PUBLIC LECTURES 105 



become a great and noble feature in the meetings.' l 

 Of his own lecture in 1868, his biographer says : 2 

 ' . . . a perfect example of the handling of a common 

 and trivial subject, so as to make it " a window into 

 the infinite." . . . This lecture . . . together with 

 two others delivered this year, seem to me to mark 

 the maturing of his style into that mastery of clear 

 expression for which he deliberately laboured, the 

 saying exactly what he meant, neither too much nor 

 too little, without confusion and without obscurity.' 

 The lectures, as a whole, have been exceedingly 

 successful : the popular audiences have shown no 

 sign of neglecting sciences when addressed to them 

 on an acceptable topic through a competent mouth- 

 piece. To take a single example out of many, it is 

 recorded 3 that Silvanus Thompson at Cardiff (1891) 

 had a crowded audience of miners who were brought 

 by special trains to hear him speak on the uses of 

 electricity in mining ; again, he held a Bradford 

 audience of 3500 for an hour and three-quarters (the 

 length of time is a tribute to his genius), while he 

 discussed the applications of electricity to industry 

 as a national question, and at the close elicited a 

 ' manifestation of feeling . . . such as is generally 

 associated with a great political meeting, rather than 

 with a scientific lecture.' A series of great names 

 Lubbock, Preece, Ayrton, Evans, Bramwell, Ball, and 



1 Life and Letters of Huxley, i, 292. 



2 Op. cit. i, 297. In the year of his presidency (1870, at Liverpool) 

 Huxley, with others, were taken under police escort to view some of 

 the worst slums in the city. This visit is evidence of a deep interest 

 in the betterment of conditions of life of the poorer classes of which 

 the lectures here referred to are another form of expression. 



3 Silvanus Phillips Thompson : His Life and Letters, by J. S. and 

 H. G. Thompson. 1920. 



