the simple extract of kine, then to be had at six pennies the quart, though now worth eight, if undiluted!

"Can such things be,

And overcome us like a summer-cloud
Without our special wonder!"

Dr. Johnson, in commenting upon "King Lear," feelingly observes

that he could never bear "the extrusion of Gloster's eyes." Mr. L., in the spirit of the great Behemoth of literary criticism, probably feared to undergo the extrusion of his own eyes. How very unlike, in the cardinal virtue of fortitude, was he to the famous individual whose exploits are recorded in the mellifluous melodies of Mother Goose after the following sublime manner !—

"There was a man in our town,

And he was wondrous wise,
He jumped into a bramble-bush,
And scratched out both his eyes.

And when he saw his eyes were out,
With all his might and main
He jumped into a bramble-bush,
And scratched them in again!"

Repugnant as we are to forego so exalted a theme, we must curtail the fair proportions of this sketch, and rapidly dash over the remainder. Would that we could follow the career of our illustrious oculist step by step! Would that we possessed the oratorical powers of that modern Demosthenes, Pickle Emmons Esq., so that we might astonish myriads of freemen by our trumpeting of his fame! Would that we were by nature gifted with the puffing capacities of the whale, so that we might spout him up to the skies! But we must forbear to aggrandize and incontinently journalize. Although

"The soul and body rive not more in parting
Than greatness going off-"

yet from Boston the occult oculist proceeded to Providence,-on which, being a pious man, he relied too wholly for he was unceremoniously requested to abscond. From thence he proceeded to Philadelphia, but that city of brotherly love showed not even the love of a fifteenth cousin to the Doctor; for while there, he was ejected from his abiding-place to the tune of the Rogue's March, followed by the " Broom-girl” and a stick-a-to movement. He then betook himself to Baltimore, having shaken the dust from his shoes upon Philadelphia; which, however, in consequence of the great abundance of pure water in the streets, was speedily washed away. Next he took himself and his remedies to Washington, where, knowing the prevalence of blindness among the high in office, he anticipated a capital harvest. Here he was doomed to new disappointments; for not only was he compelled to confine his practice to a few insignificant and ungrateful plebeians, but came near being circumscribed into still narrower limits. He was duly arraigned to appear in open court (how different from the courts of Europe,