you by my skill: let us feel our way, as we medical men feel the pulses of our patients."
In the hope of securing permanent eminence, possessing ability in his profession, Melliphant had, to an otherwise handsome establishment, added a carriage, and had also launched into expenses his practitional earnings were inadequate to support.
The constitution of Sir Howard not being sufficiently robust to enable him to combat with excess, Mr. Melliphant, from first attending him as his physician, became by degrees his inseparable companion,—perhaps chiefly arising from a similarity of taste and habits. Dissolute and vitiated alike, they confided in, and ever acted in mutual concert with each other's plans, according to the deep subtleties of their reasonings, which linked them together by some secret spell. But if, in the general estimate of their characters, a similitude might be found to prevail, nevertheless in other respects there was an essential difference.
Sir Howard invariably maintained the air and splendour of a man of gallantry and fashion; on the contrary, the other, plain and unassuming in his manners, never seemed to wish to raise himself above the level of his condition; and, though gifted with talent, sought no occasion for its display.
With the most eager assiduity Sir Howard ever courted the company of the ostentatious and affluent. Melliphant, attaching little value to riches, honours, or distinctions, preferred the company of his equals or
