Students crowded around him from all countries, and every one distinguished in science desired his acquaintance. John Hunter lived in this society, and at the same time had the advantage of being familiar with the complete and systematic course of lectures delivered by his brother. He was thus furnished with full information as to the actual state of physiology and pathology, and knew in what directions to push inquiry, whilst the natural capacity of his fine mind was untrammelled.

In 1755 John Hunter assisted his brother in delivering a course of lectures; but through life the task of public instruction was a painful one to him, and he never attained to fluency and clearness of expression. In 1760 his health seems to have been impaired by his exertions and in the recollection that one brother had already died under similar circumstances, his friends procured him a situation in the army, as being less intensely laborious than his mode of life. He served as a staff surgeon in Portugal and at the siege of Bellisle. On returning to London he recommenced the teaching of practical anatomy.

In 1767 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, having already gained the good opinion of its members by several papers on most interesting subjects. There is this great advantage in the pursuit of science in London, that a man remarkable for success in any branch can usually select associates the best able to assist him by their experience and advice. It was through John Hunter's influence that a select club was formed out of the fellows of the Royal Society. They met in retirement and read and criticised each other's papers before submitting them to the general body. This club originally consisted of Mr. Hunter, Dr. Fordyce, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, Dr. Maskelyne, Sir George Shuckburgh, Sir Henry Englefield, Sir Charles Blagden, Mr. Ramsden, and Mr. Watt. To be the associate of such men could not but have a good effect on a mind like Hunter's, active and vigorous, but deficient in general acquirement, and concentrated upon one pursuit.

At this time, and for many years afterwards, he was employed in the most curious physiological inquiries; and at the same time forming that museum, which remains the most surprising proof both of his genius and perseverance. It is strange that Sir Everard Home should have considered this collection as a proof of the patronage Hunter received. He had many admirers, and many persons were grateful for his professional assistance; but he had no patrons. The extent of his museum is to be attributed solely to his perseverance; a quality which is generally the companion of genius, and which he displayed in every condition of life. Whether under the tuition of his brother, or struggling for independence by privately teaching anatomy, or

amidst the enticements to idleness in a mess-room, or as an army surgeon in active service, he never seems to have forgotten that science which was the chief end of his life. Hence the amazing collection which he formed of anatomical preparations; hence too the no less extraordinary accumulation of important pathological facts, on which his principles were raised.

It was only towards the close of life that Hunter's character was duly appreciated. His professional emoluments were small, until a very few years before his death, when they amounted to £6000 a year. When this neglect is the portion of a man of distinguished merit, it has sometimes an unhappy influence on his profession. Men look for prosperity and splendour as the accompaniments of such merit; and missing it, they turn aside from the worthiest models, to follow those who are gaining riches in the common routine of practice. Dr. Darwin said, that he rejoiced in Hunter's late success as the concluding act of a life well spent: as poetical justice. But throughout life he spent all his gains in the pursuit of science, and died poor.

His museum was purchased by government for £15,000. It was offered to the keeping of the College of Physicians, which declined the trust. It is now, committed to the College of Surgeons, in Lincoln's Inn Fields; where it is open to the inspection of the public during the afternoons of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The corporation has enlarged the museum, instituted professorships for the illustration of it, and is now forming a library. The most valuable part of the collection is that in the area of the great room, consisting of upwards of 2000 preparations, which were the results of Mr. Hunter's experiments on the inferior animals, and of his researches in morbid human anatomy. All these were originally arranged as illustrative of his lectures. The first division alone, in support of his theory of inflammation, contains 602 preparations. Those illustrative of specific diseases amount to 1084. There are besides 652 dried specimens, consisting of diseased bones, joints, and arteries. On the floor there is a very fine collection of the skeletons of man and other animals; and if the Council of the College continue to augment this collection with the same liberal spirit which they have hitherto shown, it will be creditable to the nation. The osteological specimens amount to 1936. But the most interesting portion, we might say one of the most interesting exhibitions in Europe to a philosophical and inquiring mind, is that which extends along the whole gallery. Mr. Hunter found it impossible to explain the functions of life by the investigation of human anatomy, unaided by comparison with the simpler organization

of brutes; and therefore he undertook the amazing labour of examining and preparing the simplest animals, gradually advancing from the lower to the higher, until, by this process of synthesis, the structure of the human body was demonstrated and explained. Let us take one small compartment in order to understand the effect of this method. Suppose it is wished to learn the importance of the stomach in the animal economy. The first object presented to us is a hydatid, an animal, as it were, all stomach; being a simple sac with an exterior absorbing surface. Then we have the polypus, with a stomach opening by one orifice, and with no superadded organ. Next in order is the leech, in which we see the beginning of a complexity of structure. It possesses the power of locomotion, and has brain, and nerves, and muscles, but as yet the stomach is simple. Then we advance to creatures in which the stomach is complex: we find the simple membraneous digesting stomach; then the stomach with a crop attached to macerate and prepare the food for digestion; then a ruminating stomach with a succession of cavities, and with the gizzard in some animals for grinding the food, and performing the office of teeth; and finally, all the appended organs necessary in the various classes of animals; until we find that all the chylopoietic viscera group round this, as performing the primary and essential office of assimilating new matter to the animal body.

