PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITHSON ? S BEQUEST. 885 



In a work which he unquestionably thought of the deepest 

 importance to the human race, and instead of acting in rival- 

 ship it will be acting in unison and harmony with our estab- 

 lished colleges. 



I would, therefore, found it as a school of physical science, 

 giving an elaborate course of mathematical instruction. 

 Commencing at the point where our higher universities close, 

 1 would give it a perfect apparatus, good cabinets, and 

 gradually a respectable library. Proceeding in the work 

 of expanding it slowly, it should as encouragement was 

 given or opportunity served, be furnished with a botanical 

 garden, an observatory, a zoological institute, or analogous 

 means for prosecuting in a proper way the great sciences of 

 .astronomy and general physiology. 



Now mark, sir, the result of this. "We are the residents 

 of a great continent, which is bursting into life. Upon us, 

 and our immediate descendants, has devolved the duty 

 of developing on a scale hitherto unknown in this world 

 the resources of the giant empire, which is going to stretch 

 from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean. The men are now 

 born who will hear the loud snort of the locomotive in the 

 deserts beyond the Rocky Mountains. No system of educa- 

 tion that has ever yet been tried will meet our wants. We 

 want means for the rapid development of all our powers 

 means for the rapid development of all our resources. The 

 soil beneath us teems with wealth; our population is increas- 

 ing beyond all example; we are men of enterprise and energy, 

 living in a period of the earth's history unlike any that has 

 preceded, when the force of intellect is fast supplanting all 

 other powers, and under a government the constitution of 

 which has no example. To a nation like us ignorance is 

 death; the loss of virtue, annihilation. We are trying to 

 unite interests of the most diverse and jarring, and to bind 

 in one bond of union the hot and fiery disposition of the 

 man living within the tropic with the cold calculating in- 

 habitant of the Green Mountains. But men of all climates 

 are not men of one mind; their character is moulded by the 

 things passing around them ; it takes a stamp from the scenes 

 of early life, an impress from nature. The Italians, under 

 all their changes of government, are continually the same 

 people. Overcome, trodden down, trampled under foot, 

 there is an elastic resiliency that forever bears them up 

 again. It matters not what public calamities betide them, 

 or what national woes are stored up for them in the womb 

 of time, another Volta will reveal the mysteries of nature, 

 another Canova will breathe the breath of life into the mar- 



