338 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



a faithful but formal student gave it, " Besides these, seven others will 

 probably be discovered." The Professor, with his imperturbable 

 fixed gaze, simply asked, " Why seven ? " and called the next man. 

 The bull was afterwards several times repeated, and the Professor 

 had the credit of selecting his victims for the purpose ; but I have 

 also heard, what is more probable, that the class handed down the 

 joke, and that the repetitions were the result of collusion among 

 themselves. 



The number of the asteroids now exceeds three hundred, and this 

 astounding development of Herschel's prediction is only of a piece 

 with what has passed in all departments of physical science. In the 

 middle of the century the question between the undulatory theory of 

 light and Newton's theory of emissions was still open, and in Brewster's 

 Optics, the text-book we studied, the weight of authority was given 

 to the latter theory. So also the different modes of energy were re- 

 garded as imponderable fluids, and a no inconsiderable part of the 

 text-book on Electricity was taken up with a discussion of the merits 

 of the then usually received theory of two electric fluids, as compared 

 with Franklin's theory of one. During Mr. Lovering's long life the 

 fundamental conceptions of physics entirely changed, and it was one 

 of his great merits as a teacher that he kept abreast of the times, 

 that he weighed systems impartially, and led his pupils to distinguish 

 clearly between ascertained facts and the systems of science by which 

 the facts are classified. 



At the formal recitations I have described Mr. Lovering presided 

 as an officer of the College to enforce a prescribed task. He did not 

 consider that he was there to teach, in any proper sense of the term. 

 He had assigned an excellent book from which it was our duty to 

 learn, and from which we could learn, all of the subject we were 

 expected to know, and it was solely his duty to see that we did our 

 work. This does not seem to us now a very high ideal of a college 

 exercise, although doubtless the lazy men and the dullards did gain 

 an occasional idea from hearing their classmates' recitations. Still, it 

 must be remembered that this was the attitude of teachers in almost 

 all the class-room exercises of the period, and no one could have done 

 the duty assigned to him more faithfully or more impartially than 

 Mr. Lovering. 



But if Professor Lovering, with most college teachers of his time, 

 did not feel it incumbent on him to give personal instruction in his 

 recitations, it was very different with his stated lectures. At these 

 he displayed his full intellectual strength, and I look back on them as 



