Dr. Faber retired at the end of the two years agreed upon. He went
abroad; and being, though advanced in years, of a frame still robust, and
habits of mind still inquiring and eager, he commenced a lengthened
course of foreign travel, during which our correspondence, at first
frequent, gradually languished, and finally died away.

I succeeded at once to the larger part of the practice which the labours
of thirty years had secured to my predecessor. My chief rival was a Dr.
Lloyd, a benevolent, fervid man, not without genius, if genius be present
where judgment is absent; not without science, if that may be science which
fails in precision,--one of those clever desultory men who, in adopting
a profession, do not give up to it the whole force and heat of their
minds. Men of that kind habitually accept a mechanical
routine, because in the exercise of their ostensible calling their
imaginative faculties are drawn away to pursuits more alluring.
Therefore, in their proper vocation they are seldom bold or
inventive,--out of it they are sometimes both to excess. And when they do
take up a novelty in their own profession they cherish it with an obstinate
tenacity, and an extravagant passion, unknown to those quiet
philosophers who take up novelties every day, examine them with the
sobriety of practised eyes, to lay down altogether, modify in part, or
accept in whole, according as inductive experiment supports or destroys
conjecture.

Dr. Lloyd had been esteemed a learned naturalist long before he was
admitted to be a tolerable physician. Amidst the privations of his youth
he had contrived to form, and with each succeeding year he had
perseveringly increased, a zoological collection of creatures, not
alive, but, happily for the be holder, stuffed or embalmed. From what I