THE GENESIS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. 329 



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

 the Cabinet proving*- to l)e friendly. 



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

 hall in the Patent Oftice, an apartment which now came to be known 

 properly as "The National Institute" — a iiame wliicli it retained until 

 the hall was finally dismantle*!. 



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

 in 1849, has left a record of his impressions of the capital city — at 

 that time still very crude and unfinished. ''All that meets the gaze 

 in Washington, except the Capitol and the De])artments, seems 

 temporary," he wrote. ''The city appears like the site of an encamp- 

 ment, as if it were more adapted for a bivouack 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 

 establishments, as yet in endjryo, sea-quailrupeds from the Arctic zone, 

 birds of rare plumage, the coat in which Jackson fought at New Or- 

 leans, the rifle of an fmlian chief, plants, fossils, shells and corals, mum- 

 mies, trophies, Inists, and relics, typify iuiidequately 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 liim father," the slowly- 

 rising walls of the Smithsonian Institution, the vacant panels of the 

 rotunda, the sculi»tured defornuties on the eastern front of the Capitol, 

 and the very coin, tVeslil>- minted from California gold, awaken that 

 painful sense of the incomplete, or that almost perplexing conscious- 

 ness 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 meudiers, 

 gained courage and [)roceeded to revise its constitution and by- 

 laws to vote to print a quarto volume annually, to be entitled "The 

 Transactions of the National lnstitute,"t and to memorialize Con- 

 gress for financial aid, and to otier its services to tlie (lovernment 

 "as a referee in matters which involve scientilic knowledge and investi- 

 gation." 



In 1850, at tlie reipiest of the Secretary of State, the Institute under- 

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

 twenty-one members to pass ui)on aiticles jnoposed 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 tluMr 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. 236-40. Richmond, Apiil, 1849. 



t This series was never begun. 



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

 Proeeediuffs in octavo in 18o5-'57. 



