It is the end of August, and society has gone out of town. Sporting people have gone to Goodwood; and the Lawn, at the period of our story, as yet uninvaded by objectionable persons, promises to present, as it hitherto has always presented, a _parterre_ of aristocratic beauty. There is no "limited mail" in these days; but they could tell you at Euston Square of seats for the North booked many days in advance. And there are no Cook's tourists; and yet it would seem impossible that the boats leaving Dover twice a day for the great continental routes _vid_ Calais and Ostend, could possibly carry more passengers. That was before the contemptible German system of _battues_ was allowed among us, when _dreib-jagds_ were almost unknown in England, and when a day's shooting meant exercise, trouble, and skill, not warm corners and wholesale slaughter; but Purdays and Lancasters, though mere muzzle-loaders, did their work, and Grant's gaiters were to be found on most of the right sort throughout the English counties. The physicians and the great surgeons have struck work--it is no good remaining in a place where there are no patients--and having delegated their practice _pro tem_. to some less fortunate brother--who devoutly prays that chance may bring some rich or celebrated person unexpectedly to town, then and there to be stricken with illness, and left in his, the substitute's, hands--they are away shooting in the Highlands, swarming up Swiss mountains, lounging at German Brunnen, but never losing the soft placid manner and the dulcet tone which seem to imbue their every speech and action with a certain professional air, as though they were saying, "Hum! ha! ye-es, certainly; show me the tongue, please--ah!" and wherever they may be, the scent of the hospital is over them still. Passing through Edinburgh, on his way to his shooting in Aberdeenshire, Mr. Fleem, President of the College of Surgeons, gives up a week of his hard-earned holiday to the society of Sir Annis Thettick, the great Scotch operator, and the pair indulge in many a sanguinary colloquy; little Dr. Payne leaves Mrs. Payne to be escorted up and down the _allées_ of Baden-Baden by trim-waisted Prussian and Austrian officers, or by such of her compatriot acquaintances as she may find there (all of whom are too glad to pay court to so charming a woman), while he is closeted with Herr Doctor Von Glauber, Hof-Arzt to his Effulgency the reigning Duke of Schweinerei, with whom he exchanges the most confidential communications, resulting on both sides in a belief that the real knowledge of either of them is extremely limited. In those charming courts and groves dedicated to the study and practice of the law there is also tranquillity, not to say stagnation, for the long vacation has commenced, and the Law is out of town.