BY G. BROWN GOODE.

The name of the Smithsonian Institution is a household word throughout North America, and its fame is current wherever printed literature exists. Abroad it is regarded as the chief exponent of the scientific activities of the people of the United States, and the administrative scientific department of our government. At home, its actual relations to the administration are better understood, and it is looked upon in its proper capacity—that of an organization closely affiliated to the government and tenderly cherished by its officers, yet, in virtue of its independent foundation, independent of political favor, and ready to encourage, advise and coÖperate with any public or private enterprise without the necessity of annual appeals to the congressional committees on appropriations.

Visitors to the national capital usually carry away pleasant memories of the quiet old building among the trees in the mall, with its mediÆval battlements and turrets of brown stone conspicuous from every point of view, and the multitude who enter its halls are at least impressed with the fact that the national treasure houses are becoming filled with valuable collections rather faster than the available money and space will allow to be properly arranged and displayed. Only a very few, however, of the four hundred thousand persons who visited the buildings last year can have had the opportunity to inspect the administrative offices or the scientific laboratories, and very few indeed of those who are acquainted with the general nature of the operations of the establishment, have the slightest conception of their meaning and importance.

No class of American people, except indeed our scientific investigators, better understand and appreciate the work of the Institution than do our members of Congress, as is clearly shown by the uniform liberality with which, throughout many successive terms, regardless of changes in the political complexion of the administration, they have supported its policy, by the care with which they disseminate its reports, by the judgment with which they select their representatives in its board of regents, and above all, by the scrupulous care with which they have protected its independence from political complications. Through the disinterested labors of Washington correspondents, novelists, and playwrights, the average congressman of current, popular belief, is not a person remarkable either for manners, honesty or intellect. Residents of Washington, however, do not find the representative men at the Capital counterparts of the eminent politicians depicted by the author of “Democracy,” but in their stead, practical men of business, hard-working in their committees and hard-worked by their constituents. It is its support by these men, and through them by the people of the United States, that has enabled the Smithsonian Institution to do its work in the past. It is to such support that it will owe its efficiency in the future, and it seems right that every opportunity should be taken to explain its operations to the public. Representatives of the best classes of thinking Americans will no doubt thoroughly appreciate the benefits which education has received and will continue to receive from the proper administration of the Smithsonian bequest.

The story of the foundation of the Institution sounds more like a romance than like fact. Its history seems like the fulfillment of some ancient prophecy—even more strikingly so because it is evident that the future is to fulfill the promise of the past. The father of the founder of the Smithsonian Institution was one of the most distinguished members of the English peerage. Upon the plate of his coffin in Westminster Abbey, where he was buried “in great pomp” in 1786, he is described as “the most high, puissant and most noble prince Hugh Percy, Duke and Earl of Northumberland, Earl Percy, Baron Warkworth and Lovaine, Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of the Counties of Middlesex and Northumberland, Vice Admiral of the County of Northumberland and of all America, one of the Lords of His Majesty’s most Honorable Privy Council and Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, etc., etc.” While his aged father was sustaining this overwhelming accumulation of dignities, and while his elder brother, Earl Percy, was acting as Lieutenant-General in the war against the rebellious British colonies in North America (he commanded the reinforcements at the battle of Lexington in 1775, and led the column that reduced Fort Washington, near New York in 1776), James Smithson, a youth of modest fortune, inherited from his mother, was laying the foundations of a scientific education in the English schools and colleges, receiving the degree of Master of Arts at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1786, the year of his father’s death. He was then known as James Louis Macie, Esq., and did not assume the name of Smithson until fourteen years later, after he had attained to some reputation as a man of science. His mother was not the Duchess of Northumberland, but a cousin of her father’s, Elizabeth Hungerford, who was subsequently known as Mrs. Macie. She appears to have been the daughter and heiress of Sir George Hungerford of Audley and the Hon. Frances Seymour, sister of the Duke of Somerset and aunt of Algernon Seymour, Lord Percy, by marriage with whose daughter Sir Hugh Smithson was enabled to assume the name of Percy and the title of Duke of Northumberland. The Smithsons were an old Yorkshire family, Sir Hugh Smithson, the great-grandfather of James Smithson, having been created baronet in 1660 by Charles II. after his restoration. The names of Percy and Northumberland were, as has been stated, assumed by James Smithson’s father. These barren, genealogical details are referred to because they seem to be necessary to the understanding of James Smithson’s career.

