As we shall be obliged again to mention Desault in connection with a material item in the catalogue of our obligations to Abernethy, we postpone for the present any further remarks on that distinguished French surgeon. Abernethy now continued actively engaged in the study and teaching of his profession. The most remarkable circumstance at this time of his life, and for several years, was his peculiar diffidence—an unconquerable shyness, a difficulty in commanding at pleasure that self-possession which was necessary to open his lecture. Everything connected with his lectures is of importance to those who may be engaged in this mode of teaching, or who may desire to excel in it. No man ever attained to excellence more varied or attractive; yet many years elapsed before he had overcome the difficulty to which I have alluded. An old student, who attended his lectures, not earlier than 1795, told me that he recollected several occasions on which, before beginning the lecture, he had left the theatre for a time, to collect himself sufficiently to begin his discourse. On these occasions, a tumult of applause seemed only to increase the difficulty. The lecture once commenced, I have no evidence of his having exhibited further embarrassment. He seems early to have attained that happy manner which, though no doubt greatly aided by his peculiar and in some sense dramatic talent, there is every reason to believe had been carefully cultivated by study and observation. His lectures continuing to attract a larger and larger class, the accommodation became inadequate for the increased number of students. The governors of St. Bartholomew's, therefore, in 1790, determined on building a regular theatre within the hospital. It was completed in 1791, and Abernethy gave his October courses of anatomy, physiology, and surgery of that year in the new theatre. He had thus become the founder of the School of St. Bartholomew's, which, for the approaches it made towards giving a more scientific phase to the practice of Surgery, was certainly superior to any other. In expressing this opinion, we except, of course, John Hunter's lectures, for the short time that they were contemporaneous with those of Mr. Abernethy; John Hunter dying, as we have said, in 1793. As St. Bartholomew's Hospital was our own Alma Mater, we may, perhaps, speak with a fallible partiality; but we think not. We are far from being blind to the faults which Bartholomew's has, in common with other schools; and, we believe, regret as much as anybody can do, that the arrangements of our hospitals, excellent as in many respects they are, should still so defectively supply many of the requisitions which the interests of science demand. Some of these defects we may endeavour to point out in their proper place. We shall now leave the subject of Mr. Abernethy and his lectures, and begin to consider some of his earlier efforts at authorship, sketch the objects he had in view, and the mode of investigation.