_SIR CHARLES BELL AND THE FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM._
It will have been gathered that scientific medicine and surgery were
as yet scarcely in a condition to begin. After the discovery of the
circulation of the blood physiological research seemed to halt,
waiting on anatomy. It now took an immense and decided leap forward.
CHARLES BELL was descended from a family long settled in Glasgow; but
his grandfather becoming a minister of the Scotch Church, settled in
Gladsmuir, Haddingtonshire, and died young; and his father, William
Bell, born 1704, was a minister of the Scottish Episcopal Church
in Edinburgh. Here he suffered from all the persecution inflicted
on Episcopalians in Scotland after the Young Pretender’s rising in
1745. Episcopal ministers were forbidden to officiate to more than
four besides the family; and later, an Act was passed to forbid any
one in holy orders to officiate in a house of which he was not the
master. William Bell’s first wife dying in 1750, leaving no surviving
children, he married in 1757 Margaret Morice, grand-daughter of
Bishop White, who became the mother of Robert Bell, author of the
Scotch Law Dictionary; John Bell, the celebrated surgeon; George
Joseph Bell, Professor of the Law of Scotland in the University of
Edinburgh, and author of the Commentaries on the Law of Scotland; and
Sir Charles Bell. The father of these four eminent sons died in 1779,
when Charles was but five years old.
The straitened circumstances in which the family were left at
the father’s death resulted in knitting them closely together in
their common struggle. The affection which existed through life
between George Joseph Bell and Charles, four years younger, is one
of the most delightful on record. Much of the brothers’ education
was the result of their own efforts. George relates that although
his schooling cost but five shillings a quarter, it had to be
discontinued when he was eleven years old. Mrs. Bell aided her
children with French and drawing, and had a considerable share in
bringing forth that talent for drawing which afterwards was of such
advantage both to John and Charles.
Although Charles was some time at the High School at Edinburgh, he
most emphatically declares that he received no education but from his
mother, and the example set him by his brothers, all of whom showed
a true independence and self-reliance. He says: “For twenty years of
my life I had but one wish—to gratify my mother and to do something
to alleviate what I saw her suffer.” When she died, the blank and
indifference produced in his whole nature were so great, that all
ambition seemed to die out of him for a long time.
His brothers made a plaything of him in childhood, but yet appeared
confident of his future. They were wont to say: “Oh, never mind,
Charlie will do very well. No fear for Charlie.” Yet in after life
he greatly regretted that his early education was limited, and he
took very great pains to improve what was deficient. Even within the
last few years of his life he engaged French and Italian masters to
read with him, although he could read both languages before he left
Edinburgh.
Taking up the study of medicine under the guidance and tuition
of his elder brother John, who was already becoming notable as a
lecturer, he very rapidly found his true vocation, and gained such
proficiency that before he was twenty-one he was able to take part
of his brother’s lectures. In 1799 he published the first part of
his “System of Dissections.” Edinburgh, then embittered by the
controversy between his brother and Dr. Gregory, and other untoward
occurrences, did not give him fair scope for his talents; and it
was decided that Charles should adventure himself in London. This
was an enterprise of hardihood at that time, for Scotchmen were
still looked upon with suspicion; yet he had already become known
in London by his association with John Bell in the “Human Anatomy,”
by the first two volumes of his “System of Dissections,” and by his
engravings of the arteries, brain, and nerves. The impression made
upon him by his first experience of London, on a Sunday in November,
was thus expressed: “If this be the season that John Bull selects
for cutting his throat, Sunday must be the day, for then London is
in all its ugliness, all its naked deformity; the houses are like
ruins, the streets deserted.” He was soon rather unceremoniously
told by a hospital surgeon that they could manufacture their own raw
material, and if he had difficulties in Edinburgh, he would have more
in London. Some of his early friends in London were cautioned that he
was a sharp insinuating young man, who would drive them out of their
hospitals. His friend Lynn answered such an innuendo thus: “I liked
his brother, and I like himself. He is no humbug. His conversation
is open and free.” Lynn indeed discerned that a worthy successor of
William Hunter was among them.
