532 FOURTH BULLETIN OF [ 1846 . 
growth in our nation in all things, external and palpable, that the setting sun of 
every evening must behold it more powerful than when it rose. 
But is it that we attend to these material results too exclusively, leaving mind to 
shift tor itself ?—so that in the cultivation which it proudly seeks it has not fair play, 
from wanting those auxiliary means and appliances which it often requires, and with¬ 
out which, if mind does not sink, it may pine and fail to reach the towering heights 
its aspirations are fixed upon ? And is it that little boons are withheld from it 
through that political vehemence and intensity which our admirable institutions, 
in the midst of their excellence, primarily beget, and which tend to absorb all else 
in that one grand heated vortex? This is to be feared, and is a danger to which 
the broad forecast of our legislators should look. The topic might become fruitful 
of both facts and reflections, but I confine myself to narrow limits. We can be 
roused to patriotic indignation—half the nation, all our presses, can be roused by 
an objugatory article in a foreign review, or a paragraph in the London Times; 
but we can be cold under the obligations we contracted as a nation in accepting 
Mr. Smithson’s legacy. We can suffer his half million of dollars to lie dead in our 
hands for years and years, with his solemn will recorded on our archives. Alas for 
tins fact! It neither stings nor rouses us. There is no political, no party excite¬ 
ment in it. But it is the more painful to dwell upon ; and in the principle of such 
neglect there is a silent potency of reproach and mischief which not the marvellous 
increase of our population, nor the prodigious and universal accumulations of our 
thrift, nor all the incontestible evidences of our power, nor the victories of our gal¬ 
lant Taylor, can adequately counteract the workings of upon national character. 
Is it because that legacy was pledged to the interests of mind that all our sensibil¬ 
ities are so dead ? And are we going, as a nation, to set ourselves against these 
precious interests, or be content with mediocrity in all that relates to them? In 
other things we are positively ahead at present; but are we in these ? If we never 
desire to be, let us begin by burning poor Smithson in effigy in the rotunda of the 
capitol, with an ihkhorn round his neck—knocking the National Institute in the 
head outright, tumbling its collections from the national edifice where they have 
hitherto been deposited into the street, and above all, by obliterating from its records 
the names of all those high functionaries of our Government under whose sanction 
and auspices it was first ushered into being and introduced to the scientific world 
of all nations. 
But I earnestly desire to give way to other hopes and expectations. In this 
spirit, for one I should say, as I think, that the opportunities of making known in 
other parts of the world the intellectual advancement existing in this country which 
this Institute, if only moderately aided by the Government, would afford, as well as of 
augmenting our own intellectual stores at tne capital of the Union, thence to be 
disseminated throughout its borders, which the same small help extended to it 
would also enable it to effectuate, would do more towards creating and keeping 
alive just und favorable opinions of us with the wise, the learned, and the enlight¬ 
ened abroad, than any other national manifestation we could make. Political 
power, with all the respect which, under some views, it must command, and with 
the dread which, when formidable, it can inspire, is not necessarily linked to emi¬ 
nence in science, letters, and the arts, or with that social superiority, their glorious 
product, and humanizing as glorious, which has ever given to nations their highest 
contemporary splendor, and conferred upon them the most durable and enviable 
renown. 
With this truth standing out in history, I sincerely wish that Congress may grant 
the Institute the small relief it seeks, and I will not part from the hope that it will. 
In which feeling I pray you, my dear sir, to believe me, with great cordiality and 
respect, your very faithful servant, 
RICHARD RUSH* 
Francis Markoe, Jr., Esq., 
Corresponding Secretary of the National Institute , Washington . 
