30 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION.
his biographer ; and with equal admiration must we contemplate the intellectual labour of Morgagni, who occupied the whole of a long life to its eightieth year, in amassing for the benefit of posterity the vast treasures of knowledge contained in his great work, “ De Sedibus et Causis Morborum,” completing this work after blindness had seized him, with the help of the illustrious Scarpa, then but a youth, and who was occupied at night in reading to Morgagni, the Latin classics, as the means of refreshment, alike to the mind of the old man and the boy, from the exhaustion of the labours of the day. With the same feeling must we contemplate the original research, the profound erudition, and varied attainments of Haller, so finely eulogized by the Roman Historian as, “a Universal Genius uniting the fire of poetry with the sagacity and discernment of the philosopher.” And a happy subject of reflection it is, that these intellectual men of the olden times were as great in goodness as in wisdom. We know the fulness of feeling that impelled Galen to record the first exposition of the contrivances in the human skeleton as a sacred argument to the praise and honour of the Creator. We know moreover, the occupation of the advanced age of Haller in preparing as a last pledge of parental affection, his admirable exposition of the truths of Christianity * wherein, with the
- Letters from Baron Haller to his Daughter on the Truths of the
Christian Religion. Translated from the German. London, 1803. �
