320 LIFE OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN. 



magazine of valuable facts, disposed in an orderly and 

 practicable way, so that they could avail themselves of its 

 affluence in materials. The work also contains exact and 

 ample directions for the successful performance of experi- 

 ments, especially of those which are attended with difficulty 

 or clanger. I had been a zealous and active experimenter, 

 and rarely met with a failure. I recorded in my work the 

 results of twenty-five years of experience, and my contri- 

 butions to practical chemistry were regarded as generous 

 and valuable. I had the satisfaction to find that processes, 

 which I had regarded as my own, were, in various instances, 

 similar to, or identical with, those which Professor Faraday 

 had published in his very valuable work on chemical ma- 

 nipulations, which I had not then seen. 



Considering the size of the work it went off with reason- 

 able rapidity, and could I have found time to revise and 

 cast it anew with corrections and improvements, and with 

 more condensation, its vitality might have been continued. 



If I had found such a work as I had myself Avritten, I 

 should never have undertaken a duty which proved to be 

 extremely laborious, and with the result of which I was dis- 

 satisfied, because I had overshot my mark, and therefore, 

 as a manual for those who attended on my lectures, I could 

 not but regard it as a failure. In a more elevated view it 

 was no failure. It was a very valuable work for professors 

 and teachers in colleges who, I have been assured, held it 

 in high estimation. Everything considered, however, I was 

 not well satisfied, and I have never ceased to regret that 

 I committed myself, as I did, by commencing the publica- 

 tion while I was lecturing, and with the vain hope that I 

 could write and print even a brief work so rapidly that I 

 could keep pace with my own doings in the lecture-room. 



With the foregoing chapter may be connected 

 some letters of a miscellaneous character, a portion 



