I turn now to the Burke and Hare murders, which had important effects in various directions. The locus was Tanner’s Close in the West Port, outside the city boundary. Here Burke kept a lodging-house, and here, on the 29th of November 1827, Donald, an old pensioner, died in debt to Burke. Thus a needy man found himself in possession of the body of his dead-and-gone debtor, and it seemed to him quite justifiable to fill up the coffin with rubbish, and sell the corpse to Dr. Knox of 10 Surgeon Square at £7,10s., a sum which seemed for the moment a small fortune. Then the notion occurred to him or his associate, Hare, how easy to press the life out of some of the waifs and strays that floated about the Grassmarket and its adjacent quarters, the very lowest in Edinburgh! These were here to-day and gone to-morrow, and if they never turned up again who was there to ask after them or mourn their loss? I shall not tell here the story of “Daft Jamie” and handsome Mary Paterson and the other victims, or of how the murderers were discovered, how Hare turned King’s evidence, how Burke was convicted, whilst his associate, Helen Macdougal, escaped. Burke was executed amidst impressive and even terrible marks of popular indignation, and by a sort of poetic justice, which appealed to the popular imagination, he himself was dissected. For us Dr. Knox is a more interesting and important figure. The thing cast a shadow over his brilliant career, and at last his life was lost in flats and shallows, yet he was one of the most striking figures of his time. Though a cruel attack of small-pox in his youth had left him blind in the left eye, and plain to the verge, or over the verge, of ugliness, he was a special favourite with women, by his talk, by his manner, by you know not what. According to Shakespeare, Richard Crookback, a more evil man, surely, in every way, had the same fatal gift. Knox was widely read and of wide culture. In a city of brilliant talkers he was, so his biographer would have us believe, among the very best, nay, he ranks him equal or superior to De Quincey. We are told that he was so tender-hearted that he hated to think of experiments on living animals; he did not believe that any real advantage was to be gained therefrom. He certainly was possessed of true enthusiasm for science; he was by no means a rich man, yet he spent £300 on a whale which he dissected, and whose skeleton he secured for the museum. It was only an amiable weakness that he was very careful in his dress and person. His friend, Dr. Macdonald, afterwards professor of natural history at St. Andrews, calling upon him one day, found him with his sister Mary. She had a pair of curling-tongs in her hand, with which she was touching up her brother’s rather scanty locks. “Ah, ah! I see,” said Macdonald, “the modern Apollo attired by the Graces.” Knox was not unduly disturbed by remarks of this sort. Monro’s pupils considered themselves in the opposite camp.