Mr. Hunter's papers and greater works exhibit an extraordinary mind: he startles the reader by conclusions, the process by which they were reached being scarcely discernible. We attribute this in part to that defective education, which made him fail in explaining his own thoughts, and the course of reasoning by which he had arrived at his conclusions. The depth of his reflective powers may be estimated by the perusal of his papers on the apparently drowned, and on the stomach digested after death by its own fluids. The importance of discovering the possibility of such an occurrence as the last is manifest, when we consider its connexion with medical jurisprudence, and the probability of its giving rise to unfounded suspicions of poisoning. His most important papers were those on the muscularity of arteries; a fine piece of experimental reasoning, the neglect of which by our continental neighbours threw them back an age in the treatment of wounded arteries and aneurisms. But the grand discovery of Mr. Hunter was that of the life of the blood. If this idea surprise our readers, it did no less surprise the whole of the medical profession when it was first promulgated. Yet there is no doubt of the fact. It was demonstrated by the closest inspection of natural phenomena, and a happy suite of experiments, that the coagulation of the blood is an act of life. From

this one fact, the pathologist was enabled to comprehend a great variety of phenomena, which, without it, must ever have remained obscure.

Mr. Hunter died of that alarming disease, angina pectoris: alarming, because it comes in paroxysms, accompanied with all the feelings of approaching death. These sensations are brought on by exertion or excitement. In St. George's Hospital, the conduct of his colleagues had provoked him; he made no observations, but retiring into another room, suddenly expired, October 16, 1793.

After these details no man will deny that John Hunter possessed high genius, and that he employed his talents nobly. He was indeed of a family of genius: his younger brother was cut off early, but not until he had given promise of eminence. Dr. Hunter was, in our opinion, equal in talents to John, the subject of this memoir, though his mind received early a different bias. And in the next generation the celebrated Dr. Baillie, nephew to these brothers, contributed largely to the improvement of pathology, and afforded an instance of the most active benevolence joined to a plainness of manner most becoming in a physician. Joanna Baillie, his sister, still lives, honoured and esteemed, and will survive in her works as one of our most remarkable female writers.

The portrait from which the annexed engraving is made was painted at the suggestion of the celebrated engraver Sharpe, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was among his last works. There could not indeed be a more picturesque head, nor one better suited to the burin. The original picture is in the College of Surgeons. It exhibits more mildness than we see in the engraving of Sharpe.

FRANCESCO PETRARCA, whose real name is said to have been PETRACCO, was born at Arezzo, in Tuscany, July 20, 1304. His father was a notary at Florence, who had been employed in the service of the state; but in the civil strife excited by Corso Donati, chief of the faction of the Neri, he, with the rest of the Bianchi, including Dante, whose friend he is recorded to have been, was banished from the Republic in 1302. When the death of the Emperor Henry VII. deprived the exiles of all hope of return, Petracco took his family to Avignon, at that period the seat of the Pontifical Court. The boy Francesco then saw for the first time scenes and objects, with which his destiny was irrevocably connected; and he has left on record the impression which at ten years of age the fountain and wild solitude of Vaucluse had made upon his imagination. He was sent to study the canon law at the University of Montpellier, where he remained four years, devoting his time to Cicero, Virgil, and the Provençal writers, much more than to the doctors of jurisprudence. From Montpellier he went to Bologna; and formed an acquaintance with the celebrated Cino da Pistoia, from whom, although distinguished no less as a jurist than as a poet, Petrarch learned more poetry than law. On his father's death, which occurred when he was about twenty years old, he returned to Avignon. His mother died soon after; and the moderate patrimony which he inherited was so much diminished by the dishonesty of his guardians, that at the age of twenty-two, he found himself without fortune or profession, and with no resource, but that of entering the church.

Avignon was then the chosen abode of fashion, luxury, and vice. Petrarch mingled in its gay society, without yielding to its corruptions, or withdrawing himself from the philosophical studies which interested him above all other pursuits. A great conformity of tastes, and a common superiority to the low objects of ambition with which they

VOL. III.

E