Dryden, who, regarded in the triple capacity of poet, prose-writer, and critic, is hardly second to any English author, took no honour at the University. Swift, perhaps our best writer of pure English, whose talents proved scarcely less versatile and extraordinary than they had appeared restricted and deficient, was "plucked" for his degree, in Dublin, and only obtained his recommendation to Oxford "_speciali gratia_" as it was termed. The phrase, however, being obviously equivocal, and used only in the bad sense at Dublin, was, fortunately for Swift, interpreted in a good sense at Oxford—a misapprehension which Swift, of course, was at no pains to remove. Sheridan was remarkable for his readiness, his invention, and his wit; as a writer, he showed considerable powers of sustained thought also. He had an habitual eloquence, and, on one occasion, delivered an oration before one of the most distinguished audiences that the world ever saw[6], with an effect that seems to have rivalled the most successful efforts of Cicero, or even Demosthenes. Yet he had shown so little capacity as a boy, that he was presented to a tutor by his own mother with the complimentary accompaniment that he was an incorrigible dunce. Some boys live on encouragement, others seem to work best "up stream." Niebuhr, the traveller, the father of a son no less illustrious, with anything but an originally acute mind, seems to have overcome every disadvantage which the almost constant absence of opportunity could combine. Those who are curious in such matters might easily multiply examples of the foregoing description, and add others where—as in the case of Galileo, Newton, Wren, and many others—the predictions suggested by early physical organization proved as erroneous as the intellectual indications to which we have just adverted. The truth is, we have a great deal to learn on the subject of mind, although there is no want of materials for instruction. Medicine and surgery are not the only branches of knowledge which require the aid of strictly inductive inquiry. In all, the materials (facts) are abundant. In Abernethy there was a polarity of character, an individuality, a positiveness of type, which would have made the boy a tolerably intelligible outline of the future man. The evidence is imperfect; it is chiefly drawn from the recollections of a living few, who, though living, have become the men of former days; but still the evidence all inclines one way.