Successful as his classes were in Edinburgh, and influential as his position speedily became, it must be acknowledged that the experiment was a failure, for it did not give him the satisfaction he had hoped. Practice in Edinburgh could not possibly yield what London did, and the emoluments of the University chair did not counterbalance this. Some coldness, too, was shown him on the part of his fellow-professors. It was an old case of Scotch undemonstrativeness. “I have had a German professor to breakfast,” he writes, “who brings me a volume from Paris—they make me greater than Harvey. I wish to heaven the folks at home would make something of me. I thought, in addressing the new-made doctors at the conclusion of the session, that I had done well; but not one word of approbation from any professor, nor has one of them in all this time called me in to consultation, except when forced by the desire of the patient.” His income, never very considerable in Edinburgh, diminished considerably. “I put down my carriage with as little feeling as I throw off my shoes,” he says; but when in 1842 a Government proposal appeared likely to end in the extinction of the privileges of his beloved University, his excitement was unbounded. He set off for London as soon as he could. But he was attacked by a spasm of the stomach so severe as to threaten his life. He hastened on towards London, but while at Manchester, assisting at an operation, he thought he should have been obliged to lie and roll on the carpet, or leave the room in the midst of it. On Wednesday April 27, 1842, Sir Charles and Lady Bell reached Hallow Park, the seat of Mrs. Holland, near Worcester. Looking on the winding Severn and the distant hills, he said to his wife: “This is a novel spot; here I fain would rest till they come to take me away.” Here he sketched an old yew-tree, some sheep, and the river; then two children and a donkey. As he went back he looked with his observant eye at every shrub, commented on the birds’ notes, and gathered up their feathers for his flies. After dinner the same evening he gave graphic sketches of medical celebrities he had known, admired and discussed an engraving of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, and was altogether so happy in mood that he said to his wife: “Did you ever see me happier or better than I have been all this forenoon?” yet he had been several times that day in imminent danger of death from the dread malady that John Hunter had, angina pectoris. We cannot refrain from quoting the account of his end (Letters, p. 400): “The evening reading that night was the 23d Psalm; the last prayer, that beautiful one, ‘For that peace which the world cannot give,’ and then he sank into a deep and quiet sleep. In the morning he awoke with a spasm, which he said was caused by changing his position. His wife was rising to drop his laudanum for him, but calling her to him, he laid his head on her shoulder, and there ‘rested.’”