322 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



ways to which I had not then been accustomed in 

 the lecture-rooms of our Professors." 4 His lectures, 

 as well as the experiments that illustrated them, 

 were prepared with much care. He was never con- 

 tent with merely repeating what he had said and 

 done in a previous year. Each season, in connec- 

 tion with the delivery of his lectures, he topk care 

 to read in private some new work upon the science 

 which he was teaching, in order to refresh his mind 

 and assist him to present the subject in new lights. 

 The brilliant success of his popular lectures is abun- 

 dantly attested. The following letter is from a gen- 

 tleman whose personal excellence and scientific at- 

 tainments give weight to his testimony : 



PROFESSOR JEFFRIES WYMAN TO G. P. FISHER. 



CAMBRIDGE, October 20, 1865. 



MY DEAR SIR, I gladly comply with your wish to offer 

 a few words with regard to Professor Silliman as a public 

 teacher. My acquaintance with him as such was in con- 

 nection with the Lowell Institute, of which I happened to 

 be curator at the time he lectured. It must be remem- 

 bered that with this institution began a new era in popular 

 education in this community. Through the munificence of 

 its founder, Mr. John Lowell, it was able to place within 

 the reach of all classes instruction in the physical sciences, 

 in natural history, natural and revealed religion, and gen- 

 eral literature, and this from the ablest teachers, and gra- 

 tuitously. 



With the exception of an inaugural address from the 

 Hon. Edward Everett, Professor Silliman was the first* 

 who came before an audience under its auspices. Feeling 

 that, among institutions with kindred objects, it had unpre- 



* From a letter of Prof. George Ticknor to G. P. Fisher, Sept. 5, 1865. 



