230 
PROFESSOR OWEN 
CH. VII. 
‘ <^th. — Mr. Bransby Cooper cannot begin his 
lectures as announced, owing to some bereave- 
ment. This brings R.’s lectures at once upon 
him ; but he seems rather glad of it, as they will 
be the sooner off his mind.’ 
‘ — A gentleman came and left a present 
for R. in the shape of a guinea, which was 
affirmed to have been in the possession of John 
Hunter. Unfortunately, upon examining the 
guinea we discovered that it was coined in 1798 ! 
John Hunter died in 1793.’ 
We then have an account of O when’s first 
dinner at Sir Robert Peel’s, in a letter which he 
wrote to his sister Catherine, dated March 10, 
1844. ‘ It was my first visit,’ he remarks, ‘but 
not my first invitation.’ Among the guests 
assembled, twenty-five in all, he mentions the 
American Minister (Everett), Mr. Charles Barry, 
Sir B. Brodie, Mr. Charles Eastlake, Wilson 
Croker, and the Dean of Westminster (Turton). 
‘ A quiet sort of conversation with one’s neigh- 
bours, which after dinner became more general, 
and merged at last into instances of very old 
people. Sir Robert said he canvassed, at the last 
election, an old lady who remembered the Scotch 
rebels at Derby, and that he had ordered the 
Queen’s bounty to be given to an old Highlander 
who fought at Fontenoy. Croker slyly added 
that that was the way to find out many old soldiers 
who would remember that battle, and he argued 
