arts equally averse to Mr. Bulstrode, though Dr.
Minchin had never been in open hostility with him, and never differed
from him without elaborate explanation to Mrs. Bulstrode, who had found
that Dr. Minchin alone understood her constitution. A layman who pried
into the professional conduct of medical men, and was always obtruding
his reforms,--though he was less directly embarrassing to the two
physicians than to the surgeon-apothecaries who attended paupers by
contract, was nevertheless offensive to the professional nostril as
such; and Dr. Minchin shared fully in the new pique against Bulstrode,
excited by his apparent determination to patronize Lydgate. The
long-established practitioners, Mr. Wrench and Mr. Toller; were just
now standing apart and having a friendly colloquy, in which they agreed
that Lydgate was a jackanapes, just made to serve Bulstrode's purpose.
To non-medical friends they had already concurred in praising the other
young practitioner, who had come into the town on Mr. Peacock's
retirement without further recommendation than his own merits and such
argument for solid professional acquirement as might be gathered from
his having apparently wasted no time on other branches of knowledge.
It was clear that Lydgate, by not dispensing drugs, intended to cast
imputations on his equals, and also to obscure the limit between his
own rank as a general practitioner and that of the physicians, who, in
the interest of the profession, felt bound to maintain its various
grades,--especially against a man who had not been to either of the
English universities and enjoyed the absence of anatomical and bedside
study there, but came with a libellous pretension to experience in
Edinburgh and Paris, where observation might be abundant indeed, but
hardly sound.

Thus it happened that on this occasion Bulstrode became identified with
Lydgate, and Lydgate with Tyke; and owing to this variety of
interchangeable names for the chaplaincy question, diverse minds were
enabled to form the same judgment concerning it.

Dr. Sprague said at once bluntly to the group assembled when he
entered, "I go for Farebrother. A salary, with all my heart. But why
take it from the Vicar? He has none too much--has to insure his life,
besides keeping house, and doing a vicar's charities. Put forty pounds
in his pocket and you'll do no harm. He's a good fellow, is
Farebrother, with as little of the parson about him as will serve to
carr