to look forward to the next difficulty that is to be conquered. And
now, having had so much to say to the successful candidates, you must
forgive me if I add that a sort of under-current of sympathy has been
going on in my mind all the time for those who have not been
successful, for those valiant knights who have been overthrown in your
tourney, and have not made their appearance in public. I trust that, in
accordance with old custom, they, wounded and bleeding, have been
carried off to their tents, to be carefully tended by the fairest of
maidens; and in these days, when the chances are that every one of such
maidens will be a qualified practitioner, I have no doubt that all the
splinters will have been carefully extracted, and that they are now
physically healed. But there may remain some little fragment of moral
or intellectual discouragement, and therefore I will take the liberty
to remark that your chairman to-day, if he occupied his proper place,
would be among them. Your chairman, in virtue of his position, and for
the brief hour that he occupies that position, is a person of
importance; and it may be some consolation to those who have failed if
I say, that the quarter of a century which I have been speaking of,
takes me back to the time when I was up at the University of London, a
candidate for honours in anatomy and physiology, and when I was
exceedingly well beaten by my excellent friend, Dr. Ransom, of
Nottingham. There is a person here who recollects that circumstance
very well. I refer to your venerated teacher and mine, Dr. Sharpey. He
was at that time one of the examiners in anatomy and physiology, and
you may be quite sure that, as he was one of the examiners, there
remained not the smallest doubt in my mind of the propriety of his
judgment, and I accepted my defeat with the most comfortable assurance
that I had thoroughly well earned it. But, gentlemen, the competitor
having been a worthy one, and the examination a fair one, I cannot say
that I found in that circumstance anything very discouraging. I said to