104 LIFE IN "the babracks. 



ner and style, to depict the eccentric representations of 

 the medical school. 



Of the men who assembled at " The Barracks," note 

 only can be taken of a few* of them in this sketch. It 

 was no small treat to listen to Dr. Knox on his favoured 

 subjects; his African experience of the Dutch Boer in 

 contiguity with the agile Kaffir, or his special discours- 

 ings upon the history of race- — his taking up for the 

 nonce the credited unity of species, as biblically re- 

 corded, to show up, with greater force and a keener 

 prophetic air, the racial divergences, dissensions, and 

 antagonisms. It was not less rich to see Knox and 

 Dr. Samuel Brown engaged in a passage at arms, be 

 the subject of their controversy the atoms of Democri- 

 tus, the vagaries of the " Illuminati," or the philosophy 

 of Leibnitz. Within " Our Palace," history, ancient 

 and mediaeval, was fully canvassed and weighed in the 

 balance of modern thought ; and as every man con- 

 vened to its tapestried reception-room had more or 

 less of a speciality of pursuit, he got the opportunity 

 of playing his favourite part, not seldom incited 

 thereto by the quiet interrogations of John Goodsir, or 

 the seductive leadings of Forbes. There John H. Bal- 

 four, redundant of botanic Hfe, then as now, compared 

 notes with the Manx herbalist; there John Goodsir 



* Among the distinguished foreigners who ascended the long flight of stairs 

 in Lothian Street, mention may be made of the famed Agassiz, who made his 

 visit there after the British Association Meeting at Glasgow (Sept. 1840). 

 Forbes wrote to a friend — "Agassiz was in ecstasies with the hiving urchins, 

 star-fishes, and ophiurce I showed him, and confessed he had never seen them 

 alive." 



