110 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



horse-shoe, were types of those two conditions. The printing 

 press of Franklin's time, toilfully bringing out its two hundred 

 and fifty sheets per hour, and the great self-acting presses of 1856, 

 inking and printing, cutting and folding their twenty thousand 

 papers with railroad speed, represent these brought into closer 

 compass of time. 



How many facts was it not necessary to have established, com- 

 pared, and reduced to principles, before the steps from one of 

 these conditions to the other could be taken ? And is not science 

 the generalization of facts? Many men use science as Moliere's 

 Bourgeois Gentilhomme used prose, without knowing it. 



The mechanic of the present day is well idealized in the figure 

 designed by Crawford, and selected by Captain Meigs to adorn 

 the pediment of the National Capitol — not the mere handicraft 

 workman, however skilful, with brawny arms and ready fingers, 

 but the intellectual workman, with broad expanse of forehead, 

 and face lighted with the fire of thought, the intellectual me- 

 chanic of the nineteenth century. 



If, with the princely endowment of the Union of Peter Cooper, 

 separate lectureships upon the plan proposed by Professor Pierce 

 were founded, what a splendid branch of the great Art University 

 would not this constitute ! Reserving enough of the forty thou- 

 sand dollars of income to meet contingent expenses and to provide 

 for a Chancellor, and perhaps certain resident professors, there 

 would remain enough to furnish thirty courses of lectures, upon 

 as many different branches of science. By giving to "one profes- 

 sor several of these, his whole time might be retained for the 

 Union. 



The highest grade of science would thus be brought into the 

 class-rooms of this establishment, the name of which, and the well 

 known views of its modern founder, point to this arrangement as 

 the one adapted to its organization. 



The Astor Library. 



An earlier, yet still recent example of the spirit which satisfies 

 itself with nothing less than views of public usefulness' on the 

 amplest scale, is seen in the establishment and endowment of the 

 Astor library of this city. Perception in regard to public neces- 



