140 Me})wrial of George Brozvn Goode. 



accepted the position of patron of the society, and some members of the 

 Cabinet proving to be friendly. 



About this time the society seems to have regained its control of the hall 

 in the Patent Office, an apartment which now came to be known properly 

 as The National Institute — a name which it retained until the hall was 

 finally dismantled. 



A visitor to Washington at the time of the inauguration of Taylor, 

 in 1849, has left a record of his impressions of the capital Q\\.y — at that 

 time still very crude and unfinished. "All that meets the gaze in Wash- 

 ington, except the Capitol and the Departments, seems temporary," he 

 wrote. "The city appears like the site of an encampment, as if it were 

 more adapted for a bivouac than a home," and then he goes on to 

 describe some of the principal characteristics of the city: 



In the National Institution, like nearly all of our scientific and literary establish- 

 ments, as yet in embryo, sea quadrupeds from the Arctic zone, birds of rare plumage, 

 the coat in which Jackson fought at New Orleans, the rifle of an Indian chief, plants, 

 fossils, shells and corals, mummies, trophies, busts, and relics, typify inadequately 

 natural science and bold adventure. . . . The foundation of the long-delayed mon- 

 ument to him of whom it has been so admirably said that "Providence made him 

 childless that his country might call him father," the slowly rising walls of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, the vacant panels of the rotunda, the sculptured deformi- 

 ties on the eastern front of the Capitol, and the very coin, freshly minted from Cali- 

 fornia gold, awaken that painful sense of the incomplete, or that almost perplexing 

 consciousness of the new, the progressive, and the unattained which is peculiar to 

 our country.' 



President Taylor placed in the custody of the Institute the Washing- 

 ton relics, and some other hopeful things occurred. The members gained 

 courage and proceeded to revise its constitution and by-laws, to vote to 

 print a quarto volume annually to be entitled ' ' The Transactions of the 

 National Institute,"" and to memorialize Congress for financial aid, and 

 to offer its services to the Government " as a referee in matters which 

 involve scientific knowledge and investigation." 



In 1850, at the request of the Secretary of State, the Institute under- 

 took the appointment of the "Central Authority," a committee of 

 21 members to pass upon articles proposed to be sent to the World's 

 Fair of 1851 in London. 



The needs of the Institute in 1850, as summed up in the Secretary's 

 report, were not extravagant — a medium of publication, a curator and 

 librarian, who were to be paid sufficient salaries to enable them to give 

 a considerable portion of their time to the work, new bindings for the 

 books, and more room for library and meetings.^ 



' 1849. Tuckerman, H. T. The Inauguration. The Southern Literary Messenger, 

 XV, pp. 236-240. Richmond, April, 1849. 



= This series was never begun. 



3 None of these, however, were realized, save for a short time the publication of 

 Proceedings in octavo in 1855-1857. 



