The first purchase that a new man makes in London is a gigantic note-book, a dozen steel pens on a card, and a screw inkstand.  Furnished with these valuable adjuncts to study, he puts down every thing he hears during the day, both in the theatre of the school and the wards of the hospital, besides many diverting diagrams and anecdotes which his fellow-students insert for him, until at night he has a confused dream that the air-pump in the laboratory is giving a party, at which various scalpels, bits of gums, wax models, tourniquets, and foetal skulls, are assisting as guests—­an eccentric and philosophical vision, worthy of the brain from which it emanates.  But the new man is, from his very nature, a visionary.  His breast swells with pride at the introductory lecture, when he hears the professor descant upon the noble science he and his companions have embarked upon; the rich reward of watching the gradual progress of a suffering fellow-creature to convalescence, and the insignificance of worldly gain compared with the pure treasures of pathological knowledge; whilst to the riper student all this resolves itself into the truth, that three draughts, or one mixture, are respectively worth four-and-sixpence or three shillings:  that the patient should be encouraged to take them as long as possible, and that the thrilling delight of ushering another mortal into existence, after being up all night, is considerably increased by the receipt of the tin for superintending the performance; i.e. if you are lucky enough to get it.

It is not improbable that, after a short period, the new man will write a letter home.  The substance of it will be as follows:  and the reader is requested to preserve a copy, as it may, perhaps, be compared with another at a future period.

“MY DEAR PARENTS,—­I am happy to inform you that my health is at present uninjured by the atmosphere of the hospital, and that I find I am making daily progress in my studies.  I have taken a lodging in ——­ (Gower-place, University-street, Little Britain, or Lant-street, as the case may be,) for which I pay twelve shillings a week, including shoes.  The mistress of the house is a pious old lady, and I am very comfortable, with the exception that two pupils live on the floor above me, who are continually giving harmonic parties to their friends, and I am sometimes compelled to request they will allow me to conclude transcribing my lecture notes in tranquillity—­a request, I am sorry to say, not often complied with.  The smoke from their pipes fills the whole house, and the other night they knocked me up two hours after I had retired to rest, for the loan of the jug of cold water from my washhand-stand, to make grog with, and a ’Little Warbler,’ if I had one, with the words of ‘The Literary Dustman’ in it.