63 



he taught the science of the day in all its freshness. It was tho- 

 rough teaching too, addressed to the mind as well as the eye. His 

 experiments were refined and certain, — not too numerous, and with- 

 out any thing of the showman's display; — one, always the most 

 interesting and conclusive; two, perhaps, if there had been in former 

 years, and might still linger, some controversy about the hypothesis ; 

 — and he passed on, without renewing his argument. He had the 

 faculty, so rare and so desirable, of feeling whether he was under- 

 stood, — to speak more truly, of feeling that he was so. 



Dr. Dunglison, who was for many years his associate in the Uni- 

 versity of Virginia, writes to me : "As a lecturer on science. Dr. 

 Patterson was one of the most successful I have ever heard. Clear 

 and eloquent, without being gaudy or ostentatious, — simple, as every 

 lecturer on science ought to be,— with his various experiments always 

 well arranged beforehand, and certain to effect the elucidation he 

 proposed, — he led his hearers on from the elementary to the abstruse 

 with progressively increasing interest." 



He did not write a great deal, and has wronged his memory by 

 not publishing what he wrote. Here and there, an essay or a report 

 or a lecture or a review, — sometimes, as when we called upon him 

 at our centennary celebration, an avowed and formal discourse; — 

 and for the rest. Dr. Patterson was labouring throughout his life to 

 advance the researches or to register the success of some more am- 

 bitious votary of science. One of his pupils,* himself among the 

 most felicitous instructors of our period, tells me that from Dr. Pat- 

 terson he received his best and most effective lessons in the art of 

 teaching. Whatever was the branch, he says, or the immediate 

 topic, I found him thoroughly read up, his thoughts marshalled and 

 lucid, his opinions formed, and his disposition frank and even anxious 

 to make all his knowledge available to the objects I had in view. 



In the different organizations, that make up for Philadelphia her 

 proudest characteristic, Dr. Patterson was always a leading- man. 

 Our own Society, the Academy of Natural Science, the Franklin 

 Institute, the Institution for the Blind, the Musical Fund Society, the 

 several corporations of the church he belonged to, — in all of these, 

 his death has left a melancholy vacancy. 



In the recesses of social intercourse, — in those quiet, joyous, in- 

 structive meetings, the little group of five, which it was my privi- 

 lege to share with Bethune and Dallas Bache and Dunglison, — I can- 



* Professor Frazer. 



