866 JOSEPH HENRY. 



All three served their country well, — Franklin and Henry while living, 

 and Rumford by his bequests. Winthrop, Rittenhouse, and Bowditch 

 reached their exalted position by paths wholly untrodden by Henry. 

 They cannot, therefore, be the standard for his measure. Rumford's 

 mind was essentially practical, even in its science. He had more of 

 the spirit of an inventor than a discoverer. In Heury's place he would 

 have been more interested in pushing the telegraph to its final issue 

 than in supplementing Faraday's laws of electro-dynamical induction. 

 But in dealing with the heat of friction, Rumford displayed an experi- 

 mental skill aud a boldness of conception which have vindicated his 

 claim to a high scientific position. The progress of recent discovery 

 and the tendency of scientific speculation have promoted Rumford from 

 the position which he long held, as leader of a forlorn hope, to the 

 place of hero in the last act of the scientific drama. In this connection 

 Henry's views on the correlation of the physical and organic forces may 

 be recalled, which only lacked the fuller development and the wider 

 publication which he finally gave to them, to have secured for him the 

 first complete announcement of one of the grandest generalizations of 

 modern science. 



It might seem to be easy to institute a comparison between Franklin 

 and Henry in reference to the value of their original scientific work, 

 which was largely in the field of electricity. But a century has made 

 great changes in the starting-point, the opportunities, and the resources 

 of the discoverer. Franklin, with humble tools, had a virgin soil to 

 cultivate. He had also the rare felicity, for which Newton also was 

 envied, of living at a time when the scattered facts of a new science 

 were waiting for a comprehensive generalization. If Franklin had 

 made no experiments on the Leyden jar, or on the thunder-cloud, his 

 theory of electricity, which has held its own to this day without any 

 amendment (though its final doom is written upon it), would have 

 secured for him a place second to no other among the worthies of 

 science. Now the instruments of physical research are numerous and 

 delicate ; but useless unless the senses are educated to them. The 

 literature of science is voluminous and in many languages. Success in 

 scientific investigations demands now original thought, disciplined 

 senses, scientific culture, and a well-chosen field, where the discoveries 

 of other men will not be repeated. Both Franklin and Henry burned 

 brightly in their allotted spheres, and in the future may differ only as 

 one star differs from another star in glory. 



The funeral services on May 16, 1878, proclaimed to the world that 

 the republic had lost an illustrious citizen. There was no hollow 



