XXVIII REPORT ON THE HENRY STATUE. 



It is important to notice that this work of preparation was neither 

 hasty nor superficial. He did not rush with reckless impetuosity within 

 the temple, nor leap with a bound to the footsteps of the altar. He 

 mastered the geometry, without which Plato admitted no man even to 

 the vestibule of science. He became familiar with the Calculus, as the 

 magic spell by which to interpret her inner mysteries. Experiments 

 with that wondrous chemistry which was then at its most brilliant stage 

 of promise and performance fascinated and quickened his imagination 

 and his intellect. Each forward step was taken in orderly succession, 

 though each single step was the stride of a giant. 



At the age of twenty-eight we find him a professor in the Albany 

 Academy, of which he had been a graduate, charged with the work of 

 teaching several hours every day, and tasking himself with burning 

 zeal over every possible inquiry in chemistry and physics. As we have 

 said already, it was in the brilliant dawn of modern chemistry. As 

 this new science steadily rose above the horizon, one new discovery 

 after another flashed its light toward the zenith and indicated its up- 

 ward path of triumph. In its train appeared those new and mysterious 

 agencies which were then just beginning to fix the attention and to task 

 the analysis of the oldest and the newest discoverer. To these novel 

 phenomena the young Professor Henry devoted his special attention, 

 and soon astonished the world by achievements which first awakened 

 the excitement of bewildered wonder, to convert it into the homage of 

 amazed conviction. There was nothing to be said when, as the plunger 

 went down into its bath, the impotent bar of iron became possessed of 

 a giant's strength, and could pick up and hold a weight of more than a 

 solid ton, and as the same plunger was lifted this gigantic energy van- 

 ished as at the word of an enchanter. The speaker well remembers the 

 excitement which this discovery occasioned when the first experiment 

 was tried at Yale college, in presence of a few spectators who casually met 

 at the call of Professor Silliman, who was glowing with animation and 

 delight. The ponderous platform was loaded with pig-iron and other 

 heavy weights, with a few slight additions of living freight. Among 

 the last was the speaker, being the lightest of all, and therefore con- 

 venient to serve on the sliding scale. It is more than fifty years ago, 

 but the scene is as vivid as the events of yesterday. The question went 

 around, " Who is Professor Henry, and how did it happen that nature 

 revealed to him one of her choicest secrets'?" Thoughtful men asked, 

 "What is this wondrous Protean force which he was the first to follow 

 in its sinuous hiding places and evoke by a magician's wand; and 

 what are its relations to its kindred agents, and, above all, to the mat- 

 ter about us, which we can measure and weigh and see and handle?" 

 Others asked the still more important question, "How came the dis- 

 coverer to surmise its mysterious capacities and to penetrate to the 

 laws of its action?" To some it seemed but a successful guess by a 

 daring adventurer, a happy hit by a rude fumbler among nature's tools, 



