180 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



time, Edinburgh has never been without a journal of 

 science. That of Prof. Jameson was continued until his 

 death, a few years since ; and able successors have followed 

 in the same line of labor. 



A mutual sympathy was sustained between Sir David 

 Brewster and myself, not only by editorial services and 

 courtesies, but by his numerous memoirs. Being desirous 

 that they should appear in the "American Journal," he sent 

 them to me from time to time, in detached printed forms 

 or " brochures," as the French call them ; and each memoir 

 was usually accompanied by a letter from the author. If I 

 live to revise my files of letters, and to select those that are 

 to be preserved, I shall leave a small file of Dr. Brewster's. 

 Dr. Brewster still lives, and is almost alone among my 

 Edinburgh contemporaries. He has led a highly useful 

 life, and must, I should think, have now reached fourscore. 

 He is not only a man eminent in science, he is a man of 

 decided religious principles, and, I trust, of piety. 



At Prof. Dugald Stewart's I met Lord Webb Seymour. 

 I know little of his history. He was, however, a compeer 

 with Playfair, Hope, Leslie, Sir James Hall, and other men 

 eminent in physical science, especially in mineralogy and 

 geology. It was a pleasure to me to meet him, not because 

 he was a nobleman, but because, being a nobleman, he was 

 exempt from pride and bore himself with perfect courtesy 

 and affability. I had an agreeable conversation with him, 

 and to me it was instructive also. He appeared to be well 

 acquainted with chemistry, and named several processes in 

 the arts in which there was great loss from an ignorance 

 of chemical principles. In person, he was tall and rather 

 slender ; his dress was that of a genteel man, or, in other 

 words, that of a gentleman, as without his title he would 

 have been a noble man. His age appeared to be about 

 thirty-five. 



I am not certain whether I met Dr. Thomas Brown first 

 at Prof. Dugald Stewart's ; he called on me at my lodg- 



