438 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



as was Henry, at least in what relates to their higher education. Of 

 these, Franklin and Rumford, no less than Henry, were as remark- 

 able in administration as in science; Franklin and Rumford from 

 taste, and Henry from a sense of duty. All three served their 

 country well, Franklin and Henry while living, and Rumford by 

 his bequests. Winthrop, Rittenhouse, and Bowditch reached their 

 exalted position by paths wholly untrodden by Henry. They can- 

 not therefore be the standard for his measure. Rumford's mind 

 was essentially practical, even in its science. He had more of the 

 spirit of an inventor than a discoverer. In Henry's place he would 

 have been more interested in pushing the telegraph to its final issue 

 than in supplementing Faraday's laws of electro-dynamical- induc- 

 tion. But in dealing with the heat of friction, Rumford displayed 

 an experimental skill and a boldness of conception which have vin- 

 dicated his claim to a high scientific position. The progress of 

 recent discovery and the tendency of scientific speculation have 

 promoted Rumford from the position which he long held, as leader 

 of a forlorn hope, to the place of hero in the last act of the scien- 

 tific drama. In this connection Henry's views on the correlation 

 of the physical and organic forces may be recalled, which only 

 lacked the fuller development and the wider publication which he 

 finally gave to them, to have secured for him the first complete 

 announcement of one of the grandest generalizations of modern 

 science. 



It might seem to be easy to institute a comparison between Frank- 

 lin and Henry in reference to the value of their original scientific 

 work, which was largely in the field of electricity. But a century 

 has made great changes in the starting-point, the opportunities, and 

 the resources of the discoverer. Franklin, with humble tools, had 

 a virgin soil to cultivate. He had also the rare felicity, for which 

 Newton also was envied, of living at a time when the scattered 

 facts of a new science were waiting for a comprehensive generaliza- 

 tion. If Franklin had made no experiments on the Leyden jar, or 

 on the thunder-cloud, his theory of electricity, which has held its 

 own to this day without any amendment, (though its final doom is 

 written upon it,) would have secured for him a place second to no 

 other among the worthies of science. Now the instruments of 



