s of
research of such ingenious contrivance, such elaborate construction, that
one might suppose himself in a workshop where some exquisite fabric was
to be wrought, such as Queens love to wear, and Kings do not always love
to pay for. They are, indeed, weaving a charmed web, for these are the
looms from which comes the knowledge that clothes the nakedness of the
intellect. Here are the mills that grind food for its hunger, and "is
not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?"

But while many of the sciences have so changed that the teachers of the
past would hardly know them, it has not been so with the branch I teach,
or, rather, with that division of it which is chiefly taught in this
amphitheatre. General anatomy, or histology, on the other hand, is
almost all new; it has grown up, mainly, since I began my medical
studies. I never saw a compound microscope during my years of study in
Paris. Individuals had begun to use the instrument, but I never heard it
alluded to by either Professors or students. In descriptive anatomy I
have found little to unlearn, and not a great deal that was both new and
important to learn. Trifling additions are made from year to year, not
to be despised and not to be overvalued. Some of the older anatomical
works are still admirable, some of the newer ones very much the contrary.
I have had recent anatomical plates brought me for inspection, and I have
actually button-holed the book-agent, a being commonly as hard to get rid
of as the tar-baby in the negro legend, that I might put him to shame
with the imperial illustrations of the bones and muscles in the great
folio of Albinus, published in 1747, and the unapproached figures of the
lymphatic system of Mascagni, now within a very few years of a century
old, and still copied, or, rather, pretended to be copied, in the most
recent works on anatomy.

I am afraid that it is a good plan to get rid of old Professors, and I am
thankful to hear that there is a movement for making provision for those
who are left in need when they lose their offices and their salaries. I
remember one of our ancient Cambridge Doctors once asked me to get into
his rickety chaise, and said to me, half humorously, half sadly, that he
was like an old horse,--they had taken off his saddle and turned him out
to pasture. I fear the grass was pretty short where that old servant of
the public found himself grazing. If I myself needed an apology for
holding my of