precious glad I'm not one of the Directors now. I shall vote
for referring the matter to the Directors and the Medical Board
together. I shall roll some of my responsibility on your shoulders,
Doctor," said Mr. Vincy, glancing first at Dr. Sprague, the senior
physician of the town, and then at Lydgate who sat opposite. "You
medical gentlemen must consult which sort of black draught you will
prescribe, eh, Mr. Lydgate?"

"I know little of either," said Lydgate; "but in general, appointments
are apt to be made too much a question of personal liking. The fittest
man for a particular post is not always the best fellow or the most
agreeable. Sometimes, if you wanted to get a reform, your only way
would be to pension off the good fellows whom everybody is fond of, and
put them out of the question."

Dr. Sprague, who was considered the physician of most "weight," though
Dr. Minchin was usually said to have more "penetration," divested his
large heavy face of all expression, and looked at his wine-glass while
Lydgate was speaking. Whatever was not problematical and suspected
about this young man--for example, a certain showiness as to foreign
ideas, and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled and
forgotten by his elders--was positively unwelcome to a physician whose
standing had been fixed thirty years before by a treatise on
Meningitis, of which at least one copy marked "own" was bound in calf.
For my part I have some fellow-feeling with Dr. Sprague: one's
self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very
unpleasant to find deprecated.

Lydgate's remark, however, did not meet the sense of the company. Mr.
Vincy said, that if he could have _his_ way, he would not put
disagreeable fellows anywhere.

"Hang your reforms!" said Mr. Chichely. "There's no greater humbug in
the world. You never hear of a reform, but it means some trick to put
in new men. I hope you are not one of the 'Lancet's' men, Mr.
Lydgate--wanting to take the coronership out of the hands of the legal
profession: your words appear to point that way."

"I disapprove of Wakley," interposed Dr. Sprague, "no man more: he is
an ill-intentioned fellow, who would sacrifice the respectability of
the profession, which everybody knows depends on the London Colleges,
for the sake of getting some notoriety for himself. There are men who
don't mind about being kicked blue if they can only get talked about.
But Wakley is right sometime