place, and daily saw fresh reason to congratulate himself on his choice of a profession. An agreeable picture of the state of his mind at this period, is afforded by the following passage of a letter to his dearest friend, his affectionate and accomplished sister.

"This I can assure you, I never found study so agreeable to me as at present. I am very much surprised the study of the structure and uses of the parts of the human body is not taken into the plan of a learned education; surely no part of knowledge can be more noble and entertaining, and more proper for the employment of the faculties; what a pity the mind and body should be so little acquainted with each other! It is indeed a subject full of doubts and difficulties; but if men of genius were to apply to it, I should think great discoveries might be made. I often regret Sir Isaac Newton was not an anatomist.

66

My only books of amusement are the Latin poets; and among them the elegant and tender Tibullus is my present favourite. I never met with so much softness, such inexpressibly tender strokes, as in his elegies; in my opinion there are some single lines of his worth all the works of all the poets of his class put together. It is a pity there is no good translation of him; Hammond indeed has taken a good deal from him with the true

spirit of the original. Of what real consequence, my dear sister, is something of a taste for polite literature! It promotes cheerfulness with innocence; and by that means is an excellent guard against running into vicious pleasures, and against being unfitted by hard study and low spirits for social life. Its chief fault is, being apt to make people vain; and perhaps you will think it has had that effect with me when I tell you, that with the means of bread in my hands and pleasure in my head, I despise the dull tradesman with his thousands, the country booby with his dogs and horses; and, above all, the mere town rake, whose pleasures are meaner and more mistaken."

After two winters and the intermediate summer spent in this school of medicine, Mr. Aikin, in May, 1766, quitted Scotland, and went to pass a few months of leisure, but by no means of idleness, under the paternal roof. The flourishing state of the Warrington academy at this period, had redeemed this remote spot from barbarism, and rendered it a favorite haunt of the Muses. Among the students were several youths of promising abilities and ingenuous manners, who in after life reflected honor on the place of their education, both by their acquirements and their lasting attachment to their teachers. The tutors were; for the mathematics, Mr. Holt, a man whose

whole soul was absorbed by his science; for modern languages and some other branches of knowledge, Dr. Reinhold Forster the naturalist, who afterwards accompanied Captain Cook in his circumnavigation; the Rev. Mr. Aikin, on the death of the celebrated Dr. John Taylor, had succeeded to the post of tutor in divinity, and lectured with distinguished ability in ethics and metaphysics as well as in theology; and the department of classics and polite literature was filled by Dr. Priestley. An excellent set of lectures in history, afterwards published, was delivered by this eminent person, who had also recently constructed his ingenious biographical chart; and, with that versatility which distinguished his powerful genius, was studying the phenomena of electricity, and commencing his original experiments on that branch of natural philosophy. The most cordial intimacy subsisted among the tutors and their families, with whom also the elder students associated on terms of easy and affectionate intercourse; and while the various branches of human knowledge occupied their graver hours, the moments of recreation were animated by sports of wit and ingenuity, well adapted to nerve the wing of youthful genius.

But the claims of an active profession quickly summoned away Mr. Aikin from the tranquil

pursuits of learned leisure; circumstances also required of him the renewed sacrifice of that independence which he had enjoyed under the free system of a Scotch university; and he submitted, without repining, to become once more a pupil, under Mr. Charles White, a skilful surgeon then rising to eminence at Manchester.

Few situations of the kind could have been better adapted to promote either his improvement or his happiness. The extensive private practice of Mr. White, and his connection with a large infirmary, allowed his pupil full scope for that love of employment which marked him at all periods of his life; no disagreeable services of any kind were imposed upon him, and he found himself treated in the family in all respects as a gentleman. The town of Manchester, also, afforded him respectable and agreeable society to fill the intervals of business and study; and he had the good fortune to form a few congenial friendships which ended only with the lives of the parties. Among those with whom his connection was most intimate and durable, may be named, the late Mr. Thomas Henry, Mr. James Touchet, the late T. B. Bayley, Esq. of Hope, and the late Thomas Percival, M. D. who was previously known to him at Warrington and as a fellow-student at Edinburgh.

Professional pursuits took the lead with him at this time even in his voluntary studies, and he mentions in one of his letters that he seldom transgressed the rule of occupying a portion, at least, of each day's reading in medical works. He translated from the French the whole of Pouteau's Mélanges de Chirurgie, and composed an Essay on the Ligature of Arteries afterwards published with Mr. White's Cases in Surgery.

But the Muses still held divided empire in his heart; his correspondence with his sister was thickly interspersed with critical remarks on the Latin and English poets, not forgetting, among the latter, our early English dramatists, Massinger, Shirley, and Beaumont and Fletcher; whom some happy chance had introduced to his acquaintance, and for whom he had the courage to express all his admiration, at a period when the French taste had banished them almost entirely both from the stage and the closet. He also began to occupy himself in forming his collection of the choicest songs in our language; and he frequently exercised his own pen, both in verse and prose, in translation and in original composition, trying experiments in different styles, treating a variety of subjects, and seeking to discover where his

• This translation was never published.