Christian year, it may be remembered that in bygone times when the medical practitioner was a wizard (or a witch) and uttered his (or her) spell to stay the arrows of Apollo, it not infrequently contained a denunciation of some brother (or sister) practitioner of the art (how times are changed !), and it was known, in Rome at all events, as a carmen, a song. Hence, say the etymologists, the English word “charm,” which still, of course, characterises the modern witch, if not the modern wizard—neither of whom, we may add, is nowadays a medical practitioner.
Besides, denunciations are, of course, grunted and growled with more or less of a semblance of singing in modern opera. To substantiate my words I need only mention that interminable scene—or is it an act ?—of gloom and evil plottings by Telramund and Ortrud in Lohengrin.
But if I am again singing, this time, I trust, my voice will sound in the ears of my hearers less shrill, less strident, less of a shriek. For, in sooth, the present theme is one upon which we are justly entitled, in so far as England and Scotland at all events are concerned, to raise what would be a Nune Dimiitis of praise and thanksgiving, were it not that the price of cleanly air like that of liberty is eternal vigilance, seeing that our nostrils are no longer offended by the stenches our forefathers had to put up with. That they endured such
