hundred talents, and that in an age when a single talent was tantamount to the highest daily pay of six thousand soldiers. A century later Archimedes, the first born of ancient mechanical philosophers, was reinforced by King Hiero so powerfully that he half believed his patron would furnish him a fulcrum on which to rest a lever for lifting the world. Patronage of alchemy was a patronage, albeit blind and wasteful, of knowledge. For, says Bacon, "the search and stir to make gold hath brought to light a great number of good and fruitful inventions." Laudanum and Glauber's Salts (sal mirabile Glauberi) are not a tithe of the medicines we owe to alchemists. The black art student, Agricola, by governmental aid first made chemical analyses and discovered bismuth. Bottger, furnished by Saxony with a hundred and fifty thousand dollars with which to seek the philosopher's stone, found Dresden porcelain. Charles the second, of England, at his restoration in 1660, brought over a famous alchemist from Paris and built for him in St. James's Park a very fine "elaboratory." But the patrons of alchemy can no more be numbered than can the devotees of avarice and credulity. All the deer in Windsor Park were given by Charles I. to Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, for dissection. Whether the monarch gave him the venison too, chroniclers do not relate. For testing Halley's theory concerning variations of the compass, that philosopher was put in command of a British ship, with which he made ocean voyages for several years, returning to England in 1700. The same act of parliament which offered a prize for ascertaining longitude at sea also authorized commissions to defray the expense of longitudinal experiments. In 1805 Robert Fulton was afforded opportunities by the British government to experiment with his submarine torpedoes, and in 1807 was granted $5000 by the authorities in Washington for testing again his torpedo theory. In 1842 $15,000 were granted to Colonel Samuel Colt, inventor of the revolver, for the same purpose. The Prussian admiralty is reported to have lately purchased of an English inventor the secret of the so-called "fish-torpedo" for harbor defences. In 1800 Prussia gave the chemist Achard a farm for experiments on beet sugar;— the beginning of a manufacture, afterward encouraged in France when stripped of her sugar-islands, by the premium of a million francs for the best method of making it, and which to-day renders half Europe independent of the sugarcane and tropical islands. The manufacture of beet sugarbeginning so lately and on so small a scale will repay a million-fold the fostering care of Germany. In 1874 the tax on it in the German empire yielded more than that laid on any other article, namely, 35,451,300 marks, while that on salt was 32,350,470, and that on distilled liquors 30,761,670. But extracting sugar from beets seemed so chimerical a project to the average English mind, that one of the most popular of Gillray's caricatures shows George III. standing on the channel coast, and throwing a huge beet across to the French emperor, and bidding him make sugar of it. In 1843 the United States Congress erected a line of telegraph for Morse from Washington to Baltimore. Who can estimate the influence of this appropriation of $30,000 in hastening on the telegraphic era? An index of telegraphic progress in thirty years is afforded by the outlay on telegraphs of $834,169 in 1872 by the government even of Brazil. Again, had not the inventor Ericsson been permitted to try his propeller on a United States steamer in 1841, the navies of the world might still have been sailing ships. Had not our government given the same genius its patronage for building the unique, new-fangled Monitor, who can calculate the disasters that would have followed in the wake of the triumphant Merrimac ? In 1817 the canton of Geneva established a botanical garden simply to aid DeCandolle in his botanical researches. In 1872 De Lôme was granted £1600 by France, that he might try aeronautic experiments. In 1847 Agassiz, having executed his American commission for Prussia, was about to return thither, when he was offered by the head of our coastsurvey, Mr. Bache, who held that tools belong to him that can use them, tractet fabrilia faber,— its aid in his researches. This offer was the secret of Agassiz's deciding to end his days here, deaf to tempting European invitations. It enabled him at will to push researches on all shores from Maine to Texas, as well as along the Pacific. It bore him up the Amazon and round Cape Horn. It gave him more hands than those of Briareus. At first he could not credit his. good fortune, which was more than Aristotle's; or his feeling was, "Give me a gash, put me in present pain, Lest this great sea of joys rushing upon me, And drown me in their sweetness." The Washington authorities by making Professor Henry,who is the chief executive officer of the Smithsonian Institution, president of the light-house board, do science a service as well as themselves. They afford him abundant facilities for experiments in optics and