like unto those of magic! It is impossible to estimate fully the value of such a scientific invention to mankind!

The part which institutions of higher learning have acted in giving to the world the electric telegraph will be found by the careful student of Political Economy to be the more interesting, and the greater, the more searchingly it is examined. He will find that many, if not indeed every philosopher whose scientific experiments contributed to make it possible for man to sufficiently understand the mysterious powers which are brought into exercise in the electric telegraph, had been indebted for much, if not for all, of his education to institutions of higher learning. That certain phenomena, such as that amber and some other bodies when rubbed possess singular properties, attracted the attention of some learned men of two thousand and more years ago. The mysterious force which could be awakened by friction came to be called electricity. Its study and that of kindred phenomena became in time an abstruse science. Electricity is an imponderable, subtle agent which may be even said to pervade all matter and to be ever ready, if excited, to display its existence. Much that one would wish to know respecting electricity, science has not yet disclosed. She has even long declined to satisfy the curiosity of man by telling him whether electricity is a material agent, or merely a property of matter, or whether the secret of its power is due to the vibrations of an ether. She has secrets for those who serve her which may be as interesting as are any that she has yet disclosed.

The inventor of the first electric telegraph instrument was Samuel Finley Breese Morse. One of his grandfathers had been President of Princeton College and his father was a clergyman of wide learning who when a youth had graduated at Yale College. In due time

Finley Morse-as he was sometimes called-was sent to Yale College. The Legislature of Connecticut had from the year 1701 taken a deep interest in providing for the support of its college. Although in the year 1755 the yearly appropriation of funds was for a time discontinued on account of financial embarrassment brought upon the Colony by the Canadian war, yet this loss to the college had been in some degree made good by the Legislature making a larger appropriation in the year 1792 for its principal seat of learning than it had ever made before. The institution which had received many gifts from citizens was also more closely identified with the government of Connecticut than it had ever been before. With the handsome fund which the State appropriated for the college, real estate was bought, three new academical buildings and a house for its president were erected, and a handsome addition made to its already valuable library. New professorships were established, and what is perhaps at present most worthy of notice "a complete philosophical and chemical apparatus" was provided for this already celebrated centre of learning. Among the studies to which young Morse was introduced in college was the interesting science of electricity. The professor of natural philosophy in Yale College was the learned Prof. Jeremiah Day. In his lectures, Dr. Day dwelt carefully on electricity.* Mr. Irenæus Prime, in a very interesting biography of the distinguished inventor of the electric telegraph, states, after giving a record of the lectures delivered and the text-books used on electricity, by Prof. Day, that one of the professor's experiments with electricity "was the germ of the great invention that now daily and hourly astonishes the world, and has given

* Testimony given by Prof. Day in a court of law in the highly interesting "Life of Samuel F. B. Morse," by Samuel Irenæus Prime, p. 19.

immortality of fame to the student who twenty years afterward, conceived the idea of making this experiment of practical value to mankind." Morse himself, alluding to one of the professor's experiments thus spoke: "It was the crude seed which took root in my mind, and grew up into form and ripened into the invention of the Telegraph." Morse's able biographer adds: "But there was at the same time, in the faculty of Yale College, another illustrious man, to whom more than to Dr. Dwight or Dr. Day, Mr. Morse was indebted for those impressions which resulted finally in his great invention. Benjamin Silliman long held front rank among men of science." After paying a graceful tribute to Prof. Silliman's learning the biographer presents some highly interesting testimony delivered in a court of law by Prof. Silliman, respecting the care and thoroughness with which Morse had pursued the study of certain branches of electrical science. To the Rev. Mr. Morse,-the father of Samuel F. B. Morse, -Prof. McLean, of Princeton College, had sent for publication a paper on electricity which might well excite the mind of the young man. After leaving college young Morse continued to pursue his studies in electricity studying under Prof. Dana of the University of New York and under Prof. Renwick of Columbia College.

Morse, however gifted in intellect, was poor. His father had had his scanty means swept away by having indorsed for a friend. Thus to his sons he had bequeathed a debt instead of a fortune. After leaving college young Morse having taken lessons in painting was enabled to earn a subsistence by painting portraits. In order to acquire training as an artist he spent some years in Europe taking lessons of celebrated painters. In the year 1832 when on his way from France back to his native land, while conversing upon Benjamin Franklin's experiments

with electricity, a great thought came to him—a great thought respecting electricity which deeply agitated him. Henceforth, his mind was to be in travail until the electric telegraph should be born. He withdrew from every one and noted in his pocket-book the wonderful plan which he had conceived. At night when he retired, sleep refused to throw her kindly mantle on him. He felt that the Deity had suddenly called him to act a great part in the history of civilization. From this period for many years, Morse was to heroically labor to impress upon the public mind, less gifted in some respects than his own, the value to the human race of an electric telegraph. He was poor. Although he believed that he possessed the secret of bringing the inhabitants of distant parts of the world into instantaneous communication, and, although he might well feel that wealth and fame were hovering about him, he was too poor to make the costly experiments which the incredulous public required before it would credit the new surprise which science had in store for mankind. His situation became forlorn, and he had a family of three motherless children to provide for. Sad-hearted,-day after day was passing over his head. Should death overtake him all his labors for the human race might be lost to the world. Let a curtain here hide the sorrows and struggles of unrecognized genius.

Happily, in the year 1835, Morse was appointed Professor of the Literature of Design in the University of the City of New York. This university fronts Washington Square. It would be highly interesting to notice, in passing, the services which this noble seat of learning has rendered the world. The Rev. John Hall, of New York, -a graduate of Belfast College, Ireland,-whose devotion to the cause of true learning and whose high Christian character may well remind one of the noblest virtues of

the Puritans, is the Chancellor of the university—a university which is still rendering the Empire State and the world inestimable service. May it long be blessed with prosperity!

Prof. Morse was enabled—especially living as he did in a university building-to make, in spare hours many experiments with his electric telegraph instruments. He was enabled to improve the system of telegraphic signs, and alphabet and sounds which his highly trained mind had devised.

Prof. Morse, in a letter in which he alluded to his going to the university, said: "There I immediately commenced, with very limited means, to experiment upon my invention." He then, after describing the apparatus which he employed in his experiments, continued: "With this apparatus, rude as it was, and completed before the first of the year 1836, I was enabled to and did mark down telegraphic intelligible signs, and to make and did make distinguishable sounds for telegraphing; and having arrived at that point, I exhibited it to some of my friends early in that year, and among others to Prof. Leonard D. Gale who was a college professor of the University. * * * Up to the autumn of 1837 my telegraphic apparatus existed in so rude a form that I felt a reluctance to have it seen. My means were very limited-so limited as to preclude the possibility of constructing an apparatus of such mechanical finish as to warrant my success in venturing upon its public exhibition. I had no wish to expose to ridicule the representative of so many hours of laborious thought."

Not the least of the advantages which Morse as a Professor in the University of the City of New York enjoyed was that of the fellowship, to some extent, of men of *Ibid., p. 292.