His taking the house at Enfield was probably a prudent measure; he seemed to enjoy it very much, and especially in getting a quiet friend or two down on a Saturday to stay over till the Monday; amongst whom, a very favourite visitor was our respected friend Mr. Clift, of whom we have already spoken. Abernethy had always, however, had what he used aptly enough to term a fidgetty nervous system. From early life he had been annoyed by a particularly irritable heart. The first time he ever suffered materially from it was while he was yet a young man. He had been exceedingly depressed by the death of a patient in whose case he had been much interested, and his heart became alarmingly violent and disordered in its action. He could not sleep at night, and sometimes in the day it would beat so violently as to shake his waistcoat. He was afterwards subject to fugitive returns of this complaint, and few, unless by experience, know how distressing such attacks are. We suspect that surgeons are more frequently thus affected than is generally supposed. A cold, half-brutal indifference is one thing, but a calm and humane self-possession in many of our duties is another, and, as we saw in Cheselden, not obtained always without some cost; the effects of this sometimes appear only when the causes have ceased to recur, or are forgotten. A lively sensibility to impressions was natural to Abernethy; but this susceptibility had been increased by the well-known influence of the air and excitement of crowded cities on people who are engaged in much mental exertion. His physical organization, easily susceptible of disturbance, did not always shake it off again very readily. At one period he suffered an unusually long time from the consequences of a wound in dissection. These not uncommon accidents occur perhaps a hundred or a thousand times without being followed by any material results; but, if they happen in disordered conditions of health, either of mind or body, they are sometimes serious affairs, and usually of a more or less active kind—that is, soon terminating in death or recovery. Not so in Abernethy. The complaint went through various phases, so that it was nearly three years, he used to tell us, before he fairly and finally got rid of the effects of it. One of the most difficult things for a man so actively engaged in a profession in London as was Abernethy, is to get the requisite quantity of exercise; whilst the great mental exertion which characterizes a London, as distinguished from almost any other kind of life, requires that the digestive organs should be "up to" pretty good living. Then, again, Abernethy lived in the days of port wine; when every man had something to say of the sample his hospitality produced of that popular beverage. Abernethy, who was never intemperate, was very hospitable, and always selected the finest port wine he could get, which, as being generally full and powerful, was for him perhaps the least fitted.