of his teachers, crowded into his memory or his
note-books, he may be beaten in treating a whitlow or a colic, by the
nurse in the wards where he was clerk, or by the old country doctor who
brought him into the world, and who listens with such humble wonder to
his young friend's account, on his coming home after each session, of
all he had seen and done,--of all the last astonishing discoveries and
operations of the day. What the painter wants, in addition to, and as
the complement of, the other elements, is _genius and sense_; what the
doctor needs to crown and give worth and safety to his accomplishments,
is _sense and genius_: in the first case, more of this, than of that; in
the second, more of that, than of this. These are the "_Brains_" and the
"_That_."

And what is genius? and what is sense? Genius is a peculiar native
aptitude, or tendency, to any one calling or pursuit over all others. A
man may have a genius for governing, for killing, or for curing the
greatest number of men, and in the best possible manner: a man may have
a genius for the fiddle, or his mission may be for the tight-rope, or
the Jew's harp; or it may be a natural turn for seeking, and finding,
and teaching truth, and for doing the greatest possible good to mankind;
or it may be a turn equally natural for seeking, and finding, and
teaching a lie, and doing the _maximum_ of mischief. It was as natural,
as inevitable, for Wilkie to develop himself into a painter, and such a
painter as we know him to have been, as it is for an acorn when planted
to grow up into an oak, a specific _quercus robur_. But _genius_, and
nothing else, is not enough, even for a painter; he must likewise have
_sense_; and what is sense? _Sense_ drives, or ought to drive, the
coach; sense regulates, combines, restrains, commands, all the
rest--even the genius; and sense implies exactness and soundness, power
and promptitude of mind.

Then for the young doctor, he must have as his main, his master faculty,
SENSE--Brains--{nous}, justness of mind, because his subject-matter is
one in which principle works, rather than impulse, as in painting; the
understanding has first to do with it, however much it is worthy of the
full exercise of the feelings, and the affections. But all will not do,
if GENIUS is not there,--a real turn for the profession. It may not be a
liking for it--some of the best of its practitioners never really liked
it, at least liked other things better; bu