64 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
This Museum is a monument of public spirit in New York. We owe 
the rise of public spirit in this city and country to the war for the Union; 
that terrible experience brought men and women of all classes together in a 
closer sympathy, into a new and greater union. ‘Thus Lincoln was our 
prophet at Gettysburg when he said, “‘This nation under God shall have a 
new birth of freedom.” As will be fully told by the historian of the day, the 
inspiration to build a free museum for the people of this city came to us 
through Albert S. Bickmore. Under his scientific guidance and that of 
Daniel Giraud Elliot the right direction was taken. Both of these men are 
happily with us in this hall to-day. 
The Founders of 1869, whose names have recently been inscribed on 
yonder wall, voiced the public spirit of their day. New York was a rela- 
tively small and relatively poor city. It was before the era of the great 
captains of industry, of the single-handed patrons of art, science and educa- 
tion. Nor were there any models on which to draw the lines or to take the 
scale; there was no British Museum of Natural History, there was no 
National Museum of the United States. We marvel the more at the audacity 
of ‘Trustees who conceived a museum so great and who in 1874 approved a 
general plan larger than that of any building in the world even to the present 
day, larger than the Escorial of Spain or the National Capitol of Washington. 
It crowns this commemoration that four of the originators of the Museum 
are with us,— two of its scientific advisors, two of its Founders. If I were 
asked which of the Founders contributed most to administration and develop- 
ment I would say unquestionably Mr. Jesup, Mr. Morgan and Mr. Choate. 
Of the splendid services of our late President is it not delightful that his 
colleague for thirty-nine years, Mr. Choate himself, is here to speak ? 
Our two Founders, mirabile dictu, are as young as or younger than they 
were forty years ago. If youth is measured by energy, by productiveness, 
by patriotism, these Founders are two of the very youngest men in the City 
of New York, as each day brings forth fresh, surprising and ever welcome 
proofs. Who among the so-called younger generation can equal Mr. 
Morgan, who has quietly and almost unknown to the public sustained the 
successive administrations of Wolfe, Stuart and Jesup, with his loyalty, 
his time, his advice, his noble gifts, and who stands behind the present 
administration with undiminished force and generosity ? 
Are not our very bones founded in the law? In the early years Mr. 
Choate rendered incomparable and lasting service, not only to the two 
museums but also to the City, in laying down our charter relative to that 
union of public and private responsibility and beneficence which has been 
the model on which all the other institutions of the kind in this City have 
been founded. ‘This union has proved by experience to be perfect, for it has 