Charles Bell gained considerable notice by his criticisms on artistic
anatomy, and by the profound knowledge of the human body which he
made evident. The manuscript of his “Anatomy of Expression” being in
a forward state, it was shown to many persons of influence, including
Sir Joseph Banks (President of the Royal Society), Benjamin West,
Sydney Smith, &c., and the general opinion was that he would make a
great name. But Charles did not deceive himself into the idea that
his path into situations of importance would be easy. “I can make a
few good friends,” he says, “but cannot engage the multitude.”
After many discouragements, having at one time resolved to return
to Edinburgh, Mr. Bell took a house, formerly Speaker Onslow’s, in
Leicester Street, Leicester Square, and fitted up a lecture-room in
it. Here he started as a public lecturer on anatomy and surgery, with
an attendance of forty, but only three paying pupils, on January 20,
1806; and the second lecture was delivered to an audience of ten. In
February he lectured to a dozen artists, much to their delight. On
the 10th February 1806, after nearly fifteen months in London, he
received his first fee in consultation.
Many years afterwards, looking back upon this period of severe
struggle, he wrote: “When I consider the few introductions I then
had—to men who could be of no assistance to me—I look back with a
renewal of the despair I then felt.... These days of unhappiness and
suffering tended greatly to fortify me, so that nothing afterwards
could come amiss, nothing but death could bring me to a condition
of suffering such as I then endured.... I could not help regretting
the noble fields that were everywhere around me for exertion in my
profession, and which I found closed against me.” Meanwhile youthful
acquaintances in Edinburgh, Horner and Brougham, were getting places
in the ministry.
This year his “Anatomy of Expression” was published, and was at
once received with high favour, many painters adopting it as their
text-book. Flaxman declared he considered Mr. Bell had done more for
the arts than any one of that age. Fuseli called it truly valuable.
Charles Bell had more than an ordinary measure of liveliness,
good-humour, and geniality. One day he writes: “A band of Pandæans
are playing before my window. They make me frisk it. Last night I had
a little supper here, with some good flute-playing. It was intended
to make Horner know Wilkie, the Scotch Teniers.” All through life he
retained this sensibility to lively music. The sound of a familiar
Scotch air would start him whistling, and laying aside work, he would
take his wife by the hand, and make her dance with him through room
after room.
By the autumn of 1807, his note as a surgeon had grown, and
patients became numerous. His lectures on surgery, too, became
an unqualified success, though the number of paying pupils was
small. In 1808, however, he had thirty-six pupils. His studies for
his lectures were most faithfully and zealously prosecuted. His
lectures were most original: his discoveries were given step by
step to his class-pupils. The first record of his results in regard
to the nervous system is in a letter of 26th November 1807, when
he writes: “I have done a more interesting _nova anatomia cerebri
humani_ than it is possible to conceive.” This developed gradually
into an introduction to the Nervous System, which was shown to many
in manuscript. Meanwhile the Professorship of Anatomy at the Royal
Academy was about to become vacant, and Mr. Bell’s candidature was
warmly advocated by many of the most eminent surgeons and artists.
Abernethy desisted from the idea of candidature in his favour. Wilson
was dissuaded from competing. Sir Astley Cooper wrote a letter
stating that he beyond all comparison merited the post, and would
be an invaluable acquisition to the Royal Academy. But in the end,
Mr., afterward Sir Anthony, Carlisle was elected, and lectured to but
four pupils in his first course. It is to be remembered that even
at hospitals, lectures were by no means common things at this time.
Several of the most eminent hospital surgeons did not lecture at all,
or only lectured occasionally. So that Bell’s class of thirty-six was
really a first-rate one.
A mark of his original and painstaking mode of making progress was
seen in the visit he paid to Haslar Hospital, when the wounded
soldiers from Corunna arrived home, in January 1809. The scene was
a most striking and impressive one to his feeling nature. “I have
stooped,” he says, “over hundreds of wretches in the most striking
variety of woe and misery, picking out the wounded. Each day as I
awake, still I see the long line of sick and lame slowly moving
from the beach: it seems to have no end. There is something in the
interrupted and very slow motion of these distant objects singularly
affecting.” From the cases he saw he gained much; and laid the
foundation of his essay on Gunshot Wounds, appended to the second
edition of his “Operative Surgery.”
In 1810 Charles Bell became engaged to his future wife, Marion Shaw,
whose sister Barbara had for some years been married to his brother
George. Their brothers, John and Alexander, became Charles Bell’s
pupils and assistants. In writing to Miss Shaw at one time Mr. Bell
revealed to her much of the sadness and melancholy of his first years
in London, oppressed by the consciousness of not occupying a position
corresponding to his talents, and finding everywhere difficulties.
