A wiser selection than Mr. Rush could not have been made. He entered upon the work to which he had been appointed, with great determination. In a letter to our Secretary of State just after he had instituted suit, he says:

"A suit of higher interest and dignity, has rarely perhaps been before the tribunals of a nation. If the trust created by the testator's will be successfully carried into effect by the enlightened legislation of Congress, benefits may flow to the United States, and to the human family, not easy to be estimated, because operating silently and gradually throughout time, yet not operating the less effectually. Not to speak of the inappreciable value of letters to individual and social man, the monuments which they raise to a nation's glory often last when others perish, and seem especially appropriate to the glory of a Republic whose foundations are laid in the assumed intelligence of its citizens, and can only be strengthened and perpetuated as that improves."

The successful termination of the suit came, however, sooner than could have been expected; and in May, 1838, the amount of the legacy, exceeding the substantial sum of five hundred thousand dollars, was received and invested as required by law.

The facts stated were communicated by special message from President Van Buren to Congress, in December, 1838. Attention was then called to the fact that he had applied to persons versed in science, for their views as to the mode of disposing of the fund which would be calculated best to meet the intent of the testator, and prove most beneficial to mankind.

During the eight years intervening between this message and the passage of the bill for the incorporation of the Smithsonian Institution, much discussion was had in and out of Congress, as to the best method of making effective the intention of the testator.

In the light of events, some of the many plans suggested are even now of curious interest. The establishment of a magnificent national library at the Capital; the founding of a great university; of a normal school; a post graduate school; an astronomical observatory "equal to any in the

world," are a few of the plans from time to time proposed and earnestly advocated.

The act of incorporation in 1846, the appointment of a Board of Regents, and the selection of a Secretary, mark the beginning of the Smithsonian Institution. In the selection of a Secretary, the chief officer of the institution, the regents builded better than they knew. The choice fell upon Professor Joseph Henry of Princeton, then peerless among men of science in America. The appointment was accepted, and the essential features of the plan of organization he proposed were adopted in December, 1847. This plan recognized as

“Fundamental that the terms 'increase' and 'diffusion' should receive literal interpretation in accordance with the evident intention of the testator; that such terms being logically distinct, the two purposes mentioned in the bequest were to be kept in view in the organization of the institution; that the increase of knowledge should be effected by the encouragement of original researches of the highest character; and its diffusion by the publication of the results of original research, by means of the publication of a series of volumes of original memoirs; that the object of the institution should not be restricted in favor of any particular kind of knowledge; if to any, only to the higher and more abstract, to the discovery of new principles rather than that of isolated facts; that the institution should in no sense be national; that the bequest was intended for the benefit of mankind in general, and not for any single nation.

"The accumulation and care of collections of objects of nature and art, the development of a library, the providing of courses of lectures, and the organization of a system of meteorological observation, were to be only incidental to the fundamental design of increasing and diffusing knowledge among men.'

In its inception, and in its widening influence during the passing years, those entrusted with the actual management of this institution have conscientiously kept in view the clearly expressed intention of its founder. Following the distinctive but parallel paths, "increase" and "diffusion," the Smithsonian Institution, yet in its infancy, has added largely to the sum of useful knowledge. Its accredited representatives are out upon every pathway of intelligent research and discovery. Under the wise operation of this marvellous instru

mentality, long-concealed secrets of nature have been discovered, and it can hardly be doubted that all that it is given to man to know will yet be revealed, and it will be permitted him "To read what is still unread,

In the manuscripts of God."

By indefatigable investigation, and by world-wide publication of the results, mankind has indeed become, as was intended, the beneficiary of the princely bequest.

More fitting words could not be selected with which to close this sketch than those of the gifted and lamented Langley, whose best years were given to scientific research, and whose name is inseparably associated with the Smithsonian Institution:

"What has been done in these two paths the reader may partly gather from this volume - in the former from the various articles by contemporary men of science, describing its activities in research and original contributions to the increase of human knowledge; in the latter, in numerous ways-among others from the description of the work of one of its bureaux, that of the International Exchanges, where it may be more immediately seen how universal is the scope of the action of the Institution, which, in accordance with its motto "PER ORBEM," is not limited to the country of its adoption, but belongs to the world, there being outside of the United States more than twelve thousand correspondents scattered through every portion of the globe; indeed there is hardly a language, or a people, where the results of Smithson's benefaction are not known, and associated with his name.

