ADDRESS OF PROF. S. NEWCOMB. 455 



ing knowledge or contributing to that wide diffusion of it which 

 Smithson provided for. True, it might indirectly contribute to 

 such diffusion by giving authors the means of preparing books: 

 but this assistance was of too indirect a character to justify the 

 appropriation of a large proportion of the Smithson funds to it. 

 Nearly the same objections applied to the museum. The objects 

 therein preserved were at first the property of the Government, 

 and the contributions to its increase would naturally come, for the 

 most part, from Government explorations. The explorations under- 

 taken on behalf of the Institution would naturally be only such 

 as, from their nature, would not be undertaken by the Govern- 

 ment, or such as were necessary to supplement the governmental 

 collections. 



That a gallery of art would neither increase nor diffuse knowledge 

 on the plan required by Smithson hardly needed argument. It 

 does not seem that any serious attempt was ever made to carry out 

 this part of the project on any .considerable scale. The Indian 

 portraits which constituted the principal part of the collection of 

 paintings were, the writer believes, the private property of Mr. 

 Stanley, the artist. 



Perhaps the project on which the Secretary looked with most dis- 

 favor was the building. The system of operations which he would 

 have preferred required little more than a modest suite of office 

 rooms. The expenditure of several hundred thousand dollars on 

 an architectural structure seemed to him an appropriation of the 

 funds to which he could give no active encouragement. In later 

 years one of the warnings he often gave to incipient institutions of 

 learning was not to spend more money in bricks and mortar than 

 was absolutely necessary for the commencement of operations, and 

 it can hardly be doubted that his sentiments in this direction had 

 their origin in his dissatisfaction with the large expenditure upon 

 the Smithsonian building. 



We must not be understood as saying that Henry antagonized 

 all these objects, considered them unworthy of any support from the 

 Smithsonian fund, or had any lack of appreciation of their intellec- 

 tual value. His own culture and mental activities had been of too 

 varied a character to admit of his forming any narrow view of the 



