tioned in the will

not even the old homestead of Long Cal

derwood was left to him.

Ten years later John Hunter himself was sixty-five years old. He was a distinguished man: Fellow of the Royal Society, Member of the Irish College of Surgeons, Member of the Chirurgo-Physical Society of Edinburgh, Surgeon-General to the Army, Inspector-General of Hospitals, Surgeon to St George's Hospital, Surgeon-Extraordinary to the King, etc., etc. On no occasion, however, did he append any of these useless titles to his name; in all his writings he proudly signed himself— John Hunter.

For the last twenty-five years he was on the staff of St George's Hospital. The reason he served so long was because his colleagues couldn't oust him. They could never get along with Hunter, and they did not see why he received more pupils than they did, and besides they wanted to know what business had a surgeon to waste so much time in physiological researches. His museum,' remarked one of his associates, 'is of as much use as so many pigs' pettitoes.' And Hunter was not biblical, and did not believe in the soft answer that turneth away wrath.

Disputes developed, angry letters were written back and forth, and often the Governors were asked to interfere, and they did so by uniformly deciding against Hunter - a circumstance which did not tend to make him imitate a turtledove. He was of an imperious nature, and his high spirit chafed under his defeats.

In the early autumn of 1793 his colleagues adopted a resolution: no pupil could be received into the hospital unless he had a certificate proving that he had been bred up to the profession. This was considered a slap at Hunter, who was no stickler for such things, and would accept all pupils who seemed promising, even if they lacked previous education: perhaps he remembered his own case. Not long after this rule went into effect, two young men without certificates came to Hunter and asked to be admitted under him at the hos

pital. I'm sorry,' said Hunter, but well, suppose you write out your case; to-morrow we have a meeting of the Board, and I'll do what I can for you. Perhaps they'll let you in.'

On the morrow Hunter was in admirable humor. He was growing old and was somewhat of an invalid, but his hand had not lost its cunning: that morning he had made a dandy dissection just what he needed for the museum. He radiated good cheer. He strode into the work-rooms and told his resident-pupils some funny stories how children counterfeit illness for certain purposes. His pupils laughed.

Hunter was so pleased with himself that he forgot to take his visiting-list along when he left his home—whistling a Scotch air as he went. But William Clift, the Cornish lad who idolized Hunter, saw that York Street was the first place on the list and he ran there with the day's schedule. He found Hunter's carriage waiting, and soon Hunter himself came out of the house. Clift handed him the record of appointments, Hunter took it, looked it over, and in a ringing voice told the coachman to drive to the hospital.

He entered. The meeting had already begun; Hunter sat down; he spoke in behalf of the young men. Instantly a colleague opposed him. Choking with pain and rage John Hunter arose; he turned toward the next room, and Dr Robertson and Matthew Baillie followed him; Hunter uttered a groan and staggered into Dr Robertson's arms. Everard Home, who was in the hospital, was sent for. Hoping that he had only fainted, they worked upon him for over an hour; but life had fled. He was murdered by an insult with the aid of angina pectoris. The visiting-list was in his pocket, but the remainder of his appointments were cancelled. The Board broke up, inserting the following notice in its minutes:

'Resolved-That Mr Hunter's letter to this Board relating to two of the surgeon's pupils, which was received this day, be preserved for future consideration.'

The feet of horses were heard in Leicester Fields; Mrs Hunter looked out of her window and saw an empty carriage.

She much desired that her husband repose in Westminster Abbey, but it was not to be; he was interred in St Martin's-inthe-Fields. Long afterwards she composed to his memory an Epitaph:

Here rests in awful silence, cold and still,

One whom no common sparks of genius fired;
Whose reach of thought Nature alone could fill,
Whose deep research the love of Truth inspired.

Hunter! if years of toil and watchful care,
If the vast labors of a powerful mind
To soothe the ills humanity must share,
Deserve the grateful plaudits of mankind

Then be each human weakness buried here
Envy would raise to dim a name so bright:
Those specks which in the orbs of day appear,

Take nothing from his warm and welcome light.

