ADDRESS OF PROF. S. XEWCOMB. 467 



opening hi- eyes, among the lir-t questions he asked was whether 

 the transit of Mercury had been successfully observed and theappro- 

 priation for observing the coming total eclipse secured. He was 

 then gradually sinking, and died at noon on May 13, 1878. 



A mere sketch, like the foregoing, of the lines of activity followed 

 out by our late President, gives no adequate idea cither of his mental 

 force or of his public services. The contributions to science of an 

 American of the last few generations afford an entirely insufficient 

 standard of judgment, though it is a standard which writers arc 



JO 



prone to adopl as if if were the only one. Weareapt to forget that 

 science is a plant of cultivation which rarely or never flourishes in 

 a state of isolation, and reaches full fruition only when it can absorb 

 into its own growth the fertile ideas of many associated mind-. 

 Leaving out a few powerful intellects who started our modern system 

 of investigating nature, a high development of the scientific spirit 

 has been attained only by a communion of ideas through the medium 

 of academies, institution-, and journals. We may pronounce it an 

 entire illusion to suppose that a professor in one of our ordinary 

 American colleges, without personal contact with men engaged in 

 similar pursuits, and without access to the publications in which 

 foreign investigators publish their researches, can permanently take 

 a leading position in any branch of investigation. If it shall appear 

 that Henry's contributions to electricity were less numerous and 

 brilliant than those of Faraday, let us consider not simply the 

 immensely wider field of Henry's intellectual and public activity, 

 but the different situations of the two men. The one occupied the 

 focus of the intellectual metropolis of the world, commanding at 

 pleasure of every sort of apparatus which money could purchase or 

 art produce, and was surrounded by an admiring crowd of the elite 

 of society, eagerly hearing of his every discovery and listening 

 attentively to all his utterances. The other was, during his early 

 prime, an overworked instructor, almost out of the reach of the 

 great treasures of foreign scientific literature, and with none of the 

 advantages enjoyed by his great competitor. 



Another circumstance not to be lost sight of is that Henry, in 

 obedience to one of the great principles of his life, voluntarily 



