The great movement in England to popularize science, and to introduce economy and skill in the use of the materials of living among the poor, started about twenty-five years before the founding of this school, and it is not unlikely had the effect to direct attention in this country to the same subject. The Royal Institution, of London, was founded and chartered in the year 1800, and seems to have been a model of which our school was a distant imitation in a new country and amongst a comparatively poor people. It is a source of pride to us that an institution which has reflected so much of the light of science over the world, and which was in many respects the model of our own, was also founded by an American. The Royal Institution, of London, was founded by a New England man by the name of Benjamin Thompson, better known as Count Rumford in the scientific world. Thompson was born at Woburn, near Boston, Mass., in 1753, was a man of genius, and had both a checkered and brilliant career. He lived for a time and taught school in the town of Rumford, the ancient name of the present town of Concord, the capital of the State of New Hampshire. Here he married his first wife when he was only nineteen years of age. Thirty-two years. later,—having meantime left his native country and become a savant of European reputation, he married in Paris, for his second wife, the widow of the celebrated French chemist Lavoisier. From this town's old name he chose his title, and was made "Count Rumford by the Elector of Bavaria in 1791. Thompson was not a rebel against King George III., but a loyalist at the opening of the strife. For some imprudent remarks on politics, his neighbors in Rumford made it unpleasant for him to reside at that place— such is toleration in war times-and he left and went abroad and entered the military service of the king, by whom he was knighted. Under these circumstances, he has never been estimated in this country for what he was worth as a scientific man. He has lately found a biographer in Boston, and a favorable notice in one of the quarterly reviews. There is no absolution for certain political sins. Even the

lustre of that other great name, contemporary with him and likewise notable in science, would have been dimmed in our estimation by such a political course-even the name of Benjamin Franklin.

Rumford was an enthusiast in carrying the results of science to the aid of the poorer classes. While in Munich he wrote much on the subject of economy in the use of food and fuel. He visited London in 1795 to publish his essays, and he observed the wasteful consumption of both food and fuel in England. He looked up to the cloud of smoke overhanging London, and said that from the materials of heat thus thrown away, and made a curse instead of a blessing, he could cook all the food, warm every room, and do all the mechanical work performed by fire in the metropolis. Cuvier said of him, in view of his work in behalf of the poor, and in the advancement of science, that Rumford was the only man who took the same path for getting into heaven and into the French Academy.

In 1799, Thompson (Count Rumford), being in London, published a pamphlet of fifty pages, which led to the foundation of the Royal Institution. It was entitled, " Proposals for forming by subscriptions, in the metropolis of the British empire, a public institution for diffusing the knowledge and facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements, and for teaching, by courses of philosophical lectures and experiments, the application of science to the common purposes of life.” The object was explained to be the bringing together of science and the art of workingmen, and establishing relations of helpful intercourse between philosophers and practical artiAgriculture, manufactures, commerce, and domestic comforts, were to be studied and improved.

sans.

Now to verify the assertion that this school was prompted by and after a sort modeled upon the plan of the royal institution of Count Rumford, let us hear the proposals of the founder of this school twenty-five years later. In the letter of the founder (Stephen Van Rensselaer) to the Rev. Dr. Blatchford, dated November 5th, 1824, he says: “I have

established a school at the north end of Troy, for the purpose of instructing persons who may choose to apply themselves in the application of science to the common purposes of life. My principal object is to qualify teachers for instructing sons and daughters of farmers and mechanics, by lectures or otherwise, on the application of experimental chemistry, philosophy and natural history, to agriculture, domestic economy, the arts and manufactures. From trials which have been made, I am inclined to believe that competent instructors may be produced in the school at Troy,who will be highly useful to the community in the diffusion of a very useful kind of knowledge, with its application to the business of living." Thus it is seen the two institutions had their origin in a like impulse, both having the same object, namely: the popularization of science, or as the prospectus of the first stated it, "the application of sciences. to the common purposes of life," the very words of which statement were adopted in the prospectus of the second.