“Many and many a time in the prosecution of my plans of life have I
wished that I were with the armies, to rid myself of the load of life
without discredit.” He was married on the 3d of June, 1811.
The next year was another important landmark in Charles Bell’s
life. He accepted an offer of partnership with Mr. Wilson in the
Great Windmill Street School of Medicine. His own preparations and
drawings, &c., were added to the museum already there, and his joy at
seeing the two united was great and unmixed. His first lecture in the
school was to a class of 80 to 100 pupils. He was at the height of
his ambition in being connected with the celebrated Windmill Street
School. Mr., afterwards Sir Benjamin, Brodie, Dr. Roget, and Dr.
Brande were among his associates in lecturing. His new house (34 Soho
Square) had as many resident pupils as he could accommodate; and he
was not yet forty years old.
In 1813 he was admitted into the Royal College of Surgeons. A formal
examination being necessary, he records with amusement that the
facetious dogs asked him of what disease he thought Buonaparte
would die. In 1814 he was elected by a large majority surgeon to
Middlesex Hospital, and immediately began to make great use of
his new opportunities. His operations and clinical lectures soon
became attended by large numbers of students, and even eminent
practitioners. A Russian General, Baron Driesen, having a ball in his
thigh, was placed under his care, and especially commended to him
by the Czar Alexander. A fee of £200 and two silver cups were his
reward, as well as great personal regard from both the General and
his aide-de-camp.
When the stirring news of Waterloo arrived in London, the same
spirit which had animated him after Corunna, impelled Mr. Bell
to start off, accompanied by John Shaw, to render assistance to
the wounded. The amount of work was appalling. Nothing was ready,
to cope with the mass of misery suddenly accumulated. Mr. Bell,
finding after an inspection of the situation that he could do most
by taking in hand the needful operations upon the French wounded,
commenced his operations at six one morning and continued incessantly
operating till seven in the evening, and so on for three consecutive
days. While he amputated one man’s thigh, there lay at one time
thirteen others waiting, all begging to be taken next. “It was a
strange thing,” he says, “to feel my clothes stiff with blood, and
my arms powerless with the exertion of using the knife; and more
extraordinary still, to find my mind calm amidst such variety of
suffering; but to give one of these objects access to your feelings
was to allow yourself to be unmanned for the performance of a duty.”
It appears strange that a man who in 1807 had commenced what proved
to be such an epoch-making series of discoveries in regard to the
nervous system should have so long allowed them to lack general
publicity. His manuscript was first shown to his brother and other
friends in 1808. But it is to be noted, that when in 1811 he
privately circulated a pamphlet under the title of “An Idea of a New
Anatomy of the Brain,” submitted for the observation of the author’s
friends, they received it with but scant appreciation, and either
failed to regard it as remarkably novel, or considered the views it
put forth incredible. At this period, while the brain was believed
to be the organ of thought, it was also supposed to discharge some
nervous fluid through the spinal cord to the nerves. Little was
accurately known about the functions of the nerves: even John Bell
and Astley Cooper had advised the section of the facial nerve to cure
tic, thus paralysing the muscles of the face instead of relieving the
pain. Microscopy had not yet revealed the multitudinous fibres of
which nerves are composed, and experimental evidence was confined to
comparatively coarse forms. Thus on cutting across the main trunk of
a nerve, both sensation and motion were lost in the parts supplied
by the nerve. Bell first disentangled the functions of sensation
and motion, and found that they were carried on through distinct
nerve fibres. He noticed the distinct properties of the nerves of the
senses, for instance the fact that a prick of the optic nerve in an
operation caused a flash of light to be perceived, not a sensation of
pain: when the pricking of certain papillæ of the tongue gave rise
to a sensation of taste, not of pain, and when a blow upon the ear
occasioned the hearing of noises. Thus he acquired the conception
that in the brain the powers of the nerves were distinct and
peculiar, and due to the portion of the brain from which they started.
Seeing that in the vast number of the nerves of the body the
functions of sensation and motion were evidently combined, Bell
imagined that these nerves consisted of different portions tied
together, and he sought for a method of determining how they were
combined. The separate portions in which the spinal nerves enter the
spinal cord, forming two roots, anterior and posterior, occurred
to him as furnishing a possibility of experimental inquiry. He
now resolved to make crucial experiments on living animals, which
should settle the question by a well-devised plan of procedure.
