QUALIFICATIONS OF CANDIDATES, 5 scholars of my time, I can cook, do any kind of rough-andready housework, row, fish, shoot, and, I'm sorry to admit, fight if occasion demands it, and also keep my temper under almost any provocation. I have the reputation of being a scholar, and I believe I may say a gentleman. I forgot to state that I pick up languages rapidly, am a tolerable connoisseur in art and cookery, play whist, piquet, and chess well for an amateur, and don't drink or gamble ; and that I am a member of the Church of England, as my father's son should be." We felt that the field for this gentleman to display his taste in art as well as in cookery would be somewhat limited in the countries we proposed visiting, although his pugilistic skill might prove of value. We, however, fully appreciated the kind care he was anxious to take of us. His concluding sentence was most cheering in case of any sinister accident : I am engaged in devising a series of tests to determine whether people are really dead before they are buried ; and Egypt is a good country to make observations of this sort in."

One applicant wrote of a man whom he eulogized as follows : It will be found on inquiry, that Dr. is highly and most respectably connected. He is good-looking though unassuming, jovial yet refined, and strictly abstemious. He is about to commence practice for himself. When he does, his unpretending amenity, simplicity of manners and deportment, combined with his great acumen and high professional attainments, are sure to meet with success."

We felt that this gentleman's "deportment and unpretending amenity" would be quite thrown away on the wild tribes of the Soudan ; and passed on to another letter in which the writer, after enumerating every place marked on the most extensive map of the West Coast of Africa yet published, all