118 MEMORIAL OP JOSEPH HENRY. 



Joseph Henry was pre-eminently a philosopher, but none the 

 less a hero. His conquest was not over cities razed, homes deso- 

 lated, or the forms of men crushed and lacerated, but over the 

 obstacles of nature, in mastering her laws and harnessing them to 

 the uses of his fellow-men. No widows or orphans are left to 

 mourn over his victories, but millions who have reason to rejoice 

 in the increased knowledge and stimulated industry which followed 

 in the wake of his intellectual triumphs. By these all men are 

 brought nearer to each other, and the mysterious wires which now 

 connect all parts of the habitable earth have done more to harmo- 

 nize the prejudices and passions of man than the conquests of 

 Xerxes, Alexander, and Napoleon. No one knew better 

 than Professor Henry that all of nature's laws had not yet been 

 revealed, and that there remained an infinite field for further 

 exploration and study. 



It was a scientific Englishman, a skillful analytical chemist of 

 London, who conceived the thought and provided the means 

 whereby Professor Henry was enabled to accomplish so much 

 further good. Arts may have been lost or forgotten, because no 

 longer needed, and the world's libraries and universities already 

 possessed in abundance the vast accumulations of knowledge which 

 had for ages been garnered and stored away in these valuable 

 repositories of learning, yet nature remained so bountiful that there 

 could be no danger that her fountains would become exhausted, and 

 Mr. Smithson provided for an institution which accepts all the 

 past, and provides only for the future. He endowed munificently 

 the Institution (which bears his name here in Washington) for 

 collecting new knowledge, and for distributing it to all parts of the 

 earth. Great was the conception, generous the endowment, and 

 fortunate that the execution fell to the lot of Professor Henry ! 

 Though he loved his country as he loved his family, still, in the 

 matter of science he knew no bounds. The heavens above and 



