Chapter 2
Science is to art what the great fly-wheel and governor of a steam-engine are to the working part of the machinery--it guides, regulates, and controls the whole. Science and art are inseparably connected; like the Siamese Twins, they cannot be separated without producing the death of both.
How, then, are we to regard the superb specimens of natural history, which the liberality, the munificence; and the wisdom of our State have collected at the Capitol? They are the elements from which we can here determine all that belongs to the Natural History of our State; and may we not indulge the hope, that science and genius will come here, and, striking them with a magic wand, cause the true practical to spring into immortal life?
Remarks were also uttered by Prof. CHESTER DEWEY, President ANDERSON, and Rev. Dr. COX.
And thus ended the Inauguration of the State Geological Hall.
We turn to the Observatory, in regular order of succession.
INAUGURATION OF DUDLEY OBSERVATORY.
The Inauguration of the Dudley Observatory took place under the same tent which was appropriated to the dedication of the Geological Hall, and on the day following that event. An immense audience was assembled, drawn by the announcement of Mr. EVERETT'S Oration.
At a little past three o'clock the procession of _savans_ arrived from the Assembly Chamber, escorted by the Burgesses Corps. Directly in front of the speaker's stand sat Mrs. DUDLEY, the venerable lady to whose munificence the world is indebted for this Observatory. She was dressed in an antique, olive-colored silk, with a figure of a lighter color, a heavy, red broché shawl, and her bonnet, cap, &c., after the strictest style of the old school. Her presence added a new point of interest.
Prayer having been uttered by Rev. Dr. SPRAGUE, of Albany, THOMAS W. OLCOTT, Esq., introduced to the audience Ex-Governor WASHINGTON HUNT, who spoke briefly in honor of the memory of CHARLES E. DUDLEY, whose widow has founded and in part endowed this Observatory with a liberality so remarkable.
Remarks were offered by Dr. B. A. GOULD and Prof. A. D. BACHE, and Judge HARRIS read the following letter from Mrs. DUDLEY, announcing another munificent donation in aid of the new Observatory--$50,000, in addition to the $25,000 which had been already expended in the construction of the building. The letter was received with shouts of applause, Prof. AGASSIZ rising and leading the vast assemblage in three vehement cheers in honor of Mrs. DUDLEY!
ALBANY, Thursday, Aug. 14, 1856.
_To the Trustees of the Dudley Observatory:_
GENTLEMEN,--I scarcely need refer in a letter to you to the modest beginning and gradual growth of the institution over which you preside, and of which you are the responsible guardians. But we have arrived at a period in its history when its inauguration gives to it and to you some degree of prominence, and which must stamp our past efforts with weakness and inconsideration, or exalt those of the future to the measure of liberality necessary to certain success.
You have a building erected and instruments engaged of unrivaled excellence; and it now remains to carry out the suggestion of the Astronomer Royal of England in giving permanency to the establishment. The very distinguished Professors BACHE, PIERCE, and GOULD, state in a letter, which I have been permitted to see, that to expand this institution to the wants of American science and the honors of a national character, will require an investment which will yield annually not less than $10,000; and these gentlemen say, in the letter referred to,--
"If the greatness of your giving can rise to this occasion, as it has to all our previous suggestions, with such unflinching magnanimity, we promise you our earnest and hearty coöperation, and stake our reputation that the scientific success shall fill up the measure of your hopes and anticipations."
For the attainment of an object so rich in scientific reward and national glory, guaranteed by men with reputations as exalted and enduring as the skies upon which they are written, contributions should be general, and not confined to an individual or a place.
For myself, I offer, as my part of the required endowment, the sum of $50,000 in addition to the advances which I have already made; and, trusting that the name which you have given to the Observatory may not be regarded as an undeserved compliment, and that it will not diminish the public regard by giving to the institution a seemingly individual character,
I remain, Gentlemen, your obedient servant, BLANDINA DUDLEY.
Judge HARRIS then introduced the Orator of the occasion, Hon. EDWARD EVERETT, whose speech is given verbatim in these pages.
THE INSTRUMENTS OF THE DUDLEY OBSERVATORY.
