He whom I, with poor biographer’s pencil, put forward now in brief sketch, is one amongst the few who have thus realized the ideality of death. It were but little matter, therefore, though no biography should appear at all; it is of but little count that such biography, as the recollections of friends and intimates shall call forth, be scanty in its details; it is of but little count that the life of him who is to be shadowed forth is destitute of incident fitted for the taste of wonder-loving, passion-courting, romance-devouring, readers. Biographies for these are common. Good men are scarce. JOHN SNOW, the subject of the present memoir, was born at York, on the fifteenth day of June, 1813. He was the eldest son of his parents. His father was a farmer. His mother, who is living, resides still at York. As a child, he showed his love of industry; and increasing years added only to the intensity with which he applied himself to any work that was before him. He occasionally assisted his father in agricultural pursuits, and often in later life spoke with great _naïveté_ of the recollections of those early winter mornings when his boy’s fingers were too intimately to be pleasantly acquainted with the effects of benumbing cold. He was first sent to a private school at York, where he learned all that he could learn there. He was fond of the study of mathematics, and in arithmetic became very proficient. At the age of fourteen, he went to Newcastle-on-Tyne, as an apprentice to Mr. William Hardcastle, surgeon, of that place. He had also the opportunities of studying at the Newcastle Infirmary. During the third year of his apprenticeship, viz., when he was seventeen years old, he formed an idea that the vegetarian body-feeding faith was the true and the old; and with that consistency which throughout life attended him, tried the system rigidly for more than eight years. He was a noted swimmer at this time, and could make head against the tide longer than any of his omnivorous friends. I have heard him tell that so long as he continued to qualify his vegetables with milk and butter, the vegetarian plan supported him fairly. But on one unfortunate morning, when taking his milk breakfast, some quizzical friend, learned in botany, cross-examined him as to the vegetable on which he was then feeding. The joke went home; and the use of milk, as food for a pure vegetarian, became too absurd for consistency. The milk, therefore, must be put aside, and the butter and the eggs. The experiment did not answer; the health of our pure vegetarian gave way under the ordeal, and although in after life he maintained that an approach to the vegetarian practice was commendable, in that it kept the body in better tone for the exercise of the mind, he admitted that in his own case his health paid the forfeit of his extreme adherence to an hypothesis. Amongst his earlier scientific readings was a book in defence of the vegetable regimen by John Frank Newton. This book is