Proud of his descent he undoubtedly was. In his will he describes his identity himself in these words: “I, James Smithson, son of Hugh, first Duke of Northumberland and Elizabeth, heiress of the Hungerfords of Audley, and niece to Charles the Proud, Duke of Somerset.” He was, however, a man of broad, philosophic mind, in whom a thorough training in the best scientific methods of his day, and associations with leading investigators in Germany and France, and his brother Fellows of the Royal Society of London, had developed a generous appreciation of the value of scholarship and scientific culture.

In one of his manuscripts was found the following sentiment, which I have already referred to as prophetic in its ring:

“The best blood of England flows in my veins; on my father’s side I am a Northumberland, on my mother’s I am related to kings, but this avails me not. My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten.”

These words came to my mind last summer in London when I saw the present Duke of Northumberland, grandson of Smithson’s half-brother, a feeble old man, still one of England’s greatest dignitaries, following in the train of the Prince of Wales, and rising to falter out a feeble speech proposing a vote of thanks to His Royal Highness for presiding at one of the conferences of the International Fisheries’ Exhibition, upon the occasion of an address by Prof. Huxley, president of the Royal Society. The name of the Smithsonian Institution has a world-wide fame; but who outside of English court circles ever heard of Algernon George Percy, Duke of Northumberland?

Smithson seems early in life to have become imbued with the scientific spirit of his time. In 1784, while still an undergraduate at Oxford, he made a scientific exploration of the coasts of Scotland in company with a party of geologists. In 1787 he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and during the remaining forty-two years of his life, a considerable portion of which was passed upon the continent, in Berlin, Paris, Rome, Florence and Geneva, he was the associate of the leading men of science, and devoted himself to research. He made an extensive collection of minerals, which was destroyed by the burning of a portion of the Smithsonian building in 1865, and always carried with him a portable chemical laboratory. His contributions to science are included in twenty-seven memoirs, chiefly upon topics in mineralogy and organic chemistry, but a number of them relating to applied science and the industrial arts.

His work was by no means of an epoch-making character, but seems to have been remarkable for its minute accuracy. Smithson was a much greater man than his published writings would indicate. In his eulogy the president of the Royal Society remarked: “He carried with him the esteem of various private friends, and of a still larger number of persons who admired and appreciated his acquirements.” He was evidently a man of broad, general culture, who understood thoroughly the needs of the world in the direction of scientific endowment, and whose action in bequeathing his estate to the people of America was deliberate and well considered.

In his admirable little monograph entitled “Smithson and His Bequest,” Mr. W. J. Rhees has shown the tendency of the time of Smithson to have been in the direction of establishing permanent scientific institutions. Between 1782 and 1826, over twenty of the most important academies and societies now in existence were organized. This period he remarks “was not less marked by the gloom occasioned by long protracted and almost universal war, and the extent and rapidity of its social changes, than by the luster of its brilliant discoveries in science, and its useful inventions in the arts. Pure, abstract science had many illustrious votaries, and the practical applications of its truths gave to the world many of the great inventions by means of which civilization has made such immense and rapid progress.” He quotes in support of these statements the words of Lord Brougham, the representative statesman of the day. “To instruct the people in the rudiments of philosophy,” Brougham remarked, “would of itself be an object sufficiently brilliant to allure the noblest ambition.”

He recommended this idea to the wealthy men of England, pointing out how, by the promotion of such ends, a man, however averse to the turmoil of public affairs, may enjoy the noblest gratification of which the most aspiring nature is susceptible, and may influence by his single exertions the character and fortunes of a whole generation.

