1-SS2-37. LABORATORY OF KOYAL INFIRMARY. 33 



home, and the white and black mice. I am glad at the subject 

 of your P.S. Perpetual Motion was too delightful an idea for even 

 Mr. Dick to put an end to. I have got a new way of applying 

 steam to the piston, and to raise a steam balloon. I hope next 

 letter may contain something about the Infirmary. Is there any 

 mention of when we areio return ? We have been here a fortnight. 

 Ask Mary to write a few lines in Greek, Latin, or French, but not 

 make the Latin too difficult. You did quite right about Samuel 

 Brown. Kind love to all. Your affectionate brother, GEORGE." 

 The reference to the Infirmary was in consequence of a medi- 

 cal friend, Dr. M'Culloch, House- Surgeon to the Hospital, having 

 recommended as the best training for the boy, an apprenticeship 

 in the Laboratory of the Royal Infirmary. This well-meant but 

 injudicious counsel was followed, and in a few weeks more 

 George was bound for four years, as apprentice. His friend Dr. 

 M'Culloch died almost immediately after, and the drudgery of 

 each day, so far from being lessened by pleasant companionship, 

 brought him in contact with evil and profanity altogether new 

 and hateful to him. Looking back on this period of his life, he 

 says, in his opening address as President of the Society of Arts 

 in 1857, "How a youth is taught is as momentous a matter for 

 him and for the world as what he is taught. It has been most 

 justly declared by a grateful man that the daily society of a 

 good and noble woman is in itself an education : such also, in its 

 degree, is the society of a good and noble man ; and the fellow- 

 ship of the base and foolish is the heaviest curse which can 

 fall upon the young. All our skill is acquired by imitation 

 and practice, so that instinctive mimicry and unconscious habit 

 make us in manners and acts what we are. It is no small 

 matter, then, side by side with whom the boy-apprentice works. 

 Ah me ! When I recall some of the enforced companions of my 

 apprentice days, I feel that I would make the greatest sacri- 

 fices rather than permit a youth dear to me to encounter similar 

 temptations." His first impressions of the new scenes presented 

 daily to his view, are graphically described in an Address he 

 gave to students in 1855. The portion we extract may justly 

 be reckoned autobiographical. 



" When the young student first visits the hospital, his faith in 



c 



