Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/545

 recollections. There are few who, looking back on those studious, temperate, happy years, can say that time has brought them any thing more valuable; nay, there are doubtless many who, amidst the vexations, the animosities, the distractions, and the struggles that have since befallen or engaged them, have often wished that their lives could have been passed in that academic seclusion to which few worldly feelings found their way, and in which science could be tranquilly pursued.

No student ever went to Edinburgh with a higher ambition, or with a firmer determination to waste no time whilst there, than Dr. Darwall. He had some letters of introduction to celebrated individuals, but, like most Edinburgh students who become interested in the business of the place, U believe he gradually left off all society, except that of his fellow students, and those of his teachers whom he had the advantage of being acquainted with. I have often heard him speak, in terms of admiration, of Dr. Gordon; and he deeply participated in the regret which all lovers of the profession felt at the death of that distinguished lecturer, whose talents, had he lived, could not but have reflected a new lustre on the great school of Edinburgh.

How his days would be spent in Edinburgh, no one, who has studied there, can require to be informed. Every hour brought its regular occupation, and every hour added something to his note-books. Full notes of the comprehensive lectures of Dr. Home, on the materia medica, are among his papers; and notes of cases, medical and surgical, seen, or read of, or heard of; with extracts from, and abstracts