On small narrow tables, in different parts of the large room, which, though lighted by a dome in the centre, required, in the deep darkness of a London fog, the additional aid of lamps, were extended some five and twenty human corpses in different stages of dissection. Groups of students were silently engaged with their scalpels in examining these wonderful temples of the still more wonderful human soul. Here a solitary individual, with his book open before him upon the corpse, followed the text upon the human subject, while there, two or three together were tracing with patient distinctness the course of the disease which had driven the spirit of life from its frail habitation. I observed one of the professors in his gold spectacles pointing out to a number of the students, gathered around one of the subjects, the evidences of an ossification of the great aorta, which had, after years of torture, necessarily terminated the life of the sufferer.—There was almost as much individuality in those corpses as if they had been living, and it required the most determined effort on my part to divest myself of the idea that they were sentient, and aware of all that was passing around them. I recollect, particularly, one, which was lying nearest the door as I entered;—it was the body of a man of about forty, with light hair, and fair complexion, who had been cut down in the midst of health. His face was as full, and his skin as white, as if he had been merely sleeping; but the knife had passed around his throat, down his body, and then in sections cross-ways; the internal muscles having been evidently exposed, and the skin temporarily replaced, during the casual absence of the dissector. There was something peculiarly horrid in the appearance of that corpse, as, aside from a ruffianly and dissolute expression of the features, the gash around his throat conveyed the impression that it was a murdered man lying before me. A good-looking, middle-aged female was extended just beyond, her long hair hanging down over the end of the table, but not as yet touched by the hand of the surgeon; while, just beyond her, the body of an old man, from which the upper part of the skull had been sawn to take out the brain, appeared to be grinning at us with a horrid sort of mirth. In another part of the room, directly over which the blackening body of an infant was thrown across a beam, like a piece of an old carpet, was extended the body of a gigantic negro; he lay upon his back, his legs somewhat apart, one of his arms thrown up so as to rest upon the top of his head, his eyes wide open, his nostrils distended, and his teeth clenched in a hideous grin. There was such evidence of strength, such giant development of muscle, such appearance of chained energy and ferocity about him, that, upon my soul, it seemed to me every moment as if he was about to spring up with a frantic yell, and throw himself upon us; and wherever I went about the room, my eyes