*6 v- 
 
 ^0« 
 
 
 • » » A 
 
 *b9 
 
 V * * * °* o. 
 
 "*b. 
 
 *°+ 
 
 
 
 
 
 'J? 
 
 V*^V v^V v^V % 
 
 ,* j 
 
 *. o 
 
 
 ..** .A 
 
 o > 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 .<?< 
 
 i* .f- 
 
 V* Cr 
 
 AT ^ 
 
 ^0< 
 
 • • » .\ ' 
 
 "oV 5 
 
 
 
 T* .A 
 
 ^0^ 
 
 °°*^"V V^^\/ %^?7^ t J P .. ^ - -.« 
 
 r oK 
 
vy V->w^ 
 
 O * - 
 
 
 r ..*•_•• ^ .o*" 6 ^%.\ ^ ..*•.•♦ "«5> 
 
 
 ?5 ^ 
 
 
 
 *°% 
 
 L' : W 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 K* ** ^ 
 
 <> "o . , 
 
 ay ^^ 
 
 
r\<^wa^v-iL [tn^wr- 
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 AT THE INAUGTJKATION OF 
 
 COBNELIUS CONWAY EEL1M, LLD V 
 
 PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 
 
 THE FESTIVAL OF THE ALUMNI, 
 
 THURSDAY, JULY 19, 1860. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 SEVER AND FRANCIS, 
 
 BOOKSKI-LKKS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 1860. 
 
Entered aooordlng to Act of Congress, In the year I860, by 
 
 s i' \ i R AND FRANCIS, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office >>t the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 University Press, Cambridge : 
 Printed bj Welch, Bigelow, and Company. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The Rev. James Walker, l>. I), having sent his resigna- 
 tion of the Presidency of Harvard College to the Corpora- 
 tion, to take effect at the close of the first term of the 
 Academical year 1859 — 60, the Corporation elected, on the 
 26th of January, 1860, Professor Cornelius Conway Fel- 
 ton, LL. D., as his successor, and this appointment was 
 unanimously confirmed hy the Board of Overseers on the 
 10th of February. 
 
 On the 31st of March, a committee of the Corporation, 
 consisting of John A. Lowell, Esq. and Amos A. Lawrence, 
 Esq., was appointed to prepare for the inauguration of the 
 new President. The Faculty of the College, having been 
 requested to co-operate with the Corporation, nominated, 
 as a committee for this purpose, Professor Joseph Lovering, 
 Professor F. J. Child, and Professor G. M. Lane. 
 
 It was finally arranged that the public inauguration 
 should take place on Thursday, the 19th day of. Inly, being 
 the day of the Triennial Festival of the Alumni, who wen- 
 invited hy the Corporation to unite their celebration with 
 the ceremonies of inauguration. The inauguration of I 'res- 
 ident Wadsworth, in 1725, was on Commencement Day. 
 
 Notwithstanding the heavy showers of the morning, the 
 members of the Government of the University, the Asso- 
 ciation of the Alumni, and the invited guests, assembled in 
 great numbers in Gore Hall, under the twofold attraction of 
 the occasion, and at llf o'clock the procession was formed, 
 
by the direction of the Chief Marshal, Henry Lee, Jr., Esq., 
 and moved in the following order : — 
 
 OEDEE OF PEOCESSION FEOM GOEE HALL. 
 
 Music by Boston Brigade Band. 
 
 Aid. Chief Marshal. Aid. 
 
 Undergraduates of the College. 
 
 Members of the Scientific and Professional Schools. 
 
 The Association of the Alumni. 
 
 Librarian, with the College Seal and Charter. 
 
 Steward, with the College Keys. 
 
 Members of the Corporation. 
 
 Professors and all other Officers of Instruction and Government 
 
 in the University. 
 
 Ex-Presidents Quincy, Everett, Sparks, and Walker. 
 
 Former Members of the Corporation. 
 
 Ex-Professors of the College. 
 
 Sheriffs of Suffolk and Middlesex. 
 
 President of the Association of the Alumni, and Orator 
 
 of the Day. 
 
 Orator of the Undergraduates, and Chaplains. 
 
 His Excellency the Governor, and the President Elect. 
 
 Governor's Aids. 
 
 His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor, and the Adjutant-General. 
 
 The Honorable the Executive Council. 
 
 The Honorable and Eeverend Overseers. 
 
 Gentlemen specially invited. 
 
 Presidents of other Colleges. 
 
 Judges of the State and United States Courts. 
 
 The President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the 
 
 House of Representatives. 
 
 Auditor, Treasurer, and Secretary of the Commonwealth. 
 
 Mayors of Boston and Cambridge. 
 
 After passing in front of University Hall, Holworthy Hall, 
 Stonghton Hall, Hollis Hall, and Harvard Hall, the proces- 
 sion entered the First Parish Church at twelve o'clock ; the 
 galleries of which were already crowded with ladies. 
 
ORDER OF EXERCISES IN THE CHURCH. 
 
 I. MUSIC BY THE BAND. 
 II. LUTHER'S HYMN, 
 
 BY THE CHOIR. 
 
 III. PRAYER, 
 
 BY THE REV. PRESIDENT STEARNS, OF AMHERST COLLEGE. 
 
 IV. ORATION IN LATIN, 
 
 BY JOSEPH II. McDANIELS, OF THE SENIOR CLASS. 
 
 V. ADDRESS AND INDUCTION INTO OFFICE, 
 
 BY HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR BANKS. 
 
 VI. REPLY, 
 
 BY PRESIDENT FELTON. 
 
 VII. DOMINE SALVUM FAC PRAESIDEM ! 
 
 BY THE CHOIR. 
 
 VIII. ALUMNI ORATION, 
 
 BY THE REV. DR. SAMUEL OSGOOD. 
 
 IX. MUSIC BY THE BAND. 
 X. INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 
 
 BY PRESIDENT FELTON. 
 
 XI. PRAYER, 
 BY THE REV. PROFESSOR A. P. PEABODY. 
 
 XII. TE DEUM. 
 XIII. BENEDICTION, 
 
 BY THE EX-PRESIDENT, THE REV. DR. WALKER. 
 
6 
 
 The presence upon the stage of four ex-Presidents of 
 Harvard College — the Hon. Josiah Quincy, the Hon. Ed- 
 ward Everett, the Hon. Jared Sparks, and the Rev. Dr. 
 James Walker — was the most extraordinary incident of 
 the day. The vacant chair reserved for the oldest of this 
 distinguished band was scarcely less eloquent during the 
 early part of the services than the appearance of his venera- 
 ble form at the private door of the pulpit while President 
 Felton was delivering his Inaugural Address. While he 
 was conducted to his seat, at the head of the column of 
 living ex-Presidents, the whole audience rose involuntarily 
 to express their emotion, and the felicitous turn which 
 the speaker gave to his discourse made the event a most 
 happy interruption in the programme. 
 
 At the conclusion of the services in the church, the 
 Alumni of the College, the Government of the University, 
 and the invited guests assembled again in Gore Hall, and 
 marched in procession to Harvard Hall, where a dinner 
 had been provided under the direction of the committee 
 of the Association of the Alumni. 
 
 For the Committee, 
 
 JOSEPH LOVERING. 
 Cambridge, September, 1860. 
 
LATIN ORATION, 
 
 JOSEPH H. McDANIELS, 
 
 SENIOR CLASS. 
 
O R A T I O .* 
 
 Vixdum silent voces quas modo hi parietes redde- 
 bant, quum hodie aliis vocibus aliaque causa iterum 
 resonant. Adolescentes et senes, non modo nos qui 
 in hoc loco quasi in regno sapientiae mansuri sum us, 
 et ii qui heri in regnum amplius et per omnes terras 
 patens ex his finibus transierunt, sed ctiam qui mul- 
 tos ante annos hinc discesserunt, omnes, quasi cives 
 aut legati, convocamur, ut novum regem in civitatc 
 constituamus, ut de illo nobis gratulemur, ut festum 
 diem aganius. 
 
 Juvenes, qui modo socii nostri in his studiis fue- 
 runt, laete hie laetos videmus atque optimis omini- 
 bus proscquimur. Quam praescriptioncm edictis suis 
 Romani soliti sunt praescribcrc, "Quod bonum, fau- 
 stum felixque sit," vitae eorum praescribimus, et 
 spem habemus hunc diem iis omnia prospera ac for- 
 tunata portendere. 
 
 Sed seniores praecipuo gaudio afficiuntur. Nam 
 hodie, triennio intcrjecto, de more hue convenerunt 
 ut notas sedes amicosque notos revisant, ut inter so 
 
 * On account of the illness of the orator, the Oration was read by his 
 classmate, William Franklin Snow. 
 
 2 
 
10 
 
 colloquantur, et temporis praeteriti familiaritatem 
 renoveut. Recordantur parvum incertumque liujus 
 collegii principium, ut in loca deserta, in solum non 
 modo alienum sed etiam inimicum translatum et 
 quasi talca tenera satum sit ; ut floruerit tamquam 
 ulmi quibus ingentissimis circumdetur ; ut umbram 
 viris fortissimis praebuerit, qui, quum belli civilis 
 procellis quateretur, libenter ei subvenerint ; ut, de- 
 nique, bello ac procellis superstes nunc per dimidium 
 orbis terrarum ramos longe lateque exteiidat. Quum 
 suos quondam socios, quum sanctae tlieologiae doc- 
 tores, quum oratores et juclices, quum civitatis priu- 
 cipes et senatores, qui pictate aut eloquentia aut 
 sapientia illustrissimi sunt, quum hos omnes ex re- 
 gionibus diversissimis ejusdem matris alumnos vidcnt, 
 verba Anchisae dicta de Roma aptissima in mentem 
 veniunt, — 
 
 " Auspiciis ilia inclyta 
 Imperium ten-is, animos acquabit Olympo, 
 Felix prole varum." 
 
 Ergo pro liac matre felice prolem benigne ex- 
 cipimus. 
 
 Sed non solum quos hie oculis nostris aspicimus 
 digni sunt quorum mentionem faciamus. Mihi qui- 
 dem, longa in banc aedem pompa perducta, cum ea 
 se conjungere visae sunt animae priscorum virorum 
 qui hos ducentos annos ex hoc fonte aquas doctrinac 
 hauserunt : — 
 
 " Quique sacerdotes casti dum vita ruancbat, 
 Quique pii vates et Pboebo digna locuti, 
 Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes, 
 Quique sui memores alios fecere uierendo ; " 
 
11 
 
 horum umbrae silcntes volitant circum sedes quae iis 
 in vita gratae erant, et animis faventibus nos dcspi- 
 ciunt. 
 
 Quanti autem civitas et cives res hujus collegii 
 faciant, civitatis princeps praescntia sua et hie conven- 
 tus frequentissimus virorum et matrum et virginum 
 satis ostendunt. Decet Rempublicam humanitatis 
 cultum honorare per quern sapientes ad res admi- 
 nistrandas exercentur ; decet matronas et sorores hie 
 adesse ubi filii et fratres spes carum tutissima ver- 
 santur. 
 
 De iis qui hue uno animo eoque laetissimo congre- 
 gati sunt hoc tantum locuti, restat ut de illo cujus 
 causa est congrcgatio pauca dicamus. Ingrati au- 
 tem et nobis indigni essemus, si, quum nobis de novo 
 praeside gratularemur, eum qui tot annos tanto stu- 
 dio ad universitatem augendam tantos labores per- 
 tulit, omitteremus. Praeclarus et fortunatus ille dies 
 quo nostris rebus praefectus est, et nunc quum triste 
 verbum " Vale " dicimus, ne laetissimis quidern tem- 
 poribus integrum gaudium esse humanarum rerum 
 intelligimus. 
 
 Utinam mihi liceat ut lingua Latina sic etiam 
 moribus Latinorum in dicendo uti. Principi enim 
 oratorum illorum de se ipso dicenti narrare quae 
 egregie fecerat nulla erat religio ; nobis de aliis di- 
 centibus quae vera, quae laude digna, quae ex animo 
 sentimus, non parte ejusdem libertatis uti liceat ] 
 
 Ego vero quum haec omnia unius opera florere 
 video, non possum quin illius operam admirer et illi 
 gratias agam. 
 
12 
 
 lit (1c iis primum dicam quae oculis percipimus, in 
 partibus diversis aedificia solida et grandia intra col- 
 legii muros posita sunt. llinc thesaurus quidam 
 rerum aspectu dignarum aut quae in terris rcpositae 
 sunt aut quae hominum artibus inventae ; illinc ex 
 leerato civis liberalissimi aedes sancta et tota Deo 
 dedicata est educta. Porro autem et extra muros 
 aedificium minus et humilius est modo cxtructum, 
 cuius minime decet nos oblivisci, Nimium enim ad 
 nos convenientia verba Horatii, adhuc fuerunt. 
 
 Apricum oderamus campum, timebamus flavum 
 Tiberim tangere, nee certe exercendo livida brachia 
 gestabamus. Nunc autem quantum liacc mutata ! 
 Quae in nostro Tiberi praeclare et egregie facta, quis 
 non audivit 1 ? In his rebus profecto llomanos et 
 Graecos superamus. Romania enim fuerunt Cam- 
 pus et Tiberis, Graeeis gymnasia in quibus corporis 
 exercitationibus sunt assuefacti. Nobis autem non 
 desunt et campus et Tiberis atque gymnasium. 
 
 Ad mentes exercendas non minores sunt facilitates 
 datae. Homo pius et philosophiam eolcns universi- 
 tati praeerat, in quo consilium imperiti, opem inopes 
 invenerunt. Summae is in dicendo gravitatis, sum- 
 mae in imperando prudentiae l'uit. Quanto studio ex 
 ejus labris verba sapientiae plena et vitae praecepta 
 beatae audivimus ! Quantam artem et peritiam in 
 rebus difficillimis agendis praestitit ! 
 
 Quid igiturl Dignusne est quisquam qui viro 
 tantis virtutibus praedito succedat i Quis nisi tu, 
 cuius nomen multos annos cum hoc collegio conjunc- 
 tum est, qui nunc singulari quadam fortuna neces- 
 
13 
 
 sitatibus adfuisti? Ad hunc locum acccdis neque 
 patriae hominumqwr gentibufl neque nobis praesenti- 
 bus ignotus. Eruditionem illam, quam investigationc 
 diligcntissima consccutus es, nunquam passus es inu- 
 tilcm esse. Sod alterum multoque majus bcncficium 
 in civcs tuos ct in omncs homines contulisti. In 
 alienis civitatibus peregrinatus, cum viris illustrissi- 
 mis et doctissimis collocutus, ad fontcm ipsum phi- 
 losopbiac, ad illam Graeciam quondam liberam ct 
 celebcrrimam pervenisti. Vetcrum Graecorum poeta- 
 rum et oratorum et pbilosopliorum semper amantis- 
 sinms facile adductus es ut Graecos hujus aetatis 
 diligeres, quos plurimos annos a tyrannis oppressos, 
 ut vix quidcm cos cognoscercmus esse, tu scriptis 
 tuis per nostram rempublicam dccoravisti. Reddi- 
 disti nobis gentcm antiquam nobilemque quae diu 
 prostrata jacuit, quae modo surrexit et sibi libertatem 
 vindicavit, de littcris eorum florentibus et civitate 
 nunc firmata nos docuisti. Quare seu doctrinam seu 
 alias facultates quibus liominibus profuisti, spectas, 
 tibi ut Ciceroni licet vcre et modeste profiteri : " ( Je- 
 teros pudeat, si qui so ita littcris abdiderunt, ut nihil 
 possent ex iis neque ad communem affcrre fructum 
 neque in aspectum lucemque proferre; me autem 
 quid pudeat qui tot annos ita vivo ut a nnllius un- 
 quam me tempore aut commodo aut otium meum 
 abstraxerit aut voluptas avocarit aut denique somiius 
 retardarit 1 " 
 
 Ergo pro sociis nostris qui tua disciplina i'ructi 
 sunt et tuos mores facillimos novcrunt, pro sociis tuis 
 qui amicitia et laboribus tecum sunt conjuncti, pro 
 
14 
 
 hoc frequentissimo conventu hominum, pro omnibus 
 sapientiae cultoribus, te salvere jubemus ; ef speramus 
 fore ut haec aniversitas quae, quanquam multorum 
 capitum et plurium corporum fuit, adhuc floruit, te 
 praeside, valeal el rebus secundis fruatur. 
 
