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had a hand in Bishop Atterbury's plot, as it was designated, for the restoration of the Stuarts-at all events he spoke in the prelate's favour. He was consequently committed to the Tower in 1722, the Habeas Corpus Act being at the period suspended. Here he lay for some months, during which his practice, of course, passed into other hands, but chiefly into his friend Mead's. This admirable man, however, exerted himself to the utmost to procure Freind's release, which he was at last enabled to accomplish through the minister's requiring his own medical assistance. Mead went, urged everything he could think in favour of the captive, and finally refused to prescribe till Freind was set at liberty. Scarcely had the liberated physician reached his home, when Mead presented him with five thousand guineas, being the sum he had received from Freind's patients during his imprisonment! An act like this must have made that imprisonment ever afterwards appear to Freind the brightest spot in his lifetime, whilst the world derived a considerable benefit from the same event. In the Tower Freind wrote the entertaining and valuable history we have mentioned.

Returning to the entrance hall, and ascending the stairs which turn off to the right and to the left towards the gallery or landing on the top, we cannot but pause a moment to admire the exceedingly beautiful character and proportion of this part of the building. Here are a pair of folding doors in front leading into the library, and a single door on the right opening upon the Censor's room. This apartment, with its rich oak panelling and pillared walls, is rich in pictures and busts, and in the almost interminable series of memories which invest these works of art with a higher interest than art alone can bestow.

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Sydenham is here, with his fine massive face and his long and flowing silvery hair. During the civil wars he commanded a troop of horse under the King. Sydenham has the great merit of being the first of his profession to discard mere theory, and apply with diligence to the study of nature and facts. His practice and writings accordingly make an era in medical history. For the same reason he obtained the names of the English Hippocrates and the Father of English medicine. Here, too, is Linacre, with his small ruddy features, hollow cheeks,

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thoughtful eye, and particularly expressive mouth-a delightfully quaint-looking face in all its seriousness. Over this picture are the College arms in oak, with the shield richly emblazoned. Sir Thomas Browne is here, with his interesting and poetical face richly set off by the dark shadow of his hair and of the background of the picture. His chin and upper lip are partially covered with moustaches of a brownish hue, and his beard is peaked. The penetrating yet absorbed expression of the eye strongly reminds you of the man whom nothing could disturb from his reveries. The sudden fall of the cannon-shot which failed to disturb the self-possession of Charles of Sweden whilst writing his despatches would most likely have been unperceived by Browne. "He had no sympathy with the great business of men. In that awful year when Charles I. went in person to seize five members of the Commons' House-when the streets resounded with shouts of Privilege of Parliament!' and the King's coach was assailed by the prophetic cry, To your tents, O Israel!'-in that year, in fact, when the civil war first broke out, and when most men of literary power were drawn by the excitement of the crisis into patriotic controversy on either sideappeared the calm and meditative reveries of the Religio Medici.' The war raged on. It was a struggle between all the elements of government. England was torn by convulsions, and red with blood. But Browne was tranquilly preparing his Pseudodoxia Epidemica;' as if errors about basilisks and griffins were the fatal epidemic of the time; and it was published in due order in that year, when the cause which the author advocated, as far as he could advocate anything political, lay at its last gasp. The King dies on the scaffold. The Protectorate succeeds. Men are again fighting on paper the solemn cause already decided in the field. Drawn from visions more sublime-forsaking studies more intricate and vast than those of the poetical sage of Norwich-diverging from a career bounded by the most splendid goal-foremost in the ranks shines the flaming sword of Milton: Sir Thomas Browne is lost in the quincunx of the ancient gardens; and the year 1658 beheld the death of Oliver Cromwell, and the publication of the Hydriotaphia.'"* The pleasant, good-humoured face of Sir Samuel Garth enlivens the censor's room. One wonders where the original of such a picture could have found a sufficient stock of ill nature to commence satirist. As the friend of Pope and Swift had certainly a great deal of wit, perhaps it was from a deficiency of ill nature that The Dispensary' is not a great poem! Sufficient then for its author be the fact that he was a good man. Who will not revere the memory of Garth, when they consider that to him Dryden. was indebted for a suitable interment, when a personage of high rank forgot the duty he had sought? He caused the remains of the illustrious poet to be brought to Warwick Lane, and there pronounced an oration over them, then set on foot a subscription to defray the expenses of the funeral, and ultimately attended the solemnity to Westminster Abbey, where it was conveyed on the 13th of May, 1700, with a train of above a hundred coaches. Among the other portraits of the room are those of Cardinal Wolsey, Henry VIII. (which Malcolm thinks is either by or from Holbein), and Andreas Vesalius, the famous Italian anatomist, whose wildlooking aspect seems in strange harmony with his unhappy fortunes. In voyaging

