This simplicity of form and language was especially adapted to the audience he had now to address, little instructed in the facts or the nomenclature of science, though characterized by an eager curiosity. A word respecting the quality of the Lowell Institute audience of those days, as new to the European professor as he to them, is in place here. The institution was intended by its founder to fertilize the general mind rather than to instruct the selected few. It was liberally endowed, the entrance was free, and the tickets were drawn by lot. Consequently the working men and women had as good an opportunity for places as their employers. As the remuneration, however, was generous, and the privilege of lecturing there was coveted by literary and scientific men of the first eminence, the instruction was of a high order, and the tickets, not to be had for money, were as much in demand with the more cultivated and even with the fashionable people of the community as with their poorer neighbors. This audience, composed of strongly contrasted elements and based upon purely democratic principles, had, from the first, a marked attraction for Agassiz. A teacher in the widest sense, he sought and found his pupils in every class. But in America for the first time did he come into contact with the general mass of the people on this common ground, and it influenced strongly his final resolve to remain in this country. Indeed, the secret of his greatest power was to be found in the sympathetic, human side of his character. Out of his broad humanity grew the genial personal influence, by which he awakened the enthusiasm of his audiences for unwonted themes, inspired his students to disinterested services like his own, delighted children in the school-room, and won the cordial interest as well as the cooperation in the higher aims of science, of all classes whether rich or poor. His first course was to be given in December. Having, therefore, a few weeks to spare, he made a short journey, stopping at New Haven to see the elder Silliman, with whom he had long been in correspondence. Shortly before leaving Europe he had written him, "I can hardly tell you with what pleasure I look forward to seeing you, and making the personal acquaintance of the distinguished savans of your country, whose works I have lately been studying with especial care. There is something captivating in the prodigious activity of the Americans, and the thought of contact with the superior men of your young and glorious republic renews my own youth." Some account of this journey, including his first impressions of the scientific men as well as the scientific societies and collections of the United States, is given in the following letter. It is addressed to his mother, and with her to a social club of intimate friends and neighbors in Neuchatel, at whose meetings he had been for years an honored guest. BOSTON, December, 1846.