Here lay on a sofa Ipsden, one of the most distinguished young gentlemen in Europe; a creature incapable, by nature, of a rugged tone or a coarse gesture; a being without the slightest apparent pretension, but refined beyond the wildest dream of dandies. To him, enter Aberford, perspiring and shouting. He was one of those globules of human quicksilver one sees now and then for two seconds; they are, in fact, two globules; their head is one, invariably bald, round, and glittering; the body is another in activity and shape, _totus teres atque rotundus;_ and in fifty years they live five centuries. _Horum Rex Aberford_--of these our doctor was the chief. He had hardly torn off one glove, and rolled as far as the third flower from the door on his lordship's carpet, before he shouted: “This is my patient, lolloping in pursuit of health. Your hand,” added he. For he was at the sofa long before his lordship could glide off it. “Tongue. Pulse is good. Breathe in my face.” “Breathe in your face, sir! how can I do that?” (with an air of mild doubt.) “By first inhaling, and then exhaling in the direction required, or how can I make acquaintance with your bowels?” “My bowels?” “The abdomen, and the greater and lesser intestines. Well, never mind, I can get at them another way; give your heart a slap, so. That's your liver. And that's your diaphragm.” His lordship having found the required spot (some people that I know could not) and slapped it, the Aberford made a circular spring and listened eagerly at his shoulder-blade; the result of this scientific pantomime seemed to be satisfactory, for he exclaimed, not to say bawled: “Halo! here is a viscount as sound as a roach! Now, young gentleman,” added he, “your organs are superb, yet you are really out of sorts; it follows you have the maladies of idle minds, love, perhaps, among the rest; you blush, a diagnostic of that disorder; make your mind easy, cutaneous disorders, such as love, etc., shall never kill a patient of mine with a stomach like yours. So, now to cure you!” And away went the spherical doctor, with his hands behind him, not up and down the room, but slanting and tacking, like a knight on a chess-board. He had not made many steps before, turning his upper globule, without affecting his lower, he hurled back, in a cold business-like tone, the following interrogatory: “What are your vices?” “Saunders,” inquired the patient, “which are my vices?” “M'lord, lordship hasn't any vices,” replied Saunders, with dull, matter-of-fact solemnity. “Lady Barbara makes the same complaint,” thought Lord Ipsden. “It seems I have not any vices, Dr. Aberford,” said he, demurely. “That is bad; nothing to get hold of. What interests you, then?” “I don't remember.” “What amuses you?” “I forget.” “What! no winning horse to gallop away your rents?” “No, sir!” “No opera girl to run her foot and ankle through your purse?” “No, sir! and I think their ankles are not what they were.”