from an overweening self-confidence,--had I found that the obstacles after all lay within myself--I should have bitterly despised myself, and, worst of all, I should have felt that you had just ground of complaint. So far as the acknowledgment of the value of what I have done is concerned, I have succeeded beyond my expectations, and if I have failed on the other side of the question, I cannot blame myself. It is the world's fault and not mine. [A few months more, and he was able to report another and still more unexpected testimony to the value of his work--another encouragement to persevere in the difficult pursuit of a scientific life. He found himself treated as an equal by men of established reputation; and the first-fruits of his work ranked on a level with the maturer efforts of veterans in science. He was within an ace of receiving the Royal Medal, which was awarded him the following year. Of this, he writes:--] November 7, 1851. I have at last tasted what it is to mingle with my fellows--to take my place in that society for which nature has fitted me, and whether the draught has been a poison which has heated my veins or true nectar from the gods, life-giving, I know not, but I can no longer rest where I once could have rested. If I could find within myself that mere personal ambition, the desire of fame, present or posthumous, had anything to do with this restlessness, I would root it out. But in those moments of self-questioning, when one does not lie even to oneself, I feel that I can say it is not so--that the real pleasure, the true sphere, lies in the feeling of self-development--in the sense of power and of growing ONENESS with the great spirit of abstract truth. Do you understand this? I know you do; our old oneness of feeling will not desert us here... To-day a most unexpected occurrence came to my knowledge. I must tell you that the Queen places at the disposal of the Royal Society once a year a valuable gold medal to be given to the author of the best paper upon either a physical, chemical, or anatomical or physiological subject. One of these branches of science is chosen by the Royal Society for each year, and therefore for any given subject--say anatomy and physiology; it becomes a triennial prize, and is given to the best memoir in the "Transactions" for three years.