Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/553

 was scrupulously correct, and his manner was earnest; but he seldom condescended to enliven his remarks by those graceful digressions, without which the good will even of scientific auditors cannot always be conciliated. In public debate, or in private conversation, Dr. Darwall's extreme correctness of information rendered him, as I have observed it did in earlier years, formidable to superficial persons, who generally constitute a majority of an auditory; and those who could not disprove his facts, were, sometimes, glad to find consolation in the complaints they could make, with some kind of justice, of the unpalatable way in which their information had been amended.

The Medical Society, however, of which I have thus spoken, with, I hope, not an unpardonable garrulousness, was still but a place of relaxation to Dr. Darwall; and he did not always willingly give up an evening to its business. He felt that the days of a student's life are few and precious; and that those who neglect them, will long repent that they forgot such days would not last for ever. I imagine that he was seldom or never guilty of throwing away an hour.

As I took my degree on the same day with him, in August, 1821, I happened, during the early part of that year, to see more of him than I had done before. He had become a husband, having, some months before, married the only daughter of Philemon Price, Esq. of Birmingham, a lady in every way worthy of his choice, and who now survives him. During part of the winter, Mrs. Darwall was with him in Edinburgh, but when the anxious period