WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS. 435 



in its prospects, and so complete in its details, that it overshadows all 

 else. A great preacher has said that " every man's life is a plan of 

 God's." The faithful workman can only make the best use of the 

 opportunities which every day offers ; but he may be confident that 

 work faithfully done will not be for naught, and must trustingly leave 

 the issue to a higher jxtwer. Liltle did young Rogers think, when 

 he began to teach in Virginia, that he was to be the founder of a great 

 institution in the State of Massachusetts ; and yet we can now see 

 that the whole work of his life was a preparation for this noble destiny. 

 The very eloquence he so early acquired was to be his great tool ; his 

 work on the Geological Survey gave him a national reputation which 

 was an essential condition of success ; his life at the University of 

 Viiginia, where he was untrammelled by the traditions of the older 

 universities, enabled him to mature the practical methods of scientific 

 teachiuii which were to commend the future institution to a workings 

 community ; and, most of all, the force of character and large human- 

 ity developed by his varied experience with the world were to give 

 him the power, even in the conservative State of his late adoption, W 

 mould legislators and men of affairs to his wise designs. 



It would be out of place, as it would be unnecessary, to dwell in 

 this connection on the various stages in the development of the Insti- 

 tute of Teclinorogy. Tlie facts are very generally known in this com- 

 munity, and the story has been already well told. The conception 

 was by no means a sudden inspiration, but was slowly matured out 

 of a far more general and less specific plan, originating in a com- 

 mittee of large-minded citizens of Boston, who in 1859, and again 

 in 1860, petitioned the legislature of Massach\xsetts to set apart a 

 small portion of the land reclaimed from the Back Bay " for the use 

 of such scientific, industrial, and fine arX institutions as may associate 

 together for the public good." The large scheme failed ; but from the 

 failure arose two institutions' which are the honor and pride of Bos- 

 ton, — the Museum of Fine Arts and the Institute of Technology. In 

 the further development of the Museum of Fine Arts Professor Rogers 

 had only a secondary influence ; but one of his memorials to the legis- 

 lature contains a most eloquent statement, often quoted, of the value 

 of the fine arts in education, which attests at once the breadth of his 

 culture and the largeness of his sympathies. 



Although the committee of gentlemen above referred to had failed 

 to carry out their general plan, yet the discussions to which it gave 

 rise had developed such an interest in the establishment of an institu- 

 tion to be devoted to industrial science and education that they deter- 