Very closely do these ideas agree with those expressed by Smithson in various passages in his note books, especially with that which is used for a motto upon the publications of the Institution: “Every man is a valuable member of society who, by his observations, researches, and experiments, procures knowledge for men.” Or this: “It is in his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness, the high superiority which he holds over the other animals who inherit the earth with him, and consequently, no ignorance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil.”

It was with a mind full of such thoughts as these, with perhaps the support and inspiration of Lord Brougham’s words quoted above from his “Treatise on Popular Education,” printed in 1825, with such models in mind as the Royal Society, whose object is “the improvement of natural knowledge,” the Royal Institution “for diffusing the knowledge and facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements, and for teaching the application of science to the common purposes of life,” and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge established in London in 1825, that in 1826 Smithson drew up his will containing the following weighty provision: “I bequeath the whole of my property to the United States of America to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.”

No one has been able to show why he selected the United States as the seat of his foundation. He had no acquaintances in America, nor does he appear to have had any books relating to America save two. Rhees quotes from one of these, “Travels Through North America,” by Isaac Weld, secretary of the Royal Society, a paragraph concerning Washington, then a small town of 5,000 inhabitants, in which it is predicted that “the Federal city, as soon as navigation is perfected, will increase most rapidly, and that at a future day, if the affairs of the United States go on as rapidly as they have done, it will become the grand emporium of the West, and rival in magnitude and splendor the cities of the whole world.”

Inspired by a belief in the future greatness of the new nation, realizing that while the needs of England were well met by existing organizations such as would not be likely to spring up for many years in a new, poor, and growing country, he founded in the new England an institution of learning, the civilizing power of which has been of incalculable value. Who can attempt to say what the condition of the United States would have been to-day without this bequest? In the words of John Quincy Adams: “Of all the foundations of establishments for pious or charitable uses which ever signalized the spirit of the age or the comprehensive beneficence of the founder, none can be named more deserving the approbation of mankind.”

When the fact of the bequest became known, some six years after Smithson’s death, much opposition was shown in Congress toward its acceptance. Eminent statesmen like Calhoun and Preston argued that it was beneath the dignity of the United States to receive presents, and that it was too cheap a way of conferring immortality on the donor. The wise counsels and enthusiastic labors of John Quincy Adams, who seems to have had from the first a thorough appreciation of the importance of the matter, finally prevailed, and the Hon. Richard Rush was sent to England to prosecute the claim. He entered suit in the Courts of Chancery, in the name of the President of the United States, and in less than two years—an event unparalleled in the Court of Chancery—had obtained a favorable decision. The legacy was brought over in the form of 104,960 gold sovereigns which were delivered September 1st, 1838, to the Philadelphia mint, where they were immediately recoined into American money, producing $508,318.46, as the first installment of the Smithsonian legacy. This was increased in 1861 to $534,529.09.

For eight years the legacy lay in the Treasury, while the wise men of the nation tried to decide what to do with it. In this instance the adage that in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom did not appear to be applicable in the ordinary interpretation. The delay, though irksome to those who desired to see immediate results, was, however, the best thing in the end for the interests of the trust. Every imaginable disposition of the legacy was proposed and discussed in Congress; the debates fill nearly three hundred and fifty pages of Rhees’s compilation of Smithsonian documents. Letters by the hundred, advisory, expostulatory and dissuasive were received from representative thinkers and from societies at home and abroad. Every man had a scheme peculiar to himself, and opposed all other schemes with a vigor proportionate to their dissimilarity to his own. Schools of every grade, from a national university to an agricultural school, a normal school and a school for the blind were proposed. A library, a botanical garden, an observatory, a chemical laboratory, a popular publishing house, a lecture lyceum, an art museum, any and all of these and many more were proposed and advocated by this voluntary congress of many men of many minds. It is not necessary in this place to discuss the history of the period at length, nor to relate the manner in which the prevalence of wiser councils was brought about. It is sufficient to say that though the new institution was burdened from the start with various undertakings which have since proved unprofitable or better suited to the capacity of other institutions, such have been the flexibility of its organization and the vitality of its membership that it has been able to work out a career for itself unparalleled in the history of benevolent foundations.

