NOTICE BY PROF. J. LOVERING. 435 



appointed by Napoleon I. to a high office of state, attempted to 

 carry the laws of the infinitesimal calculus into his administration, 

 and failed. Not a few men of brilliant intellect, masters of thought 

 and of the pen, have prided themselves on a childlike simplicity in 

 the ways of the world. If Professor Henry had been one of these, 

 much would have been forgiven to his honesty of purpose, to his 

 love of truth, and to the success with which he had wooed her in 

 her most secret recesses. Therefore, it is not the least of his tri- 

 umphs that he did not, in imitation of an old astronomer, walk 

 into a pitfall on this lower earth while gazing into the depths of 

 space. He could roam with Emerson through the universe of 

 thought, but the feet of both were firmly planted on the ground. 

 Henry's judicious system of expenditures, so essential to the per- 

 manent prosperity of the Institution, put to shame the short-sighted- 

 ness and the short-comings of many professed financiers; and 

 exemplified, by anticipation, the magical products of the Holtz and 

 Ladd induction machines, in which a trifling capital of well-invested 

 electricity, the income of which is partly spent and partly saved, 

 yields an ample return for the present, and by the law of compound 

 interest secures still more brilliant results for the future. 



When Professor Henry left Princeton, he knew, and his friends 

 knew, that he must leave behind him the object of his highest 

 ambition, viz : the undisturbed and the unostentatious study of the 

 unfolding laws of the material universe. But he did not, and he 

 could not, renounce the spirit of independent research which had 

 made him what he was. As opportunity offered in the discharge 

 of his official duties he manifested this spirit himself, and communi- 

 cated it to others. His second report to the Board of Regents, for 

 1848, exhibits the promptness with which he had conceived, and 

 begun to execute, the project of covering the United States, and 

 eventually the North American continent, with a net -work of 

 meteorological stations, which, with the facilities of the telegraph, 

 yet in its infancy, would prove a perennial blessing to commerce 

 and agriculture ; and, by consolidating the scattered efforts of emi- 

 nent meteorologists, (among whom Coffin, Espy, Loomis, and Guyot 

 were conspicuous,) throw some light on the law of storms and 

 meteorology in general. In the Patent Office Report for 1857, he 



