s 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.

During his last year at the academy Gallatin was engaged in the tuition
of a nephew of Mademoiselle Pictet, but the time soon arrived when he
felt called upon to choose a career. His state was one of comparative
dependence, and the small patrimony which he inherited would not pass to
his control until he should reach his twenty-fifth year,--the period
assigned for his majority. It would be hardly just to say that he was
amb