To pursue truth regardless of the multiform errors and conventionalisms, amidst which experience has generally shown almost all subjects to have been involved; unmindful of the rebukes and obloquy by which too often the best-conducted investigations are opposed and assailed; and yet to let no angry passion stir, no conviction that we are right engender an improper idea of our own superiority, or a disregard for the claims of others; this overcoming of the world (we had almost said) is intensely difficult, for it is in fact overcoming ourselves. Yet we dare not say it is that of which human nature is incapable, for there is nothing that the heart suggests as morally right which is really impossible to us; and instances have not been wanting of the combination of the deepest knowledge with the most profound humility. On the other hand, it must be admitted that if there were anything especially calculated to bring down the cultivators of science and literature to the level of those who are regardless of the claims, or insensible to the attractions of either; we could hardly find a series of facts more fatally influential than are furnished by the disputes of men who have been employed in the cultivation of these elevating studies. Powerful intellects in teaching the comparative nothingness of man's knowledge seem to give great assistance in the acquisition of humility; but how few are the intellects of such power? The contemplation of nature, however, may, we conceive, infuse _feelings_ of humility, which can rarely be attained by the efforts of intellect alone. We have seen, in Lord Bacon, that the highest powers of intellect afforded for a while no security against the subtle, but one would have thought feeble, suggestions of a degrading cupidity. We all know, in literature, how much the fruits of intellect depend on the dominant feeling under which they are reared and nourished. Even men like Pope and Addison, who had little in common but that which should elevate and adorn human nature, were so dragged down by the demon of controversy, that, commencing with little more than the irritability of poets, they ceased only when they had forgotten even the language of gentlemen. In the controversy in question, Mr. Abernethy's position was a very difficult one, and one which shows how easily a man with the best intentions may find himself engaged in a discussion which he never contemplated; be wounded on points on which he was most sensitive, and yet defend himself with dignity, and without compromise of any of those principles which should guide a gentleman and a Christian. Mr. Lawrence was appointed Professor of Comparative Anatomy in 1816; and we know that Mr. Abernethy hailed his appointment with considerable interest. He was regarded as a gentleman of some promise, and had already distinguished himself by a singularly nice, level style of composition, as well as by careful compilation.