H4 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



the platform, with the prestige of diversified experience 

 and eminent scientific authority. Winter after winter he 

 made a rapid tour, lecturing four or five nights a week, to 

 vast assemblies rising from twelve to eighteen hundred 

 people. His subjects often lay far apart ; sometimes they 

 \vere suggested by the physical or biological conditions of 

 the deep sea ; sometimes they dealt with popular applica 

 tions of important physiological and psychological prin 

 ciples, as when he discoursed of human automatism or 

 epidemic delusions ; or, again, they were fetched from his 

 experiences of travel, it might be in the Nile valley, or 

 (subsequently) at Niagara, when any chance listener who 

 had trodden the same ground would often find that he had 

 nearly as much to learn as those who had stayed at home. 

 In such discourses (and this was also characteristic of some 

 of his writing in later years), Dr. Carpenter often fell in 

 stinctively into a sort of autobiographical vein. He had 

 been mixed up with so many important movements, and 

 had seen so much of their working, that it seemed the 

 most natural thing to him to illustrate almost every fresh 

 topic by his own personal experiences, or his own contribu 

 tion of action, knowledge, or thought, to the matter under 

 discussion. Such references were not inconsistent with a 

 real modesty, though they did not always convey that 

 impression. They poured out from his lips, or his pen, 

 simply because they appeared to him the most suitable 

 to his purpose ; and they often stood side by side with 

 an original teaching of far higher value. In a lecture 

 on Niagara, he once related what Oersted had said to 



o 



him about it in a way which excited some amusement 

 for its evidently unconscious egotism ; &quot; but Oersted s re 

 marks,&quot; it was observed, &quot;which were the substance of 

 &quot; the story, were commonplace compared to Dr. Car- 

 &quot; pcnter s own comments, which were thrown in incident- 



