* * * * *

All things being arranged to his satisfaction, he deposits his papers under the care of Mr. Sayer, and passes the interval before the fatal day much in the same state of mind as a condemned criminal.  At last Thursday arrives, and at a quarter to four, any person who takes the trouble to station himself at the corner of Union-street will see various groups of three and four young men wending their way towards the portals of Apothecaries’ Hall, consisting of students about to be examined, accompanied by friends who come down with them to keep up their spirits.  They approach the door, and shake hands as they give and receive wishes of success.  The wicket closes on the candidates, and their friends adjourn to the “Retail Establishment” opposite, to go the odd man and pledge their anxious companions in dissector’s diet-drink—­vulgo, half-and-half.

Leaving them to their libations, we follow our old friend Mr. Joseph Muff.  He crosses the paved court-yard with the air of a man who had lost half-a-crown and found a halfpenny; and through the windows sees the assistants dispensing plums, pepper, and prescriptions, with provoking indifference.  Turning to the left, he ascends a solemn-looking staircase, adorned with severe black figures in niches, who support lamps.  On the top of the staircase he enters a room, wherein the partners of his misery are collected.  It is a long narrow apartment, commonly known as “the funking-room,” ornamented with a savage-looking fireplace at one end, and a huge surly chest at the other; with gloomy presses against the walls, containing dry mouldy books in harsh, repulsive bindings.  The windows look into the court; and the glass is scored by diamond rings, and the shutters pencilled with names and sentences, which Mr. Muff regards with feelings similar to those he would experience in contemplating the inscriptions on the walls of a condemned cell.  The very chairs in the room look overbearing and unpleasant; and the whole locality is invested with an overallishness of unanswerable questions and intricate botheration.  Some of the students are marching up and down the room in feverish restlessness; others, arm in arm, are worrying each other to death with questions; and the rest are grinding away to the last minute at a manual, or trying to write minute atomic numbers on their thumb-nail.

The clock strikes five, and Mr. Sayer enters the room, exclaiming—­“Mr. Manhug, Mr. Jones, Mr. Saxby, and Mr. Collins.”  The four depart to the chamber of examination, where the medical inquisition awaits them, with every species of mental torture to screw their brains instead of their thumbs, and rack their intellects instead of their limbs,—­the chair on which the unfortunate student is placed being far more uneasy than the tightest fitting “Scavenger’s daughter” in the Tower of London.  After an anxious hour, Mr. Jones returns, with a light bounding step to a joyous extempore air of his own composing:  he has passed.  In another twenty minutes Mr. Saxby walks fiercely in, calls for his hat, condemns the examiners ad inferos, swears he shall cut the profession, and marches away.  He has been plucked; and Mr. Muff, who stands sixth on the list, is called on to make his appearance before the awful tribunal.