No man was more averse to giving unnecessary pain than Charles
Bell; no man felt more keenly the sufferings of his patients. The
first brief record of the results is as follows: “Experiment 1. I
opened the spine and pricked and injured the posterior filaments of
the nerves—no motion of the muscles followed. I then touched the
anterior division—immediately the parts were convulsed. Experiment 2.
I now destroyed the posterior part of the spinal marrow by the point
of a needle—no convulsive movement followed. I injured the anterior
part, and the animal was convulsed.” It was at once inferred that the
anterior root of the spinal nerves was motor in its functions, the
posterior root sensory.
This simple fact revolutionised the physiology of the whole subject.
We cannot now realise the novelty which there was in attaining this
extent of knowledge of the nervous system, or how valuable this firm
basis was in commencing to unravel the nervous mechanism. We cannot
here detail the experiments and trains of reasoning by which it was
shown that the fifth cranial nerve was similar in its general plan
to the spinal nerves, including distinct sensory and motor portions;
and by which the knowledge of the cranial nerves generally was
widely extended. We note now that Bell’s first paper on the Nervous
System was read before the Royal Society on the 21st July 1821, and
was received with great approbation. It soon became generally known
throughout Great Britain and on the Continent, being by almost every
one acknowledged as strikingly original. The dispute which afterwards
arose as to his perfect originality and independence having been
so conclusively settled in Mr. Bell’s favour by the production of
his original pamphlet, manuscript and letters, no account of the
controversy need here be given. He himself fully felt the importance
of his discoveries: “I have made a greater discovery than ever was
made by any one man in anatomy,” he says, not vaingloriously, but as
a simple perception of the fact.
The application of the new knowledge to the elucidation of many
obscure diseases, where the nervous system was affected, engaged
Charles Bell’s zealous attention. He speedily classified and
arranged cases illustrative of the action of the motor and sensory
nerves, cases where the muscles of the face were paralysed, as well
as various kinds of paralysis throughout the body. Instances of
partial or local pain were explained in their relation to the nerves
concerned; disorders of the eye, tongue, muscles of respiration, &c.,
all received new illumination from his researches.
A further discovery was that of the muscular sense, by which we
perceive many of the qualities of objects surrounding us, and which
even enables us to stand upright. The sensation of the degree of
muscular effort put forth in every action, in every resistance,
to a large extent builds up our judgments about external objects,
and determines our actions; and the recognition of the fact that
we perceive this by a sense distinct from touch is due to Bell.
The study of the eye entered very largely into this question, as
the muscular movements of the eye are of such extreme import in
our perceptions. In 1818 he wrote: “I think I have made out that
squinting depends on the over-action of one of the oblique muscles,
and that it may be cured by an operation. I am looking out for a
patient to try this upon.” But for want of a squinting monkey to
make the first trial upon, the thought was not carried to practical
results, and it remained for others to mature the operation for the
cure of squinting.
As a specimen of Bell’s style in popular writing, to which he devoted
great pains, we quote from his Bridgewater Treatise on “The Hand”
a passage dealing with the movements of the eye. “On coming into a
room, we see the whole side of it at once—the mirror, the pictures,
the cornice, the chairs; but we are deceived: being unconscious
of the motions of the eye, and that each object is rapidly, but
successively, presented to it. It is easy to show that if the eye
were steady, vision would be quickly lost; that all these objects,
which are distinct and brilliant, are so from the motion of the eye:
that they would disappear if it were otherwise. For example, let
us fix the eye on one point, a thing difficult to do, owing to the
very disposition to motion in the eye: but by repeated attempts we
may at length acquire the power of fixing the eye to a point. When
we have done so, we shall find that the whole scene becomes more
and more obscure, and finally vanishes. Let us fix the eye on the
corner of the frame of the principal picture in the room. At first,
everything around it is distinct; in a very little time, however, the
impression becomes weaker, objects appear dim, and then the eye has
an almost incontrollable desire to wander; if this be resisted, the
impressions of the figures in the picture first fade: for a time, we
see the gilded frame; but this also becomes dim. When we have thus
far ascertained the fact, if we change the direction of the eye but
ever so little, at once the whole scene will be again perfect before
us. These phenomena are consequent upon the retina being subject to
exhaustion.”
