bition to rise above the
class his family had adorned for ages. He had, as he averred, a soul
above senna, and a destiny higher than black drop. He had heard of a
tailor's apprentice becoming a great general. He had himself seen a
wig-maker elevated to the woolsack; and he kept continually repeating,
"Mine is the only walk in life that leads to no high rewards. What
matters it whether my mixtures be addressed to the refined organization
of rank, or the _dura ilia rasorum?_--I shall live and die an
apothecary. From every class are men selected for honors save mine; and
though it should rain baronetcies, the bloody hand would never fall to
the lot of a compounding chemist."

"What do you intend to make of Algernon Sydney, Mr. Potts?" would say
one of his neighbors. "Bring him up to your own business? A first-rate
connection to start with in life."

"My own business, sir? I'd rather see him a chimneysweep."

"But, after all, Mr. Potts, being so to say, at the head of your
profession--"

"It is not a profession, sir. It is not even a trade. High science and
skill have long since left our insulted and outraged ranks; we are mere
commission agents for the sale of patent quackeries. What respect has
the world any longer for the great phials of ruby, and emerald, and
marine blue, which, at nightfall, were once the magical emblems of our
mysteries, seen afar through the dim mists of lowering atmospheres, or
throwing their lurid glare upon the passers-by? What man, now, would
have the courage to adorn his surgery--I suppose you would prefer I
should call it a 'shop'--with skeleton-fishes, snakes, or a stuffed
alligator? Who, in this age of chemical infidelity, would surmount his
door with the ancient symbols of our art,--the golden pestle and mortar?
Why, sir, I'd as soon go forth to apply leeches on a herald's tabard, or
a suit of Milan mail. And what have they done, sir?" he would ask,
with a roused indignation,--"what have they done by their reforms? In
invading the mystery of medicine, they have ruined its prestige. The
precious drops you once regarded as the essence of an elixir vitae,
and whose efficacy lay in your faith, are now so much strychnine, or
creosote, which you take with fear and think over with foreboding."

I suppose it can only be ascribed to that perversity which seems a
great element in human nature, that, exactly in the direct ratio of my
father's dislike to his profession was _my_ fondness for it. I u