Simpson disappears and Sir James will take his place. In 1867, Sir James delivered a lecture on "Modern and Ancient Languages," at Granton. This discourse seems to have been very much of a réchauffé of Mr. Lowe's tirade against classical education at the Royal Institution a few days before. We have the usual flourish about Greek and Latin being dead languages, and the utterly inaccurate statement that in many schools in England they were the only languages taught. Whatever might have been the case some years previously, such an assertion was notoriously untrue in 1867, but the ignorance of the Scotch concerning English education is amazing; perhaps also the converse is hardly less surprising. Sir James insisted that if a knowledge of the classics were really favorable to the acquirement of a good literary style, this would exclude all ladies from authorship, forgetting apparently or else being ignorant of the fact that "George Eliot," Mrs. Browning, and even Mrs. Hemans were excellent classical scholars; of the first we may happily still speak in the present tense. Amongst "eminent authoresses" who did not acknowledge Greek and Latin to be requisite in order to write English he cites the authoress of that singular production Oswald Cray, a writer who has the best of all reasons for refusing to make any such acknowledgment. Then we have the threadbare assertion that if the works of Horace, Ovid, Juvenal, and Martial, had originally been published in England, their sale would have been stopped by authority. But however this may be, a generation which buys by the score editions of tenth-rate sensation novels redolent of nothing but murder, adultery, and seduction, and provides itself with copies of Mr. Swinburne's poems by the thousand, has no right to quarrel even with the second and ninth satires of Juvenal, or to be very severe upon "all those naughty epigrams of Martial." The fact that Juvenal, for example, wrote in Italy 1800 years ago, and that he did not "originally publish in England" in the present day, is precisely his justification. Even in England, too, conventional ideas of propriety are very fleeting things. A hundred years ago, one of the most religious of English poets read Jonathan

Wild aloud for the delectation of an evangelical old lady. Nowadays, whatever may be the nature of our daughters' or sisters' private studies, we are all, as a rule, extremely proper about the books we quote in their presence. We are far from decrying such decorous precautions—they would be highly commendable could we but suppose they afforded any trustworthy indication of our private acts and thoughts. And a hundred years hence, in all probability, our descendants will encase the legs of their drawing-room chairs in neat little trousers, and ask a lady whether she prefers the pectoral region or the crural members of a partridge. Very likely in that Saturnian era similar objections will be brought against Spenser and Milton to those which Sir James Simpson and others have seen fit to bring against the greatest satirist the world ever saw.

In 1868, the principalship of the University of Edinburgh having fallen vacant by the death of Sir David Brewster, a strong effort was made to procure it for Sir James Simpson; but the Court of Curators, unwilling to break through long prescription, and finding no precedent for selecting the Principal from the Medical Faculty, conferred the vacant office upon Sir Alexander Grant.

In this brief sketch of Sir James Simpson's life we have necessarily omitted much which in a more detailed account it would be unpardonable not to particularise. For example, we have said nothing about his proposals for hospital reform, little about his various papers on obstetric subjects, and hardly anything about his numerous charities and genial bearing in private life. All these are sufficiently present to the minds of those who knew him, and to strangers the curt mention of them which alone the limits of a review permit must, perforce, be uninteresting. It only remains to tell that, after a painful illness, Sir James died on the 6th of May, 1870, and was buried at Warriston Cemetery-the offer of a public funeral in Westminster Abbey having been declined.

However imperfectly Dr. Duns has performed his task, it is impossible for any "Civis Academiæ Edinensis" to read this biography without very strong and very mixed

