Between education and the attainments of science and invention there is some connection, though genius often defies all conventional methods of instruction. In addition to the epoch-making inventions of McCormick and his competitors, Samuel F. B. Morse had perfected his electric telegraph, which was in operation in most of the countries of Europe before 1860. Richard M. Hoe revolutionized newspaper publishing in the late forties by his rotary printing-press, which put out thousands of copies of a paper in an hour. Nor was Elias Howe's sewing-machine any less of a wonder when it came into use about 1850. Draper and Morse's new photography, Thurber's typewriter, Woodruff's sleeping-car, and many other marvelous contrivances of the same period showed the fertility of the American inventive genius. In scientific research the United States could not present so many evidences of her success, though in 1860 Alexander Dallas Bache, the head of the Coast Survey, was counted one of the leading scientists of his time, and Louis Agassiz, the Swiss-American naturalist, was teaching now in Charleston, now in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, and beginning the great work, _Contributions to the Natural History of the United States_, which his son, Alexander, was to complete. Joseph Henry, the first head of the Smithsonian Institution, was equally well known, and he and Professor Bache were the backbones of the American National Academy of Science, just beginning its beneficent work. Silliman, of Yale, and Mitchell, of the University of North Carolina, were the best-known geologists. Nor was art degenerating in this period of great prosperity. Hiram Powers, of Cincinnati, the ablest sculptor of his country, was greatly hurt because Congress refused him the contract for the decorative work on the magnificent Capitol in Washington, at last nearing completion. His aspirations were not unreasonable, for his Greek Slave, a beautiful work in marble, had captured the imagination of both American and foreign critics in 1851. Still, Thomas Crawford, his successful competitor, was a sculptor of real gifts, as one may see in his statues of Jefferson and Patrick Henry in Richmond. The work of Allston, Sully, and De Veaux, the painters, was being improved upon by Chester Harding, Eastman Johnson, and William Morris Hunt, all influenced, however, by Turner of England, the Duesseldorf (Germany) and Barbizon (France) schools. There were now many wealthy business men in the country, and thus artists had a fair chance of a livelihood while their ideals and technique were developing. In Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were the beginnings of the museums which were a few years later to become schools of art of no mean importance.