150 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



lightful airs, which she herself could not afterwards recall. 

 In order to arrest this fugitive harmony, the Earl con- 

 trived an apparatus to be connected with the keys of the 

 instrument and to be actuated by their movement, so that 

 the music was dotted down as it was played, and thus 

 recorded on the tablet which was placed to receive and 

 preserve it. 



Mr. Barlow inquired with much interest concerning his 

 native State and his Alma Mater. He expressed satisfac- 

 tion that chemistry and the associated sciences were being 

 introduced into Yale College, and added, that he would 

 have sent out a chemical apparatus and preparations had 

 he not supposed that, coming from him, the college au- 

 thorities would make a bonfire of them in the college yard. 

 I could, in reply to this bitter remark, add nothing more 

 than the assurance that such a gift would have been highly 

 acceptable, and that the articles would have been carefully 

 preserved. Mr. Barlow had been a minister of the gospel, 

 had preached and prayed publicly, and written sacred 

 hymns in elevated strains, both of poetry and devotion, 

 some of which are still preserved in our Congregational 

 collection of sacred poetry. He espoused the French rev- 

 olution with great warmth, even in its most bloody periods, 

 and even wrote a song in praise of the guillotine ; and one 

 sentiment in it was, that under the axe " Great George's 

 head would roll." In his poem on the " Hasty Pudding," 

 he apostrophizes the cow, and says : 



"Sure it is to me, 



Were I to leave my God, I 'd worship thee." 



His early friends regarded him as an apostate from 

 Christianity. As an ambassador to Napoleon, he sought 

 him in Poland, and fell a victim to the severity of winter 

 at Wilna in 1815-16. 



Just before leaving London, in November 1805, 



I visited again the Royal Institution under the introduction 

 of Mr. Accum, who had formerly been assistant operator to 



