432 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



the Collegio Romano, distinguished as the foster-brother of Victor 

 Emmanuel, but more as the gifted expounder of solar physics, owed 

 his first inspiration in science, in his youth, (for he died in 1878, at 

 the age of fifty-nine,) to Henry, whom he assisted in these experi- 

 ments. Doubtless, other young men, if they could be heard, would 

 confess to an equal enthusiasm for science, caught from the same 

 high example. But the multitudinous productions which issued in 

 rapid succession from the prolific brain and pen of Secchi, without 

 the adventitious reinforcement of imaginary cases, justify and 

 demand the assertion that what Henry led others to do is second 

 only in importance to what he did himself. 



More than fifty years ago, a little book was published under the 

 fascinating title of " Philosophy in Sport made Science in Earnest." 

 Of the many ingenious, complex, and costly instruments of research, 

 has any one been richer in its revelations to science than the child's 

 soap-bubble ? But where the child saw only an evanescent display 

 of colors, Newton read with mathematical clearness his celebrated 

 theory of fits of easy transmission and reflection, and Young mea- 

 sured the constants of the undulations of light. To-day, the micro- 

 scopic molar or molecular motions of the telephone-plate are trans- 

 lated into visible speech by the colors of a sympathetic film of 

 liquid in the phoneidoscope. In 1844, Henry experimented with 

 this every ready minister to the delight and instruction of all ages, 

 so beautiful but apparently so tender, and found that its cohesion 

 and its contractile force were those of a giant if its own thinness 

 were made the standard of measure. Thus was opened an avenue 

 into the study of molecular action which Plateau has extended and 

 embellished with the most varied and original experiments, not 

 disheartened by the total loss of eyesight: finding by the way a 

 beautiful experimental illustration of the cosmogony of La Place, 

 and building architectural forms out of liquid films as if they had 

 the cohesion of marble. 



When, at the close of 1846, Professor Henry left the quiet walks 

 of the Academy for a more public career in Washington, in obedi- 

 ence to the summons of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 

 though all applauded the wisdom of the choice, not a few regretted 

 the sad interruption in his scientific life, already rich in performance 