It need not be said that the accomplishment of these effects was the result of long continued effort on the part of men of unusual ability, energy and personal influence. No board of trustees or regents, no succession of officers serving out their terms in rotation could have developed from a chaos of conflicting opinions, a strongly individualized establishment like the Smithsonian Institution. The names of Joseph Henry and Spencer F. Baird are so thoroughly identified with that of the Institution that their biographies combined would form an almost complete history of its operations. A thirty-two years’ term of uninterrupted administrative service has been rendered by one, thirty-four years by the other. It is very doubtful whether any other institution has ever had the benefit of such an uninterrupted administration of thirty-eight years, beginning with its birth and continuing in an unbroken line of consistent policy a career of increasing usefulness and enterprise.

Joseph Henry, the first secretary, entered upon his duties at the end of the year 1846, a man already famous as an investigator in physical science, a professor of fourteen years’ standing in Princeton College, and recognized as eminent in scientific and general acquirements. From the age of forty-seven to that of seventy-nine, his life was merged in that of the Institution. Professor Asa Gray has pointed out so clearly the deep impression which he made upon the Institution while it was yet plastic, that I venture to quote his words in order to explain the character of this new force in the evolution of good results from the Smithson benefaction. “Some time before his appointment,” writes Professor Gray, “he had been requested by members of the Board of Regents to examine the will of Smithson and to suggest a plan of organization by which the object of the bequest might, in his opinion, best be realized. He did so, and the plan he drew was in their hands when he was chosen secretary. The plan was based on the conviction ‘that the intention of the donor was to advance science by original research and publication; that the establishment was for the benefit of mankind generally, and that all unnecessary expenditures on local objects would be violations of the trust.’ His ‘Programme of Organization’ was submitted to the Board of Regents in the following year, was adopted as its governing policy, and has been reprinted in full or in part in almost every annual report. If the Institution is now known and praised throughout the world of science and letters, if it is fulfilling the will of its founder and the reasonable expectations of the nation which accepted and established the trust, the credit is mainly due to the practical wisdom, the catholic spirit, and the indomitable perseverance of its first secretary, to whom the establishing act gave much power of shaping ends, which as rough-hewn by Congress were susceptible of various diversion. Henry took his stand on the broad and ample terms of the bequest, ‘for the increase and diffusion of useful knowledge among men,’ and he never narrowed his mind and to locality gave what was meant for mankind. He proposed only one restriction, of wisdom and necessity, that in view of the limited means of the Institution, it ought not to undertake anything which could be done, and well done, by other existing instrumentalities. So as occasion arose he lightened its load and saved its energies by giving over to other agencies some of its cherished work.” The character of the work done in manifold directions will be discussed topically below; its spirit is sufficiently indicated in Dr. Gray’s terse summary just quoted. Professor Henry died in 1878. “Remembering his great career as a man of science,” remarked President Garfield, “as a man who served his Government with singular ability and faithfulness, who was loved and venerated by every circle who was blessed with the light of his friendship, the worthiest and the best, whose life added new luster to the glory of the human race, we shall be most fortunate if ever in the future we see his like again.”[H] His statue, erected by Congress, stands in the Smithsonian Park.

Concerning the influence of Professor Baird, upon whom the mantle of his predecessor has descended, it would perhaps be premature and out of taste to speak. His eminence as a naturalist and his patriotic service as Commissioner of Fisheries are too well known to need mention, and indeed may be quite as appropriately discussed elsewhere. As assistant secretary from the age of twenty-four he was intimately associated with Professor Henry for twenty-seven years, and his executive ability found full scope in the development of the systems of publication and international exchange, as well as the museum, and the explorations, biological and ethnological, which were from the beginning under his charge. As secretary his policy has been a direct continuation of that of Professor Henry. The services of Mr. William J. Rhees, for thirty-two years chief clerk, merit also especial notice.

