1832-37. EXAMINERS HIGHLY PLEASED. 85 



amusements, and pleasures to discourse upon ; whereas he, the 

 vagabond, has travelled by land and sea, has voyaged on the 

 great deep, and been a peripatetic on the solid earth, and visited 

 a strange town, and seen many new sights, and made new com- 

 panions, and, in short, has entered into a new circle of folks, 

 things, and circumstances, which should yield to an inquiring 

 mind* a watchful eye, an eager attention, and a prying spirit, 

 the elements of many a joke, and many a story and circum- 

 stance ; so that I shall hold you in the highest degree culpable, 

 if you do not afford me a rich, well seasoned dish, compounded 

 ' de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis/ 



" Yet although I plead the excuse of travelling in the same 

 home circle, like the mill-horse, and therefore in sight of a 

 horizon whose every prominent object has already been often 

 scanned, yet, in truth, one little change has passed over my out- 

 ward circumstances and inward feelings, sufficiently important 

 to deserve a short notice in this my epistle. On the 8th day of 

 September, which was last Wednesday, I, your most worthy 

 cousin, appeared before that dreadful, inquisitorial tribunal, the 

 College of Surgeons, and having been duly examined, sounded, 

 and tried as to my proficiency in the arts of medicament- com- 

 pounding, limb-dissecting, and wound-curing, was duly declared, 

 pronounced, and registered as one in every respect fitted to bear 

 the honourable title of Chirurgeon, commonly called Surgeon. 

 I found the tribunal of a far less terrible cast and character than 

 I at all anticipated ; in truth, I should have faced it long, long 

 ago had I dreamed it could have been half as easy. A little bit 

 of Latin to read, which was soon despatched ; a cough-mixture 

 to prescribe, which was equally soon got over; and a volley of 

 questions on all sorts of pharmaceutical and chemical subjects, 

 followed up by a round of subtle interrogations on the mysteries 

 of anatomy and the grave matters of surgery, and I was thrust 

 into a little closet, to be immediately drawn out again, and told 

 that my examinators were highly pleased with my appearance, 

 and that my examination was highly creditable to me. And I, 

 most highly pleased, scampered home to give the welcome and 

 most unexpected news ; for I had taken great care they should 

 not have the dimmest notion of my intentions, and I had been 



