* * * * *

Our task is finished. We have traced Mr. Muff from the new man through the
almost entomological stages of his being to his perfect state; and we take
our farewell of him as the "general practitioner." In our Physiology we
have endeavoured to show the medical student as he actually exists--his
reckless gaiety, his wild frolics, his open disposition. That he is
careless and dissipated we admit, but these attributes end with his
pupilage; did they not do so spontaneously, the up-hill struggles and
hardly-earned income of his laborious future career would, to use his own
terms, "soon knock it all out of him;" although, in the after-waste of
years, he looks back upon his student's revelries with an occasional
return of old feelings, not unmixed, however, with a passing reflection
upon the lamentable inefficacy of the present course of medical education
pursued at our schools and hospitals, to fit a man for future practice.

We have endeavoured in our sketches so to frame them, that the general
reader might not be perplexed by technical or local allusions, whilst the
students of London saw they were the work of one who had lived amongst
them. And if in some places we have strayed from the strict boundaries of
perfect refinement, yet we trust the delicacy of our most sensitive reader
has received no wound. We have discarded our joke rather than lose our
propriety; and we have been pleased at knowing that in more than one
family circle our Physiology has, now and then, raised a smile on the lips
of the fair girls, whose brothers were following the same path we have
travelled over at the hospitals.

We hope with the new year to have once more the gratification of meeting
our friends. Until then, with a hand offered in warm fellowship,--not only