I rejoice to observe that the encouragement of research occupies so prominent a place in your official documents, and in the wise and liberal inaugural address of your president.  This subject of the encouragement, or, as it is sometimes called, the endowment of research, has of late years greatly exercised the minds of men in England.  It was one of the main topics of discussion by the members of the Royal Commission of whom I was one, and who not long since issued their report, after five years’ labour.  Many seem to think that this question is mainly one of money; that you can go into the market and buy research, and that supply will follow demand, as in the ordinary course of commerce.  This view does not commend itself to my mind.  I know of no more difficult practical problem than the discovery of a method of encouraging and supporting the original investigator without opening the door to nepotism and jobbery.  My own conviction is admirably summed up in the passage of your president’s address, “that the best investigators are usually those who have also the responsibilities of instruction, gaining thus the incitement of colleagues, the encouragement of pupils, and the observation of the public.”

At the commencement of this address I ventured to assume that I might, if I thought fit, criticise the arrangements which have been made by the board of trustees, but I confess that I have little to do but to applaud them.  Most wise and sagacious seems to me the determination not to build for the present.  It has been my fate to see great educational funds fossilise into mere bricks and mortar, in the petrifying springs of architecture, with nothing left to work the institution they were intended to support.  A great warrior is said to have made a desert and called it peace.  Administrators of educational funds have sometimes made a palace and called it a university.  If I may venture to give advice in a matter which lies out of my proper competency, I would say that whenever you do build, get an honest bricklayer, and make him build you just such rooms as you really want, leaving ample space for expansion.  And a century hence, when the Baltimore and Ohio shares are at one thousand premium, and you have endowed all the professors you need, and built all the laboratories that are wanted, and have the best museum and the finest library that can be imagined; then, if you have a few hundred thousand dollars you don’t know what to do with, send for an architect and tell him to put up a facade.  If American is similar to English experience, any other course will probably lead you into having some stately structure, good for your architect’s fame, but not in the least what you want.