14 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
can is a great man for stipends, and stenographers, and card 
catalogs. Fortunate would it have been if a Helmholtz had 
had charge of this institution. He would have been so ab¬ 
sorbed in his science that he would have forgotten about his 
clerks and type-writers, but his suggestions and plans, given 
to his scientific workers, would have made at Washington an 
institution conspicuous “for the increase and diffusion of knowl¬ 
edge among men.” It is one of the good signs of the times 
that scientific journals have come to recognize the deficiences 
in the work of the Smithsonian Institution and are loudly call¬ 
ing for a change of policy. 
A question of much interest to us is: What part shall Wis¬ 
consin take in the new revival of learning which seems to be 
upon us ? It has often seemed to me that Wisconsin was des¬ 
tined to become a sort of Scotland to the other states of the Mis¬ 
sissippi Valley, to be the home of a sturdy people, with high in¬ 
tellectual and moral ideals, even if it could not excel neighbor¬ 
ing states in commerce and wealth. Wisconsin is a state of roll¬ 
ing hills and partly drained valleys, marked out by nature for 
dairying and diversified farming rather than for grain and corn 
raising as it is found on the flat prairies of Illinois and Iowa. 
Wisconsin has no great beds of coal beneath her soil, and her 
manufacturing, instead of being of the cruder and grosser sort, 
must in large part develop the more highly finished products 
suitable to a more expensive cost of fuel. But these very facts 
have a compensating advantage. There will be little attraction in 
Wisconsin for the lower grade of immigrants which are brought 
in by the coal mines and the less finished manufactures. In¬ 
stead of much wealth in the hands of a few, there is hope that 
Wisconsin may enjoy a more equal division of the good things of 
life, more contentment, and immeasurably greater refinement 
and learning than will be the lot of her more populous 
neighbors. Wisconsin will be satisfied if she can share in a 
large way in the intellectual life of the nation and furnish her 
country with scholars and statesmen. It must be the ambition 
of every scholar in the state to do his part in building up the in¬ 
tellectual reputation of Wisconsin, and, more than all, for each 
one to do all he can to bring about an elevation of ideals in all 
