fitting up a cabinet of native curiosities for the Tammany Society, recently organized for the promotion of natural science and American antiquities, the Grand Sachem of which was William Pitt Smith, M.D., the author of the Letters of Amyntor.
A windfall seems to occur once in the life of every individual, and so it happened to Colles. The Constitution of the United States being adopted, and the duties on spirits established by Congress, both the hydrostatics and chemistry of Colles were called into requisition, and he was appointed to test the specific gravity of imported liquors. From the scarcity of the article, he turned his artistic skill to the making of proof-glasses—another source of profit to him. But this period of advantageous business had its end; and, in his study of new things, he projected his telegraph, which enabled him to meet his most pressing wants, in his again straitened condition. The American Academy of Fine Arts was now instituted, with Edward Livingston as its president; and, enriched with the Napoleon presents and Chancellor Livingston's rich gifts, needed a superintendent to watch over the beautiful sculptures which it possessed. John Pintard, his ever-constant friend, secured the trust for Colles, and we now find our ubiquitous philosopher in good quarters and in wholesome employment. The fondest mother never regarded with greater care her first-born than Colles watched over the Venus of the Bath. He had leisure now to drive another business, and perhaps the luckiest of his scientific hits was the application he made of his telescope and microscope. The casual pittance of a six-penny piece for a look at Venus, or the circulation, through the web of a frog's foot, with his exegetical remarks, proved adequate to his now fullest desires. What a contrast of condition in life was Colles in New-York, with his old master, the affluent Dolland, of London, with whom he had worked at achromatic lenses! It was not always a clear atmosphere for Colles apparatus, but a brilliant night or a cloudless day added to his receipts; and the fuller contents of his basket, and the larger size of his head of cabbage, as he returned from market, were diagnostic of the results of the preceding twenty-four hours.
While Colles was thus striving for the means of his daily existence, he was aided by a residence in the Government-House, whither
