92 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION.
benevolent heart; and in all the relations of life he was conspicuous for honesty of purpose and sincerity of conduct.
Years are required for the formation and development of so valuable a character, and for the reparation of its loss to society; and such events, ere the crisis of worth and fame is attained, are among the most astounding of those mysteries of which it is the will of the Almighty that we should remain in ignorance.
If to have lived in advance of the time be, as has been said, the truest test of genius, let Hunter be tried by this standard. We have enumerated the more obvious only of his anticipations of the march of knowledge in the department of surgical pathology and therapeutics; but it would be difficult to name any subject of universal medicine which has not received elucidation from the influence of his doctrines. The phenomena of life, organization, and instinct in all classes of animals, in their several varieties, and in all phases of their formation and existence, his genius brought to the illustration of the ceconomy of man. He stood alone in the wilderness, and under his hand it assumed the beautiful form and order of a garden. I need not say how successfully it has since been cultivated and enriched by the erudite labours of Blumenbach, and how immeasurably extended beyond its pristine confines by the extraordinary sagacity
