PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OP WASHINGTON. 209 



■for the first month to the munificent sum of $15 for the second 

 month of his service! From pupil in the academy and teacher 

 of the district school, he was soon promoted to the rank of as- 

 sistant in the academy, and henceforward had ample means for 

 the further prosecution of his studies. Leaving the academy, 

 lie next accepted the post of private tutor in the family of the 

 Patroon in Albany, Mr. S. Van Rensselaer; and, devoting his 

 leisure hours to the study of the higher mathematics, in conjunc- 

 tion with chemistry, physiology, and anatomy, he at this time 

 purposed to enter the medical profession, and had made some 

 advances in this direction, when he was called, in the year 1826, 

 to embark in a surveying expedition, 'set on foot under the aus- 

 pices of the State government of New York, for the purpose of 

 laying out a road through the southern tier of counties in that 

 State. Starting with his men at West Point, and going through 

 the woods to Lake Erie, he acquitted himself so well in this ex- 

 pedition that his friends endeavored to procure for him a perma- 

 nent appointment as captain of an engineering corps, which it 

 was proposed to create for the prosecution of other internal im- 

 provement schemes, but the bill projected for this purpose having 

 fallen through, Mr. Henry again accepted, though with some 

 reluctance, a vacant chair which was ofl'ered him in the Albany 

 Academy. 



In connection with the duties of this chair, he now commenced 

 a series of original experiments in natural philosophy — the ^rst 

 connected series which had been prosecuted in this country. Dr. 

 Hare, indeed, had already invented the compound blowpipe, as 

 Franklin before him, by his brilliant but desultory laboi-s, had 

 given an immense impulse to the science of electricity ; yet none 

 the less Is it true that regular and systematic investigations, de- 

 signed to push forward the boundaries of knowledge, abreast with 

 the scientific workers of Europe, had hardly been attempted at 

 that era in the United States. 



The achievements of Henry in this direction soon began to 

 win for him an increase of reputation as well as an increase of 

 knowledge; but in the midst of the fervors which had come to 

 quicken his genius, he was visited by the fancy (or was it a 

 fact?) that a few of the friends who had hitherto supported him 

 in his high ambition were now beginning to look a little less 

 warmly on his aspirations. Suffering from this source the mental 



