The President arose as he thus ended his speech; and the members of the Assembly seemed beginning to confer among themselves; but what debates ensued, or what measure was adopted, I am unable to tell, as my visionary Guides immediately hurried me to the adjoining Temple.

This second structure, though less extensive and less solid than the first, was more attractive to the eye, as it abounded with scientifical and diversified decorations.  The Assembly consisted of men, who appeared to me equally remarkable for keenness of intellect and elegance of manners.  The seat of pre eminence among them was filled by a person who possessed in a very uncommon degree these two valuable qualities, so happily conducive to medical utility and medical distinction.  Though left a young orphan, without patrimony, and obliged to struggle with early disadvantages, he raised himself by meritorious exertion to the head of a profession in which opulence is generally the just attendant on knowledge and reputation.  But neither opulence, nor his long intercourse with sickness and death, have hardened the native tenderness of his heart; and I had lately known him shed tears of regret on the untimely fate of an amiable patient, whom his consummate skill and attention were unable to save.

Thus strongly prepossessed in his favour, I was delighted to observe that he was preparing to address the Assembly in the moment we entered.  My celestial Guides smiled on each other in perceiving my satisfaction; and being placed by them instantaneously in a commodious situation, I heard the following discourse; which the character I have described delivered with an ease and refined acuteness peculiar to himself, never raising his voice above the pitch of polite and spirited conversation: 

“I am persuaded, that every individual to whom I have now the happiness of speaking, will readily agree with me in this sentiment, that we cannot possibly do ourselves more honour as a Fraternity than by considering Howard as an Associate:  assuredly, there is no class of men who may more justly presume to cherish his name and character with a fraternal affection.  In proportion as we are accustomed to contemplate, to pity, and to counteract, the sufferings of Nature, the more are we enabled and inclined to estimate, to love, and to revere, a being so compassionate and beneficent.  If Physicians are, what I once heard them called by a lively friend, the Soldiers of Humanity, engaged in a perpetual, and too often, alas! unsuccessful conflict against the enemies of life; Howard is not only entitled to high rank in our corps, but he is the very Caesar of this hard, this perilous, and, let me add, this most honourable warfare.  Perhaps the ambition of the great Roman Commander, insatiate and sanguinary as it was, did not contribute more to the torment and destruction of the human race, than the charity of the English Philanthropist has contributed to its relief and preservation.  Of