CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION

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2. A statistical history of our postal service, from the days of Postmaster Franklin.

3. A like history of telegraphy in all its varieties in the United States.

4. A like history of the progress of art, industry, and invention, including the disclosures of the Patent Office.

5. A like history of emigration to the United States, and its distribution.

6. A like history of the agriculture, and incidentally of the rate of increase of land under culture, and of the disappearance of growing timber.

7. A like history of mining, and of the progress made in the development of mineral wealth.

8. A statistical history of military and naval inventions, discoveries and achievements.

9. A statistical history of manufactures of all kinds.

IO. A statistical history of education and educational institutions, and incidentally of the honorary and financial remuneration of instructors.

II. A like history of religious and ecclesiastical institutes and the compensation of the clergy.

12. A like history of the natural sciences, their progress and the progressive means provided for their culture.

13. A like history of the progress of wealth and the financial vicissitudes of the country.

14. A like history of the fine arts.

15.

A like history of literature and typography.

16. A like history of the press.

17. A like history of the public charities, and incidentally a classification of the poor and infirm who depend upon them.

18. A like history of the organization and growth of the different States, in so far as they are not treated of under any of the preceding categories.

19. Of the Municipal, State and Federal systems of political representation, and the changes which they may have respectively undergone.

20. An account of what is memorable in the celebrations of the various anniversaries of American Independence from the commencement.

21. Of political economy, and incidentally of labor, free and servile, and wages.

The science of political economy may be said to have been born with our independence, for Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was not yet a year old.

22

Of law, as a profession, and of our systems of judicial procedure as a means of security for life and property.

23. Of medicine as a profession, and its effects upon longevity. This will furnish an excellent occasion for summing up the advantages or disadvantages which the world has experienced from Jenner's famous discovery of the prophylactic efficacy of vaccination, which was made the same year that we proclaimed ourselves as a people, free and independent, and which, therefore, in 1876, will have been on trial just a century.

24. Of commerce and navigation, domestic and foreign, ocean and river, and incidentally of marine and naval architecture. 25. Of changes and ameliorations in the social condition and nourishment of the people of the United States.

26. Of the aborigines and the changes they have undergone. 27. Of the climatic and meteorological revolutions and changes of the century on our continent.

Seventh: A national museum, to be perpetually associated, both by name and purpose, with this anniversary. The edifice might be dedicated or its corner-stone laid on that occasion, and when ready, be made the repository of such works of art commemorative of the event as proved worthy of its hospitality, and specimens of everything printed in the United States during the years 1776 and 1876, and of all memorials of that day in each of the intervening years that needed and deserved such a shelter. This should be the nucleus of a national repository in modest imitation of the Museums of the Vatican and the Louvre, and of the British Museum in London.

I have here given you some of the modes in which this august centenary may most durably and creditably express the sentiments with which it should inspire the nation, without pretending that all these methods are practicable, or that any of them are the best. What I am most solicitous about is that the subject be taken into immediate consideration and no time be lost, for there is none to spare, in making suitable preparations to welcome what cannot but be regarded, when it arrives, as the most memorable anniversary of our history. I remain, my dear Senator, very faithfully yours, JOHN BIGELOW.1 'This letter was published in the New York Tribune in January, 1871.

CHRISTMAS AT VON BUNSEN'S

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An inexpensive mode of celebrating our national birthday did not suit our Federal government under any portion of President Grant's administration. Philadelphia was selected as the theatre of a commemorative exposition of American curios, which as I predicted, largely failed to indemnify the subscribers for the expenses it involved.

Christmas Eve, 1870. Dined to-day with George von Bunsen accompanied by all my family. The three oldest of my children. dined with us at the table at half-past four p. m. The two young

est took tea with other children above stairs at five. Von Bunsen has nine or ten children, all healthy and attractive. At dinner Carl, the oldest, fourteen, said grace. After dinner in the parlor, coffee was served, then prayer-books (Lutheran) were placed in our hands, and one of the boys seated himself at the piano while the others sang Luther's Christmas Hymn. When the singing was over (to which the servants were all invited) the doors of the parlor were thrown open and we were ushered into it, my daughter Flora as the youngest guest taking the precedence. There we saw a Christmas tree nearly as high as the room itself, gaily decorated in the usual way, while around the room were arranged piles of presents to be distributed. I was almost sorry to see the liberality of their dispensation to my children as well as to their mother and myself. All had something interesting: Grace a superb illustrated edition of L'Allegro and Il. Penseroso of Milton; John a costly knife; Poultney a portfolio with writing materials; Annie and Jennie books and things suitable to their ages; my wife a knitted breakfast-shawl. To me Mrs. von Bunsen brought a brass bell modeled from a very old bell in Italy, which possessed the rare distinction of being the first cast-iron bell that had ever been made resonant. It was designed and cast somewhere in Germany, the name of the place I have forgotten. It is open-work, and the antique letters of the words S Matheus, S Marcus, S Lucas, S Johannes, are engraved around it. Mr. von Bunsen gave me also a copy of the Briefe von Alex. von Humboldt an Christian Carl Josias Freiherr von Bunsen, with this inscription on the outer page:

"To Mr. Bigelow, who would have been Humboldt's and Bunsen's friend, had he known them, as a token of sincere regard. The Editor. Berlin, Christmas Eve, 1870."