and no honest broken-down labourer could wish for or have better quarters in his declining years.

Droitwich is at last attracting general attention as a health resort, and many sufferers from gout and chronic rheumatism are flocking to it for treatment. The accommodation for invalids is said to be insufficient, but, considering the state of the land, and its tendency to sink, very great credit is due to local builders for doing so much. Important and well-planned additions have been made to the Raven, once the Manor House, now a hotel, and some large boarding-houses have been recently built. The brine springs are credited with almost miraculous efficacy; and I remember when a lad, and before beginning to study medicine, making the acquaintance of an elderly lady in Birmingham-who still survives—who had often gone to Droitwich for the baths. Her first visit must have been paid over thirty years ago. She derived great benefit, and speaks gratefully of the place. Two or three years since I sent a gouty patient up who had resisted all the remedies I could think of, and, to his delight and my gratification, a stiffness of the right shoulder, that had come on after falling from a tree upon his arm, and which had practically crippled him, yielded to frequent baths. He is now working hard, and without inconvenience, whenever his partiality for cider, mead (the favourite Dorset drink), and beer leaves him leisure and inclination for less pressing duties. The discovery of the most striking virtues of the Droitwich brine was accidental, and occurred during the cholera visitation of 1832; many deaths had taken place, when it occurred to some one to put certain of the sufferers in salt pans, and it is asserted, though the report seems too good to be true, that every one treated in this simple fashion recovered; at any rate, whatever the cause of their recovery, the reputation of the brine treatment was made, and before long a small bath company was formed. Since then the waters have grown in repute, until many persons of high rank, some, indeed, members of the Royal Family, have gone to Droitwich, and derived such decided benefit that they have returned again and again. The chief efficacy of the water is in gout and chronic rheumatism; in these complaints baths artificially heated-for the brine does not come up from a sufficient depth to be warm—are taken once or twice a day, with almost immediate advantage. The brine is mixed with at least an equal quantity of fresh, hot water, or in some cases with three times as much. Dr. W. P. Bainbrigge tells me that after sufferers from rheumatic gout have had several baths, their skin becomes soft and velvety, and the water in which they have bathed contains traces of urate of soda, which that learned physician

believes must be

dissolved out of the tissues by the solvent properties of the brine. Some medical practitioners might argue that the urate of soda was washed off the skin; but the fact, given on good authority, is curious, and calls for extended experiment and investigation; for if the brine actually dissolves out the urate of soda from the tissues of gouty patients, its value as a remedy in these crippling and painful complaints is placed on a very different footing. Brine tanks go to Malvern, fourteen miles off, where unsuccessful attempts have, it is said, been made to give the invalids, who flock to that pretty place, the benefit of Droitwich brine baths, without the trouble of going to the neighbourhood of the Wyches. The main difficulty in carrying on the brine treatment at Malvern, or anywhere else at a distance, is the heavy carriage of the brine, so that the temptation is almost irresistible to put it in the baths in homoeopathic doses; but the imagination is a powerful factor in the cure of disease, and many a sufferer may fancy that he is getting great good from his diluted brine baths.

At Droitwich there are some excellent hotels, more particularly the Raven and the Royal; the former, as I have mentioned above, has been enlarged. There are also very extensive brine establishments, so that the visitor can obtain everything he needs. I was particularly charmed with the Raven; its sitting-rooms were handsome and home-like; its grounds well kept and lovely, and its general appearance prosperous and attractive. The new St. Andrew's baths are large, and fitted with the best modern appliances. They were only opened two summers ago, and in the spring of 1888 they had to be made three times as capacious, so great had been the run upon them. They include private bathing places, and large and convenient swimming-baths. There is a want at Droitwich of medical homes for invalids, similar to those that have made Malvern, Matlock, and Buxton popular. Sufferers would often find it better to take the brine baths while under the systematic supervision of medical advisers. Some Droitwich doctors have resident patients, but there are no large and palatial establishments; and, although the hotels are excellent, gouty sufferers need close supervision, combined with scientific regimen, and that can only be managed in the house, and under the eye of an experienced medical practitioner. Good private establishments are numerous, where great skill is shown in the management of the inmates, and one of these is kept by a lady who has had a thorough training in a public hospital; she is the daughter of a medical man, who was for many years greatly respected at Hereford.

VOL, CCLXVIII, NO. 1909.

E

Of late, the prosperity of the town has much improved, and the severe depression of a few years ago has for the present passed away; this has given courage to the residents, and more is being done than for a long time. Mr. Corbett has bought the Royal Baths lately, and has been building a large establishment for the accommodation of invalids. Wealthy proprietors like Mr. Corbett can do so much when, like him, they have ripe experience, ample capital, and practical knowledge. Some day a park may be laid out, and that would be a great boon; while one or two hydropathic establishments under medical management are urgently needed, and I apprehend that suitable sites would not be difficult to find. There is evidently a good field at Droitwich for enterprise and capital.

