The Begin niiigs of American Science. 421 



Doctor Hugh Williamson [1>. December 5, 1735; d. in New York 

 May 22, 1 7 19] was a prominent but not particularly useful promoter of 

 science, a writer rather than a thinker. His work has already been 

 referred to. The names of Maclure, who came to Philadelphia about 

 1797, the Rev. John Heckewelder, and Albert Gallatin [b. 1761, d. in 

 1849], a native of Switzerland, a statesman and financier, subsequently 

 identified with the scientific circles of New York, complete the list of the 

 Philadelphia savants of the last century. 



There is not in all American literature a passage which illustrates the 

 peculiar tendencies in the thought of this period so thoroughly as Jeffer- 

 son's defense of the country against the charges of Buff on and Raynal, 

 which he published in 1783, which is particularly entertaining because 

 of its almost pettish depreciation of our motherland. 



On doit etre etoniie [says Rajnial] que PAiiienqtie n'ait pas encore produit 

 un bon poete, un habile mathematicien, un honinie de genie dans un seixl art, ouune 

 seule science. 



When we shall have existed as a people as long as the Greeks did before they 

 produced a Homer, the Romans a Virgil, the French a Racine and Voltaire, the Eng- 

 lish a Shakespeare and Milton, should this reproach be still true, we will inquire 

 from what unfriendly causes it has proceeded, that the other countries of Europe 

 and quarters of the earth shall not have inscribed any name in the role of poets. 



In war we have produced a Washington, whose memory will in future ages assume 

 its just station among the most celebrated worthies of the world, when that wretched 

 philosophy shall be forgotten which would have arranged him among the degenera- 

 cies of nature. 



In physics we have produced a Franklin, than whom no one of the present age 

 has made more important discoveries, nor has enriched philosophy with more, or 

 more ingenious solutions of the phenomena of nature. 



We have supposed Mr. Rittenhouse second to no astronomer living; that in genius 

 he must be the first, because he is self-taught. He has not indeed made a world; 

 but he has by imitation approached nearer its Maker than any man who has lived 

 from the creation to this day. There are various ways of keeping the truth out of 

 sight. Mr. Rittenhouse's model of the planetary system has the plagiary appellation 

 of an orrery; and the quadrant invented by Godfrey, an American also, and with the 

 aid of which the European nations traverse the globe, is called Hadley's quadrant. 



We calculate thus : The United States contain three millions of inhabitants; France 

 twenty millions; and the British Islands ten. We produce a Washington, a Frank- 

 lin, a Rittenhouse. France then should have half a dozen in each of these lines, 

 and Great Britain half that niimber, equally eminent. It may be true that France 

 has; we are but just becoming acquainted with her, and our acquaintance so far 

 gives us high ideas of the genius of her inhabitants. 



The present war having so long cut off all communication with Great Britain, we 

 are not able to make a fair estimate of the state of science in that countr}-. The 

 spirit in which she wages war is the only sample before our eyes, and that does not 

 seem the legitimate offspring either of science or of civilization. The sun of her 

 glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her philosophy has crossed the channel, her 

 freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful di.ssolution whose 

 issue is not given human foresight to scan." 



This was one phase of public sentiment. Another, no less instructive, 

 ' Notes on the State of Virginia, 1788, pp. 69-71. 



