Thus, in a word, I established a social position which came in aid of my professional repute, and silenced much of that envy which usually embitters and sometimes impedes success.
Dr.Faber retired at the end of the two years agreed upon.

He went abroad; and being, though advanced in years, of a frame still robust, and habits of mind still inquiring and eager, he commenced a lengthened course of foreign travel, during which our correspondence, at first frequent, gradually languished, and finally died away.
I succeeded at once to the larger part of the practice which the labours of thirty years had secured to my predecessor.

My chief rival was a Dr.Lloyd, a benevolent, fervid man, not without genius, if genius be present where judgment is absent; not without science, if that may be science which fails in precision,--one of those clever desultory men who, in adopting a profession, do not give up to it the whole force and heat of their minds.

Men of that kind habitually accept a mechanical routine, because in the exercise of their ostensible calling their imaginative faculties are drawn away to pursuits more alluring.
Therefore, in their proper vocation they are seldom bold or inventive,--out of it they are sometimes both to excess.

And when they do take up a novelty in their own profession they cherish it with an obstinate tenacity, and an extravagant passion, unknown to those quiet philosophers who take up novelties every day, examine them with the sobriety of practised eyes, to lay down altogether, modify in part, or accept in whole, according as inductive experiment supports or destroys conjecture.
Dr.Lloyd had been esteemed a learned naturalist long before he was admitted to be a tolerable physician.