When the scrimmage and riot was at the highest point, Elsworth suddenly found himself separated from his companions, and involved in a rush of people who were making for the street. These persons were anxious to escape from the violence that had suddenly come upon them, and taking rapid stock of affairs, thought it best to be outside. So, in a very few moments, Elsworth was in Oxford Street, with no chance of getting back to the scenes which he had just so unwillingly left. He turned down the Seven Dials, and as he walked towards the Strand had time to feel heartily ashamed of himself and that night’s work. Had he not had nearly enough of this sort of thing? Was it for this he had read and worked, earned honours, learned many and great things, profited by the labours of the past, which surely could not have come to him through such channels as he was likely to prove? For several days past he had been immersed in the study of Browning’s “Paracelsus.” He had seen how that hero of medicine had torn himself away from home and friends, and all his loved surroundings, to go far into the distant world to gather, with enormous difficulty, hints and scraps of medical learning which were but the veriest crumbs compared to the loaded tables now set before the student of the healing art; how, with poor means, great hardships, and the scantiest help, in opposition to the teaching of its appointed professors, doing violence to the received notions of his time, he had struck out a path for himself, through the trackless forest to the unexplored country where lay, he felt and knew by the inner light that guided him, the key to the true treatment of the hurts and troubles of men’s bodies—all this against tears and entreaties such as often hold a man back from attempting new and great things. And how, after many wanderings and contentions, much violence, and opposition, he had seized, Prometheus like, Divine gifts for men, all by his own great soul, fortified by faith in God and love to man: and had dowered the human race with gifts greater than kings and captains ever won for it, and blessings for which the art of medicine yet sings his praises. While he, Elsworth, standing as it were high on the shoulders of the discoverers of the past, had been using his time at best to acquire a mere means of livelihood, his predecessors, who had helped him to all this knowledge, had been glad to win from nature, by years of work, one by one those secrets he was using so lightly. He was overcome by shame and the sense of his unfitness for such a work as he had dared to undertake.