The formal direction of the Institution is vested in a board of regents, consisting of the Vice President and Chief Justice of the United States, three members each from the Senate and the House of Representatives, and six persons citizens of the United States appointed by Congress. The President and his cabinet are ex officio members of the Institution, and there is a provision, not at present carried into effect, providing for the election of honorary members of the Institution. The secretary is the only executive officer of the board, and is responsible to the board for his conduct of affairs. The regents meet once a year in January. Many eminent men have served in the capacity of regents, and the records of their proceedings indicate that their interest in the work under their charge has been uniformly very active.

The building occupied by the Institution and bearing its name is an ornate structure of Seneca brown stone, occupying a prominent position in the “Mall” which extends from the Capitol to the Washington monument. This building was begun in 1847 and completed in 1855. It is hybrid in character, combining features selected from both Gothic and Romanesque style, and is more admired by the public than by connoisseurs in architecture. It is doubtful if a building more unsuited to the purposes for which it was designed was ever constructed. The diversion of the funds of the Smithsonian bequest to this building was one of Professor Henry’s greatest griefs, and before the close of his life by careful economy of the annual income, he had succeeded in restoring the entire sum, amounting to about $450,000 to the permanent endowment fund, beside increasing this fund nearly $150,000 over and above the original bequest. The eastern wing of the building, for so many years the hospitable home of the secretary, has been reconstructed internally, and the offices of the Institution are all established within its walls. The remainder of the building is occupied by laboratories and exhibition halls connected with the National Museum. Another building has recently been built east of the Smithsonian for the reception of a portion of the national collections. This was put up by congressional appropriation, and Congress has at last recognized the justice of the claim, so many years urged upon them by the secretary, that the Smithson money should not be used to provide shelter for the government cabinets, and has assumed the care of the Smithsonian building and votes money for its repairs and maintenance.

Few people who visit Washington make the proper discrimination between the Smithsonian Institution proper, and the establishments under its custody. What they see is the National Museum. The relations of the Museum to the Institution will be discussed more fully in a separate article, but it is necessary to state just here that it is not the property of the Institution, but rather its ward—its management being intrusted by law to the Institution which is provided with funds for its maintenance by annual congressional grants. In early days the Smithsonian supported collections of its own, but these were not primarily for public exhibition, but for the uses of scientific investigators. Professor Henry always maintained that not one cent of the Smithson fund could with propriety be applied to the support of the National Museum, and his view is now the accepted one.

In the Smithsonian proper, little is to be seen by visitors. In the regents’ room is an interesting collection of relics of the founder, including his portrait, his scientific library, and certain of his pictures and personal effects. Beside the regents’ room there are offices, store rooms and packing rooms occupied by busy clerks and mechanics. The Smithsonian is, first of all, an executive establishment, to which have been confided various trusts, to be mentioned hereafter. It is also a publishing house, and an “exchange” for the reception and transmission of scientific materials. The great masses of books in brown wrappers and cases of papers, apparatus and specimens constitute therefore the greater bulk of the material with which it has to deal.

The leading feature of the plan proposed by Professor Henry was from the first “to assist men of science in making original researches, to publish them in a series of volumes, and to give a copy of them to every first-class library on the face of the earth.” The manner in which the first item of policy has been carried out can not be described here. Those who wish to know how it has been done must consult the thirty-four thick volumes of the annual reports, presented to and printed by Congress. It is safe to say, however, in general terms that there is probably not a scientific investigator in America to whom the helping hand of the Institution has not at some time been of service, and that assistance of this sort has been by no means restricted to this side of the Atlantic. Books, apparatus and laboratory accommodations have been supplied in thousands of instances, and every year a certain number of money grants have been made. Not less important has been the personal encouragement afforded, especially to beginners and persons remote from other advice, in the hundreds of thousands of letters which have been written by the two secretaries during the seventy years of their added terms of office. No communication is ever passed by unnoticed and the archive rooms of the Institution packed from floor to ceiling with letter files and letter copy books are well worthy of inspection.

