several courses of lectures, scientific, political, miscellaneous, and even some purely literary, which were well attended.  Some lectures on Shakespeare were crowded; and even I found much indulgence in reading, last winter, some Biographical Lectures, which were meant for theories or portraits of Luther, Michelangelo, Milton, George Fox, Burke.  These courses are really given under the auspices of Societies, as “Natural History Society,” “Mechanics’ Institutes,” “Diffusion of 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.

-----------
* 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.
-------------

But the subject, you say, does not yet define itself.  Whilst it is “gathering to a god,” we who wait will only say, that we know enough here of Goethe and Schiller to have some interest in German literature.  A respectable German here, Dr. Follen, has given lectures to a good class upon Schiller.  I am quite sure that Goethe’s name would now stimulate the curiosity of scores of persons.  On English literature, a much larger class would have some preparedness.  But whatever topics you might choose, I need not say you must leave under them scope for your narrative and pictorial powers; yes, and space to let out all the length of all the reins of your eloquence of moral sentiment.  What “Lay Sermons” might you not preach! or methinks “Lectures on Europe” were a sea big enough for you to swim in.  The only condition our adolescent ear insists upon is, that the English as it is spoken by the unlearned shall be the bridge between our teacher and our tympanum.