AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 23 



But little older than tlie Institute, I feel exceedingly embar- 

 rassed in your presence ; especially so, when I recall the command- 

 ing form and potent voice of him who stood before you a few 

 anniversaries ago, to eulogize the results of labor and invention — 

 himself a mechanic-boy, and now Governor of a State whose roll 

 of inventors is so golden — of that State whose proclamations end, 

 'God bless the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!' to which all 

 the people cry * Amen ." Or when I remember my brother Brady, 

 whose Celtic wit and Saxon logic so appropriately illustrated here, 

 the footpath of art. Or when I recollect the apt sentences before 

 you of Bache; or when I bring to mind another discourse in your 

 Transactions, a few years ago, of which Halleck, from his ' Fanny,' 

 shall be my interpreter : 



The leaves of autumn smile, when fading fast, 

 " The swan's last song is sweetest, and the best 

 Of Mbigs' speeches doubtless was his last !" 



I therefore crave your indulgence whilst you, perhaps, think 

 that the representative of a profession whose philosophy, it is 

 said, has retrograded, comes to burn faint incense in the great 

 temple of art and science, before the altars of mechanics and 

 manufactures, which are so much enriched by the votive offerings 

 of enthusiastic rhetoric and sympathetic oratory. 



II. Shall we group ourselves, during a few moments, around 

 the first milestone of the Institute, for a brief survey of its ' then 

 landscape,' of its surroundings and associations in this city ? 



American Industry, in 1829, was but a sapling. The domains 

 of agriculture extended in disorder; mechanics and laborers, in 

 their humble homes, were hopeful, rather than achieving. In thei 

 furrow and in the workshop waited students, but the Professors 

 had not met to inaugurate a proper university. Three cities were 

 in the race for position — one with the prestige of learning, one 

 with the morale of stability and patience ; but the third, New 

 York, directing the attention of Boston and Philadelphia to ma- 

 jestic advantages of locality, which framed a gateway of the west. 

 Her citizen-Governor had then recently officiated at the nuptials 

 of Atlantic and Erie, with the news of the bridal-approach, sig- 

 naled from Buffalo to Manhattan in an hour and a half by relays 

 of booming cannon. Dr. Mitchell had just poured a characteristic 

 libation into the harbor-waves : the libation of waters gathered 

 from every zone — from the Ganges and the Thames, the Nile and 

 the Rhine, the Mississippi and the Danube, the Amazon and the 

 Niger, as the tokens of that varied commerce which would gather 



