OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 339 



in many respects the most profitable part of my college course. He 

 was one of the best lecturers I have ever known, and I have known 

 the greatest masters of my time. He may not have had the imagina- 

 tion of Faraday or the grace of Dumas, but his lectures were instruc- 

 tive in the highest degree. The chief sources of his power are not 

 far to seek. In the first place, he had the great art of bringing his rea- 

 soning and his illustrations to the intellectual level of his hearers, with- 

 out belittling his subject. He was a popular lecturer in the very best 

 sense. He did not commit the common error of seeking to gain at- 

 tention through trivialities, or of attempting to appear learned by using 

 technical terms ; but he sought to raise his audience from their lower 

 plane to his level, and he succeeded to a wonderful extent. Again, 

 he had remarkable clearness of statement, and he gained this in the 

 only way it can be gained, by seeking definiteness of conception. He 

 did not trust to the inspiration of the moment to make a difficulty, 

 however familiar to him, intelligible to others ; but he laboriously 

 studied every subject he taught until he had a firm grasp of all the 

 concepts, and then the stream was clear because the spring was 

 clear. Lastly, Mr. Lovering had to a greater degree than I have 

 ever known, the power of looking at physical problems from different 

 sides, and seeing them in all their aspects. This gave him great fer- 

 tility in illustration, and often enabled him to present a subject from 

 a point of view wholly unexpected even by adepts in the science. 



We often say in the laboratory, when troubled by the failures of a 

 faithful student, but unskilful experimenter, that a chemist, like a poet, 

 is born, not made, and the same must beequally true of a physicist ; 

 and if we consider only the power of original investigation, there is 

 doubtless much truth in this trite apothegm ; but it is not true of 

 many great scientific scholars and teachers, and of this Mr. Lovering's 

 success is a conspicuous example. In college he was one of the first 

 scholars of his class, but although a good mathematician his tastes 

 were linguistic and literary rather than scientific, and he had already 

 entered on the study of Divinity when a chance opening determined 

 his career in life. The opinion has often been expressed that the 

 intuitions and enthusiasm of an original investigator are necessary to 

 make a great scientific teacher, and if by this is meant necessary to 

 direct to the best advantage the studies of those born to the purple, 

 I should agree in the judgment. But, on the other hand, the devious 

 and narrow paths through which the investigator is constantly led in 

 the chase of natural phenomena are apt to give him a very limited 

 view, while the scholar who commands a larger field is better able to 



