Useful Knowledge," &c., &c., and the fee to the lecturer is
inconsiderable, usually $20 for each lecture. But in a few
instances individuals have undertaken courses of lectures, and
have been well paid. Dr. Spurzheim* received probably $3,000 in
the few months that he lived here. Mr. Silliman, a Professor of
Yale College, has lately received something more than that for a
course of fifteen or sixteen lectures on Geology. Private
projects of this sort are, however, always attended with a degree
of uncertainty. The favor of my townsmen is often sudden and
spasmodic, and Mr. Silliman, who has had more success than ever
any before him, might not find a handful of hearers another
winter. But it is the opinion of many friends whose judgment I
value, that a person of so many claims upon the ear and
imagination of our fashionable populace as the "author of the
_Life of Schiller,_" "the reviewer of _Burns's Life,_" the live
"contributor to the _Edinburgh_ and _Foreign_ Reviews," nay, the
"worshipful Teufelsdrockh," the "personal friend of Goethe,"
would, for at least one season, batter down opposition, and
command all ears on whatever topic pleased him, and that, quite
independently of the merit of his lectures, merely for so many
names' sake.

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* The memory of Dr. Spurzheim has faded, but his name is still
known to men of science on both sides of the Atlantic as that of
the most ardent and accomplished advocate of the doctrine of
Phrenology. He came to the United States in 1832 to advance the
cause he had at heart, but he had been only a short time in the
country when he died at Boston of a fever.
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