During the Sessions of the American Association, the new Astronomical Instruments of Dudley Observatory were described in detail by Dr. B. A. GOULD, who is the Astronomer in charge. We condense his statements:--
The Meridian Circle and Transit instrument were ordered from Pistor & Martins, the celebrated manufacturers of Berlin, by whom the new instrument at Ann Arbor was made. A number of improvements have been introduced in the Albany instruments, not perhaps all absolutely new, but an eclectic combination of late adaptations with new improvements. Dr. Gould made a distinction of modern astronomical instruments into two classes, the English and the German. The English is the massive type; the German, light and airy. The English instrument is the instrument of the engineer; the German, the instrument of the artist. In ordering the instruments for the Albany Observatory, the Doctor preferred the German type and discarded the heavier English. He instanced, as a specimen of the latter, the new instrument at Greenwich, recently erected under the superintendence of the Astronomer Royal. That instrument registers observations in single seconds; the Dudley instrument will register to tenths of seconds. That has six or eight microscopes; this has four. That has a gas lamp, by the light of which the graduations are read off; the Albany instrument has no lamp, and the Doctor considered the lamp a hazardous experiment, affecting the integrity of the experiment, not only by its radiant heat but by the currents of heated air which it produces. The diameter of the object-glass of the Albany instrument is 7-1/2 French inches clear aperture, or 8 English inches, and the length of the tube 8 feet. He would have preferred an instrument in which the facilities of manipulation would have been greater, but was hampered by one proviso, upon which the Trustees of the institution insisted--that this should be the biggest instrument of its kind; and the instruction was obeyed. The glass was made by Chance, and ground by Pistor himself. The eye-piece is fitted with two micrometers, for vertical and horizontal observations. Another apparatus provides for the detection and measurement of the flexure of the tube. Much trouble was experienced in securing a good casting for the steel axis of the instrument. Three were found imperfect under the lathe, and the fourth was chosen; but even then the pivots were made in separate pieces, which were set in very deeply and welded. Dr. Gould said he had been requested by the gentlemen who had this enterprise in charge to suggest, as a mark of respect to a gentleman of Albany who was a munificent patron of Science, that this instrument be known as the Olcott Meridian Circle.
WHAT THE DUDLEY OBSERVATORY IS.
It stands a mile from the Capitol, in the city of Albany, upon the crest of a hill, so difficult of approach, as to be in reality a Hill of Science. There are two ways of getting to it. In both cases there are rail fences to be clambered over, and long grass to wade through, settlements to explore, and a clayey road to travel; but these are minor troubles. The elevation of the hill above tide-water is, perhaps, 200 feet; its distance from the Capitol about a mile and a half. The view for miles is unimpeded; and the Observatory is belted about with woods and verdant lawns. There could not be a finer location or a purer air. The plateau contains some fifteen acres.
The Observatory is constructed in the form of a Latin cross. Its eastern arm is an apartment 22 by 24 feet, in which the meridian circle is to be placed. The western arm is a room of the same dimensions, intended for the transit instrument. From the north and south faces of both rooms are semi-circular apsides, projecting 6 feet 6 inches, containing the Collimator piers and the vertical openings for observation. The entire length of each room is, therefore, 37 feet. In the northern arm are placed the library, 23 feet by 27 feet; two computing rooms, 12 feet by 23 feet each; side entrance halls, staircases, &c. The southern arm contains the principal entrance, consisting of an arched colonnade of four Tuscan columns, surrounded by a pediment. A broad flight of stone steps leads to this colonnade; and through the entrance door beneath it to the main central hall, 28 feet square, in which are placed (in niches) the very beautiful electric clock and pendulum presented by Erastus Corning, Esq. The center of this hall is occupied by a massive pier of stone, 10 feet square, passing from the basement into the dome above, and intended for the support of the great heliometer. Directly opposite the entrance door is a large niche, in which it is proposed to place the bust of the late Mr. Dudley. Immediately above this hall is the equatorial room, a circular apartment, 22 feet 6 inches in diameter, and 24 feet high, covered by a low conical roof, in which and in the walls are the usual observing slits. The drum, or cylindrical portion, of this room is divided into two parts--the lower one fixed, the upper, revolving on cast-iron balls moving in grooved metal plates, can command the entire horizon.
The building is in two stories--the upper of brick, with freestone quoins, impost and window and door dressings, rests upon a rusticated basement of freestone, six feet high. The style adopted is the modern Italian, of which it is a very excellent specimen. The building has been completed some time; but, in consequence of the size of the instruments now procured being greater than that originally contemplated, sundry alterations were required in the Transit and Meridian Circle rooms. These consist of the semi-circular projections already mentioned, and which, by varying the outlines of the building, will add greatly to its beauty and picturesqueness.
The piers for the Meridian Circle and Transit have, after careful investigation, been procured from the Lockport quarries. The great density and uniformity of the structure of the stone, and the facility with which such large masses as are required for this purpose can be procured there, have induced the selection of these quarries. The stones will weigh from six and a half to eight tons each.
The main building was erected from the drawings of Messrs. Woollett and Ogden, Architects, Albany; the additions and the machinery have been designed by Mr. W. Hodgins, Civil Engineer; and the latter is now being constructed under his superintendence, in a very superior manner, at the iron works of Messrs. Pruyn and Lansing, Albany.
