dicine. If we are to believe
himself, his career was a most remarkable one. In 1821 he was received
what is called an _interne_ of the Hotel Dieu. After having walked the
hospitals, he enrolled himself in the Catholic and Apostolic Society of
'_bonnes lettres_,' collaborated with the writers in the _Quotidienne_,
and, thanks to Royalist patronage, was named physician-in-chief of the
Royal Museums. Whether any of the groups in the pictures of Rubens,
Salvator Rosa, Teniers, Claude, or Poussin--whether any of the Torsos of
Praxiteles, or even of a more modern school, required the assiduous care
or attention of a skilful physician, we do not pretend to state. But we
repeat that the practice of Dr. Veron, according to M. Texier, was
confined to these dumb yet not inexpressive personages. In feeling the
pulse of the Venus de Medici, or looking at the tongue of the Laocoon,
or the Apollo Belvidere, it is said the chief, if not the only practice
of Dr. Louis Veron consisted. True, the doctor invented a _pate
pectorale_, approved by all the emperors and kings in Europe, and very
renowned, too, among the commonalty; but so did Dr. Solomon, of Gilead
House, near Liverpool, invent a balm of Gilead, and Mrs. Cockle invent
anti-bilious pills, taken by many of the judges, a majority of the
bench of bishops, and some admirals of the blue, and general officers
without number, yet we have never heard that Moses Solomon or Tabitha
Cockle were renowned in the practice of physic, notwithstanding the said
Gilead and the before-mentioned pills. Be this, however, as it may,
Veron, after having doctored the pictures and statues, and
patepectoraled the Emperor, the Pope, the Grand Turk, the Imaum of
Muscat, the Shah of Persia, and the Great Mogul himself, next
established the _Review of Paris_, which in its turn he abandoned to
become the director of the Opera. Tired of the Opera after four or five
years' service, the doctor became a candidate of the dynastic opposition
at Brest. This was the "artful dodge" before the Revolution of July
1848, if we may thus translate an untranslateable phrase of the
doctor's. At Brest the professor of the healing art failed, and the
consequence was, that instead of being a deputy he became the proprietor
of the _Constitutionnel_. Fortunate man that he is! In _Robert le
Diable_ at the Opera, which he would not at first have at any price, the
son of Esculapius found the principal source of his fortune, and by the