such truth the alchemy of the mind and the anatomy of the passions. I accordingly repaired to Abbotsford within a year after his death, and visited his mansion, which, though it knew him no more its armour-garnished walls and his favourite library were all there his very vestments hanging round-and that Gothic door, which he has immortalized in story, unchanged and undisturbed, yet did they everywhere seem to impart a balmy fragrance, redolent, in every relic and in every antique gem that stood out from the tracery, of the blameless life and consummate witchery of the great master who had here, from his own throne, wielded his magic wand with such stupendous power.

I visited also, near Abbotsford, that exquisite ruin, Melrose Abbey; and when one evening I was there, and beholding the moon shining through its windows, I was forcibly reminded of those well-known beautiful lines, where the author of Ivanhoe thus speaks:

"If thou wouldst view fair Melrose aright,

Go visit it by the pale moonlight;

For the gay beams of lightsome day
Gild but to flout the ruins gray."

From thence we proceeded a little farther on to Dryburg Abbey, where all that there is of mortal or earthly of the great bard and dramatist, reposes beside his father, and mother, and daughter beneath a plain and unadorned tomb, in one of the cloisters of that sacred ruin, that he so often visited and admired, and had himself selected for his last resting-place.

"That a poet and a novelist should have chosen the shades and ruins of Dryburg for his monument, I am not in the least surprised. They are extensive and romantic beyond my feeble powers of description. The peaceful solemnity of the Abbey forbids even the most idle and trifling to forget that its crumbling walls are to

the living a memento mori, and the ivy which clings so tenaciously to its time-worn arches, like the Christian's hope, outliving the vigour of youth, and cheering even death's portals with its bright expectation of a green eternity."*

Before I part with Scotland, I owe it to surgery to pay a passing tribute to the memory of one whom I well recollect while I was a pupil in Edinburgh, and whom, in after years, my more mature judgment has ranked as one of the most Herculean minds that has ever appeared in any country. I mean John Bell, whose name is still fondly and justly cherished, both by the preceptor and pupil, as a household treasure, throughout all the varied walks, the elementary paths, as well as the most intricate mazes of anatomy and surgery. The boldness and originality of his conceptions and execution in both those departments; his wonderful erudition and his peculiar felicity and terseness of style, his writings alone, in fact, surpassing in graphic power and elegant diction any other compositions in the whole range of medical literature; his rare genius, communicating a charm to everything he touched, not only through his pen, but also his pencil, for he was an accomplished limner, combined traits of character that threw a halo and flood of light over the schools of Edinburgh, that was not limited by the Tweed or the Thames, but shed its effulgence through all distant lands where the healing art is known.

But though the source of that light, not the radiance that emanated from it, is now forever extinguished, his illustrious brother, Sir Charles Bell, still lives to hallow his memory and to perpetuate his fame. Consociated with him in all the great works on which they laboured together during life, he survives after the premature

• Extract from a MS. Journal of Mrs. V. Mott.

death of that brother, to whose grave in a foreign land [Italy] he recently made a pilgrimage, and will prolong by his own individual achievements that lustre which will forever adorn this revered name. It may be said truly of Sir Charles Bell, that his physiological and pathological inquiries into the anatomy of the brain and nerves have, like those of Sir John Herschel in the mechanism of the heavens, penetrated farther than those of any other savant, and opened an entire new world to our observation, that promises to revolutionize many of the received opinions in medicine, and overturn, or, rather, subjugate to the control of his newly-propounded theory of the hitherto mysterious functions of the sensific and motific powers, not only the humoral, but other reigning hypotheses.

Sir Charles, in the declining years of his life, felt that his happiness would be most consulted by leaving the great metropolis of England, which he had chosen for some years as his residence; and returning once more, and for the last time, to the land of his fathers, and to his favourite city, Edinburgh, he was there immediately chosen to the professorship of surgery in the University, which chair he continues to fill with distinguished honour and usefulness as one of the ablest teachers of the age.

IRELAND.

We have not space to dwell as long as we could have desired on that famous land of the Scots, whose deeds, diminutive as is the territory they occupy, have filled the. world with their greatness, and must therefore hasten, before passing to the Continent, to Erin's green isle, so renowned in song, in fable, in poetic interest, in chivalry, and in genius.

I visited the Irish capital, Dublin, and found there her schools well-ordered, her hospitals ample, and her professors maintaining that high rank for which they have ever been so celebrated.

Here I was welcomed not only with the courtesies which I had elsewhere received, but with all that warmth and fulness of Irish heart and Irish hospitality which must be seen and felt to be enjoyed. I can never erase from my memory the home-like cordiality, the touching attentions, the almost brotherly affection and endearments which with prodigal generosity were opened to me at every door. There was I most feelingly greeted by that patriarch in surgery, DR. COLLES, with whose name and services I had been so long conversant, and with whom I had already been on familiar terms of intimacy for years by our frequent correspondence. He, too, spoke in terms of high commendation of the surgery of our country; and in remarking upon the great subject of aneurisms and the tying of great arteries, said that America had won laurels for herself that would never fade, and that the American instrument for tying deepseated arteries was adopted by them all, and was by

far the best that had ever been invented.

He is still in

the possession of vigorous health, and long may he enjoy his well-merited reputation as the first surgeon of Ireland. He has not written largely, but what he has written has been the fruit of such exact and minute investigation, and of such ripe experience, that every line may be said to tell the truth, and to be a sterling acquisition to our art. Not less kind and assiduous in his civilities was also my friend Cusack, who now, since the partial retirement of his great contemporary, Colles, from the field of operative surgery, may truly be said to hold the first rank in that department of our art. As it is the most dangerous and difficult path to eminence, and the only practical and demonstrative test of the utility of surgical science, it is, for these reasons, the most intensely captivating to an ambitious mind, and the most richly rewarded with the approbation and applause of public opinion.

I, perhaps, may be permitted to say, that in my opinion, no surgeon in the British kingdom or on the Continent of Europe, has gone through the range of the great modern operations of exsecting the jaws for osteosarcoma, as successfully and brilliantly as this our distinguished collaborateur of Dublin.

There also resides Sir Philip Crampton, another distinguished luminary in surgery. He it was, permit me to add, who also followed me in the steps of my first operation upon the common iliac artery. Though this first attempt in Europe did not succeed, I was favoured with a more fortunate issue; and the patient still lives in a neighbouring county, literally a monument, it may be said in a double sense, of the triumphs of modern surgery. For it was not only the first time that this great operation of the tying of this artery had ever been