an assistant pushes back the eyelid, and the
fixed eye stares vacantly at the roof.

The student below us clutches the bars in
front of him.  It is his first operation;  and he
wishes he were far away;  and wonders how
the nurses can stand so calmly, waiting with
the warm sponges.

There is a sudden movement forward of
every head; and then a dead silence. The
surgeon has broken into the house of
life, and every eye converges towards his
hands,—those hands that manipulate so
calmly—those fingers that see, as it were,
where vision cannot penetrate, and which
single out unerringly, amid the tangled
network of the frame, the life-duct that they
want.  For a moment there is a painful
pause; an instrument has to be changed, and
the operator whispers to his assistant.
"Something is going wrong," flashes in a
moment through every mind. No!—the fingers
proceed with a precision that reassures;  the
artery is tied;  and the life that trembled upon
the verge of eternity is called back, and
secured by a loop of whipcord!

There is a buzz, and a general movement
in the Theatre; the huge hollow cone of heads
turns round, and becomes a cloud of white
faces—no longer anxious. Some students
vault over the backs of the seats;  others
swing up by the force of their arms;  the
whole human cone boils over the top benches,
and pours out at the doors.  Brown pulls
Jones's hair playfully; whereupon Jones
"bonnets"  Robinson; and there is a universal
"scrimmage" on the stairs. Can these
be the same silent, grave-looking students we
saw half-an-hour since?  Yes!  Who expects
medical students to keep grave more than
half-an-hour?

As we pass down stairs towards the basement,
we see the wards opening out on either
hand. These are the surgeons' wards; and you
look upon long vistas of "fractures," and of
convalescent operation cases. The "dressers"
are at work, and trays now come into full play.

A stranger's preconceived ideas of the
suffering in an hospital are not at all borne out
by the appearance of the patients generally.
Many of them are quietly reading the better-
class cheap literature of the day;  others are
conversing round the ample fire. The little
child, with its leg in a splint, is as merry as
possible, with its bed covered with playthings.
Everything that humanity can dictate, or to
which art can minister, is supplied. The
most eminent medical men—whose attendance
sometimes the rich cannot purchase—watch
the patient with all due art and skill;
whilst carefully-trained nurses are at hand,
day and night, to ease his tired limb, or to
soothe his racking pain.

Below, again, is the floor devoted to the
medical cases; which we have already passed
through: but it does not look like the same
ward. See how that Rheumatism case has
struck up an acquaintance with the Chronic
Bronchitis; and how confidentially the Dropsy
is whispering to the St. Vitus's Dance.
The fair-haired girl, with the large lustrous
eyes, is making up a bonnet for the coming
spring—poor girl!  before that time comes,
the dark screen will, in all probability, be
drawn round her bed, and then all the ward
will know what has happened.

Anything to get rid of ennui in the hospital.
As we pass the men's ward, that rough
navigator washes up his own tea-things;
that convalescent cabman smooths the little
child's pillow;  and, farther on, the poor
shattered tailor helps his fellow in misfortune
to walk, with the inverted sweeping-
brush as a crutch! The tenderness and
sympathy you see rough fellows show in
hospitals is very touching.

The basement floor is mostly given up to
the purposes of the Medical School and the
students. The library is there;  its windows
look out upon a sickly garden  (why should
hospitals have sickly gardens, when covered
glass conservatories, affording an equable
temperature, might be so easily and cheaply
constructed?). Where books do not prevail,
the walls are covered with full-length plates
of the human form, dressed in light suits
of blue and red piping.  In the corner
sits a young anchorite mournfully contemplating
a skull;—he is only a first-year's man
having a "grind at the bones."  Two or three
more are in close consultation with that
"rough sketch of man,"  suspended by a cord
from the ceiling; they are articulating his
joints, and rubbing up their own brains for an
examination.  Another group by the fire-place
is holding a black inquest upon some
proceeding of the big Medicine-men up-stairs:
young students are so very critical.  In a
few years these seemingly thoughtless young
fellows will be spread the wide world over;
some, in the golden East; some, skirting the
pestilential shores of Africa; some, in the new
Australian world; some, in remote hamlets,
some in the fever-stricken depths of cities—
all bent upon the mission of warring with
the grim Dragon—disease.

But we must pass on, as we have yet
much to see. This is the lecture-room. How
well the students know that hideous cast
over the glass case, with the notch and
swelling in its neck; their chief point of view
in many a long lecture. Through the lecture-
room is the Pathological Museum, surrounded
by armies of cold shiny bottles. These contain
contributions from the dead to the
living—of disease to health.  It seems wonderful
how the poor human frame manages to
rub on at all; subject as we here see it is, to
such innumerable maladies.  But it does
contrive; and many of these "specimens"
are the triumphs of the surgeon's skill over
the destroyer. Scores of men walk about
well and hearty who could recognise their own
peculiar property among these bottles, and
who remember with gratitude the successful