What, it may be said, can such a man want? Why he wanted liveliness and flexibility. His voice measured forth its gentlemanly way with all the regularity of a surveying rod. Various and interesting as his subjects were, and handled with consummate ability, he must certainly have _taught_; yet we think he sent away many of his audience passive recipients, as distinguished from persons _set on thinking_ what they had heard "into their own."
He performed his task like a good man and a scholar; but still it was like a task after all. It was something like a scholar reading a book, always excepting the beautifully clear illustrations for which his subject gave him abundant opportunity. He wanted that animation and interest in his subject by which a lecturer inoculates you with his own enthusiasm. He was the most striking example in our experience of the importance of liveliness and variety, and of making a lecture, however well delivered, just that thing which we _cannot_ find in a book. The life-like, the dramatic effect was wanting; and it was to this alone that we can ascribe what we have not unfrequently observed in the midst of a generally attentive audience, a few who were "nodding" their assent to his propositions.
Now Abernethy's manner was perfect in these respects. He had just got the "cheerfully, not too fast" expression, that we sometimes see at the head of a musical composition. His manner was so good, that it is difficult to convey any idea of it. It was easy, without being negligent; cheerful, without being excited; humorous, often witty, without being vulgar; expeditious, without being in a bustle; and he usually took care that you should learn _the thing_, before he gave the _name of it_; and understand it, before he expatiated on the beauty or perfection of its adaptation to the ends it seemed designed to serve.
He was particularly chaste in the manner in which he spoke of design, or other of the Attributes so frequently observable in natural arrangements. It is a great mistake, we think, and not without something akin to vulgarity, to usher in any description of the beauties of nature by a flourish of such trumpets as human epithets form—mere notes of admiration. Nature speaks best for herself. The mind is kept in a state of excitement by too frequent _feux de joies_ of this kind; the frequent recurrence of such terms as "curious! strange! wonderful!" on subjects where all is wonderful, have a sort of bathos in the ears of the judicious, while to the less critical they produce a kind of disturbed atmosphere, which is unfavourable to the calm operations of the intellect.