STRAY PAPERS ON VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 53 
Cultivate a high standard of private and professional conduct. 
To become fully alive to the importance of this rule, you must 
view the subject in its various bearings, and employ those means 
which are most likely to accomplish your intentions. Zeal and 
ardour in the profession you have embraced will lead to habits of 
industry and perseverance, accompanied by a right employment of 
those leisure moments Avhich are more or less at the disposal of 
every man. Those moments cannot be more profitably employed 
than in the improvement and cultivation of your minds, and in the 
prosecution of your studies in literature and science. By these 
means you will imbibe a love of truth—integrity of principle will 
be maintained—the laws of good breeding and the customs of so¬ 
ciety will be attended to—vice, in whatever form, will be discou¬ 
raged—the tricks and devices of those men with whom your prac¬ 
tice often brings you in contact will be scorned and avoided—the 
various duties of private and social life will be performed with 
pleasure and delight—in short, all those virtuous principles which 
are an ornament to man will be fostered by you, and their effects 
discovered in your every action. You will then feel that “ the 
mind which has once imbibed a taste for scientific inquiry, and has 
learned the habit of applying its principles readily to the cases 
which occur, has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and 
delightful contemplation. Accustomed to trace the operation of 
general causes, and the exemplification of general laws, in circum¬ 
stances where the uninformed and uninquiring eye perceives nei¬ 
ther novelty nor beauty, he walks in the midst of wonders. Every 
object which falls in his way elucidates some principle, affords 
some instruction, and impresses him with a sense of harmony and 
order; nor is it a mere passive pleasure which is thus communi¬ 
cated. A thousand questions are continually arising in his mind 
—a thousand subjects of inquiry presenting themselves, which keep 
his faculties in constant exercise, and his thoughts perpetually on 
the wing; so that lassitude is excluded from his life, and that 
craving after artificial excitement and dissipation of mind which 
leads so many into frivolous, unworthy, and destructive pursuits, 
is altogether eradicated from his bosom.” • 
With habits, principles, and manners characteristic of what you 
are by profession—a gentleman,”—your dress and style of living 
must be in keeping, and invariably within your means. 
Simple, clean, and unadorned—avoiding the extremes of fashion 
on the one hand, and the horse-dealing groomish appearance, so 
disreputable to a medical man, on the otlicr—your appearance' 
should always be : your style of living may be safely left, I lioj^e, 
to your own good sense, whicli, I (rust, may always keep you from 
the extremes of extravagance and perjury. 
VOL. XT 11. It ' 
