"Opinionum commenta delet dies, natur? judicia confirmat."—Cicero.
"Time, which obliterates the fictions of opinion, confirms the decisions of nature."
Whoever has wandered to the south side of Lincoln\'s Inn Fields, will have found himself in one of the "solitudes of London"—one of those places which, interspersed here and there amidst the busy current that rushes along every street and ally, seem quite out of the human life-tide, and furnish serene spots, a dead calm, in the midst of tumult and agitation. Here a lawyer may con over a "glorious uncertainty," a surgeon a difficult case, a mathematician the general doctrine of probability, or the Chevalier d\'Industrie the particular case of the habitat of his next dinner; but, unless you have some such need of abstraction from the world, these places are heart-sinkingly dull. You see few people; perhaps there may be a sallow-looking gentleman, in a black coat, with a handful of papers, rushing into "chambers;" or a somewhat more rubicund one in blue, walking seriously out: the very stones are remarkably round and salient, as if from want, rather than from excess, of friction. The atmosphere from the distance comes charged with the half-spent, booming hum of population.
Immediately around you, all is comparatively silent.
If you are in a carriage, it seems every moment to come in contact with fresh surfaces, and "beats a roll" of continued vibrations; or, if a carriage happen to pass you, it seems to make more noise than half a dozen vehicles anywhere else. You may174 observe a long fa?ade, of irregular elevations—upright parallelograms, called habitable houses; but, for aught you see, half of them may have been deserted: the dull sameness of the fa?ade is broken only by half a dozen Ionic columns, which, notwithstanding their number, seem very serious and very solitary. You may, perhaps, imagine that they bear a somewhat equivocal relation to the large house before which they stand. You may fancy them to be architectural relics, inconveniently large for admission to some depository within, or that they are intended as a sort of respectable garniture to the very plain house which they partly serve to conceal or embellish; or quiz them as you please, for architects cannot do everything, nor at once convert a very ugly house into a very beautiful temple.
But, stop there!—for temple it is—ay, perhaps, as human temples always are, not altogether unprofaned; but not so desecrated, we trust, but that it may yet contain the elements of its own purification. It enshrines, reader, a gem of great value, which nothing extrinsic can improve, which no mere art can embellish—a treasure gathered from the ample fields of nature, and which can be enriched or adorned only from the same exhaustless store. Though humble, indeed, the tenement, yet, were it humbler still, though it were composed of reeds, and covered in with straw, it would remain hallowed to science.
It holds the monument of the untiring labour of a great master—the rich garnerings of a single mind—the record, alas! but of some of the obligations mankind owe to the faithful pioneer of a Science which, however now partially merged in clouds and darkness, and obscured by error, still exhibits through the gloom, enough to assert its lofty original, and to foster hopes of better times.
The museum of John Hunter (for it is of that we write) is one of the greatest labours ever achieved by a single individual. To estimate that labour aright, to arrive at a correct notion of the man, the spectator should disregard the number of preparations—the mass of mechanical and manipulatory labour which is involved—the toil, in fact, of mere collection; and, looking through that, contemplate the thought which it records; the general175 nature of the plan; the manner in which the Argus-eyed Author has assembled together various processes in the vegetable creation; how he has associated them with their nearest relations in the animal kingdom; and how he has traced the chain from link to link, from the more simple to the more compounded forms, so as to throw light on the laws dispensed to Man. The spectator should then think of the Hunterian portion of the museum as the exhausting harvest of half a life, blessed with no greatly lengthened days; a museum gathered not in peaceful seasons of leisure, nor amid the ease of undiverted thought, but amidst the interrupting agitations of a populous city—the persistent embarrassments of measured means—the multiform distractions of an arduous profession—the still more serious interruptions of occasional indisposition—and, finally, amidst annoyances from quarters whence he had every right to expect support and sympathy—annoyances which served no other purpose but to embitter the tenure of life, and to hasten its termination.
Our space will not allow us to dwell more on this subject or the Museum just now. But where is our excellent conservator—where is Mr. Clift, the assistant, the friend, and young companion of John Hunter? He, too, is gathered to his rest. He, on whose countenance benevolence had impressed a life-long smile—he who used to tell us, as boys, so much of all he knew, and to remind us, as men, how much we were in danger of forgetting—is now no more. How kind and communicative he was; how modest, and yet how full of information; how acceptably the cheerfulness of social feelings mantled over the staid gravity of science. How fond of any little pleasant story to vary the round of conservative exposition; and then, if half a dozen of us were going round with him the "conticuere omnes," when, with his characteristic prefatory shrug, he was about to speak of Hunter. Then such a memory! Why once, in a long delightful chat, we were talking over the Lectures at the College, and he ran over the general objects of various courses, during a succession of years, with an accuracy which, if judged of by those which had fallen within our own recollection, might have suggested that he had carried a syllabus of each in his pocket.
176
We had much to say of Mr. Clift; but, in these times of speed, there is hardly time for anything; yet we think that many an old student, when he has lingered over the stately pile reared by John Hunter, may have paused and felt his eyes moistened by the memory of William Clift.
When Mr. Abernethy lectured at the College, there was no permanent professor, as is now the case; no Professor Owen, of whom we shall have to speak more in the sequel. Both the professorship of anatomy and surgery, and also that of comparative anatomy, were only held for a comparatively short time.
It is not very easy to state the principle on which the professors were selected. The privilege of addressing the seniors of the profession has never, any more than any other appointment in the profession, been the subject of public competition; nor, unless the Council have had less penetration than we are disposed to give them credit for, has "special fitness" been a very dominant principle. Considering the respectability and position of the gentlemen who have been selected, the Lectures at the College of Surgeons, under the arrangements we are recording, were certainly much less productive, as regards any improvement in science, than might have been reasonably expected.
The vice of "system" could not be always, however, corrected by the merits of the individual. One result, which too commonly arose out of it, was, that gentlemen were called on to address their seniors and contemporaries for the first time, who had never before addressed any but pupils. It would not, therefore, have been very wonderful, if, amongst the other difficulties of lecturing, that most inconvenient one of all should have sometimes occurred, of having nothing to say.
Mr. Abernethy was appointed in 1814, and had the rare success of conferring a lustre on the appointment, and the perhaps still more difficult task of sustaining, before his seniors and contemporaries, that unrivalled reputation as a lecturer which he had previously acquired. As Mr. Abernethy had been all his life teaching a more scientific surgery,............