When Le Torneau preached the Lent sermon at St. Benoit, at Paris, Louis XIV. inquired of Boileau, "if he knew anything of a preacher called Le Tourneau, whom everybody was running after?" "Sire," replied the poet, "your Majesty knows that people always run after novelties; this man preaches the gospel." The King pressing him to speak seriously, Boileau added: "When M. Le Tourneau first ascends the pulpit, his ugliness so disgusts the congregation that they wish he would go down again; but when he begins to speak, they dread the time of his descending." Boileau's remark as to the "novelty" of preaching the gospel in his time, brings to mind the candid confession of a Flemish preacher, who, in a sermon delivered before an audience wholly of his own order, said: "We are worse than Judas; he sold and delivered his Master; we sell Him too, but deliver Him not." Somewhat akin was the remark, in an earlier age, of Father Fulgentio, the friend and biographer of Paul Sarpi, and, like him, a secret friend to the progress of religious reformation. Preaching on Pilate's question, "What is truth?" he told the audience that he had at last, after many searches, found it out; and, holding forth the New Testament, said, "Here it is, my friends; but," he added sorrowfully, as he returned it to his pocket, "it is _a sealed book_." HARVEY AND THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. The discovery of the circulation of the blood was the most important ever made in the science of physiology, and led to a complete revolution throughout the whole circle of medical knowledge and practice. The renown of this splendid discovery, by all but universal consent, has been attributed to William Harvey, an English physician, who was born at Folkestone in 1578, and in 1593 went to Caius College, Cambridge, where he remained four years. He then went abroad for several years, studying in the most famous medical schools; and in 1604, having passed M.D. at Cambridge, he set up in practice in London. In 1615 he was appointed Lecturer at the College of Physicians, on Anatomy and Surgery; and it was in the performance of these duties that he arrived at the important discovery that is inseparably associated with his name. "The merit of Harvey," it has been justly observed, "is enhanced by considering the degraded state of medical knowledge at that time in England. While anatomical schools had been long established in Italy, France, and Germany, and several teachers had rendered their names illustrious by the successful pursuit of the science, anatomy was still unknown in England, and dissection had hitherto hardly begun; yet at this inauspicious period did Harvey make a discovery, which amply justifies Haller in ranking him as only second to Hippocrates." In 1620 he promulgated his new doctrine of the circulation of the blood, in a treatise entitled _Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus_; in the preface to which, addressed to the College of