remain, the greatest of historians. Though we might not have had another _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, yet we might reasonably have looked for the completion of that autobiography which had such a brilliant beginning. What would we not give if that cool and appraising mind, which had raised Justinian and Belisarius from the dead and caused them to live again in the hearts of mankind, could have given its impressions of the momentous period in which it came to maturity? If, instead of England receiving its strongest impression of the French Revolution from Carlyle--whose powers of declamation were more potent than his sense of truth--it had been swayed from the beginning by Gibbon? In such a case the history of modern England--possibly of modern Russia--might have been widely different from what we have already seen. Jean Paul Marat It has always been the pride of the medical profession that its aim is to benefit mankind; but opinions may differ as to how far this aim was fulfilled by one of our most eminent confrères, Jean Paul Marat. He was born in Neufchatel of a marriage between a Sardinian man and a Swiss woman, and studied medicine at Bordeaux; thence, after a time at Paris, he went to London, and for some years practised there. In London he published _A Philosophical Essay on Man_, wherein he showed enormous knowledge of the English, German, French, Italian, and Spanish philosophers; and advanced the thesis that a knowledge of science was necessary for eminence as a philosopher. By this essay he fell foul of Voltaire, who answered him tartly that nobody objected to his opinions, but that at least he might learn to express them more politely, especially when dealing with men of greater brains than his own.