434 WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS. 



beautiful optical proof of the discontinuity of the singing hydrogen 

 flame. 



lu 1861 Professor Kogers accepted from Governor Andrew the 

 office of Inspector of Gas and Gas-Meters for the State of Massachu- 

 setts, and organized a system of inspection in which he aimed to apply 

 the latest scientific knowiedo;e to this work ; and in a visit he again 

 made to Europe in 18G4 he presented, at the meeting of the British 

 Association at Bath, a paper entitled " An Account of Apparatus and 

 Processes for Chemical and Photometrical Testing of Illuminating 

 Gas." 



During this period he gave several courses of lectures before the 

 Lowell Institute of Boston, which were listened to with the greatest 

 enthusiasm, and served very greatly to extend Professor Rogers's repu- 

 tation ill this community. Night after night, ci'owded audiences, con- 

 sisting chiefly of teachers and working-people, were spellbound by his 

 wonderful power of exposition and illustration. There was a great 

 deal more in Professor Rogers's presentation of a subject than felicity 

 of expression, beauty of language, choice of epithets, or significance of 

 gesture. He had a power of marshalling facts, and bringing them all 

 to bear on the point he desired to illustrate, which rendered the rela- 

 tions of his subject as clear as day. In listening to this powerful ora- 

 tory one only felt that it might have had, if not a more useful, still a 

 more ambitious aim ; for less power has moved senates and determined 

 the destinies of empires. 



The interest in Professor Rogers's lectures was not excited solely, 

 however, by the charm of his eloquence ; for, although such was the 

 felicity of his presentations, and such the vividness of his descriptions, 

 that he could often dispense with the material aids so essential to most 

 teachers, yet when the means of illustration were at his command he 

 showed his power quite as much in the adaptation of experiments as in 

 the choice of language. He well knew that experiments, to be effect- 

 ive, must be simple and to the point; and he also knew how to im- 

 press his audience with the beauty of the phenomena and with the 

 grandeur of the powers of nature. He always seemed to enjoy any 

 elegant or striking illustration of a physical principle even more than 

 his auditors, and it was delightful to see the enthusiasm which he 

 felt over the simplest phenomena of science when presented in a 

 novel way. 



We come now to the crowning and greatest work of Professor 

 Rogers's life, the founding of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology, — an achievement so important in its results, so far-reaching 



