Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/571

 Knowledge, and, on some occasions, spoke. (In one of these occasions, he gave the following valuable testimony respecting the benefits of popular education: it was a meeting at which the bishop of the diocese presided. “In looking, my lord, to this resolution,” he says, “I perceive it has particular claims upon us; for one of its objects is to afford instruction to those immediately around us. In so large a population as this, there must always be much vice and much crime; but there is a much larger proportion of that which is the origin of vice and crime, I mean, of ignorance. I rejoice, my lord, that I live in times when so much activity is displayed in spreading information of every kind. I rejoice that even the poorest of my neighbours may become more acquainted than formerly with the intricacies of science; for I am sure that science is not unfavourable to religion, and I feel confident that, in those who are most accomplished in science, we shall find the warmest and ablest defenders of religion. But, though I know that there is in science nothing incompatible with religion, it is most true that it is a great good or a great evil, just as it may be directed. It is our part to take care, that no effort which we can make shall be spared to direct it aright.”

Dr. Darwall was appointed physician to the Birmingham Hospital in 1831, after the lamented death of Dr. De Lys, a physician held in the highest estimation, and who died of phthisis, at an age which might have promised him many more years of life and activity. Of this appointment Dr. Darwall had always been extremely ambitious, and, indeed, if by