J6 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



she should neither understand nor care for the subject, but 

 found that she was under a mistake in both these respects, 

 and remained, an engaged and excited hearer. 



March 10. I wrote to my son : " There is now an 

 intense interest, and they talk of calling me another year. 

 The audience, as I have before remarked, is of a high order 

 of intelligence and social position, of the most perfect good 

 breeding, and during the lectures there is a breathless 

 attention. 



" I spoke last night two hours to the fullest audience I 

 have yet had, believed to be six hundred, and I am 

 treated with the greatest consideration. Mr. Gilmer is 

 highly delighted, and says to me, that he cannot anyhow 

 lose a lecture." 



Richard Caton, Esq., an Englishman, married a daughter 

 of the Hon. Charles Carroll, who was the last survivor of 

 the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. I 

 had met Mr. Caton in New Haven, and he had been very 

 courteous to me in Baltimore ; had called on me repeatedly 

 at Dr. Smith's, although eighty years of age. He always 

 came on horseback, and generally on Sunday noon. I 

 dined in his family at the Carroll House, and Mrs. Caton, 

 being quite blind, was assigned to my care, my seat being 

 next to her at table ; and I had the honor of leading her in 

 and out, and enjoyed her sensible and enlightened conversa 

 tion, her mind being in full vigor. The family are Catholics. 

 Two of the sisters married English noblemen ; one is the 

 wife of the Marquis of Wellesley, brother of the Duke of 

 Wellington, and another of a nobleman whose name I have 

 forgotten. Mrs. Caton told me that the house or castle of 

 her sister's husband was constantly thronged with visitors, 

 who enjoyed the liberty of the house in the highest degree, 

 coming and going as they please, the Marquis not being 

 responsible to entertain them, but only seeing them once 

 or twice in a day. Mr. Caton was a gentleman of courtly 

 manners, but visionary in his scientific views. 



