TWENTY-EIGHTH CONGRESS, 1843-45. 311 



You might collect some few students in the District and 

 the borders of the adjacent States ; but for any purpose of 

 wide utility the school would be no more felt than so much 

 sunshine on the poles. Meantime here would be your pro- 

 fessors, their salaries running on, your books, and appa- 

 ratus, and edifices', a show of things — a pretty energetic 

 diffusing of the fund, not much diffusion of knowledge. 



I shall venture, then, to move to strike out all those parts 

 of the bill which indicate the particular mode in which the 

 bequest is to be applied to the increase and diffusion of 

 knowledge. I except the provision for experiments in seeds 

 and plants, on which I will say a word hereafter. If this 

 motion prevails the whole question will recur : What shall 

 we do with the fund ? 



It has seemed to me that there are two applications of it 

 which may just now meet with favor. 



In the first place, to begin with the least important, I 

 adopt, with some raodifiations, the suggestion in the bill 

 that lectures be delivered in this city for two or three 

 months during every session of Congress. These lectures 

 should be delivered not by professors permanently fixed 

 here, upon annual salaries, to do nothing in the recess of 

 Congress, or to do nothing that cannot be as well done at 

 one hundred and fifty other places, but by gentlemen emi- 

 nent in science and literature, holding situations elsewhere, 

 and coming hither under the stimulations and with the 

 ambition of a special and conspicuous retainer. They 

 might be professors of colleges, men of letters, persons dis- 

 tinguished in the professions, or otherwise. Names will 

 occur to you all which I need not mention ; and their lec- 

 tures should be adapted to their audiences. Who would 

 their audiences be ? Members of Congress with their fam- 

 ilies, members of the Government with theirs, some inhab- 

 itants of this city, some few strangers who occasionally 

 honor us with visits of curiosity or business. They would 

 bo public men, of mature years and minds; educated, dis- 

 ciplined to some degree, of lil^eral curiosity, and appreci- 

 ation of generous and various knowledge. Such vv^ould be 

 the audience. The lectures should be framed accordingly. 

 I do not think they should be confined to three or four 

 physical sciences in their applications to the arts of life — 

 navigation, useful or hurtful insects and animals, the ventil- 

 lation of rooms, or the smoking of chimneys. This is 

 knowledge, to be sure; but it is not all knowledge, nor 

 half of it, nor the best of it. Why should not such an 

 audience hear something of the philosophy of history, of 



