Iiabits, and of large and liberal research, specially devoted; indeed, to the 

 cultivation of certain branches of natural knowledge, but excluding no 

 science, no philosophy, from his sympathies. Too enlightened to be ignor- 

 ant of the comwMne vinculum, the common bond of mutual relation , which 

 makes all knowledges reciprocally communicative and receptive — each bor- 

 rowing light from all, and each in turn reflecting light upon all — he was 

 too generous to confine his bounty to the gratification of tastes entirely simi- 

 lar to his own. None of the objects embraced in this bill are alien from 

 'his probable views. Books, indeed, he did not collect, as we propose to do, 

 because to one who had no fixed habitation a library would have been but 

 an encumbrance; and he lived in the great cities of Europe, where public 

 and private munificence has collected and devoted to general use such ample 

 repositories of the records of knowledge, that individual accumulation of 

 .such stores is almost superfluous. But, though he gathered no library, his 

 writings show him to have been a man of somewhat multifarious reading; 

 and it is quite a gratuitous assumption to suppose him to have been one of 

 those narrow minds, who think no path worth travelling but that which 

 they have trodden, no field worth cultivaiing whose fruits they have never 

 plucked. Aparl, then, from the liberty which the broad words of the will 

 give us, we are entitled to believe that the purposes of the testator were as 

 •comprehensive as the language he has used — that he aimed at promoting all 

 knowledge for the common benefit of all men — and to appropriate to the 

 American people, in a spirit worthy of the object and of ourselves, the com- 

 pliment he has paid us, by selecting us as the dispensers of a charity which, 

 ^knows no limits but the utmost bounds of human knowledge, and claims as 

 its recipients the men of this and of all coming ages. 



The limitation of the bequest, then, is to the ^^increase and diflfusion of 

 knowledge among men." Here two objects are aimed at. Increase, enlarge- 

 ment, extension, progress; and Diffusion, spread, communication, dissemina- 

 tion. These the bill seeks to accomplish by various means. It proposes to 

 increase knowledge by collecting specimens of the works of nature, from 

 <every clime, and in each of her kingdoms; by gathering objects in every 

 i)ranch of industrial, decorative, representative, and imaginative art; by ac- 

 cumulating the records of human action, and thought, and imagination, in 

 every form of literature; by instituting experi nental researches in agriculture, 

 in horticulture, in chemistry, and in other studies founded upon observa- 

 tion. It proposes to diffuse the knowledge thus accumulated, acquired, and 

 extended, by throwing open to public use the diversified collections of the 

 institution in every branch of human inquiry; by lectures upon every sub- 

 ject of liberal interest; by a normal school, where teachers shall become 

 pupils, and the best modes that experience has devised for imparting the 

 Tudiments of knowledge shall be communicated; by preparing and distribu- 

 ting models of scientific apparatus, and by tHe publication of lectures, es- 

 says, manuals, and treatises. 



Of the various instrumentalities recommended by this noble and imposing 

 scheme, the simplest and most efficient, both as it respects the increase and 

 the diflTusion of knowledge, is, in my judgment, the provision for collecting 

 for public use a library, a museum, and a g^allery of art; and I should 

 personally much prefer, that for a reasonable period the entire income of 

 the fund should be expended in carrying out this branch of the plan. 



But in expressing my preference for such a present application of the 

 moneys of the fund, and my belief that we should thus best accomplish th© 



