contrary, he is unremitting in his attendance, and sometimes the first there of a morning, more especially when he has, to use his own expression, been “going it rather fast than otherwise” the evening before, and comes to the school very early in the morning to have a good wash and refresh himself previously to snatching a little of the slumber he has forgotten to take during the night, which he enjoys very quietly in the injecting-room down stairs, amidst a heterogeneous assemblage of pipkins, subjects, deal coffins, sawdust, inflated stomachs, syringes, macerating tubs, and dried preparations. The dissecting-room is also his favourite resort for refreshment, and he broils sprats and red herrings on the fire-shovel with consummate skill, amusing himself during the process of his culinary arrangements by sawing the corners off the stone mantel-piece, throwing cinders at the new man, or seeing how long it takes to bore a hole through one of the stools with a red-hot poker. Indeed, these luckless pieces of furniture are always marked out by the student as the fittest objects on which to wreak his destructive propensities; and he generally discovers that the readiest way to do them up is to hop steeple-chases upon them from one end of the room to the other—a sporting amusement which shakes them to pieces, and irremediably dislocates all their articulations, sooner than anything else. Of course these pleasantries are only carried on in the absence of the demonstrator. Should he be present, the industry of the student is confined to poking the fire in the stove and then shutting the flue, or keeping down the ball of the cistern by some abdominal hooks, and then, before the invasion of smoke and water takes place, quietly joining a knot of new men who are strenuously endeavouring to dissect the brain and discover the hippocampus major, which they expect to find in the perfect similitude of a sea-horse, like the web-footed quadrupeds who paw the “reality” in the “area usually devoted to illusion,” or tank, at the Adelphi Theatre.

If one of the professors of his medical school chances to be addicted to making anti-Martin experiments on animals, or the study of comparative anatomy, the pursuits offer an endless fund of amusement to the jocose student. He administers poison to the toxicological guinea-pigs; hunts the rabbit kept for galvanism about the school; lets loose in the theatre, by accident, the sparrows preserved to show the rapidly fatal action of choke-damp upon life; turns the bladders, which have been provided to tie over bottles, into footballs; and makes daily contributions to the plate of pebbles taken from the stomach of the ostrich, and preserved in the museum to show the mode in which these birds assist digestion, until he quadruples the quantity, and has the quiet satisfaction of seeing exhibited at lecture, as the identical objects, the heap of small stones which he has collected from time to time in the garden of the school, or from any excavation for pipes or paving which he may have passed in his route from his lodgings.

The second or middle course of the three winter sessions which the medical student is compelled to go through, is the one in which he most enjoys himself, and indulges in those little outbreaks of eccentric mirth which eminently qualify him for his future professional career. During the first course he studies from novelty—during the last from compulsion; but the middle one passes in unlimited sprees and perpetual half-and-half. The only grand project he now undertakes is “going up for his Latin,” provided he had not courage to do so upon first coming to London. For some weeks before this period he is never seen without an interlined edition of Celsus and Gregory; not that he debars himself from joviality during the time of his preparation, but he judiciously combines study with amusement—never stirring without his translation in his pocket, and even, if he goes to the theatre, beguiling the time between the pieces by learning the literal order of a new paragraph. Every school possesses circulating copies of these works: they have been originally purchased in some wild moment of industrious extravagance by a new man; and when he passed, he sold them for five shillings to another, who, in turn, disposed of them to a third, until they had run nearly all through the school. The student grinds away at these until he knows them almost by heart, albeit his translation is not the most elegant. He reads—“Sanus homo, a sound man; qui, who; et, also; bene valet, well is in health; et, and; suæ spontis, of his own choice; est, is,” &c. This, however, is quite sufficient; and, accordingly, one afternoon, in a rash moment, he makes up his mind to “go up.” Arrived at Apothecaries’ Hall—a building which he regards with a feeling of awe far beyond the Bow-street Police Office—he takes his place amongst the anxious throng, and is at last called into a room, where two examiners politely request that he will favour them by sitting down at a table adorned with severe-looking inkstands, long pens, formal sheets of foolscap, and awfully-sized copies of the light entertaining works mentioned above. One of the aforesaid examiners then takes a pinch of snuff, coughs, blows his nose, points out a paragraph for the student to translate, and leaves him to do it. He has, with a prudent forethought, stuffed his cribs inside his double-breasted waistcoat, but, unfortunately, he finds he cannot use them; so when he sticks at a queer word he writes it on his blotting-paper and shoves it quietly on to the next man. If his neighbour is a brick, he returns an answer; but if he is not, our friend is compelled to take shots of the meaning and trust to chance—a good plan when you are not certain what to do, either at billiards or Apothecaries’ Hall. Should he be fortunate enough to get through, his schedule is endorsed with some hieroglyphics explanatory of the auspicious event; and, in gratitude, he asks a few friends to his lodgings that night, who have legions of sausages for supper, and drink gin-and-water until three o’clock in the morning. It is not, however, absolutely necessary that a man should go up himself to pass his Latin. We knew a student once who, by a little judicious change of appearance—first letting his hair grow very long, and then cutting it quite short—at one time patronizing whiskers, and at another shaving himself perfectly clean—now wearing spectacles, and now speaking through his nose—being, withal, an excellent scholar, passed a Latin examination for half the men in the hospital he belonged to, receiving from them, when he had succeeded, the fee which, in most cases, they would have paid a private teacher for preparing them.

The medical student does not like dining alone; he is gregarious, and attaches himself to some dining-rooms in the vicinity of his school, where, in addition to the usual journals, they take in the Lancet and Medical Gazette for his express reading. He is here the customer most looked up to by the proprietor, and is also on excellent terms with “Harriet,” who confidentially tells him that the boiled beef is just up; indeed, he has been seen now and then to put his arm round her waist and ask her when she meant to marry him, which question Harriet is not very well prepared to answer, as all the second season men have proposed to her successively, and each stands equally well in her estimation, which is kept up at the rate of a penny per diem. But Harriet is not the only waiting domestic with whom he is upon friendly terms. The Toms, Charleses, and Henrys of the supper-taverns enjoy equal familiarity; and when Nancy, at Knight’s, brings him oysters for two and asks him for the money to get the stout, he throws down the shilling with an expression of endearment that plainly intimates he does not mean to take back the fourpence change out of the pot. Should he, however, in the course of his wanderings, go into a strange