162 THE WONDERFUL CENTURY. CHAP. xvi. 



being made. The lectures were then forbidden by the 

 authorities, on the ground that he had not had permis- 

 sion to deliver them. He declined to ask for permis- 

 sion, and soon afterward left Vienna, and with his most 

 distinguished pupil, Dr. Spurzheim, travelled through a 

 large part of Northern Europe, lecturing in the chief 

 cities, and finally settled in Paris in 1807. In 1813 

 Spurzheim visited Great Britain, where he lectured for 

 four years; and it was during this period that G-eorge 

 Oonibe made his acquaintance in Edinburgh, and thence- 

 forth began that long course of personal observation and 

 study which rendered him the best English exponent of 

 the science, and probably one of the best practical phre- 

 nologists of any country. 



Combe was a man of great mental power, extremely 

 logical, ardent in the pursuit of truth, but also extremely 

 cautious in ascertaining what was and what was not true. 

 A clever writer in the Edinburgh Revieiv Dr. John 

 Gordon had just condemned and ridiculed the doc- 

 trines of Gall and Spurzheim as being full of absurdities 

 and misstatements, and " a piece of thorough quackery 

 from beginning to end." It was a clever and vigorous 

 critique, apparently founded on knowledge; and Combe 

 read it with so much enjoyment and conviction that 

 when, shortly afterward, Spurzheim came to Edinburgh 

 and gave a course of lectures, he refused to go and hear 

 him. When the lectures were over, however, a friend 

 asked Combe if he would like to come to his house and 

 see Dr. Spurzheim dissect a brain ; and as he was always 

 eager for knowledge, and had already studied anatomy, 

 he went. Combe had been a physiological student 

 under Dr. Barclay, and had often seen him dissect the 



