Provincial or national idiom, or other peculiarity, is by no means uncommon, and generally more or less disagreeable, Abernethy was particularly free from either. He could, in telling stories, slightly imitate the tone and manner of the persons concerned; but it was always touched in the lightest possible manner, and with the subdued colouring and finish of a first-rate artist. His power of impressing facts, and of rendering them simple and interesting by abundance and variety of illustration, was very remarkable, and had the effect of imparting an interest to the driest subject. In the first place, he had an agreeable mode of sympathizing with the difficulty of the student. If he were about to describe a bone or anything which he knew to be difficult, he would adopt a tone more like that in which a man would teach it to himself than describe it to others. For example, he would say, perhaps: "Ah! this is a queer-looking bone; it has a very odd shape; but I plainly perceive that one may divide it into two parts." Then pointing with a probe to the division he proposed, he would begin, not so much to _describe_ as to _find_, as if for the first time, the various parts of which he wished to teach the names and uses; the description being a kind of running accompaniment to his tracing of the bone, and in a tone as if half-talking to himself and half to the audience. Every one feels the value of order, and clearness of arrangement. Of Abernethy's, we have already spoken generally: simplicity, and impressing the more essential facts, were his main objects. He showed very frequently his perception of the importance of order, and would often methodize for the students. He knew very well that A B C was much more easily remembered than Z K J; and he would sometimes humorously contrast the difference between a man whose knowledge was well packed, and one whose information was scattered and without arrangement. This he usually did by supposing two students under examination. The scene would not _tell_ upon paper; but it never failed to create a good deal of mirth in the theatre, during which he would contrive to repeat the facts he meant to impress, without the tedium of mere reiteration. Various people have been more or less deeply impressed with different parts of his lectures, most persons having their favourite passages. In his anatomical course we were never more pleased than by his _general_ view of the structure of the body. He adopted on that occasion the synthetical plan, and in imagination put the various parts together which were to be afterwards taught analytically. In his surgical course, the manner in which he illustrated the practical points, and his own views in the "Eventful History of a Compound Fracture," was, we think, the most successful triumph, both as to matter and manner, which we have ever witnessed.