We notice as an instance of Sydenham’s kind-heartedness, a case in which he lent a poor man one of his horses for a several days’ journey, believing continuous horse-exercise to be the best cure for his disease. Another characteristic touch is the following: “I have always thought that to have published for the benefit of afflicted mortals any certain method of subduing even the slightest disease, was a matter of greater felicity than the riches of a Tantalus or a Crœsus.” To Dr. Brady he remarks: “To you that undeserved abuse wherewith I am harassed by many, is a vexation and sorrow; whilst, of those who utter it this I may safely say, that if a harmless life, hurting none by word or deed, had been sufficient to protect me from their tongues, they never would have thundered against me. Since, then, it is from no fault of mine that these calumnies have fallen on me, this is my resolution, viz., that I will not afflict myself because other men have done wrong.” Again he says: “My fame is in the hands of others. I have weighed in a nice and scrupulous balance, whether it be better to serve men, or to be praised by them, and I prefer the former. It does more to tranquillise the mind; whereas fame, and the breath of popular applause, is but a bubble, a feather, and a dream. Such wealth as such fame gives, those who have scraped it together, and those who value it highly, are fully free to enjoy, only let them remember that the mechanical arts (and sometimes the meanest of them) bring greater gains, and make richer heirs.” He addressed to Dr. Thomas Short his treatise on Gout and Dropsy, because “although others despised the observations which I previously published, you had no hesitation in attributing to them some utility.”... “It is my nature to think where others read; to ask less whether the world agrees with me than whether I agree with the truth; and to hold cheap the rumour and applause of the multitude.”