proceedings." The only art which fashionable people now-a-days care much to meddle with is literature. In estimating the difference between the position of an eminent surgeon now, and that which he would have occupied in earlier times, we must remember that life and hereditary knighthood are the highest dignities to which he is now permitted to aspire; although since this honour was first accorded to him it has so fallen in public estimation, that it has almost ceased to be an honour at all. It can scarcely be questioned that if Sir Benjamin Brodie were to be elevated to the rank of a Baron of the realm, he would still not occupy a better position, in regard to the rest of society, than that which Sir William Butts and Sir John Ayliffe did after they were knighted. A fact that definitely fixes the high esteem in which Edward III. held his medical officers, is one of his grants--"Quod Willielmus Holme Sirurgicus Regis pro vitâ suâ possit, fugare, capere, et asportare omnimodas feras in quibuscunque forestis, chaccis parcis et warrennis regis." Indeed, at a time when the highest dignitaries of the Church, the proudest bishops and the wealthiest abbots, practised as physicians, it followed, as a matter of course, that everything pertaining to their profession was respected. From remote antiquity the fee of the healer has been regarded as a voluntary offering for services gratuitously rendered. The pretender to the art always stuck out for a price, and in some form or other made the demand which was imprinted on the pillboxes of Lilly's successor, John Case, "Here's fourteen pills for thirteen pence, Enough in any man's own con-sci-ence." But the true physician always left his reward to be measured by the gratitude and justice of the benefited. He extorted nothing, but freely received that which was freely given. Dr. Doran, with his characteristic erudition, says, "Now there is a religious reason why fees are supposed not to be taken by physicians. Amongst the Christian martyrs are reckoned the two eastern brothers, Damian and Cosmas. They practised as physicians in Cilicia, and they were the first mortal practitioners who refused to take recompense for their work. Hence they were called Anargyri, or 'without money.' All physicians are pleasantly supposed to follow this example. They never take fees, like Damian and Cosmas; but they meekly receive what they know will be given out of Christian humility, and with a certain or uncertain reluctance, which is the nearest approach that can be made in these times to the two brothers who were in partnership at Egea in Cilicia."