Considering the warmth with which the originality of Charles Bell’s
views was contested, it is indeed striking to notice how early he
composed himself to answer only by silence. “This must be,” he says,
“the mode in which my opinions shall come to be acknowledged: without
some agitation and controversy they would never be propagated. I am
satisfied I have a secure ground.”
In 1821 Wilson died, and Bell’s assumption of the chief
responsibility for the Windmill Street School, with heavy pecuniary
liabilities, followed. In 1824 he was appointed to the Professorship
of Anatomy and Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons. So he set
himself with renewed energy to make his lectures of the utmost
value to practising surgeons. His first lecture was given to an
audience crowded to suffocation. The crowding continued at subsequent
lectures, many being unable to get admission.
On the 19th July 1827 his beloved brother-in-law and assistant,
John Shaw, died. His suffering from this loss was intense. In his
discoveries, his first great object had always been “to convince
Johnnie.” This faithful brother-in-law was fortunately replaced
by another, Alexander Shaw, afterwards surgeon to the Middlesex
Hospital, notable in after times as a defender of his fame and
expounder of his doctrines. In the same year was matured the project
long incubating, of a new London University (now University College),
in which Charles Bell was to be the head of the Medical School. He
delivered the inaugural lecture, and for some years took an active
part in its organisation. The arrangements, however, which were made
by the governing body were in many respects inconsistent with the
high ideal of teaching which Charles Bell had, and with the freedom
of procedure to which he had been for so many years accustomed at
the Windmill Street School. Consequently in 1830 he finally retired
from the new College, and felt in some respects stranded, for
discovery and teaching were his very life. Practice was to him an
irksome necessity. Thus a time of life in which practical success
might have made him wealthy was characterised by depression and
sadness, principally relieved by a very unusual recreation for a
hard-worked London practitioner, namely, fly-fishing. He was first
attracted to this sport by spending a day at Panshanger with his
bosom friend, John Richardson. The evident delight of his friend in
this occupation, and the freshness and relaxation which it afforded,
convinced him that he had found the thing he wanted to sweep from
his mind the cobwebs of professional life. Lady Bell says, “He was
often on the waterside before sunrise—indeed, before he could see his
flies; and he did enjoy these morning hours. I came down with his
breakfast, bringing books and arrangements for passing the whole day,
even with cloaks and umbrellas, for no weather deterred us. He liked
me to see him land his fish, and waved his hat for me to come.” In
the intervals of angling many of the best parts of his popular works
on the Hand and on Animal Mechanics were written.
In spite of the feelings of disappointment which oppressed him
severely on some occasions, it must not be imagined that he was
predominantly unhappy. Lord Jeffrey described him as “happy Charlie
Bell;” Lord Cockburn wrote: “If I ever knew a generally and
practically happy man, it was Sir Charles Bell.” Alexander Shaw said
of him: “His mind was a garden of flowers and a forest of hardy
trees. Its exercise in profound thought gave him high enjoyment;
yet he would often avow his pleasure in being still a boy, and he
did love life and nature with the freshness of youth. I therefore
repeat—if ever I knew a happy man, it was Sir Charles Bell.” Yet,
seeing that he was convinced, “that the place of a professor who
_fills his place_ is the most respectable in life,” we may believe
that a painful sense of ungratified desire was largely present if not
continually expressed. In 1835 he writes: “My hands are better for
operation than any I have seen at work; but an operating surgeon’s
life has no equivalent reward in this world... I must be the teacher
and consulting surgeon to be happy.”
In 1831, in connection with the accession of William IV., the
Guelphic order of knighthood was conferred on several distinguished
men of science, among whom Charles Bell was included. His association
with Herschel and Brewster in this honour was gratifying and
appropriate. A complete school of medicine was now projected in
connection with the Middlesex Hospital, in which he was to take a
prominent part. It had not, however, passed through three complete
months of its history, when the Town Council of Edinburgh elected Sir
Charles[19] to the Chair of Surgery in the University, and the offer
proved attractive enough to induce him to leave London. He had always
cherished the idea of a return to Edinburgh at some future time, and
it appeared to him that there was a possibility of a sphere of more
elevated usefulness there, than he could now hope for in London.
