women do in other
places that are wicked; but lecturing is the favourite diversion of
the steady-minded Bostonian. After all, I do not know that the result
is very good. It does not seem that much will be gained by such
lectures on either side of the Atlantic,--except that respectable
killing of an evening which might otherwise be killed less
respectably. It is but an industrious idleness, an attempt at a royal
road to information, that habit of attending lectures. Let any man or
woman say what he has brought away from any such attendance. It is
attractive, that idea of being studious without any of the labour
of study; but I fear it is illusive. If an evening can be so passed
without ennui, I believe that that may be regarded as the best result
to be gained. Butthen it so often happens that the evening is not
passed without ennui! Of course in saying this, I am not alluding
to lectures given in special places as a course of special study.
Medical lectures, no doubt, are a necessary part of medical
education. As many as two or three thousand often attend these
popular lectures in Boston, but I do not know whether on that account
the popular subjects are much better understood. Nevertheless I
resolved to hear more, hoping that I might in that way teach myself
to understand what were the popular politics in New England. Whether
or no I may have learned this in any other way I do not perhaps know;
but at any rate I did not learn it in this way.

The next lecture which I attended was also given in