from any eloquence in their delivery. Timid and bashful often to an
extreme, they ascend their rostrum with a shuffling, ambling gait, the
very opposite of manly grace and bearing, and, prefacing their
discourse with the short address, _"Meine Herren"_ keep on in one long,
never-varying, monotonous strain, from beginning to end,--reading wholly
or in part, often so slowly that the hearer can write down _every_ word,
often only the heads and substance of paragraphs, definitions and the
like,--and that so indistinctly, so carelessly of all but the very words
themselves, that it is not only unpleasant, at first, but even repulsive
to many. This dictating of every word, a relic of the times when
printing was yet unknown, is fast dying away. Many, both students and
professors, are loud against it, yet the tedious method is still pursued
in many places. The introductory remark of a celebrated lecturer is
characteristic. Seeing all his hearers, on the first day of the course,
ready with pen and paper, he began,--"Gentlemen, I will not dictate: if
that were necessary, I should send my maid-servant with my manuscript,
and you yours with pen and paper; my servant would dictate, yours would
write, and we in the mean while could enjoy a pleasant walk." This
is, however, not the only point that will be likely to produce an
unfavorable impression. To see a man whose name you have met in your
reading as the highest authority, whose works you have so often admired,
his style energetic, fiery, and impressive,--to see him ascend his
rostrum with every mark of negligence, uncouth and awkward in his
appearance, with every possible mannerism, talking through his nose,
indistinctly and unsteadily mumbling over his sentences, careless of all
outward form and polish, awakens anything but pleasant feelings, as the
preconceived ideal must give way to the living reality. And yet so it is
with many!

It may have contributed not a little to the reputation of Göttingen and