OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 345 



From Professor W. W. Goodwin, of Harvard University. 



My dear Dr. Peabody, — I am very sorry that I cannot attend 

 the meeting of the Academy this evening in memory of Professor 

 Lovering. Of our late President as a man of science I have no 

 right to speak, for I can claim only to be one of the large class 

 of his admirers who viewed his scientific attainments from a re- 

 spectful distance. But I have known him for more than forty 

 years as a kind friend, and in later years as a genial companion ; 

 and by his death I have lost one for whom I felt deep respect and 

 warm affection. 



I first knew Mr. Lovering as lecturer and teacher in Harvard 

 College. In 1849, when I first came under his instruction, he 

 was in his best vigor, and his lectures on mechanics, optics, 

 electricity, and magnetism always seemed to me perfect of their 

 kind, and admirably adapted to their purpose, which was to. give 

 a geueral knowledge of physical science to a whole college class, 

 who had no opportunity to study in detail more than a small 

 fraction of the sciences which his lectures covered. It seems to 

 lie beyond the province of our reformed College to give this gen- 

 eral view of the physical sciences, or indeed of any of the sciences, 

 to our students ; and perhaps we do not always remember that 

 the knowledge which every student had an opportunity to gain 

 from Mr. Lovering's lectures ought still to be brought within the 

 reach of every one at some stage of his education. 



In the old College Faculty, as I first knew it in 1856, Profes- 

 sor Lovering was one of the most important and influential mem- 

 bers. He was constant in his attendance, and he always had a 

 decided opinion on every question that came up. He often de- 

 cided a long and wandering debate which had led to nothing, by 

 a few words of plain common sense, or even by a humorous re- 

 mark into which an argument was condensed. His drv humor 

 was second only to that with which that master of humor, Presi- 

 dent James Walker, constantly entertained and often convinced 

 the College Faculty. During a great part of the presidencies of 

 Mr. Sparks, Dr. Walker, Mr. Felton, and Dr. Hill, he held the 

 post of Regent, which has since been extended into the less regal 

 but more responsible one of Dean. A comparison of the Regent's 

 office in Mr. Lovering's day, open four hours a week, with the 

 present Dean's office, open nine hours a day, shows the growth 

 of the College, and also the changed relation of the students to 