Droitwich is, after all, not such a bad place as it looks. The country is pretty, the railway communication excellent, and Gloucester, Cheltenham, Worcester, Birmingham, and Wolverhampton are within easy reach. Worcester Cathedral and Tewkesbury Abbey, and the tapering spire of St. Andrew's, Worcester, are well worth more than one visit; so is Malvern, with its grand old Priory ; a little further off is Ross, with its Horse Shoe Bend and ever-verdant fields. The Forest of Dean and Lydbrook with its magnificent viaduct, the Wye, and Symond's Yat, are not beyond easy reach, while Hereford with its Cathedral is hardly an hour's run. At Hereford, too, the beautiful Catholic Priory Church, at Belmont, on the banks of the sylvan Wye, should be visited; still further off, the beautiful neighbourhood of Ludlow, with its majestic castle and noble circular church, delights the visitor; and in the opposite direction from Hereford lies the glorious valley stretching from that city to Brecon and Devynock; while the splendid Priory of St. John's at Brecon, the Priory walks, the Brecon Beacons, the charming valley of the Honddw, and the pretty falls of Ffrrewgrech, with the beautiful Llangorse lake or Lynn Safaddan, and Builth Rocks on the Usk, are every one of them most attractive. A couple of summer months at Droitwich would give the visitor the full benefit of the treatment, and at the same time enable him to visit the picturesque places I have named, and many more besides, all within reach of any ardent lover of nature who has a good long purse and full command of his time.

AN OLD OXONIAN.

PEARLS.

PEAR

EARLS have been rising in value in the European market so long, and threaten to rise so steadily, that they may soon become the costliest, as they have long been the most elegant, orna ments of a beautiful woman.

"Si douce, si douce est la Marguerite!"

sang the ancient Provence troubadour. Many a jewel is fifty times as effective the ruby is richer in colour, the diamond is brighter, gold and silver are more plastic-as full of possibilities as Reynard's bag of tricks. The pearl has but its mild satin skin, like an angel's shoulder, its rounded curves; yet its shy, moony lustre seems to have a more permanent hold over a dainty fancy than many a more vivid and more robust material. True, it is mere carbonate of lime; true, its globing form comes but from the sickness of an invertebrate; its colours are drawn, not from the living fish, but from its putrescence after death. An ornament that owes its existence to nothing but disease and decay certainly draws little from sentiment; and perhaps the pearl owes more to its constant association with noble pictures of beauteous women than to its intrinsic glory. For all that, the decorative position of pearls is quite unassailable. In spite of their grim origin, a necklet of fine pearls remains a far more refined and dainty ornament than one of brilliants. We should naturally deck Aspasia with diamonds, but Polyxena with pearls (though, no doubt, it ought to be the other way). Perhaps one reason is the presence in pearls of beauty without brilliancy. "Only the star glitters," said Emerson, "the planet has a faint, moon-like ray."

Enormous sums have been given for pearls in all ages, because they were so beloved. Cleopatra would have swallowed a diamond had not a pearl been costlier, Arch-Snobbess as she was! and the "pearl of great price" has been a synonym for the most precious possession from time immemorial.

But after the great Exhibition of 1851, when a great impetus was given to the manufacture of artificial pearls, whilst at the same time

increased study of the pearl-bearing mollusks led experts to conjecture that it would presently be possible to sow the sea with pearls like a field with grain, the value of real pearls went down considerably. Pearl necklets could be bought for but moderate sums. People gave pearls away without much consideration, which now they would prize, and they were no longer looked upon as an "investment" for money. Of course, I do not speak of pearls of unusual size and colour-they have always had their particular market, as the best thing of its kind must have-but small pearls about the size of duckshot, that now fetch at least £30 to £40 a row. I have had little strings of pearls sent me when a child in letters as pretty things of some, but no great, consequence, by kindly disposed friends, of a now extinct breed.

The experts, however, who prophesied smooth things about pearlculture, proved regularly out of it, as science in her proud moods often does prove, and nature seems to take her revenge.

Proprietors of the pearl-banks, in haste to get rich before the value further deteriorated and the sea became a mere heap of scien tific wealth, became impatient of the normal risks of this anxious trade. The oyster-stacks, built of rotting bivalves, and purchased by auction at vast prices, began to yield fewer and fewer pearls of importance, in proportion as the size and number of the stacks increased. The divers, who hitherto had plied their dangerous trade with as much discretion as courage, detaching only the old misshapen oysters which were likely to have secreted big pearls in the long struggle with the vicissitudes of oyster life, were now bidden gather shells of all sizes; and they gathered recklessly, exhausting the banks for future use by removing young oysters incapable of pearl-bearing, whilst glutting the market with "seed" and "blind" pearls-two things which sent down the value of all pearls at the time, and have helped to raise pearls to an almost abnormal value since. For "sowing the sea with pearis" turned out a scientific failure. Both pearl-oysters and pearl-mussels refused to have their picturesque disease oftener than they could help. The Chinese-ingenious tricksters-began to manufacture real pearls after a desperate fashion by coaxing the obliging mollusk to coat balls of wax and small shot with the lustrous nacre. They even introduced small josses of thin metal between the shell and the mantle of the pearl-bearing mussel about their coasts; and these, setting up an irritation in the creature's sides, speedily became coated, and, after "stacking," iridescent, and were bought as great and mysterious curios. They also had a way of taking a single scale from off a pearl of fair size, and afterwards