prince's tooth, with a gold pencil case. I
liked him. The first time I went to him he
patted rne on the head, and showed me a
mighty rolling panorama of the coronation of
George the Fourth, and said I didn't want
any physic just then—it was that which
made me like him.

Far different were my feelings towards
Mr. Gruffinboote. Gruffinboote was one of
those men—a class now extinct—who
achieved a reputation for great talent and
practical skill, by a savage and overbearing
demeanour. Gruffinboote bullied the timid,
frightened the ladies, and insulted the
nobility. The timid people, the ladies,
and the noblemen who like to be bullied,
and frightened and insulted went to
Gruffinboote, read his book, and abused him
continually, to the great increase of his
practice and extension of his fame. It was
my doleful lot to be taken to Mr.
Gruffinboote; something, of course, being the
matter with my eyes and limbs. It was a
dark day, and we went in a yellow hackney-
coach; but where Mr. Gruffinboote dwelt, or
what sort of a house his was, I cannot call
to mind. All I can recollect is, that Mr.
Gruffinboote wanted to do something to my
eyes; but whether to scoop them out, or bleed
them, or scrape them, or drill holes through
them, or paint them with mercury (I have
suffered nearly all these processes in my time)
I cannot now say. I objected to Mr. Gruffinboote,
certainly with tears; probably with
struggles; possibly with kicks, and it is a
fact that Mr. Gruffinboote thrashed me.
He was a big, rough man, like a fierce
schoolmaster that had been turned out in a prairie
to graze; and I say that he thrashed me—a
weak ailing child, with bad eyes and limbs.
I bear Gruffinboote no ill will, but I think
were he yet alive, and were I to meet him, I
should be sorely tempted to tell him a piece
of my mind.

I should fill this sheet were I to enumerate
half the members of the Faculty between
whom I ran the gauntlet in search of health.
There was Sir E. Mollyent, the great ladies'
doctor, who wrote the most complicated
prescriptions, and was fond of recommending the
waters of Maninbad, or the baths of Lucca,
to very poor people's children, and once
prescribed chicken-broth and carriage exercise to
a pauper. There was Mr. Scalpel Carver, with
an awful white neckcloth and shining white
teeth, of whom men said, in a whisper, that
he was fond of the knife; though, thank
goodness, he never operated on me. And, among
a whole host of others, there was worthy,
kindly, Doctor Lilliput with his morocco case
full of infinitesimal bottles, his tasteless
medicines, mild and gentle mode of
treatment. I know that, as a boy, I looked upon
him as the greatest, wisest, cleverest of
Doctors; but I am afraid now that he was not
one of the orthodox Faculty, but was of the
Homœopathic persuasion.

I have not troubled the Faculty much,
since I came to years of discretion, or
indiscretion. I think I may say, as Sir
Godfrey Kneller did of Doctor Radcliffe, that I
can take anything of a doctor, but his physic.
The last doctor I went to seemed to have some
intuitive notion of this; for, when I had gravely
recited to him the details of my complaint, he
gave me a very fine full-flavoured Havannah
cigar, and ordered his servant to bring up the
liqueur-case, and the hot water. To be sure,
he was only a country doctor.

HEROES AFLOAT.

THERE was a certain charm in Malta with
its sunny days and rainy nights; but one may
grow tired of hearing marches played, and, on
the whole, certainly, a concentration of troops
on a small island has a three-in-a-bed effect
upon the spirits. I longed to get out of it and
to ramble at ease in the broad world. But
how? Fate had attached me to the British
troops with instructions to accompany them
on their march. But since these troops were,
for the time at least, locked up in Malta, they
could not march, and I could not accompany
them. In the first place, there were no ships
to take them on to Turkey; and, in the second
place, news had just reached us of a fresh delay
granted to the Czar, and of another appeal to
the sentiments of justice and generosity which
are supposed to animate the conduct of that
perfect gentleman, and of which he is as full
as bees are of milk, or cats of honey. An
ultimatissi-issi-issimum had been dispatched, and
—to say nothing of the chance of more last
ultimatissimums—there was every prospect of
a delay of five or six weeks before the first
British soldiers set foot on Turkish ground.
The question for me to consider was how
could a person in my condition best employ
his period of idleness. Of course, he could do
nothing better than set off immediately for
the seat of war, regardless of instructions
or orders. So I embarked in the Liverpool
and Levant Company's steamer, Meerschaum,
when she touched to take up passengers at
Malta.

The passengers on board the Meerschaum
were so many lions, British and continental.
Fezzes were the fashion of the day,
and some of the passengers wielded
enormous Turkish pipes and smoked
choice Latakia. A Welshman who had
at one time held a commission in the Rifles,
reeled about the deck, and he, or the liquor in
him, told us that when in garrison at
Malta he had married one of the daughters of
the emperor of Morocco, on which interesting
occasion the young lady's father had made
him a present of six millions of pounds
sterling. Just now he was afloat at the
earnest solicitation of his friend the Sultan.
He was going to Circassia. What for? Why,
of course, to teach the Circassians how to fire
a rifle. The gentlemen of his militia company