PEOGRESS IN LECTURING 201 
May 9, 1845. 
My dear Harvey,— 999,999 congratulations on Van 
Voorst's happy appreciation of your algological properties : ^ 
10,000 I reserve for myself alone, some day : when I have 
as much reason to be as thankful as I sometimes tried to 
he for mercies vouchsafed in the old Erebus. I have 
positively nothing to say but to congratulate you. For 
my own part you may also extend to me a little gratulation 
on my beginning to feel the truest and most heartfelt pleasure 
in having come here, and in having come with no selfish 
object in view ; and in having overcome my modesty, i.e. 
metamorphosed it into modest assurance. ... I never 
felt so happy in being able to be useful, for Graham is as 
nearly helpless as possible, and though surrounded by friends, 
there are none who can help him in his class, garden business, 
examinations, and many other little things. 
To the Same 
May 30, 1845. 
As to lecturing, that now comes perfectly easy and 
natural to me, and I can spout an hour of gas, without notes 
even, by dint of desperate cramming : the fact is I found 
that human nature, i.e. my nature, could not stand the 
drudgery of writing out an hour's reading from day to day, 
so I took to the extempore preaching, and find that it answers 
to the students even better than to myself : they do seem 
here to dehght in generalities however false, if attractively 
delivered [i.e. without being read], and by dint of never 
losing an opportunity of comparing the vital phenomena 
of animals with those of vegetables (right or wrong) I can 
rivet their attention au merveille. I often think how I 
should blush to see what I speak in print. I often think 
how you would laugh to see and hear me gull the multitude, 
for they are like all other crow^ds. 
... I have picked up acquaintance here with a funny 
old fish who devotes himself to fossil Botany and has splendid 
specimens marvellously cut for the microscope, Nicoll, the 
great fossil cutter, who has a splendid cabinet of specimens 
of wood etc. I am really anxious to form a fossil Herb., it suits 
my generalities about the floras of byegone ages, so pray do 
^ I.e. in undertaking publication of his book. 
