AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 29 



grafted and improved. You have observed, in every improvement 

 and advance, the comprehension of the external cause to which 

 all science relates, or how the comparison of industrial results 

 taught precision of knowledge — one opposed to shams. There 

 may have been quackeries found, but were they not compelled to 

 stand in the daylight with realities 1 Most direct has been the in- 

 fluence of this body, by its discussions in private, and its patron- 

 age in public. How many poor and struggling inventors have 

 found a first round in the ladder of success in the mere advertise- 

 ment which a display of the fair afi'orded ! Messieurs inventors 

 and manufacturers ! it is no small favor to have been introduced 

 to twenty or thirty thousand people, from every American latitude, 

 and by becoming part of the gossip of the day, to have next been 

 trumpeted by the press throughout the length and breadth of the 

 land. What return have the inventors and mechanics, the farmers 

 and the manufacturers made to this Institute, that is suitable, or 

 that is ample ? There should have long since gathered together, 

 from every State, those whose names are upon the beneficed roll 

 of some one of the quarter-century fairs of the American Institute, 

 vowed to make it a practical National Museum of Art and Agri- 

 culture, Science and Mechanics, with extended and permanent 

 accommodations, with every aid that gratitude should inspire ! 

 In this respect, shall our national foible of vanity be counteracted 

 by our national sin of selfishness, and our national crime of in- 

 gratitude ? 



V. Thus much of the Past. 



But what wizard dare stereoscope the Future of Art, Science, 

 Agriculture, and Mechanics ? These have ever had their distinc- 

 tive and distinguished epochs, under which have been gathered 

 lesser events. The one now commenced is an epoch of monster 

 ships. And when science has entirely subdued the ocean, the air 

 is yet left for conquest. Alexander the Great, at just the age of 

 the American Institute, was sighing to conquer more worlds. 



Some Red-Sea railroad will soon extend beneath the sacred 

 shadows of Mount Sinai. The solemn echoes will shrink before 

 the shrill music of the Calliope. What'a gathering point would 

 be there found for a meeting of the Christian centuries of inven- 

 tion, should we invest them with mythological form. 



There, would stand the first century, feeble with the ill-treat- 

 ment of the 'Bad Emperors,' having nothing to show but the 

 improved war engines which worked out Jerusalem's woe. The 

 second century would totter after, holding up the anatomical pre- 