ADDRESS 
 
 OF 
 
 HIS EXCELLENCY, NATHANIEL P. HANKS, 
 
 GOVERNOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH, 
 
 RETLY 
 
 OP 
 
 I* RESIDENT EELTON 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Professor Felton : — 
 
 The members of the Corporation and the Overseers 
 of Harvard College are assembled on this occasion 
 for the purpose of completing, by unostentatious yet 
 solemn ceremony, your induction to the office of 
 President. 
 
 The service assigned to me is to present to you 
 the Charter and Keys of the institution, as symbols 
 of your office and authority. In performing this 
 simple duty, I need not commend to you, Sir, the 
 important educational interests committed to your 
 charge, as the head of this ancient University. No 
 one can better understand its relation to pupils, the 
 people, and the State. More than thirty years passed, 
 with slight interruption, within the immediate circle 
 of its influence, as student, alumnus, tutor, Professor 
 in different departments, — enriched as that period 
 has been by experience of foreign travel, with a 
 special eye to your duties, and a generous devotion 
 to the general educational interests of the State, — 
 cannot fail to have given you a full appreciation of 
 the dignity of the office, or the important influence 
 3 
 
18 
 
 which a wise, just, and firm administration of its 
 powers can impart to the cause of education through- 
 out the land. 
 
 For the first time the University may be said to 
 have educated, and, so far as that result can be 
 achieved by outward opportunities and influence, it 
 has watched the growth and fashioned the character, 
 of its presiding officer. An unhesitating election by 
 the Corporation ; the unanimous confirmation by a 
 large and intelligent Board of Overseers ; the ap- 
 proval of the Faculty and Alumni ; the undissembled 
 satisfaction of the Undergraduates ; the unreserved 
 confidence inspired in scholars and intelligent men 
 everywhere, — all of whom are properly represented 
 in this assembly, — assure us that the President it has 
 created is equal to his commission, and will faithfully 
 discharge its duties. Like one who rises from the 
 ranks to the head of an army, you will possess in the 
 confidence of your associates and the public a power 
 which a more eventful life and higher attainments 
 even might fail to confer. 
 
 It is my pleasant duty, Sir, in obedience to a cus- 
 tom never yet broken, as the Chief Executive Magis- 
 trate of the Commonwealth, to welcome you to the 
 academic honors with which you are this day crowned. 
 I solicit for your administration the co-operation of 
 the people, the Legislature, the Corporation, the 
 Board of Overseers, the Faculty, and the friends of 
 thorough, manly, and truthful education everywhere. 
 I solicit at the hands of the Undergraduates, upon 
 whose concurrence in the general policy of the insti- 
 
19 
 
 tution so much depends, a like generous and manly 
 support ; not so much because your measures will be 
 adapted to the views or caprices of individuals or 
 coteries, or that the reasons upon which they may 
 rest will be anticipated or instantly appreciated, as 
 that your long and honorable official career has given 
 unforfeited pledges of a purpose to do right ; that 
 the cause of enlightened education demands for this 
 honored University a responsible head ; and that its 
 high purpose is, not to minister to the preferences of 
 favorites, but to create men to whom may be safely 
 intrusted in part the direction and the responsibili- 
 ties of an age that promises to be as stirring and 
 eventful as any that has preceded it in the history of 
 states or men. 
 
 I should fail to discharge my duty, did I not ad- 
 vert to the unflagging interest which the government 
 of the State has manifested in the prosperity of this 
 University. It was but two years after the establish- 
 ment of a Legislature, that, among its first impor- 
 tant acts, liberal provision was made — not instantly 
 realized, it is true — for the foundation of this insti- 
 tution of learning, which had doubtless been contem- 
 plated from the first planting of the Colony. And 
 it has shared with other colleges and schools the 
 munificent and wise educational appropriations which 
 have conferred such lasting honor upon the founders 
 and people of the State. The interest of the people 
 in its welfare is signally exhibited in the fact, that it 
 is the only institution, not immediately connected 
 with the routine operations of government, that is 
 
20 
 
 specified by name in the Constitution of the Com- 
 monwealth. 
 
 Surely the services which it has rendered in return 
 should not be forgotten. Its prosperity assures us, 
 as it assured those who preceded us. that k * learning- 
 is not to be buried in the graves of our fathers." 
 The first President oi' the University born on this 
 side of the Atlantic, was the chosen agent of the 
 infant Colony to represent its interests in England, 
 who obtained from William and Mary the great 
 Charter, of which ho was reputed a chief author, that 
 brought to an end the rigid, theocratic form of gov- 
 ernment which for sixty years upheld the union of 
 Church and State, and gave to freeholders, equally 
 with church-members, the right to representation and 
 participation in the affairs of government. Whether 
 this fundamental change in the constitution of the 
 body politic contributed more or less to the purit\ oi' 
 government, 1 cannot say, but it is certainlj a priv- 
 ilege which non-professors would surrender with re- 
 luctance, and must be classed among the earliest 
 triumphs oi' the principle of the supremacy of the 
 people. 
 
 The first Governor oi' the Commonwealth under 
 the Constitution, at the inauguration of one ot* the 
 most distinguished oi' your predecessors, did not hesi- 
 tate to say that the College had been in some 1 sense 
 the nurse ami parent of the Revolution. 
 
 We recall with pride the names oi' its graduates, 
 Hancock and Adams, the immediate Presidential 
 successors oi' Washington and Monroe, and distin- 
 
21 
 
 guished men in every walk of private and public 
 life, Dot forgetting those least, known t<> fame, who, 
 as unassuming but influential citizens of the towns 
 of the Commonwealth, gave their energy and wisdom 
 to the affairs of local governments, which, reflected 
 subsequently in legislative acts, constitute the hotly 
 of our statute laws relating to the churches, schools, 
 highways, and town governments, to which Mas- 
 sachusetts owes so much of her prosperity and re- 
 nown. 
 
 The education of the young is one of the noblest 
 prerogatives that can fall to the lot of man. It is 
 higher than the authority of states. Even the home 
 circle would be stripped of much of its importance 
 were it deprived of the right of moral, mental, and 
 physical culture prescribed hy affection and duty. 
 Education opens to young men the avenues of sci- 
 ence, invention, and discovery, — sometimes of for- 
 tune and fame, but as often, perhaps, of suffering 
 and sorrow. By some foreordination, if would seem 
 as though none of the human family were permitted 
 to approach the inspirations of a higher existence, 
 without tasting in some measure the throes and 
 agony of this. Knowledge is not always happiness, 
 
 but it never fails to confer dignity and power. The 
 solitary student, wearing away a life of labor, un- 
 known to authority and to men, may till the world 
 with the inspirations of his soul. May we not hope 
 thai so much of this marvellous, life-creating, world- 
 changing power as may he imparted to the young 
 within the walls of this University, may he exerted 
 
22 
 
 for the benefit and not for the destruction of men ; 
 that its conquests may he those of peace, and not of 
 uar ; that it may inscribe upon the flowing folds of 
 its spotless banner the words, Truth, Justice, and 
 Freedom ; that its disciples may feel that the chief 
 object of their novitiate here is not mere attainments, 
 but the discovery of the best methods of attainment ; 
 that they may never lose faith in men or the right, 
 nor join the ranks of those described by the great 
 master of human nature as men who think to " cir- 
 cumvent God"? And as Hancock was justified in 
 regarding the College as a nurse and parent of the 
 American Revolution, may we not hope that it will 
 remain forever, under whatever administration of 
 University or State, the propagandist and conservator 
 of Christian literature and well-regulated and uni- 
 versal liberty % 
 
 Massachusetts is not the only State that has made 
 liberal provision for education. No wise or pros- 
 perous ruler in any age has been willing to forego 
 altogether the advantages of so great a power. But 
 in other governments the system established has 
 been intended to perpetuate and strengthen the priv- 
 ilege of rulers. The system inaugurated by Massa- 
 chusetts is one intended to improve the condition of 
 the people, and to be administered in concurrence by 
 the State and the people for their mutual advantage. 
 At no period of our history has the unity of interests 
 been more strongly marked than at present. And I 
 regard it as one of the most auspicious indications of 
 the time, that the distrust sometimes existing be- 
 
23 
 
 tween the friends of collegiate and common school 
 education has, in a great degree, disappeared. The 
 liberal foundation of State scholarships, and the suc- 
 cess of students admitted to them, in all the colleges, 
 and the recent provision made for instruction of 
 teachers of the public schools, in certain branches 
 of natural science, in this institution, I regard as 
 most important steps, tending directly to the ultimate 
 harmonious co-operation of all the educational in- 
 terests within the Commonwealth. 
 
 Your predecessors in office have not failed to en- 
 large the scope and to strengthen the capacity of the 
 institution. I need not recall the memories of Dun- 
 ster, Mather, and Kirkland, in proof of this. The 
 living men who honor us with their presence, — your 
 immediate predecessor, whose resignation has been 
 so reluctantly and regretfully accepted ; another, 
 whose fame is honorably identified with the historic 
 literature of his country ; another still, whose elo- 
 quence has made his name a part of the history of 
 the Father of his Country ; and the last, the earliest 
 of living Presidents and the noblest of men, who 
 must be classed among honorable men, though, like 
 Juvenal, we reduce the number of the good to that 
 of the gates of Thebes or the mouths of the Nile, — 
 such men are a sufficient attestation of the fact. I 
 can only wish you a like honorable service and suc- 
 cess. 
 
 I present to you the Charter and the Keys of the 
 College, and in the name of the Corporation and 
 Overseers, in the name of this assembly, I salute you 
 as President of the University of Cambridge. 
 
REPLY. 
 
 Your Excellency : — 
 
 It is with the deepest sensibility that I assume the 
 office of President of Harvard College. I am grate- 
 ful to you for the friendly terms in which, as Chief 
 Magistrate of this ancient Commonwealth, you have 
 given to the appointment your official sanction. The 
 present state of the University, thanks to the wise 
 conduct of its affairs by my predecessors and their 
 associates, is prosperous beyond all former example. 
 I congratulate myself that I am called to its direction 
 when I may hope to avail myself of the counsels of 
 four distinguished men who have held it before 
 me, and that my associates are old friends, with 
 whom I have long acted in uninterrupted harmony. 
 But my chief reliance must be the blessing of Al- 
 mighty God upon honest intentions and strenuous 
 endeavors. 
 
 I congratulate myself also, your Excellency, that 
 I am introduced to this station by a Governor of the 
 Commonwealth under whose administration an im- 
 portant means of scientific culture for the people — 
 
'25 
 
 the Museum of Natural History — has been added 
 to the institutions of Cambridge. Sir, to whatever 
 loftier heights of power and fame you may hereafter 
 ascend, you will recall with satisfaction the service 
 you rendered to science by the enlightened influence 
 you exercised in behalf of the noble endowment 
 granted to that establishment by the State. In the 
 name of Letters and Science, I take this public occa- 
 sion to thank you. 
 
 Your Excellency, I know what College life is. 
 One-and-thirty years passed in the service of the 
 University have been my apprenticeship. I know 
 what College students are ; five-and-thirty years I 
 have been one myself. Their virtues are dear to me ; 
 their faults I understand ; I neither extenuate them, 
 nor exaggerate them, nor fear them. I shall press 
 upon the young men the duty of obeying the laws, 
 and the sacred obligations of thorough and conscien- 
 tious study, as the only means of doing justice to 
 themselves, their parents, and the University. The 
 influences of the place, and the example of renowned 
 predecessors, are powerful aids in forming the char- 
 acter and inspiring the generous ambition to excel. 
 I shall not forget to invoke them. 
 
 I shall do my best, your Excellency, to promote 
 the highest interests of the successive classes ; I shall 
 not weaken the discipline which has always distin- 
 guished this University, and made its halls fit dwell- 
 ing-places for studious and virtuous youth. Discipline 
 is the preparation for life. Obedience is the prelude 
 4 
 
26 
 
 to command. So far as in me lies, I shall maintain 
 the canse of order and steady industry, by aiming to 
 secure, not the gratification of the moment, but the 
 lasting good of the academic youth, as intellectual, 
 moral, and religious beings. 
 
THE GRADUATE'S RETURN: 
 
 ORATION 
 
 THE ALUMNI OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 
 
 TRIENNIAL FESTIVAL, JULY 19, 1860. 
 
 SAMUEL OSGOOD, 
 
 MINISTER OF THE CHURCH OF THE MESSIAH, NEW TOEK CITY. 
 
ORATION. 
 
 Mr. President, and Brethren op the Alumni : — 
 
 The swift years have brought us once more to this 
 cherished festival of letters and good-fellowship, and 
 the new auspices under which we meet to-day, in- 
 stead of eclipsing, ought rather to brighten the in- 
 terest of our reunion. We have been invited to take 
 part in the inauguration of our brother, the President 
 elect, and with cordial respect complying, we yet 
 keep our own established usages, hold our own time 
 and ground, and speak our own free word alike of 
 greeting and declaration. It would be easier, and 
 in some respects, undoubtedly, more agreeable, for me 
 simply to express your good wishes and take my seat. 
 But I cannot with propriety disregard your customs 
 and express instructions, and substitute ceremonial 
 congratulation for regular discourse. The presence 
 of so many superiors, instead of depressing a speaker, 
 ought rather to cheer and encourage him by thoughts 
 of the old times when we stood on this platform by 
 command of the fathers, and by bringing him nearer 
 you as brothers. As a brother — one of the rank 
 and file, not above you but among you — I would 
 
30 
 
 stand here to-day, and speak a word that may be as 
 much yours as mine. It is, I believe, a rule that is 
 held good both by man and woman, that he who 
 loves much has a right to say something-. In the 
 love of Old Harvard, as one among the many the 
 sunshine of whose life has come from our Alma 
 Mater's smile, let me take the subject from the occa- 
 sion, and speak of "The Graduate's lleturn from the 
 World to the University." To-day we return to the 
 University, where in youth we studied together, from 
 the world, where in manhood we have been working 
 together. Here, then, our manhood stands face *to 
 face with our youth, and the encounter will be not 
 sad, but cheering, if we can maintain our doctrine 
 that as men we are bound, not to lose, but to realize 
 whatever was best in the spirit, objects, and fellow- 
 ships of our youth. Upon this simple thread of 
 association, let our thoughts run their own easiest 
 way. 
 
