170 GOODSIIt's EXCELSIOR. 



not overlooking the salient points of the general 

 collection. All his visits to the Continent were made 

 for the purpose of studying the great anatomical 

 collections, and obtaining physiological apparatus ; and 

 all this gathering of knowledge in the great cities of 

 Europe was to be made applicable to his own collec- 

 tion, hoping, as all enthusiasts do, to live to see his 

 own work the best of its kind, and then to be able to 

 cry " Excelsior." 



His love for anatomical specimens was nearly as 

 great as that of Professor Bereiss of Helmstadt of the 

 last century, who had collected 131 of Lieberkulm's 

 anatomical injections and other specimens, and viewed 

 them as the greatest of treasures to be within his 

 reach night and day. Had the products of Goodsir's 

 thirty years' labour been gathered under one roof, the 

 collection would have been the most valuable in Scot- 

 land, and not less historical than demonstrative of the 

 advance of the science during the most stirring epochs in 

 the annals of natural history and medicine. Moreover, 

 it would have been a monument to his own art as s'm- 

 nificant as the great collection in Lincoln's Inn Fields, 

 London, is to the genius and industry of John Hunter. 

 It was obviously his wish, for a long time, to make the 

 University Museum, of which he was curator, the 

 adorned capital of the Goodsir column; and as the 

 world spoke of the Hunterian collection in London, 

 it might some day come to speak of the Goodsirian in 

 Edinburgh. He carved part of his masonry out of old 

 materials, and still more out of the unquarried rocks ; 



