One of the best, but not quite the best, of the medical characters in Dickens' novels, is Allan Woodcourt, who "had gone out a poor ship's surgeon, and had come home nothing better,"--the young man hastily called in when the death of Nemo is discovered, in conjunction with "a testy medical man, brought from his dinner, with a broad snuffy upper lip, and a broad Scotch tongue." Allan Woodcourt has the kindness of heart which characterises the profession, and exemplifies it very pleasingly in the scene with the brickmaker's wife, and with poor Jo, the forlorn waif who is kept continually moving on by the police. How tenderly, too, he deals with Richard Carstone, the weak-minded victim of the long-drawn Chancery suit. And his head is as sound as his heart is soft. "You," says Richard to him, "can pursue your art for its own sake, and can put your hand to the plough and never turn; and can strike a purpose out of anything." What a world of difference we see in this briefly sketched trait to the want of earnestness of purpose and steadfastness of pursuit in the character of young Carstone! Even stronger testimony to the good qualities of Allan Woodcourt is borne by Mr. Jarndyce. Allan, says that gentleman, is "a man whose hopes and aims may sometimes lie (as most men's sometimes do, I dare say) above the ordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough after all, if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good service leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I suppose; but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road, instead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is the kind I care for. It is Woodcourt's kind." The love passages of this estimable young man with the equally estimable Esther Summerson, one of Dickens' most charming presentments of English maidenhood, are very pleasing, and none of them more so than one which occurs towards the close of the story.