While the academy seems to have sent out few men of extraordinary eminence, its influence upon society was happy. Geneva was the resort of distinguished foreigners. Princes and nobles from Germany and the north of Europe, lords and gentlemen from England, and numerous Americans went thither to finish their education. Of these Mr. Gallatin has left mention of Francis Kinloch and William Smith, who later represented South Carolina in the Congress of the United States; Smith was afterwards minister to Portugal; Colonel Laurens, son of the president of Congress, and special envoy to France during the war of the American Revolution; the two Penns, proprietors of Pennsylvania; Franklin Bache, grandson of Dr. Franklin; and young Johannot, grandson of Dr. Cooper of Boston. Yet no one of these followed the academic course. To use again the words of Mr. Gallatin, "It was the Geneva society which they cultivated, aided by private teachers in every branch, with whom Geneva was abundantly supplied." "By that influence," he says, he was himself "surrounded, and derived more benefit from that source than from attendance on academical lectures." Considered in its broader sense, education is quite as much a matter of association as of scholarly acquirement. The influence of the companion is as strong and enduring as that of the master. Of this truth the career of young Gallatin is a notable example. During his academic course he formed ties of intimate friendship with three of his associates. These were Henri Serre, Jean Badollet, and Etienne Dumont. This attachment was maintained unimpaired throughout their lives, notwithstanding the widely different stations which they subsequently filled. Serre and Badollet are only remembered from their connection with Gallatin. Dumont was of different mould. He was the friend of Mirabeau, the disciple and translator of Bentham,--a man of elegant acquirement, but, in the judgment of Gallatin, "without original genius." De Lolme was in the class above Gallatin. He had such facility in the acquisition of languages that he was able to write his famous work on the English Constitution after the residence of a single year in England. Pictet, Gallatin's relative, afterwards celebrated as a naturalist, excelled all his fellows in physical science.