HIS MERITS AS A LECTURER. 325 



and receive a kind word in return. The best impulses of 

 the heart which marked him through life were still fresh, 

 and all was peace. 



Apart from the useful instruction that was im- 

 parted in these lectures, not only to educated peo- 

 ple, but also to intelligent mechanics, who heard 

 them, they stimulated individuals to the study of 

 science, who afterwards themselves became pro- 

 ficients in the same branches of knowledge. Prof. 

 Josiah P. Cooke, of Harvard College, concluded his 

 course of lectures before the Lowell Institute, in 

 1859, with these remarks : 



I should be suppressing a generous emotion, were I not, 

 in concluding, to allude to the very peculiar circumstances 

 under which I have filled this place. With one exception, 

 the only course of lectures on chemistry before this Insti- 

 tution, previous to the one just concluded, were delivered 

 by Professor Silliman, of New Haven, in the years 

 1839-43. At those lectures I was an attentive listener. 

 Although a mere boy, one of the youngest of those 

 present, I then acquired my taste for the science which 

 has since become the business of my life. Returning, after 

 so short an interval, to occupy the place of him who was 

 thus unconsciously my instructor, I might add, my only 

 instructor in chemistry, I know of no way in which I can 

 pay a higher tribute to his worth, or to the usefulness of 

 this noble charity, of which he was only the almoner, than 

 by a simple statement of these facts. If, in future years, 

 students of Nature shall arise, who can trace back their 

 earliest essays in science to any humble influence of mine, 

 I shall feel that my labor has been more than rewarded, 

 and that my efforts have been crowned with success. 



The habit of addressing popular audiences had an 



