HUNTERIAN ORATION. MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN, No one, I am sure, can have entered this theatre today, whose thoughts have not reverted in the first instance to that melancholy occurrence which interrupted our festivities last year, I mean, the decease of Sir Astley Cooper. The anniversary of his death cannot but renew the grief for his loss, and the recollection of the large debt which we owe to his memory. Yet I feel that this is a subject to which it is impossible as yet to do justice. The twelve months which have elapsed since his decease are too short to temper the general sorrow; and feelings of personal regret must overshadow in some degree the sense of his scientific eminence. Hitherto perhaps we feel the loss of the individual too keenly, to be able to appreciate justly the transcendent value of the surgeon; for though private friendship often magnifies inferior merit, and places it for a time in a position to which it has no claim, it only serves to obscure the light of that enduring fame which is destined to survive personal recollections, which is fed by the daily perception of |