Error has, indeed, long darkened the horizon of medical science; and, albeit, there have been lightning—like coruscations of genius—from time to time; still they have passed away, and left the atmosphere as dark as before. At length, however, there has arisen, we hope, a small, but steady, light, which is gradually diffusing itself through the mists of Error; and which, when it shall have gained a very little more power, it will succeed in dispelling. Then, we trust, Medicine will be seen in the graceful form in which she exists in nature; as a Science which will enable us to administer the physical laws in harmony with that moral code over which her elder sister presides; but, whenever this shall happen, Surgery will recognize, as the earliest gleams of light shed on her paths of inquiry, in aid of the progress of science and the welfare of mankind, the honoured contributions of John Hunter and John Abernethy. [Footnote 84: Professor Smythe, Lectures on Modern History, vol. i, p. 74.] [Footnote 85: See "Medicine and Surgery One Inductive Science" (the so-called Law of Inflammation).] CHAPTER XXXIII. "Eheu fugaces Postume Postume Labuntur anni: nec pietas moram Rugis et instanti senectæ Adferet, indomitæque morti." HOR. "How swiftly glide our flying years, Alas! nor piety, nor tears, Can stop the fleeting day; Deep-furrow'd wrinkles, frosting age, And Death's unconquerable rage, Are strangers to delay." FRANCIS.