A REMARKABLE IRISHMAN.
To THE EDITOR Or THZ " SPEOTAT011."
SIR,—In Sir John Banks, the father of the medical profession in Ireland, death has removed from the life of the Irish capital a remarkable man. With the generation now passing away his reputation as a physician was great—especially in cases of mental disease and fever—and in the course of his practice his skill and unremitting acts of kindness won for him a host of admirers. But Banks was also widely known for qualities of mind and heart which made him the most true and loyal of friends, the most popular of citizens, the most successful of hosts. "Will you second my nomination ? " said Lord Rathmore to Banks at an election in Trinity College; "I am told that you have not an enemy." During his long life Banks had seen many events of historical interest, and, aided by a retentive memory and by a good knowledge of both ancient and modern classics, was wont to relate his experi- ences with a charm that was entirely his own. He had been a witness in the County Clare, where his early years were passed, of the great struggle for Catholic emancipation, and was able to recall not only the speeches of the protagonists, but also those of their chief supporters. At O'Connell's table he had been a guest, and with members of his family he bad been on terms of intimacy. As proof of the Liberator's world-wide fame, Banks was fond of telling bow, when travelling abroad with O'Connell's son, the latter obtained from a banker to whom he was unknown an advance of money on a mere state- ment of his parentage. While a student Banks bad attended victims of the cholera epidemic which swept over Ireland in 1832, and often saw in a year, as he said, more cases of typhus fever than would now be possible for a physician in a lifetime. Few men of distinction in literature or science visited Dublin without being Banks's guests. Monckton Mikes and Lecky were always found at his table when they came to Dublin, and on the occasion of any celebration, or when any of the great Associations met there, his house was filled with nota- bilities. The contemporaries with whom he was most intimate
had gone before him. Outside his own profession, Trench, Graves, and Reichel amongst ecclesiastics, Ball and Morris amongst lawyers, Salmon, Ingram, and Houghton amongst men of science and men of letters, may be mentioned as some of those who knew Banks best and valued him for his
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