My request for permission to attend St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was cordially granted, and I have received a friendly welcome from professors and students. I have the full rights of a student granted to me. I do not attend many of the lectures, but confine my attention chiefly to the practice of the hospital, and at present, more particularly, to the medical practice. If I remain through the summer, I shall gradually extend my visits to the surgical and other wards, as I am particularly anxious to become widely acquainted with disease. I am obliged to feel very sceptical as to the wisdom of much of the practice which I see pursued every day. I try very hard to believe, I continually call up my own inexperience and the superior ability of the physicians whose actions I am watching; but my doubts will not be subdued, and render me the more desirous of obtaining the bedside knowledge of sickness which will enable me to _commit heresy_ with intelligence in the future, if my convictions impel me to it. I hope you will forgive this confession of want of faith, which I do not venture to make to my present instructors, for the English are in general too conservative to have sympathy with unbelief, however honest. I do not find so active a spirit of investigation in the English professors as in the French. In Paris this spirit pervaded young and old, and gave a wonderful fascination to the study of medicine, which even I, standing only on the threshold, strongly felt. There are innumerable medical societies there, and some of the members are always _on the eve_ of most important discoveries; a brilliant theory is _almost_ proved, and creates intense interest; some new plan of treatment is always exciting attention in the hospitals, and its discussion is widely spread by the immense crowds of students freely admitted. The noble provision of free lectures, supported by the French Government, increases this tendency; the distinguished men who fill the chairs in these institutions have all the leisure and opportunity necessary for original investigation, and a receptive audience always ready to reflect the enthusiasm of the teacher. I have often listened to some of these eloquent men in the College of France, their natural eloquence increased by the novelty or brilliant suggestions of the subject, till I shared fully in the enthusiasm of the assembly; and then, in the excited feeling of the moment, I would enter with some friend into the beautiful adjacent garden of the Luxembourg, and, sitting down at the foot of some noble statue, we would prolong the interest by discussion; while the brilliant atmosphere, the trees, the wind and the water, the fine old palace and the varied groups of people moving amongst the