Many are the marvellous relations in ancient and modern history, but in the records of the supernatural it is questionable if there be anything to match the preceding. Painters depict the runaway apprentice listening on Highgate Hill to the bells as they pealed, “Turn again Whittington, twice Lord Mayor of London,” but they might find a finer subject in the young Gloucestershire surgeon, aged 31, habited “in blue coat and yellow buttons, buckskins, well polished jockey boots with handsome silver spurs, a smart whip with silver handle, and hair done up in a club under a broad-brimmed hat,”[89] with eye fixed in vision, contemplating his glorious destiny, through clouds of doubt and difficulty, full twenty years ahead; standing like another Aaron, censer in hand, between the living and the dead until the plague was stayed! Verily, if we do not see miracles, it is because we do not choose to look for them. The chapter of the wonderful is not exhausted; yet greater things remain. Says Baron, and recollect the year was 1780 and Jenner aged 31-- Jenner was riding with Gardner, on the road between Gloucester and Bristol, near Newport, when the conversation passed of which I have made mention. He went over the natural history of cowpox; stated his opinion as to the origin of this affection from the heel of the horse; specified the different sorts of disease which attacked the milkers when they handled infected cows; dwelt upon the variety which afforded protection against smallpox; and with deep and anxious emotion mentioned his hope of being able to propagate that variety from one human being to another, till he had disseminated the practice all over the globe, to the total extinction of smallpox-- Which is to say, that in 1780, Jenner, aged 31, had arrived at the conclusion which he offered to the world in 1798 at the mature age of 49; and in the meanwhile allowed mankind to perish from smallpox, he having their salvation in his hands! The miraculous conversation, says Baron, was concluded by Jenner in words to the following effect-- Gardner, I have entrusted a most important matter to you, which I firmly believe will prove of essential benefit to the human race. I know you, and should not wish what I have stated to be brought into conversation; for should anything untoward turn up in my experiments I should be made, particularly by my medical brethren, the subject of ridicule--for I am the mark they all shoot at.[90]