r 40 HER OES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



his act. He always talks to the purpose, and yet he is the 

 least of a formalist of any man with whom I have been acquainted. 

 He has large information, for he is habitually an observer and 

 a student ; and yet he has no pedantry, no obtrusion of learn- 

 ing for its (or rather his) own sake, but that his companions 

 may be helped by what he knows. He is almost daily making 

 new observations, discovering something new, or using the 

 known in a new way. And yet he is not in the remotest degree 

 a dogmatist. It is not to support a doctrine that he talks, but 

 to afford you an opportunity to speak more fully of it, to get 

 knowledge from it, or to aid you by the knowledge he com- 

 municates. I have been chiefly a questioner in the society of 

 Professor S., and I always have got good answers. If he has 

 no answer, if he cannot explain the unexplained in my own 

 mind, he turns himself round in his coach, for it is in driving I 

 have the best of his society, and says, ' I don't know, I cannot 

 explain that.' He will add, 'I have had the same difficulty 

 you have, and cannot clear it up.' One advantage has arisen 

 out of this intercourse with Professor S., which declares itself 

 to me every day. I am conscious of a daily review of my own 

 professional life, of thought, of reading, and of study. I speak 

 constantly of books, of cases, of results of treatment. Professor 

 S, has read all, and infinitely more than I have, and yet how 

 small is his study. 'Here is my study,' said he the other 

 night, as I was passing his sleeping-room, on my way to bed ; 

 ' come along.' In I went. The room was small. There was 

 his bed, and in place ot a night-stand, there was at the head 

 of the bed a book stand or case, with two or three shelves about 

 a foot and a-half wide, filled with books. The filling took but 

 few. Taking hold of a movable gas-burner he brought it 

 forward, so that he could easily read on his pillow. ' Here,' 



