down on the tiles with a cry that outscreamed the sharpest treble in the Te Deum. (Look at Carlyle's article on Boswell, and see how he speaks of the poor young woman Johnson talked with in the streets one evening). All the crowd gone but these two "filles de la paroisse"-gone as utterly as the dresses they wore, as the shoes that were on their feet, as the bread and meat that were in the market on that day.”

In another place, speaking of voices, and how some had produced strange effects upon him: and how that he had heard some very sweet voices, he remarks :—

"Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child I saw and heard in a French hospital. Between two and three years old. Fell out of her chair and snapped both thigh bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. Rough students round her, some in white aprons, looking fearfully business-like; but the child. placid, perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it which you have heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at this moment, while I am writing, so many, many years afterwards. C'est tout comme un serin, said the French student at my side."

Do you not, in the relation of that incident, recognise the "all-comprehensive tenderness" which we have claimed for our author? We can almost see him standing by the hospital-cot, "weeping inwardly"—as

he so finely expresses it elsewhere-with pity for the dear little sufferer, who lies before him so still, and gentle, and patient: and, doubtless, longing with longing inexpressible to do something to alleviate her pain. Yet, he was no timid, cowardly student: his eminence in his profession shows how he had studied: his writings shew how he learned to put an iron restraint on his own feelings always, so that he might have his faculties unshackled and free to do the best for his patient. In all, however, he had the tender heart which could sympathise, and which had the happy effect also of keeping him from indulging in scientific cruelty: as witness this remark of his :—

"In the long catalogue of scientific cruelties there is hardly anything quite so painful to think of as that experiment of putting an animal under the bell of an air-pump and exhausting the air from it. [I never saw the accursed trick performed. Laus Deo.]"

Our student appears to have been interested in the literature of his profession, and to have collected the writings of some of its notable members; for, referring to a statement of his concerning medicine, at which he anticipates some will take offence, he says:—

"You don't know what I mean, indignant and not unintelligent country-practitioner? Then you don't know the history of medicine-and that is not my fault. But don't expose yourself in any outbreak of eloquence; for, by the mortar in which Anaxarchus

was pounded! I did not bring home Schenckius and Forestus and Hildanus, and all the old folios in calf and vellum I will show you, to be bullied by the proprietor of a 'Wood and Bache,' and a shelf of peppered sheepskin reprints by Philadelphia Editors."

Those who would like to know more of Dr. Holmes as a student had better read his novel "Elsie Venner," in which (amongst other characters of whom we shall have something to say hereafter) will be found his beau-ideal of a medical student, Bernard Langdon, the original of whom to a large extent, if our judgment fails us not, was our author himself.

Before closing this further portion of the brief biography, let us return to the parenthesis we just now quoted in which reference is made to Carlyle, and from which it appears that Dr. Holmes has read Carlyle's works. We can only faintly conceive the effect this must have had upon him. Studied in the light of their respective works they are very similar in their mode of thought; and there must have been a grand flashing of high intellect upon high intellect when the American (the British American as I like to think of him) read the weighty utterances of the English writer. We observe this, however, that whilst Dr. Holmes attains very nearly to the same height of conception and the same depth of thought as Mr. Carlyle does, the former has a far more graceful expression than the latter. Nevertheless. in both we

get the same prime element, that of looking into things, and not at the show of things. Perhaps it is a mere fancy to connect all this with a quotation: yet it has seemed to the present writer that some of the noble sentiments of our author may have taken their rise from the time when, probably as a student, Dr. Holmes first met with the quotation to which he makes reference in the following remark of his; which quotation he deemed worthy to be printed (as we print it) in capital letters:

"I know nothing in English or any other literature more admirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas Brown-'EVERY MAN TRULY LIVES, SO LONG AS HE ACTS HIS NATURE, OR SOME WAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES OF HIMSELF.'

CHAPTER IV.

THE BRIEF BIOGRAPHY CONCLUDED.

OUR remarks in this chapter will deal particularly with more personal information concerning Dr. Holmes than we have yet given.

We pass over his works for the present, as we shall name them further on, and discuss their merits fully. His profession as we have seen is that of medicine : in which profession, it is our pleasing duty to state, he has achieved a great reputation. He was Professor of Anatomy and Physics at Dartmouth College, in Canada, in 1839 and 1840: and he has been Professor of the same sciences in the Medical School of Harvard University (his alma mater) from the year 1847 to the present time; except that Physiology has been separated and made a distinct Professorship within a few years.

Doctor Holmes lives at Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States, making that literary capital of America his working head-quarters; but in the summer he retires to Beverly Farm, in Massachusetts,