As the hour for the lecture approached, the students one by one, closed their books, washed their hands, and descended to the lecture-room. We descended with the rest, and as we passed the grim porter, at the bottom of the stair-case, I observed in the corner behind him a number of stout bludgeons, besides several cutlasses and muskets. A popular commotion a short time previous, among some of the well-intentioned but ignorant of the lower classes, had induced the necessity of caution, and this preparation for resistance. Entering the lecture-room, we took our places on the third or fourth row of seats from the demonstrator’s table, upon which a subject was lying, covered with a white sheet, and had time, as the room gradually filled, to look about us. Besides the students, Lee pointed out to me several able professional gentlemen, advanced in life, who were attracted by the celebrity of the lecturer; among others, Abernethy and Sir Astley Cooper. Shortly after we had taken our seats, a slender, melancholy-looking young man, dressed in deep mourning, entered the circle in which we were seated, and took his place on the vacant bench at my side. He bowed reservedly to my companions as he passed them, but immediately on sitting down became absorbed in deep sadness. My friends returned his salute, but did not appear inclined to break into his abstraction. At the precise moment that the lecture was announced to be delivered, the tall form of the eminent surgeon was seen descending the alley of crowded seats to his chair. The lights in the various parts of the room were raised suddenly, throwing a glare on all around; and one of the skeletons, to which an accidental jar had been given, vibrated slowly forward and backward, while the other hung perfectly motionless from its cord. In his short and sententious manner, he opened the subject of the lecture, which was the cause, effect, and treatment of that scourge of our country—consumption. His remarks were singularly lucid and clear, even to me, a layman. After having gone rapidly through the pathology of the disease, consuming perhaps some twenty minutes of time, he said,—“We will now, gentlemen, proceed to demonstration upon the subject itself.” I shall not readily forget the scene that followed. As he slowly turned up the wristbands of his shirt sleeves, and bent over to select an instrument from the case at his side, he motioned to an assistant to withdraw the sheet that covered the corpse. Resuming his erect position, the long knife glittering in his hand, the sheet was slowly drawn off, exhibiting the emaciated features of an aged woman, her white hair parted smoothly in the middle of her forehead, passing around to the back of the head, beneath the plain white muslin cap. The silence which always arrests even the most frivolous in the presence of the dead, momentarily checked the busy hum of whispers around me, when I heard a gasp—a choking—a rattling in the throat, at