This was, unquestionably, an auspicious commencement of his career; for his patron was high in his profession, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and Reader of Anatomy to the Company of Surgeons. Besides, public opinion was not yet violently excited against the inhabitants of the sterile north. The “silver-tongued Mansfield” had, it is true, ridden from Perthshire to Middlesex, “drunk champagne with the wits,” and distinguished himself at the bar; but he was not yet lord chief justice nor an English peer. Wedderburn had not yet crossed the Tweed to grasp successfully at the great seal. Lord Bute had still to be pulled out of the apothecary’s chariot at a cricket-match to play at whist with, and become the favorite of, Frederick Prince of Wales. On the other hand, Wilkes had not indulged in what Lord Chatham called “the expensive delights” of contested elections, nor in the profanity and licentiousness of Medenham Abbey. His services as embassador to Constantinople had to be declined, and “The North Briton” to be called into existence to avenge the slight. Poor, deluded Churchill, was sitting on the forms at Westminster with Lloyd, Cowper, and Warren Hastings. The time had to come when he could “blaze the comet of a season,” by applying such terms as “the poor, proud children of leprosy and hunger,” to the natives of an ancient and noble land, whose powers he did not comprehend, and whose achievements in art, science, law, letters, and commerce, he possessed not the prescience to divine. The events of 1745 had yet to fill the citizens of London with anger and apprehension; national animosity had still to be excited to madness by public appointments being almost exclusively bestowed on bare-legged Highlanders. Hunter was, in some respects, an adventurer, and one of whom his country had reason to be proud; but it was well that he arrived and struck his root in public favor before the frenzied cry had gone forth. Douglas was not disappointed in the expectations he had formed of his assistant’s worth and ability, which he stimulated in various ways. He enabled him to enter as a dissecting pupil at St. George’s Hospital, and to attend a class for anatomy, besides a course of lectures on experimental philosophy, given by Dr. Desaguliers; and Hunter availed himself so earnestly of such advantages, and became so expert in dissection, that his excellent instructor was at the expense of having several of his preparations engraved. This aid, so well calculated to afford encouragement, was rendered just in time; for within twelve months after Hunter’s spirited expedition southward his employer died; and having apparently married past middle age, he left a widow and two children, with whom his talented _protégé_ continued to reside for the next eight years.