A POPULAR VERDICT. 



545 



the arts by which an audience can be fascinated ; but lie never lost 

 his suave demeanor and high respect for his class as a body of gentle- 

 men. His movements were graceful, and his gestures, now slow and 

 now rapid, had a rare felicity and pertinence to the matter in hand. 

 His style, his illustrations, and insinuating speech, lent a marvelous 

 fascination to his subject, and he stood before his class the imperso- 

 nation of lofty intellect and perfect self-possession. He was an ideal 

 lecturer. The area of his class-room was to Knox a charmed circle. 

 There he exercised a weird influence that traversed from side to side 

 the thronged benches and subtly pervaded the mind of every member 

 of his audience. 



As a consequence of these traits, of the solidity and breadth of his 

 knowledge, and of the consummate art of his delivery. Dr. Knox was 

 to an extraordinary degree popular with his classes. At all times ac- 

 cessible and ready to ofier kindly and encouraging counsel, he became 

 the "guide, philosopher, and friend," of every worthy student. His 

 pupils loved him and lauded him to the skies, and his anatomical 

 classes were larger than any other ever assembled in Britain. Coun- 

 try physicians rode twenty miles to attend his introductory lect- 

 ures. " The benches of Knox's class-room were occui)ied by a schol- 

 arly, earnest, and appreciative class ; the majority were strictly medi- 

 cal students, but mingling with these were English barristers, Cam- 

 bridge scholars and mathematicians, Scottish advocates and divines, 

 scions of the nobility, artists, and men of letters. The zoologists and 

 naturalists flocked to Knox for their comparative anatomy. Genera! 

 students looked upon him as the great master of his art, and fully in- 

 dorsed the encomiums bestowed upon him by Audubon and others of 

 still greater eminence, both Continental and Transatlantic. Military 

 and naval surgeons, in active service or on half-pay, often mingled with 

 the crowd. Cultivated men of all kinds were attracted by his fame, 

 and looked upon his instructions as the greatest intellectual treat af- 

 forded them in the modern Athens ; while among his students it was 

 remarked that the higher their intellectual grade, the more profound 

 was their admiration of his genius and their personal attachment to 

 him." 



As an indication of how Dr. Knox was regarded by bis class, 

 his biographer states : " There was a struggle to obtain good places 

 in Knox's lecture-room each day at eleven o'clock. The first year's 

 students attending chemistry, and the second year's men attending 

 surgery, between the hours of ten and eleven, were tlie chief claim- 

 ants for Knox's front seats. The university, from whose class-rooms 

 the majority of Knox's men came to hear his morning lecture, was 

 about three minutes' walk from Old Surgeons' Hall Knox's place. 

 The competitors in their flight down two staircases, from Hope's 

 Chemistry Rooms, their racing across the quadrangle of the univer- 

 sity, their sweeping rush over every obstacle to gain Infirmary Street,. 

 VOL. VII. 35 



