d any longer to suffer
the prejudices that formerly filled them to remain, and have, in their
impatience, stored them with new ideas and opinions--many of them good
and useful, but too hastily adopted, and not in harmony with each other
to be productive of a good result, until time has enabled their owners
to class and arrange them.

I am every day more forcibly struck with the natural quickness and
intelligence of the people here: but this very quickness is a cause
that may tend to retard their progress in knowledge, by inducing them
to jump at conclusions, instead of marching slowly but steadily to
them; and conclusions so rapidly made are apt to be as hastily acted
upon, and, consequently, occasion errors that take some time to be
discovered, and still more to be corrected, before the truth is
attained.

CHAPTER X.

Made the acquaintance of the celebrated Dr. P----, today, at Madame
C----'s. He is a very interesting old man; and, though infirm in body,
his mind is as fresh, and his vivacity as unimpaired, as if he had not
numbered forty instead of eighty summers.

I am partial to the society of clever medical men, for the
opportunities afforded them of becoming acquainted with human nature,
by studying it under all the phases of illness, convalescence, and on
the bed of death, when the real character is exposed unveiled from the
motives that so often shadow, if not give it a false character, in the
days of health, render their conversation very interesting.

I have observed, too, that the knowledge of human nature thus attained
neither hardens the heart nor blunts the sensibility, for some of the
most kind-natured men I ever knew were also the most skilful physicians
and admirable, surgeons. Among these is Mr. Guthrie, of London, whose
rare dexterity in his art I have often thought may be in a great degree
attributed to this very kindness of nature, which has induced him to
bestow a more than usual attention to acquiring it, in order to abridge
the sufferings of his patients.

In operations on the eye, in which he has gained such a justly merited
celebrity, I have been told by those from whose eyes he had removed
cataracts, that his precision and celerity are so extraordinary as to
appear to them little short of miraculous.

Talking on this subject with Dr. P---- to-day, he observed, that he
considered strength of mind and kindness of heart indispensable
requisites to form a surgeon; and that it was