PEOGKESS IN LECTURING 201 



May 9, 1845. 



MY DEAB HAEVEY, 999,999 congratulations on Van 

 Voorst's happy appreciation of your algological properties : x 

 10,000 I reserve for myself alone, some day : when I have 

 as much reason to be as thankful as I sometimes tried to 

 be for mercies vouchsafed in the old Erebus. I have 

 positively nothing to say but to congratulate you. For 

 my own part you may also extend to me a little gratulation 

 on my beginning to feel the truest and most heartfelt pleasure 

 in having come here, and in having come with no selfish 

 object in view ; and in having overcome my modesty, i.e. 

 metamorphosed it into modest assurance. ... I never 

 felt so happy in being able to be useful, for Graham is as 

 nearly helpless as possible, and though surrounded by friends, 

 there are none who can help him in his class, garden business, 

 examinations, and many other little things. 



To the Same 



May 30, 1845. 



As to lecturing, that now comes perfectly easy and 

 natural to me, and I can spout an hour of gas, without notes 

 even, by dint of desperate cramming : the fact is I found 

 that human nature, i.e. my nature, could not stand the 

 drudgery of writing out an hour's reading from day to day, 

 so I took to the extempore preaching, and find that it answers 

 to the students even better than to myself : they do seem 

 here to delight in generalities however false, if attractively 

 delivered [i.e. without being read], and by dint of never 

 losing an opportunity of comparing the vital phenomena 

 of animals with those of vegetables (right or wrong) I can 

 rivet their attention au merveille. I often think how I 

 should blush to see what I speak in print. I often think 

 how you would laugh to see and hear me gull the multitude, 

 for they are like all other crowds. 



... I have picked up acquaintance here with a funny 

 old fish who devotes himself to fossil Botany and has splendid 

 specimens marvellously cut for the microscope, Nicoll, the 

 great fossil cutter, who has a splendid cabinet of specimens 

 of wood etc. I am really anxious to form a fossil Herb., it suits 

 my generalities about the floras of byegone ages, so pray do* 



1 I.e. in undertaking publication of his book. 



