APPOINTED PROFESSOR: STUDIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 101 



most important facts in the science ; and our instructor 

 delighted, although he did not excel, in the performance of 

 experiments. He had no proper assistant, and the work 

 was imperfectly done ; but still it was a treasure to me. 

 Our Professor had not the gift of a lucid mind, nor of high 

 reasoning powers, nor of a fluent diction ; still, we could 

 understand him, and I soon began to interpret phenomena 

 for myself and to anticipate the explanations. Dr. Wood- 

 house was wanting in personal dignity, and was, out of 

 lecture -hours, sometimes jocose with the students. He 

 appeared, when lecturing, as if not quite at his ease, as 

 if a little fearful that he was not highly appreciated, as 

 indeed he was not very highly. 



In his person he was short, with a florid face. He was 

 always dressed with care ; generally he wore a blue broad- 

 cloth coat with metal buttons ; his hair was powdered, and 

 his appearance was gentlemanly. His lectures were quite 

 free from any moral bearing, nor, as far as I remember, 

 did he ever make use of any 'of the facts revealed by 

 chemistry, to illustrate the character of the Creator as seen 

 in his works. At the commencement of the course he 

 treated with levity and ridicule the idea that the visitations 

 of the yellow fever might be visitations of God for the sins 

 of the people. He imputed them to the material agencies 

 and physical causes, forgetting that physical causes may 

 be the moral agents of the Almighty. His treatment of 

 myself was courteous. I dined with him in his snug little 

 bachelor's establishment, for he had no family, and a 

 matron housekeeper superintended his small establishment. 

 I should add respecting his lectures that they were brief. 

 He generally occupied a fourth or a third of the hour in 

 recapitulating the subject of the preceding lecture, and thus 

 he advanced at the rate of about forty or forty-five minutes 

 in a day. 



At the commencement of my first course with him, in 

 1802, he had just returned from London, where he had 



