interest, but, not being connected with our previous
instruction, took little hold upon us. As to natural science,
we had in chemistry and geology, doubtless, the best
courses then offered in the United States. The first was
given by Benjamin Silliman, the elder, an American pioneer
in science, and a really great character; the second,
by James Dwight Dana, and in his lecture-room one felt
himself in the hands of a master. I cannot forgive myself
for having yielded to the general indifference of the
class toward all this instruction. It was listlessly heard,
and grievously neglected. The fault was mainly our own;
--but it was partly due to ``The System,'' which led
students to neglect all studies which did not tell upon
``marks'' and ``standing.''

Strange to say, there was not, during my whole course
at Yale, a lecture upon any period, subject, or person in
literature, ancient or modern:--our only resource, in this
field, being the popular lecture courses in the town each
winter, which generally contained one or two presentations
of literary subjects. Of these, that which made the
greatest impression upon me was by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Sundry lectures in my junior year, by Whipple, and
at a later period by George William Curtis, also influenced
me. It was one of the golden periods of English literature,
the climax of the Victorian epoch;--the period of
Wordsworth, Tennyson, and the Brownings, of Thackeray
and Dickens, of Macaulay and Carlyle on one side
of the Atlantic, and of Emerson, Irving, Hawthorne, Ban-
croft, Prescott, Motley, Lowell, Longfellow, Horace