Such an announcement would be hailed with intense interest by 

 thousands, and the amphitheater of the museum would be crowded to 

 overflowing with receptive and admiring auditors. I need only sug- 

 gest such an arrangement to find, I doubt not, an appreciation of its 

 importance in every one of my hearers, and the hope felt or expressed 

 that the directors of this establishment will endeavor to provide an 

 endowment for the support of such a feature of the museum. But I 

 have not yet done. The development of the institution would not yet 

 be complete were it even furnished with all the appliances I have 

 mentioned. There is still another duty which this city owes to itself 

 and to the civilized world; I allude to an endowment for the support 

 of a college of discoverers, of a series of men capable not only of ex- 

 pounding established truths but of interrogating nature and of discov- 

 ering new facts, new phenomena, and new principles. The blindness 

 of the public to the value of abstract science and to the importance of 

 endowments for its advancement is truly remarkable. IN o country in 

 the world is so much indebted for its progress in power and intelligence 

 to science than ours, and yet no country does so little to encourage or 

 advance it. Nearly all that is done in this line, is by professors in col- 

 leges, badly paid, and generally overworked. It is not every one, 

 however well educated, that is capable of becoming a first-class scien- 

 tist ; like the poet, the discoverer is born, not made, and when one of 

 this class has been found he should be cherished, liberally provided 

 with the means of subsistence, fully supplied with all the implements 

 of investigation, and his life consecrated to the high and holy office of 

 penetrating the mysteries of nature. What has been achieved in the 

 knowledge of the forces and operations of nature and the use to which 

 this knowledge has been applied in controlling and directing these 

 forces to useful purposes, constitutes the highest claim to glory of our 

 race. Yet it is a melancholy fact that, notwithstanding the reputation 

 for wealth and intelligence possessed by our people, for the only 

 institution intended especially for the advancement of science in this 

 country we are indebted to a foreigner, James Smifhson, and that a 

 very large portion of the income of this has wrongfully been devoted 

 to the erection of a costly edifice and the embellishment of grounds, 

 and expenditures on other local objects unnecessary for the realization 

 of the intentions of the founder. I am happy, however, to say that 

 after 25 years of incessant efforts in one line by the directors, Con- 

 gress has at length been induced to indicate an intention of redressing 



