166 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



with his apparatus and experiments, and with the opera 

 tions of his great mind ; and as my conversation regarding 

 Lavoisier was only eleven and a half years after his death, 

 Dr. Hope's recollections of him were doubtless correct. 

 Lavoisier was guillotined May 8th, 1794, by the Revolution 

 ary Tribunal, on the frivolous pretext that he had adulter 

 ated tobacco ; and they even refused him a respite of a few 

 days, to enable him to complete some experiments then in 

 progress. The report in his case declared that the Repub 

 lic had no need of chemists. Bloody and execrable des 

 potism, infamous through all time ! Dr. Hope's admira 

 ble course finished my educational training in chemistry. 

 I understood, realized, and retained every part of it. To 

 me it was worth a voyage across the Atlantic. 



Dr. John Murray called then Mr. Murray was a 

 private lecturer, not connected with the University ; but his 

 high reputation for talents and learning secured him a 

 class respectable for numbers and character. Ee had also 

 distinguished himself by an excellent elementary work on 

 chemistry, and by a system of materia medica which was 

 of the first authority among the treatises on that subject. 

 He was a very agreeable lecturer, with a pleasant intona 

 tion, and a voice of sufficient strength. He spoke with 

 perfect ease, in a style lucid, terse, and flowing, but without 

 diffuseness. His manner and action were graceful, and his 

 treatment of the class polite and friendly ; so that he se 

 cured their good-will, and was able to maintain good order 

 in his lecture-room, which was an apartment in his house, 

 not capable of containing more than thirty-five or forty 

 persons. 



Dr. Murray, when I was his pupil, was threatened with 

 consumption, and died not many years after I left Edin 

 burgh. He wrote to me a year or two after my return, and 

 informed me that he was about going to the south of Eng 

 land to revive his health. A son who bore his name, re- 



