in Hollis Street Church "Starr King was not thought to be what a teacher
of Boston Unitarianism ought to be. He was regarded rather as a florid
platform speaker, one interested in the crude and restless attempts at
reform which sober men distrusted." Another reviewer mingles praise and
criticism quite ingeniously. "He astonishes and charms his hearers by a
rare mastery over sentences. He is a skilful word-marshal. Hence his
popularity as a lyceum lecturer. However much of elegant leisure the
more solid and instructive lecturers may have, Mr. King is always
wanted. He is, in some respects, the most popular writer and preacher of
the two denominations which he equally represents, being a sort of soft
ligament between the Chang of Universalism and the Eng of Unitarianism."

This last criticism invites us to notice - all too briefly - a phase of
King's experience in New England fitting him most admirably for the
larger work he was to do on the Pacific Coast. From 1840 to 1860 the
Lyceum flourished in the United States as never before or since. Large
numbers of lecture courses, extending even to the small cities and
towns, were liberally patronized and generously supported. In many
communities this was the one diversion and the one extravagance. To fill
the new demand an extraordinary group of public speakers appeared;
Emerson, Edward Everett, Wendell Phillips, Dr. Chapin, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, George William Curtis, Henry Ward Beecher, Frederick Douglas,
Theodore Parker and others, whose names are reverently spoken to this
day by aged men and women who remember the uplift given them in youth by
these giants of the platform.

That he was always wanted with such rivals as those is proof enough of
King's power with the people, of his fame as an orator, even before his
greater development and his more wonderful achievements in California.
His lecture circuit extended from Boston to Chicago. His principal