MEMOIR OF MAGENDIE 125 



vey. This affair of the nerves may require much time to become what it ought 

 to be, but I indulge myself with the idea that I have made a discovery not 

 surpassed by any in anatomy; nor am I yet at the end of it." This, hoAvever, 

 was but a passing gleam of satisfaction; ambitious and delicate minds are al- 

 ways vacillating between exaltation and distrust. He wrote shortly afterwards : 

 "The satisfaction which I have enjoyed in my researches has been very great; 

 the reception which science has given them has been the reverse of what I ex- 

 pected. The earliest announcement of my discoveries obtained from profes- 

 sional men not a word of encouragement. When, subsequently, the publica- 

 tion of my memoirs by the Royal Society rendered it impossible that some at- 

 tention should not be paid to them, the interest which they excited inured only 

 to the advantage of those who contradicted them, or those who pretended to 

 have anticipated me. It has become for me an affair of but little importance." 

 He was mistaken; it was to him the important affair ; he wouhl have pre- 

 ferred, however, that it should have been a little more so that of all the world, 

 and that the attention at first bestowed should not so soon have grown languid. 

 He did not recollect Fontenelle's saying: "The admiration of mankind is a 

 sentiment which only craves leave to terminate." 



The memorials of our savant have been collected, as I said just now, by his 

 brother-in-law, John Shaw. The warm controversy raised by the new views 

 which he had introduced into science was distasteful to his meditative and se- 

 rious temper, as well as to his sense of personal dignity. He stood aloof from 

 it, and retm-ned into Scotland, almost disgusted with ambition. "My dear 

 friend," said to him the aged Professor Lynn, "you will never change. If you 

 live to be old, you will be the same child, but with crutches." After his poet- 

 ical manner, he writes in his private journal, at his departure from London : 

 ** I find myself to-day like a bird whose nest is in the cap of a school-boy." 



A sojourn in his country wrought in him no change of mood. After filling 

 for some years, at Edinburgh, the chair which his brother had occupied, he 

 travelled on the continent. Artistic Italy atracted the greatest share of his ad- 

 miration. The following is his judgment, evincing at least profound feeling, 

 respecting Michael Angelo. It should not be forgotten that he himself possessed 

 a superior, an exquisite talent, as designer and painter, and that he has written 

 a book, equally esteemed by the man of science and the artist, on the anatomy 

 of expression. 



" In these statues," he says, speaking of two statues of Day and Night at 

 Florence, " Michael Angelo has displayed great perception of art and a genius 

 of the first order: the combination of anatomical science and of ideal beauty, 

 or, rather, grandeur. It has been often related of him that he studied the torso 

 of the Belvedere, and had it constantly before his eyes. This fine model of 

 antique art may well have been the authority on which ho relied for his great 

 development of the human muscles ; but the torso could not have taught him 

 the effects which he produced by the magnificent and gigantic members of these 

 statues. Who is the artist, modern or ancient, that would have voluntarily 

 consented thus to demonstrate the difficulties of the art, and to place the human 

 body in this position ? Who that would have thrown the shoulder into this 

 violent contraction, and have preserved, nevertheless, with so learned an exact- 

 ness, the relations of the parts among themselves, the harmony of the bones and 

 muscles ? This great man shows us how genius submits to labor in order to 

 attain perfection. It was necessary to have passed through the severe labors 

 of the anatomist to acquire that power of designing which it was scarcely to be 

 hoped would meet with appreciation either then or afterwards." 



On his return from Italy, Mr. Bell, having gone to pass some days at the 

 country seat of one of his friends in the neighborhood of Worcester, Avas there 

 overtaken by sudden death.* 



* See, in the British Rerieu; (October 10, 184.5,) siu article full of interest, by M Picbot, 

 on Cbarles Bell. From this I have drawn some of the traits of his familiar life. 



