Of course there are medical practices
sometimes honestly sold for reasons told to
purchasers without reserve. Doctors grow old;
and, when they retire, often would rather sell
than give away their good-will. It is true that
such doctors usually have medical friends, and
such introductions are not often to be found
soliciting the stranger in the public market.
The like suspicion commonly attaches to the
public auction of a right of walking in some
dead man's shoes. Whenever the seller of such
bargains has to look for a purchaser wholly
beyond the circle of the men who know him, it is
probable that he might fairly advertise his sale,
although he never does, according to manner of
some drapers, to be "in consequence of a failure."

For my own part—and that is the sum of my
argument—I cannot irnagine why sick people, and
their friends, not looking for the best help of
skill available in their behalf, suffer themselves
to be passed from hand to hand as articles of
traffic. Further, I have learnt to be sorry at the
waste committed by a great many young doctors,
who buy only a false position for themselves
with money that would enable them to stand
on their own ground, and prove the power that
is in their knowledge if they resolutely bound
it to an upright, generous, and active life.

DRIFT.

THE Inquisition's post mortem, or inquests after
death, forming an unbroken series, extending
from the reign of Henry the Third down to the
twentieth year of the reign of Charles the First,
at which period they were merged in the
proceedings of the Court of Wards and Liveries,
are among the most important of our national
records. They furnish very valuable information
on two topics peculiarly esteemed by
Englishmen—property, and the line of descent. They
are simply inquiries made after the death of all
tenants in chief of the king, and their process
runs as follows: The king issued his writ to his
escheator for the province in which the death
took place, commanding him to summon a jury,
and institute an open and diligent inquiry into
"what lands the deceased died seized of, in
chief of the crown," "the day of his death," and
the "name, degree of consanguinity, and age of
the next heir." This inquiry was accordingly
perfected in due form; and the escheator made
his return into the Court of Chancery. A
similar return, "by virtue of his office," and not
requiring a writ, was also made into the Court
of Exchequer, of which the escheator was an
officer.

In connexion with the "inquisitions," are a
set of documents entitled the "Probationes
ætatis," or proofs of age, which originated under
these circumstances: When the heir, having
been a minor at the taking of the Inquisition on
the death of his father or other relation, had
attained his full age, he applied for " livery," or
yielding up his lands out of the hands of his
guardian. Before granting his application, the
king required a "proof of age" to be rendered
for his royal information. By these "proofs of
age" instructive, varied, and amusing glimpses
into the domestic habits and lives of our
ancestors are often given, and as in all evidences
of the past, through the medium of very quaint
language, one learns how similar the feelings,
pursuits, follies, and virtues of bygone generations
were to our own.

The following is a translated extract from one
of these "proofs of age," made in the first year
of King Henry the Fifth (1413), to establish
the majority of William the son of John, who
was the son of Sir William Bonevile, knight; and
the depositions of the witnesses are curious and
remarkable, not only from the oddity of their
disclosures, but for the unhesitating contradiction
as to the particular fact of the date of the
natal day, to which they are specially summoned
to testify, running through the whole of their
evidence. There is at least a fortnight's discrepancy
between the two dates assigned by the
various parties.

The first inquiry was made at Honiton on
Tuesday Halloween (October 31st).

John Cokesdene, Nicholas Penerich, and
William Hill, each of the age of 46 and more,
sworn and examined upon the truth of the age
of the aforesaid William Fitz John, say, and
each of them, separately examined for himself,
saith, that the aforesaid William Fitz John
Bonevile is of the age of 21 years and more, for
that he was born at Shete, in the county of
Devon, on the last day of August, in the
sixteenth year of the reign of the Lord Richard the
Second after the conquest, King of England,
and baptised in the parish church of the same
place, on the same day, about the hour of
Vespers. And this they well know to be true,
because the said jurors were elected on that day
to make peace between two neighbours, it being
a "Love day," and on that same day came a
certain Lady Catherine, widow of Sir John
Cobham, Knight, and wife of John Wyke, of
Nynhyde, aunt to the said William Fitz John,
riding on her way to Shete, thinking to be made
the child's godmother, when a certain Edward
Dygher, servant to Sir William Bonevile, who
was reputed to be half-witted, for that he was
verbose and jocular, met her and asked her
whither she was going? To whom she answered
sharply, "Fool, to Shete to make my nephew a
Christian man." Whereupon the said Edward,
grinning, said to her, in his mother tongue:
"Kate, Kate,
Thereto by myn pate
Comystowe to late,
For the baptism of the child is over."
And she, mounting her horse in a passion, rode
homewards in grave anger, swearing she would
not see her sister, the mother of the said child,
for half a year, unless she should be at the point
of death; and all these things the jurors knew
and saw.

William Hoderfield and Richard Damare,
both of them of the age of 45 and more, sworn
and examined, say and each of them saith, that
the aforesaid William Fitz John was born at