1832 37. SACREDNESS OF THE DEAD. 55 



theory regarding dreams, that we dream all the night long, and 

 that the reason we do not recollect them is because memory is 

 not called into action. If that theory is correct, and I think it 

 is, what glorious visions I must have lost ! what entrancing 

 pictures of seraphic beauty and unimaginable glory !" 



On the next page is a morsel of Infirmary life, in writing 

 which he seems to have been interrupted, for it closes abruptly 

 in the middle of a sentence. Two pages have been left blank 

 for its continuation, but the story was never resumed. 



"January 5th, 1836. I have this day had to perform one of 

 the most melancholy duties which it has fallen to my lot, for 

 some time, to perform, the burying of a stranger in a foreign 

 land, in the cold grave. Tis about two months since I was 

 struck, in going round one of the wards of the Infirmary, by 

 the handsome contour of one of the patients, and the exceedingly 

 beautiful forehead towering over a Grecian nose and well-formed 

 features. I learned he was a German, a valet de place, who had 

 been travelling from Aberdeen to Edinburgh, but in getting off 

 the coach had had the misfortune to twist his leg at the hip. 

 The pain and inconvenience were slight at first, so as not to 

 prevent him travelling on ; but on reaching Edinburgh he be- 

 gan to suffer more and more, and at last the pain and inability 

 to move the limb which he experienced, increased so as to pre- 

 vent walking, and he came into the Hospital. For some days 

 the injury appeared a trivial one ; he was cheerful, in good 

 health generally speaking "- 



At the death of this man, no friends were found to claim his 

 body ; and the thought that his " beautiful forehead" should be 

 touched by the dissecting-knife, George felt to be unbearable. 

 He could not, however, undertake to be responsible for the ne- 

 cessary expenses, so many demands did the patients make on 

 his slender stock of pocket-money. The result of anxious pon- 

 dering how his object might be accomplished was, that he 

 searched out some Germans, waiters in one of the clubs in town, 

 and telling them of their countryman's death, he assured them 

 that, if they claimed the body, his stock of clothes would amply 