The entire building is a tasteful and elegant structure, much superior in architectural character to any other in America devoted to a similar purpose.
ORATION.
FELLOW CITIZENS OF ALBANY:--
Assembled as we are, under your auspices, in this ancient and hospitable city, for an object indicative of a highly-advanced stage of scientific culture, it is natural, in the first place, to cast a historical glance at the past. It seems almost to surpass belief, though an unquestioned fact, that more than a century should have passed away, after Cabot had discovered the coast of North America for England, before any knowledge was gained of the noble river on which your city stands, and which was destined by Providence to determine, in after times, the position of the commercial metropolis of the Continent. It is true that Verazzano, a bold and sagacious Florentine navigator, in the service of France, had entered the Narrows in 1524, which he describes as a very large river, deep at its mouth, which forced its way through steep hills to the sea; but though he, like all the naval adventurers of that age, was sailing westward in search of a shorter passage to India, he left this part of the coast without any attempt to ascend the river; nor can it be gathered from his narrative that he believed it to penetrate far into the interior.
VOYAGE OF HENDRICK HUDSON.
Near a hundred years elapsed before that great thought acquired substance and form. In the spring of 1609, the heroic but unfortunate Hudson, one of the brightest names in the history of English maritime adventure, but then in the employment of the Dutch East India Company, in a vessel of eighty tons, bearing the very astronomical name of the _Half Moon_, having been stopped by the ice in the Polar Sea, in the attempt to reach the East by the way of Nova Zembla, struck over to the coast of America in a high northern latitude. He then stretched down southwardly to the entrance of Chesapeake Bay (of which he had gained a knowledge from the charts and descriptions of his friend, Captain Smith), thence returning to the north, entered Delaware Bay, standing out again to sea, arrived on the second of September in sight of the "high hills" of Neversink, pronouncing it "a good land to fall in with, and a pleasant land to see;" and, on the following morning, sending his boat before him to sound the way, passed Sandy Hook, and there came to anchor on the third of September, 1609; two hundred and forty-seven years ago next Wednesday. What an event, my friends, in the history of American population, enterprise, commerce, intelligence, and power--the dropping of that anchor at Sandy Hook!
DISCOVERY OF THE HUDSON RIVER.
Here he lingered a week, in friendly intercourse with the natives of New Jersey, while a boat's company explored the waters up to Newark Bay. And now the great question. Shall he turn back, like Verazzano, or ascend the stream? Hudson was of a race not prone to turn back, by sea or by land. On the eleventh of September he raised the anchor of the _Half Moon_, passed through the Narrows, beholding on both sides "as beautiful a land as one can tread on;" and floated cautiously and slowly up the noble stream--the first ship that ever rested on its bosom. He passed the Palisades, nature's dark basaltic Malakoff, forced the iron gateway of the Highlands, anchored, on the fourteenth, near West Point; swept onward and upward, the following day, by grassy meadows and tangled slopes, hereafter to be covered with smiling villages;--by elevated banks and woody heights, the destined site of towns and cities--of Newburg, Poughkeepsie, Catskill;--on the evening of the fifteenth arrived opposite "the mountains which lie from the river side," where he found "a very loving people and very old men;" and the day following sailed by the spot hereafter to be honored by his own illustrious name. One more day wafts him up between Schodac and Castleton; and here he landed and passed a day with the natives,--greeted with all sorts of barbarous hospitality,--the land "the finest for cultivation he ever set foot on," the natives so kind and gentle, that when they found he would not remain with them over night, and feared that he left them--poor children of nature!--because he was afraid of their weapons,--he, whose quarter-deck was heavy with ordnance,--they "broke their arrows in pieces, and threw them in the fire." On the following morning, with the early flood-tide, on the 19th of September, 1609, the _Half Moon_ "ran higher up, two leagues above the Shoals," and came to anchor in deep water, near the site of the present city of Albany. Happy if he could have closed his gallant career on the banks of the stream which so justly bears his name, and thus have escaped the sorrowful and mysterious catastrophe which awaited him the next year!
CHAMPLAIN'S VOYAGE AND THE GROWTH OF COLONIES.
