nio, in the
fairy-tale,[I-D] chose his followers, for his peculiar gifts. First on the
list stood the MAN OF MEDICINE, Dr. Quentin Quackleben, who claimed
right to regulate medical matters at the spring, upon the principle
which, of old, assigned the property of a newly discovered country to
the bucanier who committed the earliest piracy on its shores. The
acknowledgment of the Doctor's merit as having been first to proclaim
and vindicate the merits of these healing fountains, had occasioned his
being universally installed First Physician and Man of Science, which
last qualification he could apply to all purposes, from the boiling of
an egg to the giving a lecture. He was, indeed, qualified, like many of
his profession, to spread both the bane and antidote before a dyspeptic
patient, being as knowing a gastronome as Dr. Redgill himself, or any
other worthy physician who has written for the benefit of the _cuisine_,
from Dr. Moncrieff of Tippermalloch, to the late Dr. Hunter of York, and
the present Dr. Kitchiner of London. But pluralities are always
invidious, and therefore the Doctor prudently relinquished the office of
caterer and head-carver to the Man of Taste, who occupied regularly, and
_ex officio_, the head of the table, reserving to himself the occasional
privilege of criticising, and a principal share in consuming, the good
things which the common entertainment afforded. We have only to sum up
this brief account of the learned Doctor, by informing the reader that
he was a tall, lean, beetle-browed man, with an ill-made black
scratch-wig, that stared out on either side from his lantern jaws. He
resided nine months out of the twelve at St. Ronan's, and was supposed
to make an indifferent good thing of it,--especially as he played whist
to admiration.

First in place, though perhaps second to the Doctor in real authority,
was Mr. Winterblossom; a civil sort of person, who was nicely precise in
his address, wore his hair cued, and dressed with powder, had
knee-buckles set with Bristol stones, and a seal-ring as large as Sir
John Falstaff's. In his heyday he had a small estate, which he had spent
like a gentleman, by mixing with the gay world. He was, in short, one of
those respectable links that connect the coxcombs of the present day
with those of the last age, and could compare, in his own experience,
the follies of both. In latter days, he had sense enough to extricate
himself from his course of dissipation, th