Edinburgh Review, October, 1835.

from Padua to Venice in 1504, he was shipwrecked on the isle of Zante, and there perished by hunger. Four marble busts in addition adorn the censor's room : those of Sir Henry Halford, Sydenham, Mead, and Baillie. With an anecdote of the latter we quit this interesting apartment. Baillie was occasionally very irritable, and indisposed to attend to the details of an uninteresting story. After listening with torture to a prosing account from a lady who ailed so little that she was going to an opera that evening, he had happily escaped from the room, when he was urgently requested to step up-stairs again; it was to ask him whether on her return from the opera she might eat some oysters: "Yes, ma'am," said Baillie, "shells and all."

The library is a truly splendid room. It is very long, broad, and high, lighted by three beautiful lanterns in the ceiling, which is of the most elegant character. The walls consist of two stories, marked at intervals by flat oaken pillars below, and clusters of flat and round imitation-marble pillars above. A gallery extends along the second story all round the room, and the wall is there fitted up with bookcases, hidden by crimson curtains, containing preparations; amongst others are some of the nerves and blood-vessels constructed by Harvey, and most probably used by him in the very lectures before referred to. The books, chiefly the gift of the Marquis of Dorchester, who left his library to the College, are ranged round the walls of the lower story. From the gallery a narrow staircase leads up into a small theatre, or lecture-room, where are some interesting busts and pictures, among the latter a fine portrait of Hunter. The most interesting works of art in the library are the two portraits which adorn the compartments of the wall near the ends of the room. One is of Dr. Radcliffe, the founder of the magnificent institution at Oxford, and whose executors gave two thousand pounds towards the erection of this building. He looks serious, yet with a latent smile playing over his face, as though suddenly called to attend a patient, while the enjoyment of a just-uttered joke was as yet unsubsided. It is painted by Kneller, the conjunction of whose name with Radcliffe will remind many a reader of the anecdote concerning them. They lived next to each other in Bow Street, Covent Garden, and the painter having beautiful pleasure grounds, a door was opened for the accommodation of his friend and neighbour. In consequence of some annoyance, Sir Godfrey threatened to close up the door; to which Radcliffe replied, he might do any thing with it if he would not paint it. "Did my very good friend, Dr. Radcliffe, say so?" cried Sir Godfrey: "go you back to him, and after presenting my service to him, tell him that I can take anything from him but physic." How different the associations roused in the mind by a sight of the picture at the opposite end of the room-the portrait of Harvey, by Cornelius Jansen! And if ever portrait spoke the history of its subject, it is this. Beneath that wide expanse of brow, how forlorn a face appears! A few white hairs straggle over the lip which had so often quivered at some new and more piercing instance of the world's folly and ingratitude. That out-stretched hand there were few to grasp beyond his own immediate friends and connexions; yet hand, heart, and soul, lived and toiled and suffered but for the good of mankind. Harvey, however, was a man in fortitude as well as in every other respect; and the very studies which first disquieted him, brought him afterwards Peace. He loved

his profession, and had high hopes of it. To have seen the change that has characterized the last fifty years, during which the rate of mortality has decreased nearly a third, and mainly by the efforts of the members of that profession, would have amply repaid him for all his sufferings. Perhaps he did foresee some such change. Perhaps he saw, in the dim and distant future, glimpses of a happier state of things than we have yet any conception of. Much is true that cannot be demonstrated. The world would not listen to his demonstrations. How does it know what glorious revelations its wilfulness, blind ridicule, and injustice may not have shut up in his grave, as in the graves of others like him?

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XXVIII. THE PRIORY AND CHURCH OF ST.
BARTHOLOMEW.

Of all the persons whom the mighty business of providing sustenance for the population of London leads among the pens, and crowds, and filth of the great Metropolitan beast-market-of all those whom pleasure attracts to the gingerbread, and shows, and gong-resounding din of the great Fair-or, lastly, of all those whom chance, or a dim remembrance of the popular memories of the place, its burnings, tournaments, &c., or any other motive, brings into Smithfield-we wonder how many, as they pass the south-western corner of the area, look through the ancient gateway which leads up to the still more ancient church of St. Bartholomew, with a kindly remembrance of the man (whose ashes there repose) from whom these, and most of the other interesting features and recollections of Smithfield, are directly or indirectly derived? We fear very few. Time has wrought strange changes in the scene around; and it is not at all sur

VOL. II.

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