Page:The Harveian oration ; delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 26th, 1879 (IA b24976465).pdf/55

 processes, they make their escape by whistling, just as a steam engine blows off the steam with a great noise when not doing useful work; the poet wonders at the scientific man's materialism, and exclaims "the plough boy whistles as he goes for want of thought." One of the most remarkable examples, in my opinion, of a man who possesses both a scientific insight into objects around him, and at the same time the true artistic and poetic mind, is the professor of anatomy at Boston to whom I have already alluded. I should say that Wendell Holmes has the faculty more than any other author whom I know of analysing human sentiments, and showing their association with the material world around us. In some of his writings and poems it were difficult to say whether the physical, the chemical, the physiological or the purely spiritual idea dominate, and indeed must not all these and more be united in the mind of the creator of all things, or be phenomena, if you will, of the underlying substance. In a poem describing the death and burial of a child, all these attributes may be seen, the last verse running thus:

"At last the rootlets of the trees Shall find the prison where she lies,