EPIGRAMS ON A LOUD AND SILLY TALKER.

  If it be true man’s tongue is like a steed,
  Which bears his mind,—­why then, none wonder need,
  That Timlin’s tongue can run at such a rate,
  Because it only carries—­feather weight.

* * * * *

  When Timlin speaks, his voice so shrill and loud
  Fills with amazement all the list’ning crowd;
  But soon the wonder ceases, when ’tis found
  That empty vessels make the greatest sound.

* * * * *

PUNCH’S PENCILLINGS.—­No.  XVII.

[Illustration:  SIR ROBERT MACAIRE

ENDEAVOURING TO DO AN EXCHEQUER BILL.]

* * * * *

THE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE LONDON MEDICAL STUDENT.

6.—­OF THE GRINDER AND HIS CLASS.

[Illustration:  O]One fine morning, in the October of the third winter session, the student is suddenly struck by the recollection that at the end of the course the time will arrive for him to be thinking about undergoing the ordeals of the Hall and College.  Making up his mind, therefore, to begin studying in earnest, he becomes a pro tempore member of a temperance society, pledging himself to abstain from immoderate beer for six months:  he also purchases a coffee-pot, a reading-candlestick, and Steggall’s Manual; and then, contriving to accumulate five guineas to pay a “grinder,” he routs out his old note-books from the bottom of his box, and commences to “read for the Hall.”

Aspirants to honours in law, physic, or divinity, each know the value of private cramming—­a process by which their brains are fattened, by abstinence from liquids and an increase of dry food (some of it very dry), like the livers of Strasbourg geese.  There are grinders in each of these three professional classes; but the medical teacher is the man of the most varied and eccentric knowledge.  Not only is he intimately acquainted with the different branches required to be studied, but he is also master of all their minutiae.  In accordance with the taste of the examiners, he learns and imparts to his class at what degree of heat water boils in a balloon—­how the article of commerce, Prussian blue, is more easily and correctly defined as the Ferrosesquicyanuret of the cyanide of potassium—­why the nitrous oxyde, or laughing gas, induces people to make such asses of themselves; and, especially, all sorts of individual inquiries, which, if continued at the present rate, will range from “Who discovered the use of the spleen?” to “Who killed cock robin?” for aught we know.  They ask questions at the Hall quite as vague as these.