72 EARLY LIFE. 



once more allowed the privilege which I in those days 

 enjoyed, of being present, while the first philosopher 

 of his age was the historian of his own discoveries, 

 and be an eyewitness of those experiments by which 

 he had formerly made them, once more performed 

 with his own hands. 



His style of lecturing was as nearly perfect as can 

 well be conceived ; for it had all the simplicity which 

 is so entirely suited to scientific discourse, while it 

 partook largely of the elegance of all he said or did. 

 The publication of his lectures has conveyed an accu- 

 rate idea of the purely analytical order in which he 

 deemed it best to handle the subject with a view to 

 instruction, considering this as most likely to draw 

 and to fix the learner's attention, to impress his 

 memory, and to show him both the connection of the 

 theory with the facts, and the steps by which the 

 principles were originally ascertained. He would 

 illustrate his doctrine of latent heat by referring to 

 what is seen and felt, but passed without remark, in 

 the boiling of a kettle, and the steam coming from its 

 spout of different heat at different distances; or would 

 remind us of the surprise expressed by finding that 

 boiling water is cooled far more quickly than could 

 be foreseen upon the addition of a very little cold; or 

 that a hot chestnut which the mouth cannot bear, is 

 in an instant made bearable by the least drop of wine 

 sipped with it, and the wine not becoming sensibly 

 hotter. His experiments were often like Franklin's, 

 performed with the simplest apparatus indeed with 



