To this method of lecturing Dr. Black rigidly adhered, endeavouring every year to make his courses more plain and familiar, and illustrating them by a greater variety of examples in the way of experiment. No man could perform these more neatly or successfully; they were always ingeniously and judiciously contrived, clearly establishing the point in view, and were never more complicated than was sufficient for the purpose. Nothing that had the least appearance of quackery; nothing calculated to surprise and astonish his audience; nothing savouring of a showman or sleight-of-hand man was ever permitted in his lecture-room. Every thing was simple, neat, and elegant, calculated equally to please and to inform: indeed simplicity and neatness stamped his character. It was this that constituted the charm of his lectures, and rendered them so delightful to his pupils. I can speak of them from experience, for I was fortunate enough to hear the last course of lectures which he ever delivered. I can say with perfect truth that I never listened to any lectures with so much pleasure as to his: and it was the elegant simplicity of his manner, the perfect clearness of his statements, and the vast quantity of information which he contrived in this way to communicate, that delighted me. I was all at once transported into a new world--my views were suddenly enlarged, and I looked down from a height which I had never before reached; and all this knowledge was communicated without any apparent effort either on the part of the professor or his pupils. His illustrations were just sufficient to answer completely the object in view, and nothing more. No quackery, no trickery, no love of mere dazzle and glitter, ever had the least influence upon his conduct. He constituted the most complete model of a perfect chemical lecturer that I have ever had an opportunity of witnessing.