 I. Here in our youth we studied together. Dwell 
 a moment upon the spirit of those early days. It 
 seems now but yesterday that we lived within these 
 College walls. We were youths then, — not boys, 
 not men ; not boys, with passions dormant, with set 
 tasks for the patient memory, and with wills in lead- 
 ing-strings under the parental roof; not men, either, 
 under the burden and heat of the day, full of care for 
 bread or name. We were youths, emancipated from 
 boyhood and on tin 1 way to manhood, with fresh 
 blood coursing through our veins, and with a sense 
 of new freedom, at once impatient of restraint and 
 
31 
 
 earnest for progress. How could we fail, then, of a 
 certain enthusiasm, that must show itself in our tone 
 of life, and inula 1 us in fact what we were in name, — 
 young students ? 
 
 Students ! Mark that word. Not mere school- 
 boys learning lessons by heart, — not professional 
 adepts, using the fruits of previous study, or, if 
 studying, doing so with an eye to professional work, 
 — but students; and, as the term implies, carrying 
 the freshness of curiosity into our pursuits, and 
 bent upon some kind of knowledge. If any of us 
 were a little dull in the recitation-room, and more 
 earnest for the laboratory or the garden than for the 
 regular text-books, we were generally studious in 
 some way, — in some way, if not the best, seekers for 
 light to open new paths to young and eager eyes. 
 Every old hall and tree recalls the enthusiasm of 
 those days, and we see ourselves restored in these 
 youths, who have the freshness of the morning on 
 their cheek, and the light of new studies in their 
 eye. Here Aoavs the wonderful fountain of life, that 
 has always seemed the same, though always chang- 
 ing, like the old Helicon, whose waters ever held the 
 same hue and sparkle, although constantly passing 
 away. As we look upon this fountain of Youth, 
 fresh and new as in the old times two centuries ago, 
 we find ourselves claiming it as our own, and are 
 half ready to quarrel with these young students for 
 taking our goods and stealing our lost youth. But 
 let them have it. It is theirs now, as it was ours 
 once ; and when they are as old as we arc, they may 
 
32 
 
 find that there is something far better that should 
 come with time, and that true experience ripens, in- 
 stead of blighting, the blossom of early enthusiasm. 
 
 The dull world may deny this, and try to set up 
 an impassable barrier between youth and manhood, 
 in the name of its pet word, experience, as if the prosy 
 sound must needs put all young enthusiasm to flight. 
 We accept the word, but not in any disheartening 
 sense, not allowing for a moment that wisdom im- 
 plies the death of any generous feeling. True, in- 
 deed, there is a time when we are tempted to lose 
 our ideal in the actual, and perhaps think that a 
 dull worldliness is the necessary cost of experience, 
 — ready to say with Schiller, — 
 
 " The chains of fancy all are rent 
 And all her fair creations flown ; 
 The pleasing faith has passed away 
 In beings which my visions bore ; 
 Reality has made its prey 
 Of what seemed beautiful before." 
 
 With experience, indeed, many illusions must pass 
 away, and in two chief ways time is likely to chill 
 something of our early fervor. The passage from 
 fancy to fact puts the stern limit of reality before 
 our young dreams, and as in youth we dream of a 
 hundred careers, and in manhood, according to the 
 cruel laws of time and space, we must be content to 
 have but one career, we must expect empires of air- 
 castles to dissolve into mist the moment we ex- 
 change dreaming for waking, and build upon the 
 solid ground. In the next place, the passage from 
 
33 
 
 the contemplative to the active, or from the cognitive 
 to the conative state of mind, startles us from our 
 quiet studies and fair visions by revealing the law of 
 labor, that is quite as inexorable as the limit of time 
 and space. We see that we must not only change our 
 2)0st but our posture, not only our material but our 
 mood, and upon actual things do actual work. So 
 be it, and what then 1 Accept the limit of necessity, 
 and submit to the law of labor. But why abate one 
 jot of heart or hope, as the field is before us and the 
 battle is to be won? Because we are face to face 
 with fact, are we not to open our eyes wider, instead 
 of shutting them, and to put forth our hands more 
 bravely, instead of folding them in dainty indolence ? 
 Certainly, limitation should deepen enthusiasm in- 
 stead of killing it, and the moment the game starts 
 up in our path, we need more eye and more courage 
 than while we were curiously watching the clouds 
 chase each other across the sky. Labor also ought to 
 quicken enthusiasm, alike by bringing our thoughts 
 to a practical point, such as favors insight as well as 
 oversight, and by adding the force of manly will to 
 the ardor of youthful susceptibility. Under both 
 points of view, we maintain that true enthusiasm 
 should deepen with experience, and if actual affairs 
 at first may chill the untried student, he will find 
 his courage rising, instead of falling, as he takes a 
 real interest in them, and so rises from the actual to 
 the real, or from the show to the substance. Limita- 
 tion, instead of contracting, should concentrate his 
 thoughts; and labor, instead of hardening, should 
 5 
 
34 
 
 strengthen his purpose. Thus he comes to a real 
 enthusiasm instead of one mainly ideal, or to a fervor 
 more the fruit of the earnest purpose and the effec- 
 tive will, than of the roving fancy or the curious 
 intellect. The fancy and the intellect catch some- 
 thing of the new zest of reality indeed, and the eye 
 bent on real good may have a quicker sight for 
 beauty and a deeper insight into truth. Thus the 
 true student, when become a master of his working 
 art, is a student still, and as first studies lose their 
 freshness, higher studies under the imperial word of 
 positive duties open their more celestial gates, and 
 bring the childlike seeker near the inmost shrine. 
 
 But why speak only of the power of the working 
 will upon the taste and intellect? Why not urge 
 its worth as a fountain of original inspiration and 
 strength I Why not clearly say, what all sound 
 philosophy and history assure us, that the student 
 must become a worker in order to have his full ani- 
 mation, and that the active will, quite as much as 
 the inquisitive intellect, can be inwardly moved, and 
 faithful service adds heroic fire to quiet study I With 
 all that is claimed for the strength of youthful spirit, 
 it is certainly the frequent trouble with our early 
 purposes, that they are more visionary than effective, 
 more aspiring than inspired, and that in our early 
 plans, as in our scribblings in verse, we are apt to 
 make the fatal mistake of confounding aspiration and 
 inspiration, and so mocking daring aims with lame 
 achievements. In our relations to nature, mankind, 
 and to God, it is the hardest of all things to rise from 
 
35 
 
 susceptibility to energy, and to do our part, instead of 
 expecting everything to be done for us. A weakness, 
 even of physical tone, is no uncommon trait of stu- 
 dent life, and the mind languishes in want of the 
 natural help from the body, even the moral and 
 religious faculties catching the feebleness of the 
 nerves and muscles. Hence, the need of giving to 
 college recreations, as well as studies, more of the 
 tonic force of active life, and preparing our youth to 
 be brave in the great battle to come, by the sports 
 that stir courage as well as develop strength. Pro- 
 fessor Erdmann of Halle has some excellent observa- 
 tions on this point in his recent spirited lectures on 
 University education, and he strenuously maintains 
 the superiority of the chivalrous sports that invigo- 
 rate the spirits, over the gymnastic exercises that only 
 swell the muscles, commending the arts that o-ive 
 youth mastery over the elements and over brutes, 
 and, if need be, over rude men, and declaring a riding- 
 school as important as a library to students, and that 
 it should be as cheap and accessible. Certainly, 
 academic education is, of itself, very deficient in the 
 training of active power, and the constructive will 
 must put forth its force before the true enthusiasm, 
 the real animation, and even the constructive im- 
 agination, can be known. The earnest worker, and 
 he alone, can know that a determined purpose may 
 be as creative and spontaneous as the susceptible 
 fancy, or the inquisitive intellect, and the brave right 
 hand may write out in solid deeds as stirring lyrics 
 as any that are breathed in song. Now surely in 
 
36 
 
 manhood the active will comes to its best conscious- 
 ness, and may find itself most vitally moved, alike 
 from human sympathy, professional discipline, and 
 divine influence. Manhood is therefore the time for 
 a ripe and real enthusiasm that unites active strength 
 with intellectual sensibility, brings out the real man 
 in his energy as well as his susceptibility, and makes 
 the wise head and the ready hand work together, 
 whilst the generous heart stands loyally between the 
 two, and with cheerful pulses, like a musical band, 
 beats brave marches for their journeying and peace- 
 ful requiems for their rest. 
 
 In this spirit we face our youth to-day, and bathe 
 anew in its morning freshness, stoutly refusing, how- 
 ever, to ask the shadow to turn back on the dial, or 
 to bewail the flight of years as the death of generous 
 feeling. If we have been true to our early days, we 
 carry their blessing and power forward with us as 
 we go, as the calm full stream bears the mountain 
 spring with it in its large and beneficent tide, and 
 in waters that still sparkle takes goodly fleets upon 
 its bosom, and nurtures sweet blooms and rich fruits 
 upon its banks. Thus surely a true man maintains 
 and deepens the enthusiasm of youth, if less ardent, 
 more fervent than of old, and if less ready to take 
 fire, more able to carry fire than when in his teens. 
 So it is that all loyal service, instead of forgetting 
 freedom, does but fix and perpetuate it, as free in 
 duty as of old free in enjoyment or curiosity, with 
 a liberty that is a power instead of a mere idea, an 
 effective force instead of an exacting desire, and 
 
37 
 
 escaping the world's dull drudgery not by droning 
 imbecility, but by brave fidelity. So the true man 
 finds himself as the years pass, ever returning to 
 what was best in his youth, and singing with new 
 heart the old lays of faith and fellowship. Such has 
 been the way with all real humanity in the career of 
 the great historical races that have marched west- 
 ward to build up the city of God on earth. As 
 these races have advanced in their course of con- 
 structive conquest, their heroic will has ever re- 
 affirmed the faith that led them from the cradle of 
 Oriental quietude. The countrymen of Paul, Chry- 
 sostom, Ambrose, Charlemagne, Alfred, Luther, Wash- 
 ington, as they have done brave deeds, have said 
 more deeply the old hymns and prayers of Hebrew 
 bards and prophets. Not only with trembling harps 
 and pealing organs, but with ringing anvils, cleaving 
 ploughshares, whirling spindles, rustling presses, 
 speeding ships, cheering bugles, and hurrying emi- 
 grant trains, they are chanting the old Te Deums 
 and Glorias, in deeds as well as in words, that circle 
 the globe, and make the outgoings of the morning 
 and evening to meet and rejoice together. In this 
 spirit we return to our morning land, and ask that 
 experience may ripen into manly fidelity the impul- 
 sive enthusiasm of our youth, instead of sinking it 
 into dreamy worldliness, or evaporating it in airy 
 caprice, and when it is time for our day to sink into 
 the Western shadows, our sun may hang out with 
 richer, trophies upon his evening pavilion the same 
 crimson banner which he unfurled as he began his 
 
38 
 
 morning march, and the vesper hymn may deepen 
 the thanksgiving and not dash the joy or the hope 
 that spoke in the morning prayer. Such a faith 
 binds our days together by " natural piety," and man- 
 hood transforms the spirit of youth into the practical 
 realism that is earnest to take all good gifts to itself, 
 and to make them into true uses, so joining the 
 receptive and the active powers together, as to pro- 
 mote the student into the worker, the disciple of 
 knowledge into the Master of Arts. 
 
 II. Returning thus to the spirit of our youth, we 
 are in a position to see it in action and consider 
 its leading object. Coming hither from the world 
 where we have been and are working together, we 
 see more clearly, that the peculiarity of our College 
 life was in the fact that we studied together. Those 
 two words, study and work, tell the story of the 
 objects of our youth and manhood, as the words en- 
 thusiasm and experience tell the story of spirit of the 
 two seasons. Of course, to study is to work, and to 
 work with any sort of sense or spirit is, more or less, 
 to study. But the difference between the working 
 student and the studious worker is this, that the 
 student works in order to study, and the worker 
 studies in order to work ; with the former study 
 being the object of work, and with the latter work 
 being the object of study. So important is this dis- 
 tinction, that it cannot wisely be set aside by trying 
 to make the young student a professional worker, or 
 to make the professional worker merely a student. 
 The collegian who is obliged to stop in his studies, to 
 
39 
 
 attend to professional practice, or the professional 
 man who has no practice to give point to his studies, 
 is in a poor path of improvement. The true method 
 is, to give youth mainly to study, and then in man- 
 hood leave it not merely to intellectual tastes, but to 
 positive professional duties, to give the motive for 
 study, that before was found under the discipline of 
 teachers. The student is in danger of becoming a 
 mere smatterer, if he has not most of his time for his 
 books, and the graduate without the positive de- 
 mands of a profession upon his time and thoughts, is 
 apt to be little more than a dainty amateur, or a 
 feeble dilettante. He can study best in youth who is 
 free to prepare to work well in manhood, and he can 
 work best in manhood who is called to apply well 
 the studies of his youth. He who studies in order 
 to find truth, continues, instead of breaking off his 
 career, when he works truth into practice, and study 
 thus bears fruit in work, realizing itself, not nullify- 
 ing itself in action. 
 
 To-day we confront our years of study, and there 
 is something not wholly cheering in the remembrance 
 of our student life, when we were so free to seek 
 after truth amid such boundless stores of learnino- 
 with teachers so many, so able, and so faithful. But 
 if we grieve at all that those years are gone, it should 
 be, not because we would always be students, or 
 return to these halls, but because we did not use 
 our time here well, and are haunted by ghosts of 
 old follies, perhaps vices, as we walk through these 
 familiar groves. Consider well the life of study led 
 
40 
 
 by us here, and must we not say that its best treas- 
 ures have been returning to us in the path of active 
 fidelity, and all true work has revived the objects of 
 our study 1 
 
 Without attempting any ambitious classification, 
 we may, in harmony with the best thinkers of our 
 time, make a very simple and obvious division of the 
 studies in a University course, that will suffice to 
 show their bearing on the work of our manhood. 
 If even that half Pagan, Auguste Comte, allows him- 
 self to speak of the hierarchy of the sciences, we 
 may, without suspicion of cant or affectation, com- 
 pare the range of our studies to a vast temple some- 
 what like that which Egypt planned and Judsea 
 completed ; a temple with three leading enclosures, 
 and presided over by orders of priests. Two chief 
 priests meet us at the gate of learning, and never 
 leave us at the inmost shrine. These are Mathe- 
 matics and Language, the two studies that are the 
 conditions of all others, marked from all others by 
 being not so much treasures of knowledge as keys of 
 the whole treasury, — not so much separate sciences 
 as methods of all science, — not so much specimens 
 of reasoning, as masters of reason itself; in fact, vir- 
 tually teachers of Logic, doing more for the disci- 
 pline of thought than the technical manuals of the 
 logical art. The one, Mathematics, is severe and 
 passionless, — - pure intellect, without demanding the 
 least throb of emotion -or any graces of style; the 
 other is the organ of human feeling and will, in fact 
 the expressed life of man, and is as much suited to 
 
41 
 
 the study of humanity as Mathematics is suited to 
 the study of nature. The two meet us at the gate 
 of the temple, and go with us through every sphere, 
 up to the highest or inmost shrine, where the stu- 
 dent seeks the mercy-seat of Him whose arithmetic 
 and geometry are written out in the eternal heavens, 
 and whose language is the Eternal Word. Thus 
 guided and taught to number and measure, and name 
 and define, we entered the outer court of the temple, 
 the realm of Physics or Cosmology, and there studied 
 nature or the visible universe in the elements and 
 forces of its masses and molecules, winning some 
 knowledge of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry, 
 and regretting that we explored so little that other 
 portion of this court now so richly illustrated here 
 to students, the department of Organic Physics, or 
 Physiology, w T ith its preparations from the fields of 
 Natural History. Then we drew near the second 
 apartment of the temple, the sanctuary, and there 
 the study of man opened upon us in various ways, 
 not only in what is technically called Psychology 
 or Mental Philosophy, but in all that illustrates hu- 
 manity, whether in history, biography, ethics, or in 
 the masterpieces of the representative personages of 
 our race. We probably learned more of man in this 
 latter way than in any other, and we can never be 
 sufficiently grateful to our mother University for 
 acquainting us so fully with the actual thoughts of 
 the great leaders of"the human race in their original 
 tongues, and so opening to us the mind, character, 
 and speech of the great historical races that have 
 6 
 
42 
 
 made our humanity what it is. Their very names 
 are enough to make the pulse beat quicker, as they 
 assure us that we have had direct personal acquaint- 
 ance with the providential masters of human thought 
 under their two great leaders, — Homer, the father 
 of old classics, and Dante, the father of our modern 
 literature, the first in time and perhaps first in genius 
 of the illustrious line of authors who have written in 
 the language of modern nations instead of the lan- 
 guage of the schools. 
 
