i857 PRELIMINARY LECTURES I^n 



Mesozoic and Cainozoic," by his assistants. " To make the 

 course complete there should be added (i) A series of lec- 

 tures on Species, practical discrimination and description, 

 modification by conditions and distribution ; (2) Lectures 

 on the elements of Botany and Fossil Plants." 



This reorganisation of his course went hand in hand 

 with his utilisation of the Jermyn Street Museum for paleon- 

 tological teaching, and all through 1857 he was busily 

 working at the Explanatory Catalogue. 



Moreover, in 1855 he had begun at Jermyn Street his 

 regular courses of lectures to working men — lectures which 

 impressed those qualified to judge as surpassing even his 

 class lectures. Year after year he gave the artisans of his 

 best, on the principle enunciated thus early in a letter of 

 February 27, 1855, to Dyster — 



I enclose a prospectus of some People's Lectures (Popular 

 Lectures I hold to be an abomination unto the Lord) I am 

 about to give here. I want the working classes to understand 

 that Science and her ways are great facts for them — that physi- 

 cal virtue is the base of all other, and that they are to be clean 

 and temperate and all the rest — not because fellows in black 

 with white ties tell them so, but because these are plain and 

 patent laws of nature which they must obey " under penalties." 



I am sick of the dilettante middle class, and mean to try 

 what I can do with these hard-handed fellows who live among 

 facts. You will be with me, I know. 



And again on May 6, 1855 : — 



I am glad your lectures went ofif so well. They were better 

 attended than mine [the Preliminary Course], although in point 

 of earnestness and attention my audience was all I could wish. 

 I am now giving a course of the same kind to working men 

 exclusively — one of what we call our series of " working men's 

 lectures," consisting of six given in turn by each Professor. 

 The theatre holds 600, and is crammed full. 



I believe in the fustian, and can talk better to it than to 

 any amount of gauze and Saxony; and to a fustian audience 

 (but to that only) I would willingly give some when I come to 

 Tenby. 



The corresponding movement set going by F. D. 

 Maurice also claimed his interest, and in 1857 he gave his 



