He told me once of an interview he had with Lord Castlereagh, which may, perhaps, be not out of place here. When Sir T. Lawrence was painting the portrait, and Abernethy went to give him a sitting, Abernethy was shown into a room where another visitor, a stranger to him, was also waiting. The stranger, looking at a portrait of the Duke of York, observed, "Very well painted, and very like." "Very well painted," Abernethy replied. The other rejoined: "A good picture, and an excellent likeness." "A very good picture," said Abernethy. "And an excellent likeness," again rejoined his companion. "Why, the fact is," said Abernethy, "Sir Thomas has lived so much amongst the great, that he has learnt to flatter them most abominably." On being shown in to Sir Thomas, Sir Thomas said: "I find you have been talking to Lord Castlereagh." He had not, we think, as yet sustained the loss of any member of his family, nor hardly experienced any of those ordinary crosses from which few men's lives are free, and which, sooner or later, seldom fail to strew our paths with enough to convince us that perfect peace cannot be auspiciously sought in the conduct of human affairs. He was soon, however, to receive an impression of a painful nature, and from a quarter whence, whatever might have been his experience, he certainly little expected it. Long accustomed to be listened to by admiring and assenting audiences, whether in the theatre of the hospital, or in those clusters of pupils which never failed to crowd around him whenever he had anything to say; he was now to have some of his opinions disputed, his mode of advocating them impugned, his views of "Life," made the subject of ridicule, and even his fair dealing in argument called in question. All this, too, by no stranger; no person known only to him as one of the public, but by one who had been his pupil, whose talents he had helped to mature and develop, whose progress and prospects in life he had fostered and improved, and to whom, as was affirmed by the one, and attested by the other, he had been a constant friend. That this controversy was the source of much suffering to Abernethy, we are compelled to believe; and it is altogether to us so disagreeable, and difficult a subject, that we should have preferred confining ourselves to a bare mention of it, and a reference to the works wherein the details might be found; it is, however, too important an episode in the life of Abernethy to be so passed over; it suggests many interesting reflections; it exhibits Abernethy in a new phase, illustrates, under very trying circumstances, the "Virtus repulsæ nescia Intaminatis fulget honoribus," and brings out in stronger relief than any other transaction of his life the best and most distinctive traits of his character (benevolence and Christian feeling), under temptations which have too frequently disturbed the one, and destroyed the other. CHAPTER XVIII.