 One step more was to be taken, one curtain more 
 was to be lifted ; for he surely is a novice, and not 
 a master, who has not gone beyond the study of 
 nature and of man, to some knowledge of Him who 
 is Lord of Nature and Father of Men. Theology is 
 the inmost shrine of the temple, to which Physics is 
 the outer court and Psychology is the sanctuary. 
 We have learned something of Theology, and, not 
 speaking now of express theological education, have 
 we not all cause to be grateful that so much wisdom 
 and zeal were devoted to giving us distinct ideas of 
 the being and attributes of God, and of the eternal 
 aims of human life "? If Paley or Grotius did not 
 do for our faith all that we asked, the chapel pulpit 
 came nearer the mark, and its faithful ministry was 
 to ,some of us a greater help than any other depart- 
 ment of the University, — leaving impressions that 
 come back to us with every good purpose and ear- 
 nest prayer. We were crude youths then, not with- 
 out some share of folly ; but who of us had not some 
 sense of the perfections of God, the dignity of duty, 
 
43 
 
 and the reality of divine influence X Heaven's bless- 
 ing upon our Alma Mater for thus consecrating learn- 
 ing by piety ; and let her sons manfully say now and 
 always, that Theology is first of sciences, and Re- 
 ligion is the first of arts. Let them manfully say, 
 that when a petulant sectarianism, or a self-indulgent 
 secularism, shall succeed in driving Theology and 
 Religion from these halls, the name of John Harvard 
 should be erased from the Charter, and the founda- 
 tions of these old walls should be upturned. It is 
 Theology that created this University, and in fact 
 established in the world the very idea of a Univer- 
 sity, — that institution at once comprehensive and 
 organic, combining all sciences under one sovereign 
 wisdom. Other sciences give multiplicity, but only 
 Theology gives unity, and makes the many into one. 
 This only can interpret the range and unity of the 
 whole temple, as Bacon has so nobly observed in his 
 immortal Essay on the Advancement of Learning, a 
 copy of which Harvard gave with his other books to 
 this library : " But to those which refer all things to 
 the glory of God, they [the three views of the uni- 
 verse presented by him] are as the three acclama- 
 tions, ' Sancte, Sancte, Sancte ' ; holy in the descrip- 
 tion and dilatation of his works, holy in the connection 
 and concatenation of them, and holy in the union of 
 them in a perpetual and uniform law." 
 
 Such was the temple of learning that we fre- 
 quented here in years gone by, and surely more than 
 once we heard the according voices of the hierar- 
 chies of science as they joined in worship of Him 
 
44 
 
 the only true, and study sometimes kindled into 
 adoration. Where is that temple now, or what is 
 our familiarity with its courts % Have the inexorable 
 years that drove us from these halls of learning, 
 driven us from that shrine, and left us to drudge for 
 bread in this working-day world ] It surely is not 
 wise to deny that there are some points of painful 
 contrast between the former life of study and the 
 present life of work ; not wise to deny that, as early 
 enthusiasm is apt to die out in dull worldliness, so 
 early study is apt to give way to mere business, and 
 neglect the light of first principles for the empiricism 
 of the passing day. Too many of us renounce learn- 
 ing for timeserving expediency, and not a few who 
 were quick at mastering the contents of books for 
 the recitation-room, are utter drones at reading men 
 and things, to make living report of them in timely 
 thoughts and apt deeds. For this frequent falling 
 off from college promise, there is ample occasion, if 
 not ample reason, since in study and in work not 
 only do the materials differ, but also the implements 
 and powers, — not only the matter, but the manner ; 
 the materials in the one case being choice books, and 
 in the other case the world as it is, with its stubborn 
 men and things, — the powers in the one case being 
 mainly the receptive taste and intellect, and in the 
 other case the practical judgment and the aggressive 
 will. But is there any essential antagonism, there- 
 fore, between study and work 1 Nay, does not true 
 work upon actual matter in actual manner complete 
 the student's education, and enable him to work into 
 
45 
 
 reality the truth that he before studied out in idea 1 
 Ought not practical usefulness to give point to the 
 lessons of books, and the active judgment and will 
 combine with the taste and intellect to bring out the 
 powers, as well as the truth of things % Truth itself 
 does not become wholly real, nor touch and interpret 
 and master reality, until embodied in virtue; and 
 how profoundly Lord Bacon again observes : " In 
 general and in sum, certain it is that 'Veritas' and 
 ' bonitas ' differ but as the seal and the print ; for 
 truth prints goodness ; and they be the clouds of 
 error which descends in the storms of passions and 
 perturbations." Let the earnest scholar accept this 
 idea, and he will find that his working years are 
 printing more clearly the truths of his student years, 
 and that, as he goes on his loyal way, he is ever re- 
 turning to the studies of his youth, occupying as a 
 master the school that he before visited as a pupil, 
 ministering as a priest where he before listened as a 
 hearer or gazed as a spectator. 
 
 As we try to do our work faithfully, and make our 
 own mark upon men and things, do we not find old 
 truths deepening under our active hand, and new 
 substances and powers presenting themselves to be 
 interpreted by first principles 1 We work indeed 
 upon stubborn material, but resistance develops new 
 powers in us and new qualities in the resisting ob- 
 ject, — qualities that are generally more vital and 
 dynamic than the abstractions which we learned in 
 books. The result is, that as we have become active, 
 the actual world, instead of being soulless, reveals 
 
46 
 
 more soul ; and instead of losing our ideas in reality, 
 reality shows them in their life and force. Nature, 
 man, nay, God himself, show their powers to us as 
 we touch them with active hand and earnest will, 
 and the working view of the universe is surely the 
 power view, the hidden forces of nature, the interior 
 faculties of man, and the mysterious influence of God 
 revealing themselves only to the active worker. 
 
 The true reality, then, is both ideal and actual, not 
 the surrender of the ideal to the actual, but the res- 
 toration of the one in the other; and as truth is 
 carried into practice, it interprets itself not only into 
 ideas, but into powers. The true worker, then, instead 
 of being driven from the temple of science, finds 
 himself returning to it with fuller prerogative, and 
 patient obedience wins deepening illumination, as was 
 the case with the devotee whom Jeremy Taylor so 
 eloquently speaks of, who left a sweet vision of God 
 to meet the call of duty, and found the lost vision 
 brightening as the lowly duty was done. The true 
 realism, then, is at once ideal and actual, one reality 
 with its polar diversity. As Coleridge suggests in 
 his Friend, are not such men as Plato and Lord 
 Bacon different poles of the same real intellect, the 
 one more ideal, the other more practical, but both 
 needed to exhibit human thought and scientific truth 
 in its completeness \ If this is so, then, in our per- 
 sonal development, we may hope in a certain way to 
 repeat that great experience of the ages, and com- 
 plete our own Platonic period of too dreamy idealism 
 by a Baconian period of solid utility. Then, too, we 
 
47 
 
 may hope in our own way to enjoy something of the 
 great triumph of modern enterprise in ascending to 
 first truths by practical industry, in finding that our 
 science is clearer as our art is more perfect, and our 
 intuitions deepen as our energies rise. How em- 
 phatically this position is proved by the effect of 
 active life upon the primal studies, Mathematics and 
 Language ! The wonderful science of Calculus has 
 sprung up in the practical school of modern art, and 
 with the effort to measure the heavens and weigh the 
 globes, this mighty method has been invented by the 
 intellects of Newton and Leibnitz, and the new har- 
 monies of numbers transcend the mystic dreams of 
 Pythagoras. The business of the world is constantly 
 making new applications of mathematical science, 
 and carrying forward its principles. The engineer 
 marches in front of the armies alike of war and 
 peace, and industry and enterprise wait upon his 
 word. One of our own mathematicians tells by cal- 
 culation in a court of law the practical value and 
 working power of a turbine wheel, and shows in a 
 brilliant philosophic paper, that, in the arrangements 
 of their leaves upon the stems, the trees correspond- 
 ing with the cycles of the planets thus intone celes- 
 tial numbers and chant the music of the spheres. 
 
 Every department of Physics illustrates the power 
 of the actual manner in discovering and developing 
 the truth of things. It is in the laboratory or work- 
 shop that the hidden properties of matter are made 
 to reveal themselves, and the mysterious affinities of 
 the atoms with the latent forces of light, heat, elec- 
 
48 
 
 tricity, and magnetism appear at the chemist's call. 
 Nature in her masses, as well as her molecules, 
 obeys the same method, and the earth and the heav- 
 ens need to be studied by the active hand, as well 
 as the open eye. 
 
 Language, too, develops its light and warmth 
 under the electric touch of action, and the eloquence 
 that is active never appears in the still air of schol- 
 arly seclusion. University life gives the scholar a 
 classic vocabulary and a polished diction, but only 
 the life university can make him an orator. As he 
 feels the spur of necessity, and answers to the sym- 
 pathy or animosity of the living world, he finds that 
 he can speak with new power from the fulness of 
 his old treasures, and that the words once gathered 
 with such toil now come to him in full play, as the 
 water long and laboriously collected in the reservoirs 
 gushes and sparkles in the fountain. If it is too 
 much to say, with a recent German writer, that the 
 art of thinking is the art of speaking, or that lan- 
 guage is thought, it is undoubtedly true that he who 
 is master of language is in a fair way to be master of 
 thought, and needs little more than earnest practice 
 to work his word into power, and make it burn as 
 well as shine, by its fire kindling the human heart 
 as the light of recluse study can never do. In 
 this respect Demosthenes was surely right, and the 
 secret of eloquence is not in mere study, but in 
 living work. It is action, action, action, and a re- 
 cent author, Theremin, confirming the great Athe- 
 nian's definition, has rightly called such eloquence 
 
49 
 
 the virtue of the lips. This virtue has power to 
 reveal all other virtue ; and only when studied thus, 
 not merely by the spoken, but the acted word, the 
 human heart reveals its treasures, and humanity 
 opens its hidden deeps to the potent spell. Every 
 department of human nature illustrates the same 
 principle, and we know man, not only as we read or 
 think about him, but as we work with him and upon 
 him. 
 
 In fact, all generous and fervent occupation recalls 
 and deepens first principles, and every great art, like 
 Newton's Astronomy, writes or thinks out its " Prin- 
 cipia " more clearly in the school of action. The old 
 myth that the Muses were daughters of Mnemosyne, 
 beautifully embodies this truth. As the daughters 
 perfect the beautiful arts of music, poetry, eloquence, 
 and the like, do they not, in their ripening intellect- 
 ual beauty and deepening eye, renew their mother's 
 image, and does not every flash of their inspiration 
 give out the calm, blessed light of the ideal and 
 maternal Memory, holding out its clear guardian ray 
 upon the opening pathway of their buoyant hope'? 
 Does not every beautiful art carry us back to the 
 primal source of inspiration, and make us almost 
 believe, what some of the ancients affirmed, that we 
 pre-existed in the primeval wisdom that made all 
 things, and all loyal service restores us to the Eternal 
 Mind in the reason that is the remembrance of his 
 light, and the habit that is the channel of his will \ 
 
 But why spend many words to prove that work 
 ought to be the realization of study, and that he who 
 7 
 
50 
 
 works wisely finds his ideas bearing fruit in deeds, 
 and so returning to him with new life and powers. 
 Does not the highest truth in philosophy and relig- 
 ion fix the principle that the highest or absolute 
 reality cannot be known by thought or study alone, 
 but by work or obedience'? The active hand only 
 can bring out the latent heat of nature, and the 
 earnest will only finds the hidden warmth and power 
 of God. God is the absolute being, the eternally 
 True and Good. Who shall know him except by 
 serving him, — serving him in spirit as well as truth, 
 in deed as well as thought 1 In this view, how sug- 
 gestive is the remark of Melancthon, — in his noted 
 Loci Communes, that had so much to do with guid- 
 ing the Lutheran Reformation, — that God's Word 
 or Son is the manifestation of his thought, whilst his 
 Spirit is the manifestation of his will ; — an idea that 
 certainly has some confirmation from Scripture and 
 its great scholastic expounders. To know the reality 
 of God, then, we must know him as Will as well as 
 Wisdom ; as Will, which is his proceeding virtue, 
 as Wisdom is his proceeding intelligence ; and the 
 ultimate fact of Christianity and the crowning bless- 
 ing of the Church, the gift of the Holy Spirit, can 
 be known only by the human will in working har- 
 mony with the Divine will. If the Word is opened 
 mostly to the devout student, the Spirit is opened 
 mostly to the devout worker, and he only is the true 
 scholar or disciple who by study and by work knows 
 the living God in the blessed reality of his Word 
 and Spirit. He finds, that as consecrated reason 
 
51 
 
 enters into the universal or Divine reason, so conse- 
 crated will enters into the universal or Divine will, 
 and so, by study and by work, the seeker solves the 
 problem of sages, and knows the Infinite and Eter- 
 nal God. 
 
 Such is our doctrine of manly realism in reference 
 to the great object of life ; and, in this view, he is 
 the only realist, the truly practical man, who is at 
 once a student and a worker, uniting ideas with 
 deeds. Our position is thus maintained as to the 
 object as well as the spirit of life, that manhood is 
 bound to realize the promise of youth. 
 