"If we were permitted to think of him as conscious of what has been, is being, and is still to be done, in pursuance of his wish, we might believe that he would feel that his hope at a time when life must have seemed so hopeless, was finding full fruition; for events are justifying what may have seemed, at the time, but a rhetorical expression, in the language of a former President of the United States, who has said: "Renowned as is the name of Percy in the historical annals of England, let the trust of James Smithson to the United States of America be faithfully executed, let the result accomplish his object, the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men, and a wreath more unfading shall entwine itself in the lapse of future ages around the name of Smithson than the united hands of history and poetry have braided around the name of Percy through the long ages past.'

XII

THE OLD RANGER

JOHN REYNOLDS, GOVERNOR OF ILLINOIS, A BORN POLITICIAN HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE PEOPLE HIS AFFECTATION OF HUMILITY ADMITTED TO THE BAR HE CONDEMNS A MURDERER TO DEATH HIS CURIOUS ADDRESS TO ANOTHER MURDERER

- BECOMES A MEMBER OF THE LEGISLATURE · ELECTED GOVERNOR HIS GENEROSITY TO HIS POLITICAL ENEMIES - BECOMES A MEMBER OF CONGRESS HIS ADMIRATION FOR HIS ASSOCIATES ELECTED A MEMBER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE RETIRES TO PRIVATE LIFE.

HIS world of ours will be much older before the like of John Reynolds, the fourth Governor of Illinois, again appears upon its stage. The title which he generously gave himself in early manhood, upon his return after a brief experience as a trooper in pursuit of a marauding band of Winnebagoes, stood him well in hand in all his future contests for office. "The Old Ranger" was a sobriquet to conjure with, and turned the scales in his favor in many a doubtful contest.

The subject of this sketch was a born politician if ever one trod this green earth. He was a perennial candidate for office, and it was said he never took a drink of water without serious meditation as to how it might possibly affect his political prospects. The late Uriah Heep might easily have gotten a few points in " 'umbleness," if he had accompanied the Old Ranger in one or two of his political campaigns.

While Illinois was yet a Territory, his father had emigrated from the mountains of Tennessee and located near the historic village of Kaskaskia. This was at the time the capital of the Territory. The village mentioned was then the most, and in fact, the only, important place in the vast area constituting the present State of Illinois. There were less than five thousand persons of all nationalities and conditions in

the Territory, and they mainly in and about Kaskaskia, and southward to the Ohio. Beck's Gazetteer published in 1823five years after the admission of the State into the Unioncontains the following: "Chicago, a village of Pike County, situated on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Chicago Creek. It contains twelve or fifteen houses, and about sixty or seventy inhabitants."

The acquaintance of John Reynolds with what was then known as "the Illinois Country" began in 1800, and his thorough knowledge of the people and their ways gave him rare opportunities for acquiring great personal popularity. Fairly well educated for the times, gifted with an abundance of shrewdness, and withal an excellent judge of human nature, he soon became a man of mark in the new country. He was at all times and under all circumstances the self-constituted "friend of the people." He affected to be one of the humblest of the sons of men; and his dress, language, and deportment were always in strict keeping with that assumption. For the pride of ancestry he had a supreme contempt. In his "My Own Times," published a few years before his death, he said: "I regard the whole subject of ancestry and descent as utterly frivolous and unworthy of a moment's serious attention."

This recalls what Judge Baldwin said of Cave Burton:

"He was not clearly satisfied that Esau made as foolish a bargain with his brother Jacob as some think. If the birthright was a mere matter of family pride, and the pottage of agreeable taste, Cave was not quite sure that Esau had not gotten the advantage in his famed bargain with the Father of Israel."

Humility was Reynolds's highest card, and when out among the people he was always figuratively clothed in sackcloth and ashes. A few extracts from his book may be of interest:

"I was a singular spectacle when in 1809 I started to Tennessee to college. I looked like a trapper going to the Rocky Mountains. I wore a cream-colored hat made of the fur of the prairie wolf, which gave me a grotesque appearance. I was well acquainted with the mysteries of horse and foot races, shooting matches, and other wild sports of the backwoods, but had not