call to mind the advent of some young practitioner -preceded by the trumpet-tongued announcement of his fame during the brief rehearsal at some London hospital-of the important part he has to play in after life? What doctor ever came upon the stage who had not been the brightest star of his hospital or school?—if we may believe his maiden aunt and doting mother. In fact,

"Where yet was ever found a mother

Who'd give her booby for another?"

The youthful doctor enters public life just as a rocket darts into the sky-with noise and flash -all eyes directed to his strange eccentric flight. He soars a time in regions of mid-air, and gives off coruscations numerous and bright—the dazzling admiration of the upturned village eyes. Having discharged "the atomic weights" which ballasted him, and the "chemical combinations" which gave such brilliancy to his grand ascent, he is reduced at last to his own "specific gravity," with which he falls again to earthlike the rocket's empty case, to be refilled with more substantial, less showy, and less explosive stuff.

No art-no science-no profession—no calling—can send forth such an extraordinary pro

digy as the young doctor. He is an amalgamated mass of chemical symbols and decompositions of atomic weights and theories of microscopic specimens-botanic preparations — dissections-operations-diseases-and dog Latin of certificates credentials- testimonials and diplomas. He is, in fact, crammed to the mouth like a carpet-bag, and ground to the finest point like a lancet. He looks the very impersonation of science, (?) and boasts of dissections-lectures-dresserships-and bloody operations, in which he took the distinguished part of wringing out the sponge and looking on. He exhibits the diplomas of the College and the Hall to curious friends and maiden aunts. He boasts that he can cure all the incurables in his native village, and sneers contemptuously at experience and old-established men. This is the man who holds the balance of our destinies-the privileged by law to lengthen out or cut the thread of human life, without accountability to man.

How often blind affection for our own leads to the sacrifice of human life! How many a trusting friend has been beguiled into offering up his life a sacrifice to youthful skill! How many parents-proud of the school-distinctions of a son-entrust their lives to his helpless inexperience; and it is only when the evidence of

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approaching death alarms the minds of friends, that other aid is summoned to avert the fatal end. Week after week the village Esculapius receives the homage of the poor-the pity of the rich—and the most profound contempt of doctors far and near; but as the gloss subsides, the indignant mother, finding that her darling doctor's door is not beset with anxious crowds, vents her sore displeasure on the stupid world. She tells her friends what wondrous cures 66 our doctor" has performed, long after old practitioners had given the cases up. With the practice of his fascinated family, and the patronage of all the old stagers who employ each new doctor in succession and pay none-our juvenile hero consumes the first few years of his professional life, and—finding that the public do not take him at his own valuation-he softens down, and, in process of time, discovers what a smattering of knowledge is a young doctor's stock-in-trade.

He meets with difficult and dangerous casesreverses and vexations—and is obliged to seek from time to time the assistance of the very men whom he despised and scorned. Having at length cut his wise-teeth and fooleries together, he gets into practice, and, in his turn, looks down with commiseration upon the next new doctor who comes upon the scene.

Having disposed of our young and inexperienced friend, we will view him in another phase of his medical existence or, as commencing practice again after years of experience and toil,-and let us see how the world will use him then. As in former years, the first thing he does is to fix the brass plate on his door, and keep it bright. The next, to look for friends! What a strange delusion! Did ever mortal hear of friends encouraging a doctor yet?

He then observes, with scrutinising glance, the peculiarities of the people, and at length endeavours to obtain some public appointment. But who ever heard of a public gift that was not privately bestowed upon some friend of the parson, or protégé of the treasurer, long before the vacant office was announced? Thus is Hope defeated by the representatives of Faith and Charity.

He then appeals to family connexions; and here, again, is doomed to disappointment. Who ever patronised a doctor relative? especially if poor; and, if rich, who would seek to practise as a doctor? As a last resource, he tries the several introductions from his friends; but everywhere he calls, he meets with some rebuff. One will receive him coolly, while another treats

him as if come to kidnap her favourite doctor. The only persons from whom he receives attention are those upon whom he had no claim

those who are not trammelled by a clique, and whose vision is not nasally obscured. If, despite all obstacles, he rise and make a sensation in the world, his darling relatives will claim him as their own!

No men are so subject to the world's caprice as doctors. It is most humiliating to see a man of science at the mercy of a clique—to see him patronised or rejected by glaring incapacity or wealth-to hear him vilified by lisping lipsor see him thrust aside while some notorious mediocrity is summoned to supplant him. Even the decencies of social life are often outraged by his neighbours, strangers like himself, seeking the aid of some inferiority, whose carriage is kept waiting in vulgar triumph opposite his door. So much for the world's patronage of doctors!

A medical man, before commencing practice, should always ascertain the description of inhabitant. If he do not, and it prove to be of the lower and more uneducated class, deficient in the knowledge of the usages of society and the courtesies of life, the educated gentleman may write himself down as lost.