compiled in 1627, will explain our meaning:-"One chirurgeon barb shall cut and poll the hair of all the scholars of the hospital; as also loo cure of all those within the hospital, who any way shall stand in need

art."

[Portrait of Abernethy.]

is one

> antici

hes. In

the proand the

species is

and how, n himself.

cerebellum tive power. als greatly als endowed The lecturer ellum of the ther, which is

f the year. of the Professor eral interest-the is now brilliantly pants are of a more speaks that it is a statesmen, poets and President is the orator. 4th of February, and

in praising; and of whom Cibber says, " He was an actor, as Shakspere was an author, both without competitors," &c. These are interesting recollections, and no doubt often turn the eyes of the student in history or dramatic literature towards Lincoln's Inn Fields. But a much more widely spread as well as deeper interest centres there. Scarcely a town or large village in the remotest parts of England but has its young aspirants for the honours and emoluments of a profession, the entrance to which lies through Lincoln's Inn Fields. And only those who have passed, or endeavoured to pass through it, can fully appreciate the anxieties and difficulties of the undertaking, or understand the peculiar interest with which the minds of a very large class of persons throughout England view the Royal College of Surgeons.

We are now standing before the building in question, admiring Mr. Barry's chaste and impressive design. Till the almost entire rebuilding of the structure under this gentleman's superintendence in 1835-6, the aspect of the College was, with the exception of the portico, as mean as it is now dignified, as discordant as it is now harmonious. And that portico owes much of its present noble proportions and graceful beauty to the gentleman we have named: a new column, for instance, was added, and the whole fluted; whilst the bold entablature along the entire top of the edifice, with its enriched cornice, and the sunken letters of the inscription in the fricze, the elegant appearance of the stacks of chimneys at each end, and the general lightness of the structure from the great number of windows, are all new, and betoken the masterly hand that has here been at work, and which has given to London not one of the least considerable of recent architectural productions. It is afternoon, and many persons are passing beneath the portico into the Hall. Let us follow them. Some pass through the glazed open doors in front into the inner vestibule, with its low roof and open pillars, towards the Theatre; others into the Secretary's room on the left: these last are, almost without exception, young, and generally gentlemanly-looking men; and their business is to take the first step in a much-dreaded business, the registering their names for examination. It is astonishing how hard the most indolent or lazy student can work now-that is, a week or two before his examination; and, tired as he has been of the eternal lectures, he is even chivalrous enough to hear one more, the one just about to be given in the Theatre-to the Students' gallery of which accordingly he ascends. Leaving the Secretary's room, we enter the inner hall or vestibule before mentioned, which is ornamented, and its roof supported by rows or screens of Doric columns; and in the far corner, on the left, we find the staircase ascending to the Council Room and Library, and the doorway to the Theatre. Entering the latter, we find ourselves in the Members' gallery, which runs round three sides of the lofty but somewhat contracted-looking place, with crimson scats, wainscoted walls, and a square-panelled roof, in the centre of which is a lantern or skylight. Above us is the Students' gallery, in front the wall of one entire side of the Theatre, and below a sunken floor, with a table for the lecturer, and seats rising upward from it towards us and on each side. The table is covered with preparations, some in glass vessels, intended no doubt to be used for the illustration of the subject of the lecture; and across the wall above, on a level with our own eyes, that long board has been evidently raised for a similar purpose, for it is almost hidden with

drawings, chiefly coloured. One single bust ornaments the place, the bust of John Hunter, placed on a pediment over the board. The seats immediately in front and by the sides of the lecture-table below us are, we are told, for the Council of the College.

