d fall. There are
indications of arrogant self sufficiency and supercilious contempt for
others; of undue deference for Bulstrode, not from respect or esteem, but
as a tool to further his views; and a tendency to treat patients not as
human beings but as cases--objects to experiment on, and verify
hypotheses regarding pathology and disease, all which betray a nature not
attuned to the highest and noblest pitch, and that cannot be expected to
stand in the hour of trial. His first direct lapse is when, against his
secret conviction, he supports Tyke as hospital chaplain in opposition to
Farebrother; but mainly in mere defiance and resentment of the general
style of his reception at the Board meeting, and the opposition he
encounters there. Anon comes his marriage to Rosamond Vincy,--a marriage
prompted by no true affection, but solely by the fascination of her
prettiness, her external grace and accomplishments. Led on mainly by his
own taste for luxury and external show, he plunges into extravagances of
every kind. Debt inevitably follows, crippling his resources, cramping
his energies, fettering him as regards all his higher professional aims
and efforts. To his wife he looks in vain for sympathy or aid. She only
aggravates the difficulties and harassments of his life by her callous
selfishness, her dull obdurate insistance on all her own claims, her mean
deceits and concealments. Embarrassments of every kind thicken around
him; and at last in the all but universal estimation of his fellows, and
nearly in his own, in the hope of temporary relief he becomes accessory
to murder. His end is as sad a one for his character, and in his
circumstances, as can well be conceived: falling from all his high if
somewhat arrogant professional aims, his hopes of elevating the general
practitioner, and of raising medicine from an art to a science, into the
fashionable London lady's doctor.

Though Mr Farebrother occupies a somewhat less prominent place in the
narrative, he is delineated with not less consummate skill. He comes
before us at first a man of genial kindly sympathies, frankly alive to,
and frankly acknowledging, his own deficiencies. There is an utter
absence of pretence and affectation about him, a graceful and engaging
simplicity and frankness of whole nature, that can hardly fail to win the
heart. All his home relations--toward mother and sisters--are singularly
touching. Feeling all his defects as a clergyman