The influence of scrutiny in impairing the skilfulness of action is seen on other subjects, as well as in the practice of medicine. The eloquent clergyman, who would ordinarily carry his audience along with him, while he is aiming with clear mind and zealous heart to attain the _one_ great object of his preaching, the impression of the truth upon the conscience would fail to produce the same effect upon an audience of _critics_. For, to say nothing of the embarrassment which the very idea of criticism occasions, his attention would be distracted by supposed criticisms, which would suggest themselves to his mind while he is speaking; and that concentration of mental and moral energies upon one object, which is essential to true eloquence, would be wanting. To be eloquent before such an audience, he must either disarm their criticism, or he must forget that they are critics, and look upon them only as men whose minds are to be impressed and whose feelings are to be moved by the truth. Take another illustration of quite a different character. A noted juggler perceived, at the commencement of his performance, that he was very narrowly watched by a gentleman whom he knew at once to be a very acute observer. He was embarrassed, as I have seen a practicer of the juggleries of animal magnetism embarrassed by a similar cause, and he felt that he could not practice his deceptions with so free and easy a hand, as he could if he were not watched by so an intelligent an eye. The consciousness of being thus watched distracted his mind, and prevented him from concentrating its energies upon one object. The juggler immediately gave this gentleman a piece of money, telling him that he must look out or he would get it away from him in the course of the evening. At the conclusion of the exhibition the gentleman said to the juggler, ‘well, sir, here is your money—you see that I have kept it safely.’ ‘Yes,’ replied he, ‘and I meant that you should, for I chose that you should have something else to watch besides me.’ The case of the physician, whose practice is scrutinized by by-standers, is worse even than that of the criticized clergyman, or the watched juggler. For the criticism to which he is subjected is not skilful, and is therefore not capable of appreciating the merit of the measures which he employs. In the case of the clergyman, the analogy would be more correct if his audience were illiterate, and his subject were one of an abstruse and metaphysical character. Their criticism would then bear a strong resemblance to that to which the practice of the physician is often made to submit. If the physician investigate the case before him, thoroughly and scientifically, the reasonings upon which his treatment is based are often as much beyond the knowledge of those who have not been instructed in the science of medicine, as a strictly metaphysical argument is beyond the knowledge, and therefore the criticism, of a plain unlearned audience.