In looking round, two or three circumstances arrest our attention. The Students' gallery is almost empty, while the members' gallery and the body of the Theatre, on the contrary, are almost full: another illustration of the truth that meets us in a thousand shapes-those only who know the most have the truest idea how much there is to learn. Again, among the faces present we can detect more than one man whom the world looks on, and justly, as among the foremost in their profession: yet these, with their time worth we know not how many guineas an hour, come to hear a lecture which has no adventitious interest whatever attached to it: it is but one of twenty-four given annually: there are no lords, dukes, nor princes present, nor is there any sumptuous dinner about to follow, as in the case of the annual oration delivered in the Theatre. The character of the faces around must be noticed by the most ordinary observer. Lavater and Spurzheim might each have written a separate chapter in their great works on the exhibition afforded by such an assemblage. The expression of thought and intellect—always acute, sometimes high-is written upon every face and stamped on every brow. But our reflections are interrupted: through a little door in the wall beside the table enters the beadle of the College with the gilt mace, which he lays on the table, members of the Council follow, and lastly enters the lecturer, in a black silk robe with crimson edging; and, as if impatient of the parade, however necessary, at once commences his lecture. The subject is one of greater interest than a stranger and an unscientific man might have anticipated, and of almost (to such an one) startling novelty: the brain of fishes. In a rapid survey, the lecturer describes in brief but expressive language the process of declension of the brain from man through the inferior animals, and the birds, down to the fishes; showing how closely each individual and species is linked with that above and below it in the great scale of creation, and how, above all, this variety of structure tends to explain the being of man himself. Thus, it has been maintained by distinguished physiologists, that the cerebellum in the human brain has organic functions connected with the locomotive power. If this be true, should we not find the cerebellum in the lower animals greatly developed, or almost entirely lost, precisely as we find the individuals endowed with extraordinary locomotive powers, or very deficient of them? The lecturer answers by pointing to the amazing development of the cerebellum of the shark, the most vigorous perhaps of fishes, and to that of another, which is scarcely visible, and the owner of which lies all but torpid for half the year.

From this glimpse of the Theatre during one of the lectures of the Professor of Comparative Anatomy, let us pass to an occasion of more general interest—the Hunterian oration, which takes place annually. The Theatre is now brilliantly lighted with chandeliers; for it is late in the day, and the occupants are of a more diversified character. The board is gone, and everything speaks that it is a show rather than a work day of the College. Warriors and statesmen, poets and artists, may now be found among the audience. The President is the orator. Referring to the fitness of the day for the subject-the 14th of February, and

the birth-day of John Hunter-he proceeds, in a notice of the life of that remarkable man, to show what the College, and, through it, the profession, and the world generally, owe to him.

John Hunter was born in 1728, at Long Calderwood, near Glasgow. His father was a small farmer, and having nine other children, but little attention was paid to the child's education. His father's early death made matters still worse, and up to the age of seventeen John Hunter was distinguished for nothing more important than his enjoyment of country sports. Finding this mode of life attended by pecuniary as well as other inconveniences, he addressed himself to a better, and went and laboured zealously in the workshop of his brother-inlaw at Glasgow, a cabinet-maker. The manual dexterity which subsequently formed a noticeable feature of Hunter's personal character, and which he found so valuable in his scientific studies, is ascribed to the three years thus spent. The fame of William Hunter, the brother of John, as an anatomical and scientific lecturer, now roused more ambitious thoughts, or at least prepared the way for their accomplishment. He wrote to offer his services; they were accepted; and behold John Hunter at London. His first essays gave so much satisfaction that his brother at once prophesied he would become a good anatomist. This was in 1748. The year following he became the pupil of the celebrated surgeon Cheselden, and attended with him the Hospital of Chelsea for two years, and at the expiration of that time engaged himself to Pott in connexion with the practice of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Passing over various other stages of his career, we find him in 1754 a partner with William in the school, and sharing in the delivery of the annual course of lectures. The severity of his studies now became too great for him, serious illness ensued, and, but for the judicious course he adopted, the world might have now known nothing of John Hunter. He sought and obtained the appointment of staff-surgeon to a regiment ordered to a milder climate, and for two years followed its migrations, when he returned to England completely restored. Hunter would now have risen rapidly in his profession but for two deficiencies, amenity of manner, so valuable, we might say indispensable, to a medical man, and education; as it was, he suffered much inconvenience and anxiety, not on account of his own personal wants, but for his beloved museum, the foundation of which he began to lay from an early period. He lectured, but could get only few pupils, and was frequently obliged to borrow the money for some new purchase that had tempted him, and which he could not resist. A pleasant anecdote of one of these occasions is told. Pray, George," said he one day to Mr. G. Nicol, the king's bookseller, an intimate acquaintance," have you got any money in your pocket?" The answer was in the affirmative. "Have you got five guineas? because if you have, and will lend it to me, you shall go halves." "Halves in what?" said Mr. Nicol. Why, halves in a magnificent tiger, which is now dying in Castle Street." The money was lent, and the great anatomist made happy. All this while his reputation was steadily on the advance, and the fact came home to him in two very satisfactory incidents in the years 1767-8: in the first of which he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society; and in the second, surgeon to St. George's Hos pital. This was everything to John Hunter: patients and pupils alike flowed in, and the Museum went on at a glorious rate. More laboriously now than

66