 III. We confirm the same solid and cheerful 
 philosophy by considering the fellowships of our 
 youth, or the friendships that brought genial spirits 
 together for common objects, and so favored our 
 pleasure and our studies. Here in youth we studied 
 together, and this last' word, " together" is more 
 important than any in the sentence. The fact is 
 clear that our influence upon each other was the 
 most characteristic trait of our college life, and in our 
 play, as well as study, we lived and moved in com- 
 pany. On the Delta, play would have been penance 
 without associates; and in the recitation-room, the 
 lessons would have had no zest without the presence 
 of classmates as well as teachers. May we not be- 
 lieve that the sociality of our youth came not merely 
 from sympathetic feeling, but also from a half-con- 
 scious conviction of the truth, which has grown upon 
 us with every year's observation and thought, that 
 individual culture is poor and fragmentary without 
 
52 
 
 social fellowship, and the true humanity is, therefore, 
 not egotistic, but fraternal, — not individualized, but 
 associated 1 We need not go far into metaphysics to 
 prove that each individual shares in the whole intel- 
 lectual and moral capital of his associates ; for the 
 first principles of our social nature prove the fact. 
 Every citizen, in a manner, owns the whole city, and 
 enjoys its treasures of wisdom and humanity. The 
 jolly sailor rates himself very much according to his 
 ship ; and, if she carries seventy-four guns, he consid- 
 ers himself personally as a seventy-four. So, in our 
 day, each of us was as big as the whole class, and, as 
 seventy-two was our number, each Freshman of us 
 regarded himself as a seventy-two ; nor did the asso- 
 ciate feeling lessen with time. We certainly had a 
 sense of greater wholeness, or of integrating our nar- 
 row individualism, by our personal friendships and 
 college associations. From chosen friends we per- 
 haps derived our best private incentives as well as 
 satisfactions, whilst in the ruling public opinion we 
 were led to our usual methods of amusement and 
 discipline. College notions of honor may have been 
 very imperfect, yet they had some elements of true 
 loyalty, and college ideas of fellowship may have 
 been in some respects lax, but they never wholly lost 
 sight of the truth that no man should live for him- 
 self alone. 
 
 The composition of a single class of seventy or 
 eighty was itself a sufficient study, and the very 
 names of our classmates recall to us now a range of 
 character that makes the catalogue almost a compend 
 
53 
 
 of universal history. Can we not remember in our 
 associates types of mind as strongly marked as the 
 fathers of the old philosophies \ Can we not name 
 our Platonist, so ideal and so impractical, ready to 
 discourse on Beauty with Hippias, or on Goodness 
 with Philebus, and quite as ready to lose himself in 
 the misty idealities of the Parmenides, or wreck 
 himself upon quicksands in the specious communism 
 of the Republic 1 What class had not its keen and 
 utilitarian Aristotle, its severe Zeno, its graceful Epi- 
 curus, its doubting Pyrrho, and, last of all, its cynical 
 Diogenes, the model sloven of college, as sure of 
 never wearing a clean shirt on Sunday or a holiday, 
 as of snapping at every pet notion or idol of the 
 hour'? Can we not recall surprising contrasts of 
 character, to be found within a few steps of each 
 other, and do not some of us remember two class- 
 mates who could easily toss an apple or bandy pleas- 
 antry across the bit of green sward between their 
 rooms, who were yet as far from each other in tastes 
 and pursuits as the poles of the globe 1 The one 
 was a combination of Kean and Weslev, uniting 
 great dramatic power with high religious enthusi- 
 asm, believing himself sometimes visited by harping 
 angels, holding prayer-meetings in his room, and, in 
 spite of what was called his excessive pietism, com- 
 manding the respect of the whole class, even of the 
 fast ones, on the ground that, in college phrase not 
 yet wholly obsolete with us graybeards, he was a 
 downright " good fellow." The other was a kind of 
 Grimaldi Galvani, a marvellous compound of fun and 
 
54 
 
 physics, helping the digestion of the whole class 
 by his comic faces and songs, and instructing us all 
 by his attainments and experiments in natural sci- 
 ence, sometimes combining sport and instruction 
 oddly together, as when, returning from sweet Auburn 
 (then our favorite college ramble, and not a conse- 
 crated cemetery) in triumph, with a monstrous bull- 
 frog, the patriarch of the sylvan pond, he invited the 
 whole entry to see the application of galvanism to 
 the creature's muscles, and the giant croaker breathed 
 out his life as an offering to science, in a cry that 
 might have enabled Aristophanes to add another and 
 more sonorous stanza to his famous Tlapayopr^^iia 
 Barpuxav* or concert of frogs. 
 
 Not only the study of individual characters, but of 
 their cliques and combinations, is most instructive, 
 and a new era will come in academic education, 
 when the springs of social feeling among students 
 are better understood, and due means are used to 
 assimilate the heterogeneous and sometimes conflict- 
 ing elements by just ideas and influences. It is a 
 bright day surely that sends into a class a few gener- 
 ous, gifted, high-minded, and brave youths, who are 
 more determined on doing right, than the idlers and 
 profligates are on doing wrong ; and, in spite of all 
 obloquy and opposition, they are sure to triumph in 
 
 * President Woolsey, when in Athens, went to the ponds near by, to 
 learn whether the Attic frogs still kept the accent of their song in the 
 days of Aristophanes, and found the same old strain : — 
 BpeKeK6Ke£ kou£ Koa£, 
 
 PpfKeKfKet; KOCli; Kod£. 
 
 Aristoph. Ranae, 209, 210. 
 
55 
 
 the end, and to establish that blessed consummation, 
 a sound and ascending public opinion in college, 
 such as puts good scholarship and good fellowship 
 together, and brings the true spirit to bear upon the 
 true object of study. Whatever science or accom- 
 plishment is pursued in this temper seems to grow 
 with a kind of charmed life, although not prescribed 
 in the regular course ; and those of us who remem- 
 ber the zeal with which the study of modern lan- 
 guages and of extempore speaking was pursued, will 
 need no argument upon the worth and power of free 
 literary companionship. On the whole, may we not 
 safely say, that not only college pleasures, such as 
 belong especially to youth, had their life in congenial 
 fellowship, but all earnest purposes, such as give 
 good promise for manhood, if they did not there 
 originate, found therein the most effectual nurture ? 
 But why dwell longer on this theme 1 Look to these 
 old halls, and to these old friends, — remember, too, 
 
 the cherished faces no more with us in the world, 
 
 and the subject speaks for itself, as we breathe once 
 more the charmed atmosphere of old friendships, 
 pleasures, and studies. 
 
 But what is our manhood saying or doing in 
 answer to the fellowship of our youth X Eenouncing 
 it for a churlish selfishness or a dogged individual- 
 ism 1 Surely not, unless experience of the world is 
 the denial of the best interests of the heart, and the 
 knowledge of the world is the death of the generous 
 affections. There are indeed some causes that tend 
 to isolate and harden the heart when we quit our 
 
56 
 
 early associates, and go out into the world to seek 
 our fortunes. AVe no longer find ourselves among 
 companions of age and tastes like our own, and 
 perhaps the genial favorite of the whole class finds 
 himself posted in a rustic village, on a frontier settle- 
 ment, toiling from morning to night for bread. Sep- 
 aration and occupation, with their change of home 
 and habit, are the two barriers that threaten to shut 
 us out from the pleasant companionship of our 
 youth, and too many allow themselves to be shut up 
 within them. But this should not be so. Separa- 
 tion, instead of bringing indifference, should provoke 
 fresh loyalty ; and occupation, instead of bringing 
 drudging monotony, should move a man- to cheer 
 his toil by genial affections, and enlarge his narrow 
 walk with all generous co-operation. As we are in 
 danger of being narrowed in our range of sociality, 
 we should deepen our springs of fellow-feeling, and 
 as we are tempted to sink down into the plodding 
 craftsman of a special business, we ought to make 
 this very speciality the reason for integrating our 
 labor by a broader association and a higher fellow- 
 ship than ever, if not indeed with the same old com- 
 panions, with others of like spirit and objects. As 
 we go on our own way and do our own work, we see 
 more clearly how much incentive and instruction we 
 leave behind us, and feel the need of supplying their 
 place. Our separate careers or professions, whilst 
 they give us new power and influence, reveal new 
 limitations, and show us, what we begin only to 
 learn in college, that our gifts are but partial, and 
 
57 
 
 we all need each other to make ourselves complete. 
 Ought we not, therefore, as we advance in years, not 
 only to keep alive the geniality of our youth, but to 
 deepen it by a new sense of social need and duty, and 
 so add the friendship of co-operation to the old friend- 
 ship of congeniality? Ought not our classmates 
 themselves to be more valuable to us now, with all 
 their varied arts and experience, and we more valua- 
 ble to them, than when we ate our Commons fare 
 together, or when, with joined hands, stout lungs, 
 and moist eyes, we sang « Auld Lang Syne," as we 
 bade adieu to these old halls \ We allow indeed that 
 friendships of mere sentiment are not apt, of them- 
 selves, to continue, and the fondest associations of 
 youth fall away unless renewed by active service; 
 classmates, once bosom friends, passing each other 
 with little more than a nod or a word, when no 
 longer brought together by kindred principles or 
 pursuits. Hence the more need of keeping alive the 
 old fellowship by new modes of co-operation, and 
 encouraging community of feeling by community of 
 interests and duties. As the working habits become 
 fixed, and the will, freed from early conflicts, rises 
 into a calm and steadfast sense of duty, under the 
 universal will, ought not our memory in like tran- 
 quillity to rise into the higher sense of companion- 
 ship, under the universal light, and ought not the 
 best years, alike the most kindly and the most fruit- 
 ful, to come after our meridian % We used to read 
 together in college, in Pindar's second Olympic, of 
 the painless existence, aSwcpw al&va, the tearless ceon 
 
58 
 
 which faithful souls earn for themselves with the 
 gods on high, by toil and virtue. 
 
 aWa napa ptv Tipiois 
 Gfoip, olrivfs e^aipop cvODKias (iftuKpvu vtpovTai 
 alava. Olymp. II. 65 — 67. 
 
 To hope for such a blessed consummation in this 
 world may be too much; but is not a true man 
 nearer it al fifty than at twenty! Some one has in- 
 deed said that it is best for a man to die at thirty-five, 
 for (ben lie lias gone through all pleasures, and has 
 nothing new to enjoy. We cannot say so ; and we 
 firmly believe that the best growth of the human 
 heart comes after the fortieth year, under the kindly 
 nurture of home affections and manly fidelity. Ought 
 not our golden age to come to us in the autumn 
 time of golden fruit, with its crowned labors, fixed 
 habits, and loyal memories'? And, as the ripe fruit 
 on the tree holds within its ruddy rind the fertile 
 seed, image and offspring of the parent seed, thus 
 filial in its day of glory, and cherishing the spring- 
 time in the harvest, ought not our own autumn thus 
 to cherish and renew the spring-time of our life] 
 No thoughtful man will deny that there is some- 
 thing in faithful work and mature and loyal char- 
 acter that tends to renew and exalt all worthy affec- 
 tions and make the heart younger evermore. 
 
 In all that we are saying, we are taking it for 
 granted that lasting good-fellowship must rest upon 
 a ruling idea, and perpetuate itself in some worthy 
 service, or that in other words it must be real in its 
 aim and in its object, or, perhaps we had better say, 
 
59 
 
 in its guiding truth and animating spirit. Man 
 social, like man individual, lives duly when he has 
 light and motive, or eyes to Bee his object and power 
 to lay hold of it. Seeing and seeking make up his 
 life. Society follows the same laws, and the groat 
 fellowships (hat, have ruled the world and still rule it 
 follow this law, and upon their standard stale a prin- 
 ciple and urge a duty. Every powerful association 
 of men rests 14)011 some vital idea and object, some 
 reality, at once ideal and practical, that moves the 
 living to think and work together, and perpetuates 
 the memory of the dead. Not only empires and 
 priesthoods, but universities prove (his position, and 
 old Cambridge, England, and this new Cambridge 
 had their own guiding idea or germinal principle; 
 and a passing glance at the origin of these two influ- 
 ential institutions exemplifies what all philosophy 
 and history teach, — that men enjoy most and achieve 
 most when assimilated by a master idea and object, 
 and all real companionship rests upon a real faith 
 and service. In some respects, what Ave call the 
 Realism of the New Cambridge contrasts and com- 
 pares emphatically with that of the old English 
 University, its mother, and the bequest of John 
 Harvard, in 1638, resembles, not only in generosity 
 but in faith, the bequest of Hugh Balsham, that 
 founded the first college house of St. Peters, in Old 
 Cambridge, England, in 1257. In that thirteenth 
 century, in which the great universities of England 
 and the Continent rose from mere schools of private 
 instruction, the old Catholic Realism had reached its 
 
60 
 
 climax ; and, amidst its highest bloom, sagacious 
 eyes might discern the buds of the new culture that 
 were to outgrow its glory. It was the age when the 
 Romish doctrine of the Real Presence in the priestly 
 church and the transubstantiated wafer was taught 
 by its great masters, asserted by its great heroes, and 
 embodied in its great structures ; the age that pro- 
 duced Thomas Aquinas and his Summa Theolocjiae, 
 and St. Louis, peerless soldier of the cross ; the age 
 which canonized St. Francis and St. Dominic almost 
 before their bodies were cold in their graves, and 
 which began to build the York Minster and the 
 Cologne Cathedral ; the age in which England, with 
 her barons, and but two years before her Magna 
 Charta, trembled under the interdict of Rome, and 
 King John licked the dust at the feet of Innocent 
 III. It was the age of the great precursors of the 
 modern thought, that was to supplant the old Realism 
 by the new ; the age of Roger Bacon, the father of 
 modern science, and Dante Alighieri, the father of 
 modern literature. Old Cambridge was founded by 
 Hugh Balsham, afterwards Bishop of Ely, in full faith 
 in the Catholic Church, whilst she was, probably, 
 without the knowledge of her masters, cherishing 
 seeds of the new life ; and the resolutions of honor 
 to the founder, shortly after his death, show well the 
 grounds of fellowship among those ascetic scholars. 
 The University in full assembly decreed, May 26, 1291, 
 that on the eve of Saints Vitus and Modestus there 
 should be annually a solemn congregation of all the 
 Regents, to pray for the soul of the Lord Hugh. 
 
61 
 
 Those prayers for the dead on saints' days came from 
 the heart of the Catholic Church, and stand in broad 
 contrast with the new times and the new University. 
 We may be, in many respects, wiser than those 
 devout scholars ; but we cannot claim to have better 
 feelings than they, nor can we help, in some respects, 
 contrasting the unity of spirit and object in those 
 days with the discords of our time. 
 