By the terms of the will, his nephew, Dr. Matthew Bailliethe last medical man in London who carried the famous gold-headed cane- and his brother-in-law, Sir Everard Home, were appointed executors. After the elapse of some years Home insisted on having all of Hunter's unpublished manuscripts he said he needed them to prepare the Catalog of the Hunterian Museum — and William Clift who had guarded them so faithfully put them in a cart and conveyed them to Sir Everard.

Men began to speak of the greatness of Everard Home. He contributed more papers to the Royal Society than any other member, and these communications were remarkable for their breadth of vision and for the number of discoveries they contained. 'He inherits the mantle of John Hunter,' they said.

The trustees of the museum grumbled; they urged Home to get the Catalog ready; it was more than time. 'If you are too busy with your important researches,' they suggested,

'let someone else do it.' 'Nonsense,' answered Sir Everard, 'I will prepare the Catalog myself.' And the ambitious investigator kept on reading papers before the Royal Society, and men said of him, ' He is a second John Hunter.'

In July 1823 Everard Home received from the printer the last proof of his concluding volume of Lectures on Comparative Anatomy. Sir Everard was ageing, and knew that death might take him unawares, but as he did not wish men to know that for years he had been stealing from John Hunter's manuscripts, he placed these priceless papers upon his hearth. Flames leaped up the chimney; so much smoke was made that the engines came, and firemen demanded entrance; but Modred calmed them: the house was not on fire-it was only John Hunter's manuscripts burning.

The case came to court, and Sir Everard defended himself by saying that Hunter had commanded him to destroy the manuscripts as they were in too imperfect a form for the public. Among those who tried to testify against Sir Everard was poor Clift- but he broke down and cried.

But William Clift had done a deed that makes posterity bless his name. During the period that this devoted boy had access to the manuscripts, he frequently read and made extracts from them with his own hand he copied nine folios. And many years later, his son-in-law, the distinguished Sir Richard Owen, edited these notes in two volumes, entitled, John Hunter's Essays and Observations on Natural History, Anatomy, Physiology, Psychology, and Geology — and even Darwin quoted from them.

As the years rolled by, the British nation awoke to the fact that the fitting resting-place of so great a man as Hunter was Westminster Abbey. But his body had long lain in the vaults of St Martin's-in-the-Fields. Who could locate his coffin among thousands? I will find it,' said Frank Buckland. He spent sixteen days in the charnel-house, examined over three thousand coffins and found it. With more honor than he ever received during his lifetime, John Hunter

was buried in the North aisle of the great Abbey, and on perennial brass were inscribed the words, The Founder of Scientific Surgery. This aisle is a veritable shrine of science, for besides John Hunter it now contains the remains of Newton, Darwin, Herschel, Lyell, Woodward, Mead, Couch Adams and James Prescott Joule. The wishes of John Hunter's widow were at last fulfilled, but she never knew it: so many good things in this world come too late.

The fame of Hunter has increased with the passing of the years. Every Hunterian Oration is eloquent-as eloquent as the orator can make it in praise of his genius, and Samuel D. Gross has left this line on record: ' With the exception of Hippocrates, the father of Medicine, John Hunter is the grandest figure in the history of our profession.'

The Life of Hunter has been written several times: pathologically by Everard Home, cleverly but maliciously by Jesse Foot, eulogistically by Joseph Adams, colorlessly by Stephen Paget, more satisfactorily by Drewry Ottley, but the only adequate sketch of his mental career occurs in Henry Thomas Buckle's History of Civilization.

It must not be thought, however, that we believe in the chasm which Buckle imagines to exist between the deductive and inductive method. According to Buckle, the Scotch are the most deductive people on earth, while the English are the most inductive, and therefore, he argues, since Hunter spent the first twenty years of his life in a deductive country and the remainder in an eminently inductive nation, it follows that the two hostile forces of deduction and induction struggled for the mastery in his mind and at times obscured his understanding.

We can answer this argument with an incident from the historian's own life: When Buckle was a chess-player he occasionally met in the cigar-divan of the Strand a youth of his own age. Some years later this young man decided to publish a series of books by subscription, and Buckle was among the first subscribers. If Buckle had not died in his prime he