emotions. As we turn over its pages and recognise on each some familiar name, past days seem to come back, and for a moment we can almost fancy we are again among our old friends and teachers. But we are quickly reminded how heavy a hand death has laid upon the brilliant circle which but lately graced our alma mater. During the last seven years four of the brightest lights even in that splendid constellation have been quenched in the darkness which awaits us all; and although we are very far indeed from insinuating that the distinguished successors of Henderson, Goodsir, Syme, and Simpson are, in any sense, unworthy representatives of those who immediately preceded them, we may well be pardoned if a natural feeling of sadness comes over us when we remember that so many of our old instructors have passed away from the society which they contributed so much to adorn. Of Henderson it may safely be asserted that none ever listened to him as a teacher who did not, ere long, come to love him as a friend ; and although some few may have been chilled or repelled by the thoughtful gravity of Goodsir, none who really knew him could fail to prize the genuine kindness and Christian worth which were, perhaps, at times hidden from the superficial by his characteristic reserve. Notwithstanding Syme's sarcastic and even bitter disposition, there was below the surface a fund of native benevolence, the effects of which many of his students, whose welfare he was ever ready to promote, have had gratefully to acknowledge in after life. And while we cannot but remember with regret the rancour, discourtesy, and even disingenuousness, which too often disgraced Simpson as a controversialist, and the intolerant and persecuting spirit he uniformly displayed towards those who differed from him, we are bound, in fairness, to set against all this, not only his almost incredible industry, the versatility of his genius, and his practical usefulness, but also his many acts of unostentatious benevolence, his strong family affection, and his active friendship towards many a struggling aspirant who had no claims to his notice except those of poverty and distress.

We are sorry to be compelled to do the ungracious act

of exposing Simpson again after his death, but Dr. Duns's biography has left us no choice. It is strange that a learned divine of that Free Kirk of Scotland, of which both Simpson and Henderson were members-Henderson indeed occupying a conspicuous position as elder-should have failed to perceive without any telling that Henderson would not have sacrificed name, and fame, and money, and repose for the sake of advocating the claims of homoeopathy to be considered a great truth in medicine, had it been the grotesque chimera represented in Duns's pages on Simpson's authority. Surely any man of sense might have perceived that the sole real point at issue between the supporters and opponents of homoeopathy is simply the experimental point, is the principle true or not when tried? Henderson thought it right to make the trial before bearing public witness for or against it. A religious man as he was, he had the fear of the ninth commandment before his eyes, and was accordingly solicitous not to bear false witness. How does a divine excuse Simpson, who, without one single trial, testified publicly that his colleague had spoken falsely?

The Simplicity of Life: an introductory Chapter to 'Pathology.' By RALPH RICHARDSON, M.A., M.D. London: H. K. Lewis. Pp. 118.

WE are truly rejoiced to see the appearance of this work, which is the first instalment of a new edition of Fletcher's Pathology. The author is an old pupil of Fletcher's, and possesses, besides the published works of that distinguished physiologist, notes of his lectures, and will therefore, we hope, be able to add much valuable matter from that source. About two years ago he wrote to Dr. Drysdale, as the surviving Editor of Fletcher's Pathology, asking if there was any intention of publishing a second edition, adding that he contemplated doing so. Dr. Drysdale replied that

he was unable to undertake the task, and expressed his gratification at hearing of Dr. Rchardson's intention. The present volume contains chiefly a transcription of Fletcher's chapter on life in the Rudiments of Physiology, preceded by some introductory matter comparing it with the ideas prevalent now, especially those of Gull, Huxley, and Beale, which he judges on Fletcher's principles. On some points we are not quite at one with him respecting the nature of force and its relation to the animal; e. g., he objects to the expression of force being "stored up" in plant products to be consumed in animals, while we think that, properly understood, this is quite correct. But we are all the same unspeakably gratified that the doctrines of Fletcher, which we have so long endeavoured to bring into the prominence they deserve, should now be brought forward by other independent disciples. We look forward with eagerness to the future parts, and if the author brings the public to apply Fletcher's doctrines to the physiological, pathological, and therapeutic knowledge of the day, he will be doing incalculable service. We have to notice one omission. In the appendix he gives extracts from Dr. Drysdale's first part of Life and Equivalence of Force, selected on some principle we fail to discover, but he omits to put marks showing that the quotations are not consecutive. The meaning is therefore not what Dr. Drysdale intended. The second part, in which reference to Fletcher is made, is not alluded to in this volume.

The Baths and Wells of Europe, their actions and uses, with notices of Climatic Resorts and Diet Cures. By JOHN MACPHERSON, M.D. Second Edition. London: Macmillan, 1873.

THIS is a nice little book, not by any means an exhaustive treatise on the baths and wells of Europe, but useful to the practitioner by giving, in a few words, the leading