benefit of your fellow-creatures, nature's hidden treasures. Fulfil your mission worthily-not for your own advantage, nor for your own reputation—but for the glory of God and for the welfare of his creatures. The day will come when you will have to render up account. After the service of God, it is the highest mission of man."

And what doctor could read this spirit-stirring appeal to the amour propre of his profession, without feeling proud of his vocation? Yet withal, what doctor would be bold enough to affirm that many of the medical men whom we daily see are, or ever were, intended to be priests of the sacred fire of life, except by their fond and doting parents?

The man of education and refined feelings, who possesses that self-respect which is the safeguard of his profession, has, indeed, a trying and difficult task to compete with some of these mediocrities, who resort with impunity to the thousand-and-one little artifices so effective with the public, and yet so ridiculed by them-for the public are not such fools that they cannot tell what a doctor drives to his next-door neighbour's for-or what he goes to every place of worship for or why he drives about on Sunday so as to attract the notice of every congregation

in succession! They know, too, that a lady is not always in the case when the doctor is summoned from church, from dinner, or from supper. They know, that when a doctor's carriage stands near a railway station for hours together, that he is not always looking in to see a patient, but looking out for one.

A carriage is a very simple and a very essential thing to a medical man in practice; yet there are ways of employing even a carriage, which smack of quackery-advertisement—and puff. It may be made the doctor's signboard or his finger-post.

I once heard of a medical man whose carriage was so regularly near the station when the crack trains arrived from town, that a facetious swell, soured by the prospect of a weary walk, christened the doctor's turn-out the sign of " The Old Black Horse." Doubtless a draught or pull from the machine would not have been refused; but chacun à son goût. Many there are who would prefer that the doctor's sign should always stand at the railway station, or anywhere, than opposite their door for patients may have private reasons for not proclaiming to the world the sad misfortune of being in the doctor's hands.

It is the practice of such silly artifices which

makes the medical profession the object of public ridicule and contempt. Were the respectable and more sensible public to discountenance such practices, instead of merely laughing at them, the doctor would soon cease to imitate the mountebank who promenades the streets and blows the advertising blast from his professional penny trumpet to crowds of ailing, gaping mortals, who rush to see and hear. These acrobat doctors are unjust towards the educated medical man who observes professional decorum, although it keeps him in obscurity.

Is it conducive to a patient's interest that his doctor should be independent of him?

Certainly not. There is too much to try the temper and disgust the feelings. Few independent men would tolerate the peevishness-the petulance—the summary commands-the reproaches the dissatisfaction—and the gross ingratitude of many patients, to say nothing of the grumbling at the charge for nights of anxious. watching and days of thankless toil. Were a man rich, what inducement would there be to witness sorrow-suffering-and death, and to breathe the hot, polluted breath of pestilence?— No. Depend upon it, poverty is designed by Providence to be the doctor's portion, and that

very poverty is the source of all his real greatness. There are, however, arguments which tend another way; -for instance: How can we expect the man whose brain is everlastingly distracted with life's cares, to find clear thoughts, to reason, and reflect, upon a case of life and death? No man deserves our sympathy more than the doctor. Poor in purse-broken in spiritbent with anxiety and trouble-he slaves his life away, consoling with a cheerful voice his patient's sorrow, or repelling with his ready hand the onslaught of grim Death. Even when oblivious Sleep, in charity, would spread her mantle over his sinking frame, the hasty summons drags him forth again; and when grey morn awakes the busy world, this weary slave is seen returning to his bed. The well-educated, scientific doctor, is modest in demeanour-thoughtful in appearance -cautious in forming or giving an opinion—careful in practice; he boasts not, and he makes no dash; and although he lives in obscurity and neglect, yet he has the proud reflection of having done his duty and enlarged the boundaries of science. He is free from the stings of an upbraiding conscience. "No busy dreams awake

his curtained sleep."

"No angry spirits hover

round his midnight couch, and cry aloud for

vengeance." But, unfortunately for science and humanity, the medical profession is not wholly composed of such men as these.

It is an extraordinary physiological fact, that doctors, like sheep, are gregarious, although they hate and despise each other to the last extreme. But, be it observed to their credit, it is only those who are opposed to each other in practice, and, while opposed, that this feeling exists; for when doctors meet away from the scene of their rivalry, they are no longer rivals, but most excellent and confiding friends-just as contending barristers, who, when in court, are so ferocious that spectators are apt to consider the table which separates them a merciful interposition of Providence to prevent legal homicide, yet leave the court the best of friends, to the infinite disgust of their respective clients, who, with rage depicted on their countenance, generally articulate the words "a sell," as if-foolish creatures!—they imagined that a paid advocate accepted their ire with the fee.

There are spots in London so densely crowded with doctors that they may not inaptly be called the Quartiers Latin, or Latin districts,—a term given to the locale of the doctors by our French neighbours,—in honour, I presume, of canine Latinity.