At a period in history in which the intercommunication was not so rapid as now between England and this country, and the interchange and progress of ideas much slower than at present; when, according to William Cobbet, it took fifty years for an idea to penetrate the house of commons, it was no small progress made by our founder and patron, when in less than twenty-five years after the Royal Institution of London was chartered, he laid the foundation of this school. Since that time the railroad, steamship and telegraph have been added to the means of communication, and the power of the press has been immeasurably increased. Vastly different in the circumstances of their inception were the two institutions. One opened in spacious apartments in Albemarle street, London, and was patronized by the great, wealthy and fashionable, with an admission fee of fifty guineas. And such was the rage for attending its scientific lectures, that at the end of the first year the subscription in its aid amounted to £24,000. Besides Rumford, who lived in the premises, there was Humphrey Davy, director of the laboratory, and assistant professor of chemis

try, earning fame for himself, on a salary of one hundred guineas a year. And Dr. Thomas Young, styled by an Edinburgh reviewer, the apostle of the undulatory theory of light, and Dr. Thomas Garnett, with others, were on the first roll of lecturers. Subsequently, these places have been filled by such men as Michael Faraday and Professor Tyndall, who lately visited this country.

On the other hand, this school opened in 1824, at the north end of Troy," a phrase sufficiently indefinite to indicate its uncertain and migratory character. It was, however, localized for a time in the "old bank place on River street, near the east end of the dam,-so far as such a school as it then was, with Amos Eaton for its senior professor" and controlling spirit, of itinerant habits and methods of studying natural science, can be said to have been localized at all-in an ill-adapted place, with only small apparatus of the ruder sort-with no subscriptions, no money, no attendants but the poor young searchers after knowledge, who followed the Professor in his botanical and mineralogical excursions across the country, and returned to the "old bank place" to find the whole faculty of the school there embodied in the person of Professor Amos Eaton-guide, philosopher and lecturer.

The lecture system, it will be observed, was the method first adopted in each. It is with science as with politics, agitation begins and an interest is awakened by talk. And in the hands of zealous, devoted, enthusiastic young men there is no subject which may not secure a hearing.

In tracing similitudes, let us not forget to mention, what has no doubt occurred to all present, in surveying the rise and progress of these two institutions, that both were in the initiatory and formative period of each, guided and controlled by men of scientific genius, eccentric in character, and enthusiasts in their profession-just that order of men who set the world ahead in whatever pursuits they may be engaged-Count Rumford and Professor Amos Eaton, both Americans.

AMOS EATON.

No apology is offered for a moment's digression, to briefly review the career of Professor Amos Eaton, so thoroughly identified with this school for the first eighteen years of its existence, before a generation of men who know his fame, but who have little knowledge of his personal history. Amos Eaton was born in the town of Chatham, Columbia County, New York, on the 17th of May, 1776. His father was a farmer and a highly respected citizen of that town. The son early manifested superior ability and high aspirations. At the age of sixteen he had made himself a practical land surveyor, making his own magnetic needle and compass case out of the rude material at hand. With the encouragement of his parents he fitted for college, and at the age of twenty-three he graduated at Williams College in 1799, with a high reputation for his scientific attainments. He commenced the study of law with Elisha Williams, in Columbia County, soon after graduating, and continued the study of law in New York in the office of Josiah Ogden Hoffman. It was in New York that he came under the instruction of Dr. Hosack and Dr. Mitchell, and became interested in botany and other natural sciences to such a degree that he never could wholly resist the sway of his enthusiasm for those pursuits. He was admitted an attorney of the Supreme Court of this State at Albany in 1802, and located as lawyer and land agent at Catskill. Here he gave his first course of popular lectures on botany, and prepared a small elementary treatise on the subject. He attended lectures at New Haven in 1815. In 1817 he returned to Williamstown and gave lectures to the students on botany, mineralogy and geology. The first edition of his "Manual of Botany" was published this year. He continued his public lectures in the large towns of New England and New York, exciting great attention and interest in the natural sciences. In 1818 Governor Dewitt Clinton invited him to Albany, and he gave a course of lectures before the members of the Legislature. In 1820 he was appointed professor of natural history in the medical college at Castleton, Vt., and deliv