The publications of the establishment are as numerous as those of a great publishing house, and as a matter of fact, they are all given away; although there is a provision for their sale at cost price, I doubt if a thousand dollars’ worth has been sold in five years. There are three series, the aspect of which must be familiar to every observing person who has ever spent a day among the shelves in any American library of respectable standing. The Smithsonian “Contributions to Knowledge,” now including twenty-three stately volumes quarto with 116 memoirs, in all 12,456 pages, and numerous fine plates, the Smithsonian miscellaneous collection, in octavo, containing 122 papers with 20,299 pages, and thirty-five annual reports. The papers included in these volumes are all published separately, the number of separate volumes printed up to this time being above 500. These include papers varying in length from 4 to 1,000 pages, by the most eminent specialists in every branch of science. The most recent work, one now in progress, two volumes having been published, is a systematic work on the botany of North America by Dr. Asa Gray; another is an illustrated work on prehistoric fishing, by Dr. Charles Rau.

I have never seen an estimate of the value of the books distributed during the thirty-eight years, but I should judge that it can not fall below $1,000,000, estimating the prices at standing publishing rates.

In addition to the direct publications of the Institution let us look at the numerous magnificent volumes of scientific reports printed in more or less direct coÖperation with the Institution by the various government surveys and exploring expeditions, at government expense. Who can doubt that the extent of this literature, which is a constant source of comment in foreign scientific journals, where it is desired to stimulate European governments to publish scientific researches in a similar way, is largely a product of the influence of the Institution?

One of the main features of the Institution in its early days was its library. Its publications were distributed throughout the world to every scientific and literary institution of good repute, and in exchange they sent their own publications. In this way an immense collection of scientific periodicals and journals was received, and the Smithsonian library became one of the most extensive in the world in this department. Books came in freely from other quarters and the support of the library became a great burden to the Smithson fund. The same policy which led to the abandonment of the Smithsonian cabinet, led to a transfer of the library, and in 1866 the books were transferred to the Capitol where they are cared for as a section of the national library under the name of “The Smithsonian Deposit.” The books come in as heretofore, in exchange and as donations, and are sent weekly to their place of custody at the other end of the mall. The increase in 1883 amounted to 11,739 books and pamphlets, and the total deposit amounts to about 100,000 volumes. Several thousand volumes are retained in the working libraries of the Institution.

At the time of the Smithson bequest the endowment of research had scarcely been attempted in America. There were schools and colleges in which science was taught and certain of the professors employed in these institutions were engaged in original investigation. There were a few young and struggling scientific societies, the American Academy of Sciences in Boston, and the Boston Society of Natural History, the Connecticut Academy of Sciences, the New York Lyceum of Natural History (now the New York Academy of Sciences), the American Philosophical Society, and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. The American Association for the Advancement of Science was not organized until 1840. The publications of these societies were necessarily very limited in extent and influence, but then together with the monthly journal published at New Haven, by Professor Silliman, they embodied the chief outcome of American scientific work. Science in America was an infant in swaddling clothes. Forty years have passed and American science now stands by the side of the science of Britain, of Germany, of France, a fellow worker, competing on an equal footing in nearly every field of research. No one is likely to question the statement that the Smithsonian Institution has done what was absolutely indispensable to the rapid and symmetrical development of American scientific institutions, and it is equally certain that the progress of American science has had an immense influence upon the welfare of America in every department of intellectual and industrial activity. It has offered a helping hand to every institution and every individual in America capable of profiting by its generous aid, and has stimulated coÖperation by them with similar workers abroad. In this way its influence has been enormous, but still greater has been the benefit of its stimulating powers upon the policy of the general government toward scientific ends.