But the discovery of your great river and of the site of your ancient city, is not the only event which renders the year 1609 memorable in the annals of America and the world. It was one of those years in which a sort of sympathetic movement toward great results unconsciously pervades the races and the minds of men. While Hudson discovered this mighty river and this vast region for the Dutch East India Company, Champlain, in the same year, carried the lilies of France to the beautiful lake which bears his name on your northern limits; the languishing establishments of England in Virginia were strengthened by the second charter granted to that colony; the little church of Robinson removed from Amsterdam to Leyden, from which, in a few years, they went forth, to lay the foundations of New England on Plymouth Rock; the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands, after that terrific struggle of forty years (the commencement of which has just been embalmed in a record worthy of the great event by an American historian) wrested from Spain the virtual acknowledgment of their independence, in the Twelve Years' Truce; and James the First, in the same year, granted to the British East India Company their first permanent charter,--corner-stone of an empire destined in two centuries to overshadow the East.
GALILEO'S DISCOVERIES
One more incident is wanting to complete the list of the memorable occurrences which signalize the year 1609, and one most worthy to be remembered by us on this occasion. Cotemporaneously with the events which I have enumerated--eras of history, dates of empire, the starting-point in some of the greatest political, social, and moral revolutions in our annals, an Italian astronomer, who had heard of the magnifying glasses which had been made in Holland, by which distant objects could be brought seemingly near, caught at the idea, constructed a telescope, and pointed it to the heavens. Yes, my friends, in the same year in which Hudson discovered your river and the site of your ancient town, in which Robinson made his melancholy hegira from Amsterdam to Leyden, Galileo Galilei, with a telescope, the work of his own hands, discovered the phases of Venus and the satellites of Jupiter; and now, after the lapse of less than two centuries and a half, on a spot then embosomed in the wilderness--the covert of the least civilized of all the races of men--we are assembled--descendants of the Hollanders, descendants of the Pilgrims, in this ancient and prosperous city, to inaugurate the establishment of a first-class Astronomical Observatory.
EARLY DAYS OF ALBANY.
One more glance at your early history. Three years after the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, Fort Orange was erected, in the center of what is now the business part of the city of Albany; and, a few years later, the little hamlet of Beverswyck began to nestle under its walls. Two centuries ago, my Albanian friends, this very year, and I believe this very month of August, your forefathers assembled, not to inaugurate an observatory, but to lay the foundations of a new church, in the place of the rude cabin which had hitherto served them in that capacity. It was built at the intersection of Yonker's and Handelaar's, better known to you as State and Market streets. Public and private liberality coöperated in the important work. The authorities at the Fort gave fifteen hundred guilders; the patroon of that early day, with the liberality coëval with the name and the race, contributed a thousand; while the inhabitants, for whose benefit it was erected, whose numbers were small and their resources smaller, contributed twenty beavers "for the purchase of an oaken pulpit in Holland." Whether the largest part of this subscription was bestowed by some liberal benefactress, tradition has not informed us.
NEW AMSTERDAM
Nor is the year 1656 memorable in the annals of Albany alone. In that same year your imperial metropolis, then numbering about three hundred inhabitants, was first laid out as a city, by the name of New Amsterdam.[A] In eight years more, New Netherland becomes New York; Fort Orange and its dependent hamlet assumes the name of Albany. A century of various fortune succeeds; the scourge of French and Indian war is rarely absent from the land; every shock of European policy vibrates with electric rapidity across the Atlantic; but the year 1756 finds a population of 300,000 in your growing province. Albany, however, may still be regarded almost as a frontier settlement. Of the twelve counties into which the province was divided a hundred years ago, the county of Albany comprehended all that lay north and west of the city; and the city itself contained but about three hundred and fifty houses.
[Footnote A: These historical notices are, for the most part, abridged from Mr. Brodhead's excellent history of New York.]
TWO HUNDRED YEARS.
One more century; another act in the great drama of empire; another French and Indian War beneath the banners of England; a successful Revolution, of which some of the most momentous events occurred within your limits; a union of States; a Constitution of Federal Government; your population carried to the St. Lawrence and the great Lakes, and their waters poured into the Hudson; your territory covered with a net-work of canals and railroads, filled with life and action, and power, with all the works of peaceful art and prosperous enterprise with all the institutions which constitute and advance the civilization of the age; its population exceeding that of the Union at the date of the Revolution; your own numbers twice as large as those of the largest city of that day, you have met together, my Friends, just two hundred years since the erection of the little church of Beverswyck, to dedicate a noble temple of science and to take a becoming public notice of the establishment of an institution, destined, as we trust, to exert a beneficial influence on the progress of useful knowledge at home and abroad, and through that on the general cause of civilization.
SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS.
You will observe that I am careful to say the progress of science "at home and abroad;" for the study of Astronomy in this country has long since, I am happy to add, passed that point where it is content to repeat the observations and verify the results of European research. It has boldly and successfully entered the field of original investigation, discovery, and speculation; and there is not now a single department of the science in which the names of American observers and mathematicians are not cited by our brethren across the water, side by side with the most eminent of their European contemporaries.