92 BEVIEW, 



recommend this little pocket volume to our readers, and believe that any one 

 buying it will consider his half-crown well laid out. 



Since the above was written, a new edition has been called for : we wish it 

 every success its author could wish. 



THE LATE PKOFESSOR EDWARD FORBES. 



BY ONE OF His PUPILS. 



" Nature, a jealous mistress laid him low. 



He woo'd and won her; and, by loye made hold, 

 She show'd him more than mortal man should know; 



Then slew him, lest her secrets should be told." 



The Naturalist would but ill fulfil its duty to a numerous circle of its 

 readers, were it to omit a brief notice of the distinguished philosopher whose 

 name is at the head of this page, who has been so lately called from a sphere 

 of extraordinary usefulness to the enjoyment, we trust, of more elevated 

 views of those mysteiies whose solution was the one object of his life, and 

 an endless communion with the God of Natiu-e. And yet what shall we 

 wi'ite? Should we tell of his childhood, youth, and manhood; his struggles 

 after truth, successful through the very difficulties by which they were 

 encompassed, we would be but rehearsing a thrice told tale. Were we to 

 comment on his literary, his scientific, and his artistic merits, we would but 

 feebly echo the sentiments of each and all of his readers. Or were we, in the 

 spirit of the humourist, to record his sallies of wit, his youthful squibs, or 

 his more mature poetical effusions, our sketch would bear too much re- 

 semblance to 



" A joke scrawl'd on an epitaph." 



All that we can do is to present a few facts relative to the departed genius, 

 in hopes that they may stir up the fire of emulation in the bosom of some 

 fellow student. 



Edward Forbes was essentially a naturalist. Intended by his parents for 

 the respectable profession of medicine, he had no alternative but to take out 

 classes which he never attended and purchase books which he never studied. 

 The details of a medical education were to him dry and unattractive pursuits, 

 and in no way calculated to win him from his happy rambles in search of 

 objects of natural history. It was in vain that friends persuaded, and he 

 himself endeavoured. His love for Nature was too strong to be overcome. 

 He was meant by Nature for one of her favoured ones ; and accordingly a 

 natui'alist he became. Travel, in 1836, after he had quite forsaken his 

 medical studies, but strengthened the natural bent of his inclination. 



