In 1829 Mr. Morse went abroad for the purpose of completing his art studies.  He remained in Europe for more than three years, residing in the principal cities of the Continent.  During his absence he was elected “Professor of the Literature of the Fine” in the University of the City of New York.  He set out on his return home to accept this professorship in the autumn of 1832, sailing from Havre on board the packet-ship “Sully.”

As has been stated, he had manifested a decided fondness for Chemistry and Natural Philosophy while at Yale College, where he was a pupil of Professor Silliman in the former science, and of Professor Day in the latter, and after his departure from college he had devoted all his leisure time to the pursuit of these studies.  So great was his fondness for them that some of his friends declared their belief that he ought to abandon art and devote himself to science.  In 1826-27 he had delivered, at the Athenaeum in New York, the course of fine-art lectures to which reference has been made, and on alternate nights of the same season Professor J. Freeman Dana had lectured upon electro-magnetism, illustrating his remarks with the first electro-magnet (on Sturgeon’s principle) ever seen in this country.  Morse and Dana had been intimate friends, and had often held long conversations upon the subject of magnetism, and the magnet referred to had at length been given to the former by Professor Torrey.  The interest which he had thus conceived in this instrument had never diminished, and his investigations and studies had never ceased, so that at the time of his departure from France in the “Sully,” in 1832, he was one of the best informed men upon the subject to be found in any country.

Among his fellow-passengers were a number of persons of intelligence and cultivation, one of whom had but recently witnessed in Paris some highly interesting experiments with the electro-magnet, the object of which was to prove how readily the electric spark could be obtained from the magnet, and the rapidity with which it could be disseminated.  To most of the passengers this relation was deeply interesting, but to all save one it was merely the recital of a curious experiment.  That one exception was Mr. Morse.  To him the development of this newly-discovered property of electricity was more than interesting.  It showed him his true mission in life, the way to his true destiny.  Art was not his proper field now, for however great his abilities as an artist, he was possessed of genius of a higher, more useful type, and it was henceforth his duty to employ it.  He thought long and earnestly upon the subject which the words of his fellow-passenger had so freshly called up, pacing the deck under the silent stars, and rocked in his wakeful berth by the ocean whose terrors his genius was to tame, and whose vast depths his great invention was to set at naught.  He had long been convinced that electricity was to furnish the means