“Indeed! Aye, I thought I should find it so, from the account which the messenger gave me. However, my lord, as I am thus far, I may as well just look in. There is a possibility, perhaps, that even yet the use of the lancet may not be too late.” Lord Spoonbill did not oppose the physician’s wish, though he had no expectation of any benefit to be derived from it. He therefore returned and waited the report. The man of medicine soon rejoined his lordship, and pronounced the patient beyond the reach of professional skill. “The spirit, my lord, has left the body,” continued he, “according to the vulgar expression.” No man could more heartily enjoy the reprobation of vulgar phraseology than could Lord Spoonbill, generally speaking; but at this moment he was not disposed to be critical, and he answered the medical man rather pettishly. He was not for his own part able so quickly to make the transition from the grave to the gay as persons more accustomed to such scenes. It is also not very uncommon for the imperfectly virtuous to be exceedingly morose when under the impression of serious or religious feelings. The physician was very much surprised at the manner in which his lordship received the above-quoted speech; for it is a great absurdity in these enlightened days to imagine that there is any such thing as a soul. If there had been any such thing, the medical gentlemen, who have very minutely dissected the human body, certainly must have found it. But as they have not seen it, clearly it has no existence, and that which we take for the soul is only a sort of a kind of a something that is not a soul, but is only a word of four letters. Many of the Newmarket students indeed had discovered this fact before the dissectors had revealed it. When the medical philosopher observed that Lord Spoonbill did not express any approbation of the phraseology whereby a doubt of the existence of a soul was intimated, he did not consider that the disapprobation might be more from feeling than from opinion, and therefore he proceeded to the discussion of the subject in a regular and systematic method. His lordship was, however, not at all disposed to listen to his arguments, and the two walked side by side in silence to the castle. When the Earl saw his medical oracle, he directed his inquiries first to him-- “Doctor, you will be seated,” having been uttered with its usual majesty of condescension, the Earl then proceeded to ask-- “And now, doctor, what report do you bring of our worthy rector?” “Dr Greendale, my lord, is no more. Life was extinct before I could reach him; and I am of opinion that nothing could have saved him.”