acoustics, which would otherwise be impossible, as well as for testing plausible theories. Governments have sometimes patronized knowledge by relaxing for its benefit the severities of war. "The great Emanthian conqueror bid spare The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower In the very heat of our war for independence, Dr. Franklin, as Plenipotentiary of the United States in France, forbade American privateers to molest the squadron with which the British discoverer, Captain Cook, was circumnavigating the globe. France, in the interest of science, is said to have laid a similar interdict on her cruisers. It is certain that Franklin did, and on those of Spain also. In acknowledgement of Franklin's magnanimity the British Admiralty sent him, as from the king, a presentation copy of Cook's voyages and a gold medal. In 1813 Davy, the scientist, was allowed by Napoleon to make a chemical tour on the continent of Europe, when it was shut up against all other Englishmen. Through upholding some form of religion, governments have patronized knowledge. Among the seven wonders of the classical world all save two were religious monuments; namely, the pyramids and the mausoleum, the colossal statues of Apollo at Rhodes, and of Jupiter at Olympia, and the Ephesian temple of Diana; and all were national works. So were the architectural miracles of Karnak, Jerusalem, Baalbec, and Athens, as well as those in India and farther east. After the fall of paganism every government which favored Christianity favored the advance of knowledge. For the last millenary the grandest architecture in the world has been displayed in European cathedrals, the larger part of which were built at public expense. The funds obtained by the pope through the sale of indulgences for lavishing on St. Peter's were as really public money as was that fund raised in England by a parliamentary tax on coal for erecting fifty churches in London by Sir Christopher Wren. So were the sums secured by priests in Rouen for licenses to cat butter in Lent, and then laid out in building there one of the most massive church towers in France, called "La Tour de Beurre, parcequ'elle fut construite de l'argent payé par les fidèles pour obtenir la permission manger du beurre pendant le carême." Through the church also governments have patronized sculpture and painting no less than architecture. The master-pieces of most of the masters were executed for the ornamentation of churches. They have usually been paid for by public money, money exacted rather than voluntarily contributed. In maintaining Christian clergy, governments have done a service to knowledge. The maintenance of Christian teachers from the revenues of the state began with the first Christian emperor, Constantine. Charlemagne at the opening of the ninth century was the legal author of tithes. Thus was furnished a physical basis which is often a sine qua non of intellectual advancement, the Toû σTW which Archimedes wanted as a pre-requisite for moving the world. Ecclesiastics thus fed, have done as much as any other class for the increase of knowledge. Such names as Roger Bacon, and "gunpowder Schwarz," both friars; Grosseteste a bishop; Basil Valentine, who invented percussion powder, a Benedictine, cannot be surpassed among mediaevals. The only man in the ninth century known to have maintained the rotundity of the carth, was a bishop. Petrarch was a prebendary, as some one says, "fattening upon benefices while writing about philosophy." Copernicus was a parish priest. The monks of Salamanca entertained Columbus for two years, and supported his scheme of discovery after it had been condemned by the university. The foremost founders of libraries and museums were popes. - When Milton visited Rome in 1638 - his biographer, Professor Masson, writes the popes and cardinals had come to regard the patronage of learning and the arts as a part of their official duties. To build new edifices, surround them with gardens and fountains, and adorn them with sculptures and paintings; to preside at meetings of the academies and to hold large reunions in their own palaces, at which all the learned were assembled, and at which the best singing in Italy was to be heard, to collect books and manuscripts, and to employ librarians to catalogue and keep them, such were the occupations of the Roman cardinals. Some portions of papal patronage are underrated when we view them from a Protestant stand-point. Thus Borghese, who had laboriously and scientifically arranged the papal numismatic treasures, was paid, at his own request, by permission to cat meat on Friday. Protestants would choose a largess of meat, choosing pork rather than permission to partake of it, loin rather than license. But Borghese was well paid, for he was well satisfied. Cardinal del Monte, having begged a telescope from Galileo, sent him in return. a certificate of indulgence, as it were celestial pardons for celestial prospects. Never, however, can we forgive the seven cardinals, who silenced, and as it were paralyzed, Galileo during the last nine years of his life-though the |