assumption, and it was very soon refuted and displaced by our specialists in English philology. Still, he took an enormous amount of pains in the analysis and comparison of English literary remains at the supposed period when the transition was effected, and frequently dilated on his results in private conversation; although he never prepared them for publication, and I am not sure that his labours had any influence on the course of the subsequent investigations of others.

These various inquiries outside Clark's proper scientific work, unfortunately received an increase of attention through the breakdown in his health, which took place within a couple of years of my first acquaintance with him. Becoming unfitted for the conduct of his class, he had likewise to remit, in a great measure at least, his laboratory work, and had thus his time thrown upon his hands for any occupation that could at once interest him and yet not be too much for his reduced strength.

He followed up his Old-English inquiries by an incursion into phonetic spelling; a subject which had now begun to be agitated. For a year or two, this was a standing topic with him, and he carried it through various phases. One consequence of hearing him frequently descant upon the subject was that I obtained a discipline in our vowel pronunciation, into which he thoroughly entered with a view to making good our alphabetic defects. In any scheme of phonetic reform, several new alphabetic characters had to be devised, and he exerted his ingenuity in the search. Of all the schemes put forward for a complete representation of our alphabetic sounds, his appeared to be the most successful. His investigation and construction of alphabetic letters went the length of framing an entire alphabet, guided by the theoretical conditions of perfection in the forms of the letters. His experiments had no immediate result,

but they remain as suggestions to future inquirers, and may be seen in the University Library.

Clark, in the consciousness of his natural sagacity, ventured upon problems which had hitherto seemingly defied solution. His attention was drawn to the great Berkleyan puzzle as to the reality of the external world. He made some attempts to grapple with this difficulty, but abandoned it; evidently losing hope. His actual suggestions by way of solving the difficulty amounted to little or nothing.

In religion, he became early disencumbered of the prevailing orthodoxy, and felt that here was a field for his inquiring mind which might bear important fruit. Looking at the unsatisfactory results achieved by our natural theologians, he made the remark that "surely it ought to be possible to find out the habits of the Deity," by a still more sifting examination of the phenomena of nature, directed to that end. This, however, he did not pursue; and there is no ground for supposing that he would have attained more success than others before him had done.

On my coming to Rothesay, in the end of 1848, where I had parted with him a year before, I found he had made way with an entirely new research bearing on theological controversy. This was the mutual relationship of the three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. He had made a series of pastings of parallel passages from these three evangelists, using the Authorized version. In one, he followed the course of Matthew, and put at its side the corresponding passages of the two others; in another, he followed the order of Mark; and, in the third, the order of Luke. A study of these parallel pastings he deemed proof positive of the derivation of Mark from Matthew and Luke. He even laid down the scheme that Mark had proposed to himself in appropriating the material of the two others. Probably, no one had thought of using

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the same mechanical facilities for dealing with the question of the mutual dependence of the Gospels. Regarding the sources of Mark's Gospel as established beyond question, he next endeavoured to settle the priority and dependence of the two others. This was far less conclusive. All that he could make out to his own satisfaction was that Matthew was prior to Luke-that Luke had Matthew before him, and adopted its contents very largely, with certain changes, while evidently making use of some other materials not now extant.

From these comparisons Clark drew certain inferences respecting the credibility of the Gospels, which were by no means in accordance with the common views of Christian theologians. He might have stopped here, and exhibited his manner of proceeding and the conclusions he had arrived at for the judgment of the general public. Such, however, was not his way. Thinking that the cogency of his views could be much more severely tested by carrying the research a step further, his next object was to avoid the irregularities of our translation by making the comparisons upon the original Greek. Verbal coincidences had very much to do with the points he was driving at, and hence his motive for working upon the originals. He was no Greek scholar, but acquired a sufficient familiarity with New-Testament Greek to qualify himself for repeating the comparison upon the Greek original. Instead, however, of working at once in this way and obtaining whatever elucidation might be gained by so doing, he saw fit to raise up another difficulty, namely, uncertainty of the readings, which at that particular time had been brought into public prominence. He would not, therefore, take another step until he had seen what effect these differences would have in a comparison of the originals. Upon this rock his whole enterprise was shattered and rendered nugatory. It was too much his way to expend strength upon settling

particular points that had only a very small bearing upon the great issues involved, and to consume his valuable days in this manner. His determination to settle the text became a fixed idea, and occupied the closing years of his life, without his ever being able to return to the main purpose of the whole, on which alone public interest could have been evoked. He had, nevertheless, by help of a careful assistant, who afterwards became professor of Biblical Criticism in Glasgow, prepared a series of tables, showing the relative value on MS. authority of the diverse readings in the three Gospels. This he left at his death to be edited and published by Dr. Donaldson, of the High School of Edinburgh; but his wife's family, who were members of the United Presbyterian Church, and who always had suspicions of his heterodox tendencies, interfered to suppress the publication of what was, to say the least of it, a most masterly research.

In every point of view, the intimacy with Clark was highly educative to all of us of the younger generation who had enjoyed his friendship. His sagacity extended widely over public affairs and the conduct of business in our University and otherwise; and we had the greatest reliance upon his judgment in whatever department it was brought into exercise. I have only to add, in explicit terms, what has already been more or less implied, that from no other single man did I obtain the same amount of assistance in regard to English style and composition.

To recur to the work of the session. I gave up two hours a day to the Anatomy class of Dr. Allen Thomson, which was properly a medical class. Thomson was certainly a most accomplished and accurate anatomist. His lec

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turing was lucid, but entirely wanting in emphasis or prominence, which impaired its effect. The chief business of an anatomical lecturer was to show in actual specimens the parts of the human body; the students having to help out their memory by the text-books. What I could do was simply to take in the amount of detail usually mastered by the first year's medical students, and it was with these that I competed, at the end of the session, for a place in the prize list. I went into the dissecting-room and made a complete dissection of an arm, for more perfect familiarity with the bodily tissues. We acquired a certain amount of physiology, as well as anatomy proper, but this could not be carried far. The entire course made a most valuable groundwork for future studies in Physiology, and, to a certain degree, in Zoology, in which my information was desultory, and derived more from books than from regular instruction.

Various other labours had to be comprised within this session (1840-41). I had to deliver a second time the course of Natural Philosophy lectures to the Mechanics' Institution; and, although the lectures were very much the same, an entirely new introduction had to be prepared at the moment when the business of the Institution was unusually exigent. The topic was character