Neither are the old hospitals the only parts of a defective system. There is no hospital in London that, even yet, has any country establishment for convalescents; whilst of two of those more recently established, one is built over a church-yard; and the other, intended only for the relief of decarbonizing organs, is placed in the immediate neighbourhood of the most smoky metropolis in Europe. Both, therefore, instead of standing out as the most distinguished illustrations of the laws of sanitary and physiological science, being, on the contrary, emphatic examples of their violation. We are unwilling to conclude this chapter without observing that, notwithstanding the coldness and discussions which threw somewhat of melancholy and shade over Abernethy's retiring days, thus presenting an unwelcome contrast with the more palmy periods of his career—a contrast from which it might have been hoped his conscientious retirement might have spared him,—we yet see how appropriate a preparation it might have been for a transition from the exciting, and adulatory, atmosphere which surrounds a popular and scientific teacher, as compared with the calmness and peace of a life in the country. He was now no more to enter the Hospital Square, where we have so often seen him mobbed, as it were, by the crowding and expectant pupils; no more to be daily addressing audiences who never seemed to tire even with repetitions of that with which many were already familiar; nor any more to see, as occasional visitors, men grown grey in the successful practice of his early lessons, bringing their sons to the same school, and both listening with equal pleasure. There is no doubt that, contrasted with all this, retirement was a great, though now probably a welcome, change. Eminent men unintentionally exert an influence which is not without its evils; and we shall see that of this he was fully aware. Assentation is too much the order of the day. The multitude appear to agree. The few who differ, are apt to be cautious or reserved. If a man is too sensible to be fed with such garbage as direct flattery, there are always tricksters or tacticians, who have a thousand ways of paying homage without detection. Then, again, those who really admire a man, and are honest,—keep aloof, and shrink from an association with those whom they know, or believe, to be parasites. It thus happens that there are men to whom so few venture to be honest, that the world may present little better than a practical lie. It is a mercy then, when a man's sun is setting, that he be blessed with a little twilight of truth. There are, in the moral and intellectual constitution, as well as in the physical endowments of Man, beneficent powers of adaptation, which let us gently down to contrasts, which, too sudden, might be painful or destructive.