88 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



of that office, and remained in the instruction and govern- 

 ment of the Institution until 1853, when I fully resigned, 

 having made an overture for a resignation in 1850, which 

 was not accepted. During this period, on two different 

 occasions, I passed nearly two years abroad. By invitation 

 of the Corporation and Faculty of the College, I continued 

 to give the chemical lectures to the termination of the 

 course of 1853, and the lectures on mineralogy and geol- 

 ogy until the termination of the academic year of 1855. 

 My personal knowledge of Yale College has covered more 

 than sixty years, and therefore, as to historical facts, I may 

 be regarded as a competent witness during more than one 

 third of the period of its existence. 



A primary object in the institution of the College was 

 the education of ministers of the Gospel. Classical learn- 

 ing was, therefore, the principal object of attention, and so 

 it continued to be until my time. To train young men to 

 write and to speak was the great effort of the instructors. 

 Theological, ethical, and metaphysical subjects were much 

 cultivated, and logic was also a prominent topic. The 

 mathematics were not forgotten, and their value was appre- 

 ciated. The discoveries of Newton in the preceding cen- 

 tury had given great dignity and attractiveness to astron- 

 omy and to physical dynamics, and there were always in 

 the College devotees to these sciences and to mathematics. 

 The Rev. President Clap 1739 to 1766 was an emi- 

 nent mathematician and astronomer ; and the Rev. Presi- 

 dent Stiles 1777 to 1795 in addition to a wide range 

 of knowledge on almost all subjects, was an ardent devo- 

 tee to astronomy. It was said that he cherished the hope 

 that in the future life he would be permitted to visit the 

 planets, and to examine the rings of Saturn and the belts 

 and satellites of Jupiter. He continued to my time, hav- 

 ing died in 1795, in the May vacation of my Junior year. 



In the first century of Yale College, a single room was 

 appropriated to apparatus in physics. It was in the old 