 Two dates very near each other, and coming more 
 than three centuries after Hugh Bal sham's gift, mark 
 the powers that ruled the birth and fortunes of this 
 new Cambridge. In 1575, Francis Bacon, a lad of 
 fifteen, after two years of residence, left Trinity Col- 
 lege, Cambridge, in disgust with the state of learning, 
 especially of scientific studies, to seek more light in 
 foreign parts; and, nine years afterward, in 1584, Sir 
 Walter Mildmay, an English Puritan, founded Eman- 
 uel College at Cambridge, telling Queen Elizabeth, 
 who rallied him upon his Puritanism, that, whilst 
 he would countenance nothing contrary to her estab- 
 lished laws, he had set an acorn, " and when it be- 
 comes an oak, God alone knows what will be the 
 fruit thereof." Of this acorn, John Harvard and our 
 Harvard College were fruits, — the fruits of English 
 Puritanism, on soil which the invention of Guten- 
 berg, the discovery of Columbus, and the refor- 
 mation of Luther and Calvin, had done so much 
 to prepare. Harvard was educated at Emanuel Col- 
 lege, and had no less noted compeers at the Univer- 
 sity than Jeremy Taylor and John Milton, — those 
 paragons of their time, so like and so unlike, the one 
 
62 
 
 the dove of the English Church, so fond of nestling, 
 with his golden and purple plumage, under the 
 shadow of the sanctuary ; the other, that eagle of 
 song, so impatient of all enclosures, and panting for 
 the mountain and the cloud. In his library, which 
 he bequeathed to Harvard College, besides the treas- 
 ures from the Greek and Latin classics, and the 
 Christian fathers, Harvard brought two authors, who 
 have been, perhaps, more than any others, the found- 
 ers of what is peculiar in the thought of modern 
 Christendom, and surely of our New England, — 
 John Calvin, the chief champion of the new divinity, 
 and Francis Bacon, the chief champion of the new 
 science, — the one the apostle of the new theocracy, 
 the other the master of the new humanism. These 
 two personages represent the tendencies, the Puritan 
 zeal, and the worldly thrift, that so signally combined 
 to distinguish modern from mediaeval England, the 
 Puritan element predominating under Cromwell, the 
 secular element under William and Mary, and a tol- 
 erable compromise being brought about between the 
 two by the prevailing policy of the English Church, 
 which aims to be at once sacred and secular, and 
 shrewdly mediate between both worlds. The history 
 of New England, and especially of Harvard College, 
 turns upon the struggle between the two tendencies 
 thus represented, — the theocratic and the humanistic ; 
 in the first century the theocratic element prevailing, 
 in the second century the scales oscillating between 
 the two, and in this nineteenth century the human- 
 istic or secular tendencies predominating, until now 
 
63 
 
 the institution that was at first, and for many years, 
 but a school for educating ministers, is pre-eminent 
 for its physical science, classic learning, and secular 
 schools and accomplishments, — theology, notwith- 
 standing its masterly teachers, holding a divided, if 
 not a secondary place. We will not quarrel with 
 what has been inevitable, nor sigh for the days when 
 the theocratic word of Increase Mather and his son 
 Cotton, with increasing prerogative, passed for law 
 and gospel. We no more wish to bring back Presi- 
 dent Increase Mather, the first Doctor of Divinity 
 ever made here, than old England wishes to bring 
 back Humphrey Necton, the Carmelite friar, who 
 received, in 1269, the first doctorate of divinity ever 
 conferred by old Cambridge * We welcome the new 
 science, yet ask with it for a true sense of the ancient 
 faith, and if Bacon has triumphed by leading us to 
 the realities of nature, and if the best modern physics 
 declares, with Agassiz, in his masterly essay on Clas- 
 sification, that there is a spirit in nature, and genera 
 and species are real creatures of God, not figments of 
 circumstance, nor guesses of man, we ought to be in 
 a better condition for discerning the higher realities 
 of God, and Calvin's austerity should not hide from 
 
 * Thomas Fuller, in his charming History of Cambridge, records the 
 Latin lines that celebrated Humphrey Necton's honors, ami Leland thus 
 translates them : — 
 
 " Above the skies, let's Humphrey Necton praise, 
 For on him first, Cambridge conferred the bays." 
 The original stands thus: — 
 
 "Laudibus Humphredum Necton Astra feremus, 
 Qui data GrantansB laurea prima seholae." 
 
64 
 
 us the great truth, more important and central in 
 his pages than any of his harsh dogmas, that the 
 soul of man may and should enjoy the real presence 
 of the Spirit, and that life is death until this presence 
 is known. To vindicate this conviction, and main- 
 tain the spiritual element in the social polity, has 
 been the aim of earnest thinkers among our alumni 
 in every age ; and, in some respects, the new school 
 of theologians, since Buckminster and Channing, 
 have taken sides with the Mathers and the old 
 theocratic party, so far as arraigning the materialism 
 of the age is concerned, and asserting the sovereignty 
 of God over man. Our Harvard theologians, what- 
 ever their creed and name, and all creeds and all 
 names we number among our alumni, should think 
 their triumph a defeat, if, in assailing theocratic pre- 
 tensions, they destroy Christian faith, and, in their 
 opposition to the Pharisaism that cares for the mint, 
 anise, and cumin, play into the hands of the Saddu- 
 cism that cares most for the loaves and the fishes, and 
 so substitutes the insolence of worldly prosperity for 
 the insolence of sanctimonious zeal. The true religion 
 must interpose between the theocrats and the secu- 
 larists, harmonize the missions of Calvin and Bacon, 
 Edwards and Franklin, Channing and Webster, and 
 place spiritual ideas in due relations with the facts of 
 nature and the institutions of humanity, by methods 
 as winning and effective in action, as wise and ear- 
 nest in principle. Our Harvard school of thought 
 surely needs a helper to this end, and an unsatisfac- 
 tory secularism that provokes an equally unsatisfactory 
 
65 
 
 radicalism is likely to rule so long as the organizing 
 forces of society and letters are left to worldly inter- 
 ests, and theology and religion are given over mainly 
 to the speculative intellect, their noble ideas allowed 
 indeed to range at will through the air, without 
 being fixed upon the earth in solid deeds and institu- 
 tions. We are well aware that this state of things is 
 necessary, but only, we trust, as a transitional stage. 
 The old Catholic fellowship could not continue ; and 
 the spiritual power, quarrelling with science and hu- 
 manity, justly found itself excommunicated by them 
 in the attempt to excommunicate them. The quar- 
 rel, however, was not because of the war of religion 
 with science and humanity, but because of the usur- 
 pations of the priesthood; and a better age must 
 surely heal the breach, and reconcile the spiritual 
 and temporal ideas and powers. 
 
 Even good-fellowship languishes in the absence of 
 this higher Realism, as has been and is plainly shown 
 in the feuds and asperities of so many earnest think- 
 ers among us who ought to be brethren. The very 
 animosities of our radicals, that sometimes have 
 seemed to us to partake more of the curses from the 
 Jacobin Mountain than of the blessings of the Gali- 
 lean Mount, have at heart a certain depth of convic- 
 tion and a nobleness of aim, more, we trust, like the 
 theocratic harshness of the old Puritans, than the 
 unbridled hates of the new Terrorists. Something 
 is surely wrong, however, at the fountain-head, if not 
 of our thinking, surely of our social methods ; and 
 we may be certain that the springs of genial com- 
 9 
 
66 
 
 panionship will be filled anew when we learn to 
 work together from higher convictions, and upon a 
 broader platform. The principle of assimilation 
 should be sought from above, not from below ; and 
 only the love that is of God has ever had power 
 to reconcile characters so marked as those that 
 are often antagonists among us, and to subdue the 
 harshness of a strong but narrow individualism to the 
 catholicity of a genuine manhood. The poorest of 
 all intolerance is that which is impatient of diversi- 
 ties of character, and tries to make enemies of gifted 
 men, who, in spite of their radicalism or conserva- 
 tism, ought to be warm friends, and combine their 
 various qualities like the colors of the prism, that 
 blend in a single ray of white and blessed light. Ill 
 fares our culture, and even what we may choose to 
 call our humanities, without a positive faith and or- 
 ganic method, and we shall feel a higher enthusiasm 
 for letters as we accept more devoutly the reality of 
 religion, as it speaks to us in its own authority and 
 blessedness as to our fathers. Why may we not, 
 without renouncing any of our new light, but from 
 larger liberty and better insight, repeat loyally the 
 old watchword on our College seal, " Christo et Ec- 
 clesiae ; " — " Christo," to Christ, in whom the reality 
 of God's Word was manifest in living union with 
 man ; " Ecclesiae," to the Church, the company of 
 faithful souls, in whom the reality of God's Spirit is 
 shown in living fellowship with men. 
 
 This faith has made what, in the best sense, we call 
 humanity ; and through its progress men have drawn 
 
67 
 
 nearer each other as they have drawn nearer God. 
 It has brought new geniality, as well as strength, to 
 the homes and hearts of the people, and given schol- 
 ars a unity unknown in the old Attic and Roman 
 times. Compare the exquisite odes of Horace, which 
 this charming pet of courtiers wrote to such near 
 friends as Mecaenas, Postumus, and Torquatus, with 
 the hymns that Ambrose, a braver Roman and the 
 master of kings, composed alike for prince and peas- 
 ant, and how much nobler and more cheering is the 
 strain which invokes the Eternal Spirit to lift us 
 above the power of time and death, that threaten all 
 earthly ties ! As we review our friendships to-day, 
 we ask not to sing, with Horace to Postumus, — 
 
 "Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, 
 Labuntur anni nee pietas moraui 
 Puigis et instanti senectae 
 Afferet indomitaeque morti." 
 
 Nor to mourn with him as he writes to Torqua- 
 tus, — 
 
 " Immortalia ne speres monet annus et ahnum 
 Quae rapit hora diem." 
 
 Let us join, rather, in the morning hymn with 
 which Ambrose, the ruder Latinist indeed, but the 
 greater man, hailed the dayspring, as it broke upon 
 the pagan darkness, and still cheers our day : — 
 
 " Verusque sol illabere 
 Micans nitore perpeti 
 Jubarque sancti spiritus 
 Infunde nostris sensibus." 
 
 If such thoughts as these, which bring the solemn 
 names of Hugh Balsham, Catholic Bishop of Ely, and 
 
68 
 
 .John Harvard, Puritan minister of Charlestown, to- 
 gether, and urge the sacred mission of our Univer- 
 sity as a school of morals and religion, as well as 
 science and letters, may seem too grave for this festive 
 occasion, let us remember that nothing unites men 
 together so much as the recognition and service of a 
 sacred cause, and they who are the bravest comrades 
 in arms are ever the most jovial companions at table. 
 What can be more cheering and harmonizing to us 
 as graduates, than a due sense of the plain fact of his- 
 tory, that this institution is the child of God's provi- 
 dence, and the ages have been combining to enlarge 
 its heritage and to urge its duty. The old Catholicism, 
 with its external universality, and the old Puritanism, 
 with its internal throne, have bequeathed to us their 
 treasures by right of our lineage, and we are false to 
 our birthright if we in any way, either by a narrow 
 pietism, or a lax and insolent materialism, forsake the 
 comprehensiveness and the purity which they sought 
 in their way. Accept the high commission, and if 
 sometimes, as we note the marvellous progress of 
 the new arts and sciences, and see physics and polit- 
 ical economy so enlarging their domains and com- 
 bining their forces, and almost threatening to build 
 up a papacy of naturalism with a god of bread, and a 
 priesthood of pence, and a ritual of luxury, we are 
 impatient for the rise of a devout, enlightened, and 
 < (instructive mind, who shall do for the new learning 
 what the ancient faith did for the old, and so build 
 up the new City of God, we may take comfort in 
 remembering the gradual progress of the former 
 
69 
 
 civilization, and perhaps believe that the task of 
 construction lingers, not because the harmonizing 
 spirit is wanting, but because the materials are still 
 gathering for the edifice, and the great structure 
 must not be built till the stones arc ready and the 
 plans matured. Here to-day, however, we can have 
 a cheering glimpse of its proportions, and refresh 
 our fellowship by a prospect of its fitness and grand- 
 eur. Here to-day we base our fellowship upon the 
 true Harvard Catholicity, — larger than Roman rit- 
 ualism and Genevan legalism, — the Catholicity that 
 accepts all truth as God's, and claims it for his ser- 
 vice. To-day we do not dash, but quicken our joy 
 by owning together the highest principles, and, as we 
 walk through these groves and look upon these halls 
 and spires, we readily bring our treasures of science 
 and letters before the mercy-seat, and cheer and 
 exalt our fellowship by the solid Realism that com- 
 bines science, humanity, and religion under the same 
 Word and Spirit, and calls us to mastery over na- 
 ture, fraternity with men, and dependence upon God. 
 So we sit down in the sanctuary together, and chant 
 our " Sancte, Sancte, Sancte," as we read in those 
 three parts of the great temple the diverse, yet 
 according books of nature, man, and God, — three 
 books, but one truth, as in the " Veritas " of our first 
 College seal. Put the two seals, "Christo et Ec- 
 clesiae" and "Veritas," on different sides of the same 
 banner, and Harvard has a standard worthy of her 
 history and her destiny. This is surely better than 
 the military flag, under which we once marched 
 
70 
 
 through the streets of Cambridge, with " Marti et 
 Mercurio " on the silken folds. The inscription 
 ' ; Christo et Ecclesiae " better than any other may- 
 declare the spirit of our fellowship, and the word 
 " Veritas," covering three books, best expresses the 
 largeness of our objects ; for to us they mean the 
 books of Nature, Humanity, and Divinity. What 
 God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 
 
 This high allegiance to the mission of the Univer- 
 sity gives us new interest in its history and pros- 
 pects, reviving, with practical aims, the memory of 
 the lives and services of our brother Alumni, whose 
 work we are bound to continue. They have labored, 
 and we have entered into their labors. We are all 
 beneficiaries, and, whether rich or poor, we have 
 never paid back the good that we have received. 
 Nothing can better stimulate us and our sons, in 
 these days of large privilege and ready luxury, than 
 a living sense of the zeal and sacrifice given to this 
 institution by its great benefactors, and of the need 
 of seeking, in a higher sense of responsibility, the 
 tonic energy which they found in hardship and con- 
 flict and poverty. Let the great company of our 
 brethren pass before us in solemn procession, nor 
 let us refuse to be as hospitable in heart as our Tri- 
 ennial Catalogue is hospitable in word, and let us 
 number the dead and the living together here. A 
 very simple statement of fact helps us to marshal 
 the whole body of the Alumni together in one com- 
 pany under three divisions. The lives of three men 
 exhaust the history of Harvard University, and em- 
 
71 
 
 brace the seven and a half generations, from 1636 to 
 1860, a period of two hundred and twenty-four years. 
 Three lives, bearing date thus : William Hubbard, 
 of the class of 1642 (the first of the graduated 
 classes), was born in 1621, and died in 1704, aged 
 eighty-three ; Nathaniel Appleton, of the class of 
 1712, was born in 1693, and died in 1784, aged 
 ninety-one; and Josiah Quincy, of the class of 1790, 
 was born in 1772, and, Heaven be praised, he is with 
 us here to day in his eighty-ninth year. These three 
 lives, like three links of a chain, interlock with each 
 other, and the middle link is all that is wanting to 
 connect us with the contemporaries of Harvard. 
 Josiah Quincy, when a boy of twelve, could have 
 known Nathaniel Appleton, and Nathaniel Appleton, 
 when a boy of thirteen, could have known William 
 Hubbard, and William Hubbard was contemporary 
 with our founder, being seventeen years old when 
 Harvard died. Speak these three names together 
 now, and let the centuries of graduates march behind 
 them as behind centurions. William Hubbard ! 
 advance the seventeenth century, with its Puritan 
 strictness and heroism. Nathaniel Appleton ! for- 
 ward the eighteenth century, with its bolder think- 
 ing and larger empire. Josiah Quincy ! here we are, 
 and his venerable name leads this, our nineteenth 
 century of graduates, with its broader knowledge 
 and finer culture. God grant that they who follow 
 may be worthy of such leaders. If we follow our 
 academic fathers worthily, shall we not find our fra- 
 ternal interest in each other increasing as our zeal 
 
72 
 
 for sound letters increases, and may not this associa- 
 tion of Alumni, instead of being merely a social, be 
 also a working bod)', as is the case with the graduates 
 of Oxford and Cambridge, who have a voice in the 
 University Senate, and an influence upon the whole 
 arrangement of the institution'? It is very obvious, 
 that, instead of being turned adrift, to forget our 
 Alma Miller and be forgotten by her, her sons should 
 be more valuable to her after their graduation, and the 
 funds of the institution, and the state of opinion 
 among undergraduates, would be vastly helped by 
 the rise of a new and more active fellowship of the 
 Alumni. Better sense of our common heritage, too, 
 will rise with better conviction of our own duty, and 
 we must enjoy more as we do more together, or 
 be more genial companions in wit, as we are more 
 loyal comrades in service. 
 
