Page:The Hunterian Oration1843.djvu/33

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education, an accomplished anatomist, and rising into practice as an accoucheur. He had begun to form his museum, and his house gradually became the resort of those who wished to advance the art which they practised. Nor must we omit the im- portant fact, that this brother, whose public and private tuition was destined to develope the genius of John Hunter, was ten years older than himself; a difference which would enable him to add some- thing of paternal authority to brotherly persuasion. The same advantage was enjoyed by Charles Bell, and we have already seen with what fruits.

Yet, great as these advantages were, backed, too, by splendid genius and unwearied industry, did they entirely compensate for the want of early education ? Some answer “Yes;” nay, it is even a question with them whether a better and more learned training might not have stunted that eager curiosity, that faculty for observation, that power of generalizing, which he possessed in so eminent a degree. This cannot be determined now; for, instead of knowing the whole history of his feelings and attainments, some fragments alone have reached us: but it is very certain that a learned education had not this freezing power with those distinguished men to whose eareer I alluded just now. And then, reflect on the advantages which good training gave them. ‘Take Cuvier, for example. Whence did he derive the clearness of his descriptions, and the facility of his style both in written compositions and in oral com- munications? Whence, but from the literary toils of his boyhood at Stuttgardt ? who, that has sat on the