Moreover, his heart was in Scotland, in the streets of Edinburgh—in
the theatre where Monro had lectured to him—in the society of his old
friends Jeffrey, Cockburn, William Clerk, Adam Ferguson, and most of
all his brother George. “London is a place to live in, but not to
die in,” he said. “My comfort has ever been to labour for some great
purpose, and my great object of study has been attained.... There is
but one place where I can hope to fulfil the object of my scientific
labour, and that is Edinburgh; and that is an experiment.”
Successful as his classes were in Edinburgh, and influential as his
position speedily became, it must be acknowledged that the experiment
was a failure, for it did not give him the satisfaction he had hoped.
Practice in Edinburgh could not possibly yield what London did,
and the emoluments of the University chair did not counterbalance
this. Some coldness, too, was shown him on the part of his
fellow-professors. It was an old case of Scotch undemonstrativeness.
“I have had a German professor to breakfast,” he writes, “who brings
me a volume from Paris—they make me greater than Harvey. I wish to
heaven the folks at home would make something of me. I thought, in
addressing the new-made doctors at the conclusion of the session,
that I had done well; but not one word of approbation from any
professor, nor has one of them in all this time called me in to
consultation, except when forced by the desire of the patient.”
His income, never very considerable in Edinburgh, diminished
considerably. “I put down my carriage with as little feeling as I
throw off my shoes,” he says; but when in 1842 a Government proposal
appeared likely to end in the extinction of the privileges of his
beloved University, his excitement was unbounded. He set off for
London as soon as he could. But he was attacked by a spasm of the
stomach so severe as to threaten his life. He hastened on towards
London, but while at Manchester, assisting at an operation, he
thought he should have been obliged to lie and roll on the carpet, or
leave the room in the midst of it. On Wednesday April 27, 1842, Sir
Charles and Lady Bell reached Hallow Park, the seat of Mrs. Holland,
near Worcester. Looking on the winding Severn and the distant hills,
he said to his wife: “This is a novel spot; here I fain would rest
till they come to take me away.” Here he sketched an old yew-tree,
some sheep, and the river; then two children and a donkey. As he
went back he looked with his observant eye at every shrub, commented
on the birds’ notes, and gathered up their feathers for his flies.
After dinner the same evening he gave graphic sketches of medical
celebrities he had known, admired and discussed an engraving of
Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, and was altogether so happy in mood
that he said to his wife: “Did you ever see me happier or better
than I have been all this forenoon?” yet he had been several times
that day in imminent danger of death from the dread malady that John
Hunter had, angina pectoris. We cannot refrain from quoting the
account of his end (Letters, p. 400): “The evening reading that night
was the 23d Psalm; the last prayer, that beautiful one, ‘For that
peace which the world cannot give,’ and then he sank into a deep and
quiet sleep. In the morning he awoke with a spasm, which he said was
caused by changing his position. His wife was rising to drop his
laudanum for him, but calling her to him, he laid his head on her
shoulder, and there ‘rested.’”
No more appropriate tribute has been paid to Sir Charles Bell than
that in the _Edinburgh Review_ for April 1872. The writer says (p.
429): “Never passed away a gentler, truer, or finer spirit. His
genius was great, and has left a legacy to mankind which will keep
his name fresh in many generations. But the story of his life has a
more potent moral. It is the story of one who kept his affections
young, and his love of the pure and the refined unsullied, while
fighting bravely the battle of life; whose heart was as tender as his
intellect was vigorous and original who, while he gained a foremost
place among his fellows, turned with undiminished zest to his home
and his friends, and found there the object, the reward, and the
solace of his life.”
He was buried near the yew-tree he had so lately sketched in Hallow
Churchyard. A plain stone, with his name, dates of birth and death,
and the line, “The pure in heart shall see God,” marked the spot. A
tablet was afterwards placed in the churchyard, with an inscription
written by his lifelong friend Francis (Lord) Jeffrey. Part of it
runs thus: “Sacred to the memory of Sir Charles Bell, who, after
unfolding with unrivalled sagacity, patience, and success, the
wonderful structure of our mortal bodies, esteemed lightly of his
greatest discoveries, except only as they tended to impress himself
and others with a deeper sense of the infinite wisdom and ineffable
goodness of the Almighty Creator.” His letters, edited by his widow
(1870), are a lasting memorial of his beautiful and noble nature.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] In December 1835.