Indeed, Mr. Abernethy's closing career at the hospital gave him no great reason to rejoice at the "hospital system." Men, who could see nothing in leaving very much more important situations to an indefinite succession of apprentices, cavilled at a prospective lectureship for his only son; whilst his lectures were delivered over to gentlemen—one of whom had, from an early period, ridiculed, as he said, the opinions which he taught as—and which we now know to have been—John Hunter's; and another, with whom there had been of late several not very pleasing associations. This was necessarily a result of the "hospital system;" a system that gave a still more melancholy and fatal close to the labours of John Hunter, whose death took place suddenly in the Board-room of St. George's Hospital, whilst resisting an interference with a privilege which his love of science rendered valuable to him, and which it was for the interests of science that he should enjoy; but, mournful as these results are, and many others that might be added, still, if we found that the system worked well for science, we might rest satisfied; but is it so? What advances have the hospital surgeons of London, _under the apprentice system_, made in the science of surgery? Let those answer the question who are desirous of maintaining this system. For our own parts, the retrospect seems to show "the system" in a more striking manner than any thing we have yet stated. John Hunter, that _primus inter omnes_, was no hospital apprentice; he migrated from St. Bartholomew's, where the rule was too exclusive to give him a chance, to St. George's, where he obtained admittance; St. Bartholomew's preserved "the system," and lost Hunter. Abernethy was an apprentice, truly; but all those glorious labours which shed such a lustre on his profession, and such a benefit on mankind, were completed long before he became surgeon to St. Bartholomew's Hospital; and it is material to repeat that at that time the assistant surgeons, with the exceptions already stated, had nothing to do. In casting our eyes over the retrospect of years, one honoured name attracts our notice, in connection with a real advance in the knowledge of the functions of nerves. We allude to Sir Charles Bell. But here again "the system" is unfortunate; for Sir Charles was never a hospital apprentice at all, and only succeeded to a post in a London hospital after an open canvass in an institution in which the narrow portal of the apprentice system is unrecognized.