 The work done by our brethren during these cen- 
 turies might well make us proud, were it not that it 
 so urges fidelity and rebukes our sluggishness. The 
 mind of our Harvard lias never ceased to wield a 
 leading influence on "\\v American letters, and with- 
 out enumerating its achievements in the learned 
 professions, and in the arts and sciences connected 
 with them, without dwelling upon the names of 
 those of our brethren who have occupied places of 
 power in State and nation, court, school, and church, 
 judges, governors, presidents, legislators, ambassa- 
 dors, ministers, masters in every worthy science and 
 art, it is enough to name a single branch of liberal 
 culture in which our brethren have led, and perhaps 
 
73 
 
 still lead, the literature of the nation. I mean the 
 use of the English tongue in its purity, beauty, and 
 force. Our University has been the mother of our 
 American prose, and in this she has been queen of 
 the art most useful and most- beautiful. It is said 
 by that original and perhaps somewhat enthusiastic 
 thinker, Lasaulx, of Munich, in a volume just from 
 the press, that among all the beautiful arts, whether 
 the plastic arts of architecture, sculpture, and paint- 
 ing, or the vocal arts of music, poetry, and eloquence, 
 the last stands first in honor and in importance, and 
 " the world of free prose speech is as large as the 
 world of human thought itself." Now surely the 
 masters of American prose have come from these 
 halls of study, and for nearly a century from its ori- 
 gin Harvard College embodied all the literature of 
 the land, whilst, perhaps, in this nineteenth century' 
 of enlarged culture, she has given to the nation, 
 from her own graduates, a large, if not the largest, 
 number of the principal classic prose-writers, and 
 welcomed to her honors the chief authors from other 
 schools. Her sons have created the rich school of 
 American History ; and if we to-day throw a fresh 
 chaplet on Prescott's recent grave, and name with 
 him some ten or twelve of our graduates, from the 
 days of Hubbard, Belknap, and Holmes to those of 
 Sparks, Bancroft, Palfrey, and Motley, we have, with 
 few exceptions, — Washington Irving chief of these, 
 — exhausted the list of leading American historians. 
 Honor to these our brethren, not only for the learn- 
 ing and eloquence, but for the large and hopeful hu- 
 10 
 
74 
 
 inanity, which they have expressed in diction from 
 this old well of English pure and undefiled. Honor 
 to them and all others, whether in prose or verse, 
 who share their fame and their inspiration. The 
 water from this sparkling- fountain, whenever, from 
 any book or speech, it touches our lips, should re- 
 fresh our old fellowship, and quicken braver pur- 
 poses, as well as more genial affections. Let our 
 new Alumni Hall be built as if over this perennial 
 well, and when, from year to year, we meet together, 
 let the speech of our brethren, like a sparkling cup, 
 pledge us anew to each other, to our founders, and 
 to all friends of man and God. Call the spring our 
 Castalia ; nay, call it our Siloa, and thank God that 
 here, as, in the Providential course of ages, the Greek 
 and Roman culture have bowed to the Christian 
 faith, and the words of classic beauty have caught 
 the spirit of the Word of Eternal Truth. 
 
 In this temper we survey our past and cheer on 
 our future, devoutly acknowledging the line of Provi- 
 dential agencies that has led us from small begin- 
 nings to this day of unequalled prosperity and hope. 
 Cuvier tells us, in his Eloge on the naturalist Adan- 
 son, that this great explorer of nature, who was once 
 so poor as to have no shoes to attend the French 
 Institute after his election, asked, in his will, that 
 a wreath might be laid upon his coffin, composed 
 from the fifty-eight families of plants established in 
 botany by him. We do not read of any flowers 
 being put upon Harvard's coffin, when, in Septem- 
 ber, 1638, the stern Puritans laid the wasted scholar 
 
75 
 
 in his early grave. But the grateful centuries have 
 paid, and are paying, a kindlier tribute; and the fair 
 flower and rich fruit of more than two hundred 
 harvests of manly culture, more than two hundred 
 families of plants, have made his name fragrant 
 throughout the world, and his little vineyard has 
 been a broad and fruitful garden of God. In the 
 beautiful language of Gilman, whose loyal and ven- 
 erable head we do not see here now, as three years 
 ago, we may point to the humble Colony school that 
 rose on these grounds, as the first growth of Har- 
 vard's goodly seed, and rejoice in the magnificent 
 increase with every succeeding year : — 
 
 " O Relic and Type of our Ancestors' worth, 
 Thai bast long kepi their memory warm I 
 Firsi. flower of their wilderness ! Star of their night ! 
 Calm rising through change and through storm ! " 
 
 Grateful to Harvard and the noble line of our 
 benefactors, we thus meditate upon the graduate's 
 return, and try to speak in words the blessing that 
 we have received in deeds. In this spirit, at once 
 serious and cheerful, we, the Alumni of Harvard, 
 join for the first time in the inauguration of our 
 President. It is easy to salute you, our brother, as 
 head of the University to-day, for you are identified 
 with all our best academic associations. You guided 
 our first studies, and every line of old Homer speaks 
 to us your name, and your frequent mercy as well 
 as constant judgment. From year to year, your 
 kindly face has renewed the welcome, and we feel 
 that you arc one of us, and your honor is ours. You 
 
76 
 
 may depend upon our fidelity in whatever concerns 
 the welfare of the University, and the sac-redness of 
 its charter and laws. A single word from you will 
 bring us all to your side, even if we travel on foot 
 over the roads, and ford or swim the rivers on our 
 way. We, your brethren, greet you, our President, 
 and commend you to God's blessing. As we do so, 
 we recall, with filial reverence, the illustrious line of 
 scholars who have occupied the chair before you, 
 from Dunster's day to this. We rise up to name 
 with honor those of that line who are with us still: 
 James Walker, Jared Sparks, Edward Everett, Jo- 
 siah Quincy, — in themselves a host, their simple 
 names to us sufficient titles both of honor and affec- 
 tion. In such presence we are one fellowship to- 
 day, and, with Dunster's tomb here at our side, and 
 with Harvard's monument almost in sight, we may 
 join hand in hand, with one voice lifting to the 
 mercy-seat the Non nobis, Domine, of our fathers, — 
 not unto us, not unto us, but unto God, give the 
 glory. 
 
INAUGURAL ADDRESS, 
 
 PRESIDENT FELTON. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 My Friends and Fellow-Students : — 
 
 I have accepted the office of President of this 
 ancient University, not ignorant of its labors, nor 
 inexperienced in its anxieties. The men who have 
 preceded me — the illustrious dead, who rest in yon- 
 der churchyard, or under the peaceful shades of 
 Mount Auburn, — the eminent and beloved among 
 the living, who, having retired from this scene of 
 duty, adorn, by their inspiring presence, this day 
 — have established a standard of official labor and 
 responsibility, which may well give pause to any 
 man called to succeed them. I dare not compare 
 myself with them. The Honorable President, Mr. 
 Quincy, who offered me the first appointment I ever 
 held in the University, thirty-one years ago, still 
 lives, in a frosty but kindly age, and year after year 
 honors with his welcome countenance and vigorous 
 speech our academic festivities. His successor, the 
 bright, consummate flower of American scholarship 
 and eloquence, in the rich maturity of his splendid 
 genius, rests for the day from his public toils. The 
 eminent historian, with whose faithful researches and 
 
80 
 
 masterly works the name and fame of Washington 
 are indissolubly connected, cheers us with his benig- 
 nant kindness. My immediate predecessor, the clear 
 and profound thinker, the philosopher and divine, 
 the unrivalled master of sacred eloquence, who so 
 lately held this seat and bore these cares, comes to 
 witness the ceremonies, happy, doubtless, that he is 
 released from the burden of the office which he 
 crowned with so much success and dignity. They 
 have, one and all, left their footprints in our aca- 
 demic retreats, which I pray God I may be able 
 to follow, though it must needs be with unequal 
 steps. 
 
 I am happy that the ceremony of inauguration is 
 associated with the festival of the Alumni. By the 
 organization of our American colleges, the body of 
 the graduates have but a slight connection with the 
 University after they have once been dismissed from 
 Alma Mater's immediate care. They bear no official 
 relations to the University, and have no direct influ- 
 ence over its affairs. I wish it were otherwise here, 
 for Harvard University is properly represented, not 
 only by those who are engaged for the moment in 
 the studies of the place, but by the great body of 
 educated men, who have gone forth into the world, 
 and are filling their several posts of duty, labor, 
 and dignity ; who are busied in the practical affairs 
 of life, in the professions, in science and letters ; 
 the lawyers, physicians, clergymen, scholars, states- 
 men, and orators. The undergraduates are the 
 bright and promising spring, without which there 
 
81 
 
 could be no summer and autumn ; but the grad- 
 uates are the summer and autumn, with ripening 
 fruits and gathered harvests. 
 
 On this occasion you will not expect from me any 
 elaborate discussion of theories of education ; I ap- 
 pear before you, to-day, with no new views to offer. 
 I am not a new man here. I am the oldest inhab- 
 itant. I believe not one man, — no, not one, — hold- 
 ing office in any department of the University, when 
 I returned, after an absence of two years, is now in 
 active academical duty. In the immediate govern- 
 ment of the College, my associates are, with few 
 exceptions, men who have been my pupils ; without 
 exception, men to whom I have been attached by the 
 ties of a friendship which has never been interrupted 
 by a passing cloud. Had my personal wishes been 
 gratified, I should have been left to the cultivation of 
 Grecian letters, and the studies of the professorship 
 in which I have passed so many happy years. When 
 St. Basil, having long resided in the society of the 
 students and philosophers of Athens, was called by 
 the duties of life to leave those classic scenes, he 
 departed with lamentations and tears. More fortu- 
 nate than St. Basil, I am permitted to remain. I 
 shall not desert the academic grove ; the voice of 
 the Bern a and the Dionysiac theatre still ring in my 
 ears with all their enchantments. Homer, iEschy- 
 lus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, — I 
 shall not part company with you yet. Helicon and 
 Parnassus, which my feet have trodden literally as 
 well as figuratively, are consecrated names. Hymet- 
 11 
 
82 
 
 tus still yields his honeyed stores, and the Cephissus 
 and Ilissus still murmur with the thronging mem- 
 ories of the past. I resign my former duties to 
 younger and more vigorous hands ; but my excellent 
 friend and successor I know will allow me to haunt 
 his lecture-room, even to that period of life when I 
 shall be like the chorus in the Agamemnon, who 
 
 <J?uAAd8os fjtr) 
 KaraKapcpopevrjs, Tp'nvobas pev 68ous 
 2rei'xei, iraidus S' ovftev apeiov 
 "Ovap fjpepocpavrov aXaivei. 
 
 " When hoary Eld, in sere and yellow leaf, 
 Walks his triple-footed way ; 
 Nor stronger than a child 
 "Wanders — a vision in the light of day." 
 
 Brethren, we stand here to-day as the representa- 
 tives of the oldest University on the American conti- 
 nent. Our Puritan ancestors brought with them, 
 from Oxford and Cambridge, the scholarship of Eng- 
 land. They were among the best educated men of 
 their times. They were among the noblest men of 
 all times. If their memories ever cease to be hon- 
 ored here, — if, among the changes that advancing 
 years are always making in the opinions and works 
 of men, the names of the Puritan fathers shall ever 
 be scorned or forgotten here, — the smile of Heaven 
 shall no longer rest upon us, and these fair struc- 
 tures, now crowded by studious youth, and visited by 
 the light of unexampled prosperity, shall crumble to 
 the earth, blighted with the curse of God. John 
 Harvard, whose honored name the University bears, 
 was a Cambridge man, and the name of the place, 
 
83 
 
 Newtown, was early changed to Cambridge, — Can- 
 tabrigia Noy. Anglorum, — Cambridge of the New- 
 Englishmen. Harvard College became the corpo- 
 rate designation, and the University at Cambridge 
 its descriptive synonyme. A seal, bearing the motto 
 "VERITAS," was adopted in 1643, but the one 
 now commonly used, with the motto " Christo et 
 Ecclesiae," was introduced at a later and uncertain 
 date. The earliest degrees were conferred by the 
 President, with the sanction of the Honorandi Viri 
 and Reverendi Presbyteri, upon the Juvenes quos scio, 
 tarn doctrina quam moribus idoneos esse, fro more 
 Academiarum in Anglia, according to the usages of 
 the Universities in England. Indeed, the early so- 
 ciety of New England generally was organized upon 
 the social principles of Old England. 
 
 The precedence yielded to rank, the privileges, 
 exemptions, and honors conceded to esquires and 
 knights (there were few of higher rank among the 
 Puritan aristocracy), would astonish and offend this 
 easy-mannered age. These social views were shared 
 by the scholars and governors of the infant College. 
 In the class-room and chapel the scholars sat accord- 
 ing to the acknowledged rank of their fathers. It is 
 ordered by the earlier laws, that " scholarium quis- 
 que donee primo gradu ornetur, ni sit commensalis 
 aut nobilis alicujus Alius, aut militis primogenitus, 
 suo tantum cognomine vocator," — " Let every schol- 
 ar, until he receives his first degree, be called only by 
 his surname, unless he be a fellow-commoner, or the 
 eldest son of a knight or nobleman." Some of the 
 
84 
 
 ancient laws are more applicable to the present time 
 than the one I have just quoted. For example, "they 
 [the scholars] shall honor as their parents, magis- 
 trates, elders, tutors, and aged persons, by being 
 silent in their presence, except they be called on to 
 answer, not gainsaying, showing all those laudable 
 expressions of honor and reverence in their presence 
 that are in use, as bowing before them, standing un- 
 covered, or the like." 
 
 " They shall be slow to speak, and eschew not 
 only oaths, lies, and uncertain rumors, but likewise 
 all idle, bitter scoffing, frothy, wanton words, and 
 offensive gestures." 
 
 The following brief rule has a much wider appli- 
 cation than to the scholars of a college : " None 
 shall pragmatically intrude or intermeddle in other 
 men's affairs ; " and there is a Latin law, which was 
 by no means a dead letter, though in what was called 
 a dead language : " Si quis scholarium, ullam Dei et 
 hujus collegii legem sive animo per verso, seu ex supi- 
 na negligentia, violarit, postquam fuerit bis admoni- 
 tus, si non adultus, virgis coerceatur," — "If any of 
 the scholars, from a perverse mind or supine negli- 
 gence, shall violate any law of God and of this Col- 
 lege, after he has been twice reproved, if not adult, 
 let him be scourged with rods." 
 
 I forbear to make any application, — scholars now 
 are all adults. 
 
 I must quote one more, as a law greatly needed 
 everywhere : " No scholar shall taste tobacco, unless 
 permitted by the President, with the consent of their 
 
85 
 
 parents or guardians, or on good reason first given 
 by a physician, and then in a sober and private man- 
 ner." Begging pardon of my numerous smoking 
 friends, — and no man has more or better, whether 
 as friends or smokers, — I can only say that, if 
 the scholars " tasting tobacco " depended upon the 
 permission of the President now, cigars, pipes, snuff, 
 and every other form of the abomination, would 
 quickly disappear from the College premises. But 
 alas ! the smoke of tobacco, like the smoke of sacri- 
 fice offered to idols among the ancient heathen, has 
 led the generation of men astray, and the breath of 
 human nostrils goes up to heaven, — if, indeed, it 
 
 goes there at all, — eXiacrofievr] irepl kclttvw. 
 
