ADDRESS OF PROF. A. GRAY. 57 



Albany Academy, earning the means at one time by teaching a 

 country district school, later by serving as tutor to the sons of Gen- 

 eral STEPHEN VAN RENSSELAER the patroon. Then he took the 

 direction of a road-survey across the southern portion of the State, 

 from West Point to Lake Erie, earning a little money and much 

 credit. He returned to Albany Academy as an assistant teacher, 

 but was very soon, in 1828, appointed professor of mathematics. 

 He had already chosen his field, and began to make physical inves- 

 tigations. 



It is worth noticing that just when HENRY'S youthful resolution 

 to devote his life to the acquisition of knowledge was ready to bear 

 fruit, another resolve was made, in England, by another scientific 

 investigator, JAMES SMITHSON, in his will, executed in October, 

 1828, wherein he devoted his patrimony "TO FOUND AT WASH- 

 INGTON AN ESTABLISHMENT FOR THE INCREASE AND DIFFUSION 

 OF KNOWLEDGE AMONG MEN." Who could have thought that the 

 poor lad, who resolved to seek for knowledge as for hid treasure, 

 and the rich man of noble lineage, who resolved that his treasure 

 should increase and diffuse knowledge, would ever stand in this 

 interesting relation ; that the one would direct and shape the estab- 

 lishment which the other willed to be founded ! 



The young professor's position was an honorable but most 

 laborious one. Although Albany Academy was said by the distin- 

 guished president of Union College in those days to be "a college 

 in disguise," it began its work low down. Its new professor of 

 mathematics had to teach seven hours of every day, and for half 

 of this time to drudge with a large class of boys in the elements 

 of arithmetic. But he somehow found time to carry on systemat- 

 ically the electro-magnetic researches which he had already begun. 

 In the very year of his appointment, 1828, he described in the 

 Transactions of the Albany Institute a new application of the 

 galvanic multiplier, and throughout that year and the two next he 



