Xl LIFE OF DR. ROLLESTON. 



ledge, which a conversation on any subject whatever was enough 

 to refute, and one had to acquiesce in being treated as a kind of 

 authority upon the very subject which he was putting in a 

 perfectly new light. A walk round a Museum with Professor 

 Kolleston was a treat I more than once enjoyed. He would take 

 up topic after topic, some great and some small, and pour out his 

 stores of precise and often recondite knowledge, always de- 

 lighted to be questioned, and glad of any appearance of receiving 

 information. I remember how once a turn was given to our 

 talk by the chance mention of a piece of rascally cruelty in- 

 flicted upon animals. I remember the rush of indignant words, 

 and the excitement which could not abate till he had uttered his 

 passionate exclamation. Professor Rolleston's popular lectures 

 are in many persons' recollection ; they were odd in many ways, 

 immensely discursive, often dwelling upon details more curious 

 than important, and overlaying the subject with an excess of 

 illustration. There was always an infinity of unfamiliar matter, 

 discussion of passages in classical historians, quaint applications 

 of the rules of logic, rectification of words, and something of the 

 flavour of the learned and rather whimsical writers of the 

 seventeenth century, such as Burton, Fuller, and Sir Thomas 

 Browne. Two characteristics never failed to redeem these dis- 

 courses from any suspicion of triviality. The facts were minutely 

 accurate, and they were made to converge upon one point with an 

 effect which was only impaired by their profusion and vivacity.' 

 Such remarks, at once appreciative and critical, will be read with 

 far more lively interest than any mere panegyric. Rolleston was 

 a man whose mind and character were built on a large enough 

 scale to allow of the full all-sided truth being told about him. 

 A further aid to realising him will be found in the judgment of 

 him by his instructor first, and friend afterwards, Mr. Savory, 

 FR.S., the eminent surgeon: — 'What always struck me in 

 Rolleston was his abounding energy, his profuse mental activity. 

 While awake his mind seemed never to be in a state of com- 

 parative repose. It was constantly striving at the solution of 

 some problem or other, either in argument or discussion, or in a 



