uring
to decipher them at the other. Those who have called upon him at this
trying period have found him in an old shooting-jacket and slippers,
seated at a table, and surrounded by every book that was ever written upon
every medical subject that was ever discussed, all of which he appears to
be reading at once--with little pieces of paper strewn all over the room,
covered with strange hieroglyphics and extraordinary diagrams of chemical
decompositions. His brain is just as full of temporary information as a
bad egg is of sulphuretted hydrogen; and it is a fortunate provision of
nature that the _dura mater_ is of a tough fibrous texture--were it not
for this safeguard, the whole mass would undoubtedly go off at once like a
too tightly-rammed rocket. He is conscious of this himself, from the
grinding information wherein he has been taught that the brain has three
coverings, in the following order:--the _dura mater_, or Chesterfield
overall; the _tunica arachnoidea_, or "dress coat of fine Saxony cloth;"
and, in immediate contact, the _pia mater_, or five-and-sixpenny long
cloth shirt with linen wristbands and fronts. This is a brilliant specimen
of the helps to memory which the grinder affords, as splendid in its
arrangement as the topographical methods of calling to mind the course of
the large arteries, which define the abdominal aorta as Cheapside, its two
common iliac branches, as Newgate-street and St. Paul's Churchyard, and
the medio sacralis given off between them, as Paternoster-row.

Time goes on, bringing the fated hour nearer and nearer; and the student's
assiduity knows no bounds. He reads his subjects over and over again, to
keep them fresh in his memory, like little boys at school, who try to
catch a last bird's-eye glance of their book before they give it into the
usher's hands to say by heart. He now feels a deep interest in the
statistics of the Hall, and is horrified at hearing that "nine men out of
thirteen were sent back last Thursday!" The subjects, too, that they were
rejected upon frighten him just as much. One was plucked upon his anatomy;
another, because he could not tell the difference between a daisy and a
chamomile; and a third, after "being in" three hours and a quarter, was
sent back, for his inability to explain the process of making malt from
barley,--an operation, whose final use he so well understands, although
the preparation somewhat bothered him. And thus, funking at the rejection
of