kvi THE LIFE OF HARVEY. 



consummate mathematician and physical astronomer makes trial 

 of this suggestion : he assumes the ascertained perturbations as 

 elements, he combines these under the guidance of knowledge 

 and reason, and at length he says, if the cause suggested be well 

 founded, there or thereabouts must it exist ; and lo ! on turning 

 the far-seeing tube to the point in space which he had indicated, 

 there in verity gleams a new world, then first seen, though 

 launched by God from Eternity to circle on the verge of our 

 creation ; and he who bade us look becomes the discoverer of 

 a new planet. Who will dispute the merit here ? Truly, 

 man does show the God within him when he uses his faculties 

 God-like in themselves in such God-like fashion. But 

 Harvey's merit, according to our idea, was of the selfsame 

 description in another sphere. The facts he used were familiarly 

 known, most of them to his predecessors for nearly a century, 

 all of them to his teachers and immediate contemporaries; yet 

 did no one, mastering these facts in their connexion and se- 

 quence, rising superior to prejudice, groundless hypothesis, and 

 erroneous reasoning, draw the inference that now meets the 

 world as irresistible, until the combining mind of Harvey gave 

 it shape and utterance. To our apprehension Harvey was as 

 far above his fellows as the eye of poetic intelligence, that ex- 

 ultingly absorbs the beauties of the starry sky and the green 

 earth, is above the mere physical sense that distinguishes light 

 from dark. The late Dr. Barclay, a fervent admirer of Harvey, 

 . whose name he never uttered without the epithet immortal, 

 has put the question of Harvey's merit both happily and elo- 

 quently, and it affords us pleasure to quote the passage from 

 the writings of our old and honoured teacher in anatomy. 

 "The late Dr. Hunter," says Dr. Barclay, 1 "has rather 

 invidiously introduced Harvey along with Copernicus and 

 Columbus, to show that his merit as a discoverer was com- 

 paratively low. But what did Copernicus, and what did 

 1 On the Arteries, Introduction, p. ix. 



