vm UNIVERSITIES: ACTUAL AND IDEAL 221 



" If a man could be sure 

 That his life would endure 

 For the space of a thousand long years " 



he might do a numher of things not practicable 

 under present conditions. Methuselah might, 

 with much propriety, have taken half a century to 

 get his doctor's degree; and might, very fairly, 

 have been required to pass a practical examination 

 upon the contents of the British Museum, before 

 commencing practice as a promising young fel- 

 low of two hundred, or thereabouts. But you 

 have four years to do your work in, and are turned 

 loose, to save or sla}^ at two or three and twenty. 



Now, I put it to you, whether you think that, 

 when you come down to the realities of life — when 

 you stand by the sick-bed, racking your brains for 

 the principles which shall furnish you with the 

 means of interpreting symptoms, and ' forming a 

 rational theory of the condition of your patient, it 

 will be satisfactor}'' for you to find that those 

 principles are not there — although, to use the ex- 

 amination slang which is unfortunately too famil- 

 iar to me, you can quite easily " give an ac- 

 count of the leading peculiarities of the Marsu- 

 pialia," or ^' enumerate the chief characters of the 

 Comjwsitce,^' or " state the class and order of the 

 animal from which Castoreum is obtained." 



I really do not think that state of things will 

 be satisfactory to you; I am very sure it will not 

 be so to your patient. Indeed, I am so narrow- 



