The interest in Professor Rogers's lectures was not excited solely, however, by the charm of his eloquence; for, although such was the felicity of his presentations, and such the vividness of his descriptions, that he could often dispense with the material aids so essential to most teachers, yet when the means of illustration were at his command he showed his power quite as much in the adaptation of experiments as in the choice of language. He well knew that experiments, to be effective, must be simple and to the point; and he also knew how to impress his audience with the beauty of the phenomena and with the grandeur of the powers of nature. He always seemed to enjoy any elegant or striking illustration of a physical principle even more than his auditors, and it was delightful to see the enthusiasm which he felt over the simplest phenomena of science when presented in a novel way. We come now to the crowning and greatest work of Professor Rogers's life, the founding of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology--an achievement so important in its results, so far-reaching in its prospects, and so complete in its details, that it overshadows all else. A great preacher has said that "every man's life is a plan of God's." The faithful workman can only make the best use of the opportunities which every day offers; but he may be confident that work faithfully done will not be for naught, and must trustingly leave the issue to a higher power. Little did young Rogers think, when he began to teach in Virginia, that he was to be the founder of a great institution in the State of Massachusetts; and yet we can now see that the whole work of his life was a preparation for this noble destiny. The very eloquence he so early acquired was to be his great tool; his work on the Geological Survey gave him a national reputation which was an essential condition of success; his life at the University of Virginia, where he was untrammeled by the traditions of the older universities, enabled him to mature the practical methods of scientific teaching which were to commend the future institution to a working community; and, most of all, the force of character and large humanity developed by his varied experience with the world were to give him the power, even in the conservative State of his late adoption, to mold legislators and men of affairs to his wise designs.