to
say, and this assurance should, in the true sense, not the Milesian, be
modest.

* * * * *

I have to apologize for bringing in "Rab and his Friends." I did so,
remembering well the good I got then, as a man and as a doctor. It let
me see down into the depths of our common nature, and feel the strong
and gentle touch that we all need, and never forget, which makes the
world kin; and it gave me an opportunity of introducing, in a way which
he cannot dislike, for he knows it is simply true, my old master and
friend, Professor Syme, whose indenture I am thankful I possess, and
whose first wheels I delight in thinking my apprentice-fee purchased,
thirty years ago. I remember as if it were yesterday, his giving me the
first drive across the west shoulder of Corstorphine Hill. On starting,
he said, "John, we'll do one thing at a time, and there will be no
talk." I sat silent and rejoicing, and can remember the very complexion
and clouds of that day and that matchless view: _Damyat_ and _Benledi_
resting couchant at the gate of the Highlands, with the huge Grampians,
_immane pecus_, crowding down into the plain.

This short and simple story shows, that here, as everywhere else,
personally, professionally, and publicly, reality is his aim and his
attainment. He is one of the men--they are all too few--who desire to be
on the side of truth more than to have truth on their side; and whose
personal and private worth are always better understood than expressed.
It has been happily said of him, that he never wastes a word, or a drop
of ink, or a drop of blood; and his is the strongest, exactest, truest,
immediatest, safest intellect, dedicated by its possessor to the
surgical cure of mankind, I have ever yet met with. He will, I firmly
believe, leave an inheritance of good done, and mischief destroyed, of
truth in theory and in practice established, and of error in the same
exposed and ended, such as no one since John Hunter has been gifted to
bequeath to his fellow-men. As an instrument for discovering truth, I
have never seen his perspicacity equalled; his mental eye is
_achromatic_, and admits into the judging mind a pure white light, and
records an undisturbed, uncolored image, undiminished and unenlarged in
its passage; and he has the moral power, courage, and conscience, to use
and devote such an inestimable instrument aright. I need hardly add,
that the story of "Rab and his Friends" is i