In Dublin University a Regius Professorship of Physic dates from the time of the Restoration, and other chairs were subsequently founded. The Irish College of Surgeons was established as late as 1784, but nothing great came of it for many years. A Scotchman, Cheyne, settled in Dublin, published in 1817 the first volume of the Dublin Hospital Reports, and by the excellence of his own clinical reports on cases of fever, gave a good tone to the work of the Irish school. But the elevation of the Dublin Medical School to the high rank which it has ever since maintained was the work emphatically of Robert Graves and of William Stokes. The Graves family, descended from a colonel in Cromwell’s cavalry, who had acquired considerable estates in Limerick county after Cromwell’s subjugation of the country, was represented at the close of the last century by the Regius Professor of Divinity in Dublin University, and one of the senior Fellows of Trinity College, Richard Graves, D.D. His three sons, Richard, Hercules, and Robert obtained at the degree examinations of three successive years the gold medal in science and in classics. ROBERT JAMES GRAVES, born in 1795 or 1796, after going through a complete arts course, and such medical study as Dublin then afforded, graduated M.B. at Dublin in 1818. He then betook himself to other schools, and successively studied in London, in the most celebrated Continental schools, and in Edinburgh, being away from Dublin more than three years. He had an excellent language-faculty, and once, having forgotten his passport, was imprisoned for ten days in Austria as a German spy, the authorities insisting that no Englishman could possibly speak German as he did. During his stay in Italy, Graves, who had considerable artistic capacity, accidentally made the acquaintance of Turner, the celebrated painter, and became his companion on many journeys. An interesting notice of Graves’ intercourse with Turner has been given by Professor Stokes.[14] It appears that the two lived and travelled together for months without either of them inquiring the name of his companion. On a voyage from Genoa to Sicily Graves’ courage and decision were strikingly put to the test when the captain and crew, in a terrific gale, were about to quit the ship in the only boat, leaving the two passengers to their fate. Graves, though ill, seized an axe, and stove in the boat, took command, repaired the pumps from the leather of his own boots, and saved the ship.