The crowds that attended the preaching of Whitfield, first suggested to him the thought of preaching in the open air. When he mentioned this to some of his friends, they judged it was mere madness; nor did he begin to practise it until he went to Bristol, when, finding the churches denied to him, he preached on a hill at Kingswood to the colliers. After he had done this three or four times, his congregation is said to have amounted to twenty thousand persons. He effected a great moral reform among these colliers by his preaching. "The first discovery," he tells us, "of their being affected, was to see the white gutters made by their tears, which plentifully fell down their black cheeks, as they came out of their coal-pits." After this he preached frequently in the open air in the vicinity of London, and in other parts of the country, to thousands of auditors. SIR HANS SLOANE. This illustrious physician, President of the Royal Society and the College of Physicians, and the founder of the British Museum, was born at Killaleagh, in the north of Ireland, in 1660. He settled in London in 1684, and was in great repute as a practitioner in the time of Radcliffe, with whom he was acquainted, though they were never friends. On his arrival in London, he waited on Sydenham with a letter of introduction, in which a friend had set forth his qualifications in glowing language, as "a ripe scholar, a good botanist, a skilful anatomist." Sydenham read the recommendation, and eyed the young man very narrowly; then he said, "All this is mighty fine, but it won't do. Anatomy--botany--nonsense! Sir, I know an old woman in Covent Garden who understands botany better; and as for anatomy, my butcher can dissect a joint just as well. No, no, young man, this is all stuff; you must go to the bedside,--it is there alone that you can learn disease." In spite of this mortifying reception, however, Sydenham afterwards took the greatest interest in Sloane, frequently making the young man accompany him in his chariot on his favourite airing. It was against the strongly expressed wish of Sydenham that Sloane went to Jamaica--where he gathered abundant materials for the book on the natural history of that island, which he published at intervals from 1707 till 1725. He neglected, when he was settled in successful practice in London, no means that could advance the interests of literature and science. He presented to the Apothecaries' Company the fee-simple of their gardens, on conditions as honourable to their fame as to his own. It was his public spirit and humanity that suggested the plan of the "Dispensary," the opposition to which gave rise to the beautiful and famous poem of Garth, which alone preserves the memory of the contest and the disputants on this much-vexed subject. Sloane was made a baronet in 1716; but his greatest glory was his succession to Sir Isaac Newton in the Presidency of the Royal Society. Sloane had