life on account of the disorder which finally proved fatal, he had for 

 many years had the most extensive practice as a physician of any in 

 London. The mental character to which he owed this distinction is 

 interesting as a subject of psychological study, and valuable as an 

 example and encouragement to those who desire to lead a similar life 

 of usefulness. His intellectual powers were not of that order to 

 which it is usual to apply the term "genius :" no original discovery, 

 no striking innovation marked his career. Nor was he a man of 

 very sparkling talent : there was nothing that could be called " bril- 

 liancy" in his thought, his writing, or his mode of action. What he 

 possessed in an eminent degree was, wisdom, judgment that pecu- 

 liar balance of faculties which enables a man to think soundly and to 

 be a safe adviser and guardian. The circumstances of his life had 

 helped to give this form to his character. He had received his 

 public education at Westminster and Cambridge, where the studies 

 are such as to cultivate in an equal degree the imaginative and scien- 

 tific faculties. The postponement of his entrance on special profes- 

 sional studies till he was three-and-twenty years of age, enabled him 

 to bring to these studies, when he did engage in them, a fully-formed 

 mind, and so to escape the danger often arising from crude prejudices 

 acquired in early studentship. His election, at the age of thirty, as 

 Physician to St. George's Hospital, kept him afterwards closely to 

 the duties of practical life, from which he was never distracted by 

 special scientific inquiries ; and accordingly his lectures on the prac- 

 tice of medicine and the lectures on cholera, which at the request of 

 his colleagues he gave in 1833, with the addresses which he delivered 

 as President of the Medical and Chirurgical Society in 1846 and 

 1847, constitute the bulk of what he has published to the world. 

 He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1828, and through life 

 was a conspicuous illustration of the intimate connexion between 

 sound science and practical usefulness. 



SIR ALEXANDER CRICHTON, second son of Mr. Alexander Crichton 

 of Woodhouselee and Newington in Mid Lothian, was born in Edin- 

 burgh on the 2nd of December, 1/63. He received his elementary 

 education in his native town, and afterwards matriculated in its 

 University. He was placed at an early age with Mr. Alexander 

 Wood, a surgeon of eminence in Edinburgh. At the expiration 