 I must not dwell on these characteristics of the 
 past. The history of the University has been admi- 
 rably written by Mr. Peirce, once Librarian, by Mr. 
 Eliot, formerly the Treasurer, and, more fully, by my 
 venerable predecessor, President Quincy. I will only 
 remark, that every record of the proceedings of our 
 ancestors in relation to the establishment, shows that 
 they had large and liberal purposes. They aimed to 
 educate a learned clergy ; but not that alone. The 
 general education of the people was embraced in the 
 scope of their enlightened plans, and they included 
 in their idea of a scheme of general education the 
 general principles of the highest possible education. 
 The University was upreared side by side with the 
 School-house, as an indispensable part of the instru- 
 mentalities of civilization. They built up a state 
 which they resolved should be a Christian state, 
 
86 
 
 but their conception of a Christian state included 
 the widest range of human learning. They were no 
 fanatics of a single, narrow idea. They were men 
 of piety, but not an ignorant piety. They thought 
 the chief end of man was to glorify God, but they 
 would glorify him by unfolding, to the highest 
 possible extent, the faculties of the human soul, 
 which He created in his own image. We smile as 
 we read some of the formal and ceremonious require- 
 ments of the earliest College laws. Manners change 
 in external manifestations from age to age ; but the 
 basis of good manners, respect for the rights of others, 
 modest estimate of self, honorable submission to es- 
 tablished laws, deference to venerable age, illustrious 
 character, and official station, reverence for sacred 
 things, — these are the foundation of the manners of 
 gentlemen everywhere and in all times. Our ances- 
 tors had this in view in their rules of order, however 
 quaintly expressed, and they were wise men in re- 
 quiring of the academic youth good manners as well 
 as good morals, — the minor morals as well as the 
 greater morals. And I am glad to say that, though 
 many of the ancient ceremonial observances have 
 passed away in the course of time, the spirit of our 
 rules remains the same; the object, namely, to train up 
 Christians and gentlemen, remains the same. I will 
 venture to affirm, in no boastful spirit, but with de- 
 vout thankfulness, that the object has been in good 
 measure accomplished in these academic retreats. No 
 one can be more conscious than I am, that young men, 
 during the period of their University life, are often 
 
87 
 
 restless under college rules, and take it ill that they 
 are called to account for the violation of what they 
 are sometimes pleased to consider petty restrictions. 
 I have entire confidence in the honor of the great 
 mass of students. [At this moment, the venerable 
 Ex-President Quincy entered, leaning upon the arm 
 of his son, and took a seat with the other three Ex- 
 Presidents, on the stage. He was received with 
 repeated and prolonged applause. When they ceased, 
 the speaker resumed.] I was speaking, Mr. Pres- 
 ident Quincy, of the faults and virtues of College 
 students. No one has had a more thorough knowl- 
 edge of both than you. No one can judge them 
 more truly, — no one will judge them more gently. 
 I was about to say that I believe no body of youno- 
 men are, in the mass, more truthful and mag- 
 nanimous. I have nowhere met persons more gen- 
 tleman-like, better bred, better behaved, or with bet- 
 ter purposes, on the whole. Yet I must say that 
 those speculative gentlemen, who maintain that 
 the rules of order which students are required to 
 observe within the College premises are superfluous, 
 know but little of human nature or student nature, 
 which is a modification of the same thing. Bring 
 four or five hundred persons, young, middle-aged, or 
 old, learned or ignorant, pious or impious, or even 
 angels, together without laws, and a superior power 
 to enforce them, without rules of order, and the au- 
 thority to require their observance, and, in a month, 
 these quiet and studious scenes would become a pan- 
 demonium. A lady may now pass, unattended, at 
 
88 
 
 any hour, through the College grounds, secure from 
 seeing or hearing anything to alarm or offend her. 
 Mothers never need to warn their daughters not 
 to cross the College precincts, day or night, for 
 the spirit of the place is such that maiden delicacy 
 has never been wounded, by word or act, within 
 these hallowed grounds. Take off the restraints — 
 which some young men think so grievous, and jus- 
 tify themselves in striving to resist — for a month 
 only, and the Faculty would receive a petition, unan- 
 imously signed, to restore them all, if not to make 
 them more rigorous than before. Law is the only 
 condition of society, — much more, civilized soci- 
 ety. A state where every man does what is right 
 in his own eyes, that is, has no restraining power to 
 check his whims and passions, is not a state in which 
 progress can be made. Homer understood that well, 
 when he described the lawless, one-eyed Cyclops, — 
 dde/Aiarta etSco?, — and his shaggy brethren of the 
 mountains and caves, — fit companions of the beasts 
 that perish. The laws necessary to establishments of 
 learning vary, in form and in details, according to cir- 
 cumstances. I think our University owes no incon- 
 siderable part of the great influence it has exercised 
 upon society to the fact that, while it has remodelled 
 the special forms of its laws and orders when the 
 spirit of the age required, it has always enforced, 
 not only the moral law in its highest sense, but 
 the minor morals, which are the manners of gentle- 
 men. 
 
 There is a saying of ancient wisdom, that he best 
 
89 
 
 knows how to rule who has learned how to obey. 
 Submission to the law is the best discipline for the 
 august task of making and administering the laws. 
 To the American, more than to any other, the early 
 lessons of obedience are needful. Our only security 
 is in the law, and in ready and intelligent obedience 
 to its sovereignty. It was a noble sentence of Plato, 
 that the magistrate is not the servant of the people, 
 but the servant of the LAW. An opposite view has 
 taken too strong a hold upon our heady Demos. All 
 men and all things are supposed to be subjected to 
 the shifting gales of the popular will. But law is 
 the expression of Eternal Right, beyond the reach 
 of the caprice of the moment. It is, in its highest 
 form, the voice of God. " The laws from Jove," — 
 Oe/iLo-Tes upo? Jto'?, — is a phrase of Homer, who 
 knew all the profoundest truths of human experi- 
 ence. Education includes this obedience to law as 
 one of its vital elements. To leave the young with- 
 out this influence is more dangerous among us than 
 in other countries, because in no other country has 
 the citizen, on attaining his majority, so direct an 
 agency in the affairs of government. The three years 
 of academical freedom (the Academische Freiheit) 
 of the German University are not so dangerous as 
 they would be here, because the moment the Bursch 
 takes his degree, he falls for life under a rigorous 
 system, against which it would be vain for him to 
 struggle ; his daily bread depends upon his daily 
 obedience. And yet, even in Germany, a growing 
 sense of its evils is beginning to manifest itself. 
 12 
 
90 
 
 When I explained to some of the learned men on 
 the Continent the college system generally prevalent 
 in America, by which students at the University 
 are held to the daily performance of their duties, — 
 duties which they cannot go far in neglecting, with- 
 out being called to account, and that, too, during the 
 four years of college study, until the young men 
 reach the average age of twenty-one, — they agreed 
 that our system was much better than theirs, and 
 one of them, raising his hands, exclaimed, " Would to 
 God we had it here ! " Our danger is routine ; theirs 
 is license. On each side, the special danger is vividly 
 felt, and the special advantage of the other clearly 
 perceived. We sometimes give too strong a prefer- 
 ence to the German University system ; they are sen- 
 sitive to its peculiar evils, and perhaps exaggerate 
 the advantages of ours. A system which should 
 unite the excellences of both, would come as near 
 perfection as a human institution can attain. 
 
 And this leads me to a topic on which I feel it my 
 duty to say a word. I am aware that some have 
 fancied that the law of the State cannot cross the 
 boundary-lines of the College premises, whatever- 
 deeds may be perpetrated there. I shall speak my 
 mind frankly, because I think the time has come 
 when the subject should, once for all, and in the 
 most public manner, be set in its true light. In a 
 well-ordered society, when crime has been committed, 
 the public law steps in to vindicate its supremacy, and 
 citizens of every grade and calling stand before its 
 dread tribunal on the footing of exact equality. No 
 
91 
 
 fear or favor, or personal solicitations, can set aside 
 its stern decree, or abate the penalties it inflicts on 
 the doers of evil deeds. I know of no power in the 
 College, or the State, which can make an exception 
 here, or can establish a refuge for crime in these 
 grounds. The Faculty, Corporation, and Overseers 
 combined could not arrest, for a moment, the foot- 
 steps of justice, pursuing the offender into the Col- 
 lege domains. There is no right of asylum for 
 wrong and violence near the altars of learning and 
 religion. It is to the honor of our students, that the 
 cases of offence are so few and far apart that the 
 very memory of one dies out before another occurs ; 
 and when one does occur, both the act and its legal 
 consequences come upon them with surprise. The 
 course of the law strikes them as a novelty, which 
 they sometimes vehemently resent. And then we 
 hear, from many quarters, that we are a paternal 
 government, and that sounding phrase is considered 
 argument enough to condemn the most indispensable 
 course of well-considered action. A paternal govern- 
 ment ! The Austrian and Russian despotisms are 
 paternal governments. That cannot be what is meant. 
 It is the family government, perhaps, to which they 
 refer. What family government ever shielded its mem- 
 bers from the penalties of violated law] What father 
 ever had the power or the right to protect his son from 
 the officers of justice, even if it was the paternal 
 mansion itself which the reckless youth had burned 
 to the ground 1 Family government ! I suppose the 
 thing somewhere exists. I know the art, in former 
 
92 
 
 times, was understood; but there is a figure of 
 speech which the grammarians denominate cata- 
 chresis, and which young men at college sometimes 
 wittily employ when they call their fathers " the 
 Governors," — ut lucus a non lucendo. There is a 
 story told of a discussion in a social circle of students 
 at Cambridge, not here, but in England, on the in- 
 teresting subject of their "Governors," — when one, 
 more filial than the rest, tried to check the petulance 
 of his comrades by saying, iC After all, let us re- 
 member that they are our fellow-creatures." That 
 kind of paternal government, the government of 
 those " Governors," we do not think is the best pos- 
 sible government for an American University. I 
 take it upon me to say, — and I say it not as a new 
 thing, but as a matter both of common sense and 
 common law, — that these grounds, consecrated to 
 learning and piety, — these buildings, that so many 
 generations have inhabited, — this property, the 
 charities of our ancestors and our contemporaries, 
 dedicated to science, letters, education, and to the 
 worship of Almighty God, — all these enjoy the 
 protection of the law. No man shall lay the hand 
 of violence on these sacred trusts. High privileges, 
 secured by the gifts of generous and pious men, are 
 no excuse for midnight outrage and barbarous vio- 
 lence. He who forgets the dignity of his position as 
 a student, his obligations as a gentleman, his honor 
 as a man, and sets the laws of the land at defiance, 
 runs the same hazard as any other man, either of 
 detection in the act, or of conviction and all its con- 
 
93 
 
 sequences afterward. Crime is no more a joke within 
 the College walls than it is without, and the false 
 idea that it is so I denounce as a dishonest and 
 corrupting sophistry, not to be tolerated for a mo- 
 ment by any conscientious administration of college 
 government. 
 
 From the small beginning of the College, when, 
 according to the witty verse of the President to-day, 
 the Tutors had to deal with 
 
 " The Freshman Class of one," 
 
 it has grown to a great University, wholly in accord- 
 ance with the liberal spirit in which Harvard College 
 was founded. John Harvard's gift, and the contribu- 
 tions of successive friends of learning in the early 
 times, were noble examples, — small in amount, but 
 large in proportion to their worldly means, — and 
 nobly have they been followed by the Hollises, the 
 Alfords, the McLeans, the Gores, the Eliots, the 
 Phillipses, the Lawrences, the Appletons, the Grays, 
 — time would fail to name them all, — who have 
 made the establishment what it is. The State, ani- 
 mated by the spirit of the Fathers, cherished the 
 College, sometimes by annual appropriations, and 
 sometimes by special benefactions ; but by far the 
 larger part of its means, now in activity, in all its 
 departments, have come from private sources, — in a 
 great measure from the generous citizens of Boston, 
 whose names will be forever identified with the pro- 
 gress of learning in America. To the College proper 
 have been successively added the Divinity School, the 
 
94 
 
 Law School, the Medical School, the Lawrence Sci- 
 entific School, the Botanical Garden, and the Observ- 
 atory; and last, but not least in the bright array, the 
 Museum of Natural History, built by private liber- 
 ality, and the enlightened munificence of the Com- 
 monwealth. The College, — Harvard College, — the 
 germinal institution giving its corporate name to 
 the whole, and the other establishments grouped 
 around it, make collectively the University. What 
 is a University'? It is a permanent establishment, 
 in which all knowledge, all means of scientific and 
 literary research, all the accumulations of study and 
 experience, are gathered together. It is built, not for 
 one age, but for every age ; its aim is to advance the 
 human race in all that exalts and dignifies the life 
 of man. The recorded wisdom, the written speech 
 of every civilized nation, should be treasured on the 
 shelves of its libraries ; its museums should contain 
 every product of the handiwork of God ; its labora- 
 tories should have every material and every instru- 
 ment by which Nature can be interrogated, and the 
 thoughts of the Almighty read. Men of the most 
 distinguished genius, of the largest acquirements, 
 should be drawn into its service. Studious and eager 
 youth should find the ample page of learning ever 
 unrolled before them. Withdrawn from the tumults 
 of the world, and its maddening ambition, here truth 
 alone should reign supreme. In the still air of de- 
 lightful studies, here the growing intellect should 
 ripen, undisturbed by the passions which agitate soci- 
 ety. A University should bind together the students 
 
95 
 
 who enter its halls in the hallowed friendship that 
 grows from common pursuits of the noblest kind, and 
 is nurtured by the generous sentiments native to the 
 heart of uncorrupted youth. It should bind the ages 
 together, by the most elevating associations that can 
 act upon the finest feelings of the soul. For beneath 
 its immemorial trees have walked the great and 
 good of past ages, and the most illustrious of our 
 contemporaries. In these apartments, they studied 
 and conversed ; in these lecture-rooms, they listened 
 to the learned men who guided their studies, and 
 trained their unfolding faculties to the great tasks of 
 life. Here first they exercised their logical reason, 
 or glowing fancy, on congenial themes. Every spot 
 of ground, every shady tree, every trodden path, 
 every wall, turret, pinnacle, is linked to sacred 
 memories, that crowd the period of hope and youth 
 passed here. We recall with delight such venerable 
 images, such exciting thoughts. We seem to see the 
 forms of illustrious men, still haunting the places 
 dear to them in the days long since gone; we lis- 
 ten in imagination to the voices of the great orators, 
 whose fame has filled the world ; of the poets, whose 
 song has added new charms to life ; of the illustrious 
 cultivators of science, who have read the laws of 
 nature, or conversed with the stars : — 
 
 " Rapt in celestial transport they, 
 Yi't hither oil a glance from high 
 They send of tender sympathy, 
 To bless the place where on their opening soul 
 First the genuine ardor stole." 
 
96 
 
 It is these associations of the present and memo- 
 ries of the past that create the strong attachments 
 cherished by the graduates of a college for the place 
 of their education. The fond feeling, that grows 
 stronger with age, and kindles with a brighter flame 
 as the lamp of life burns lower, is that of a child 
 for its mother. If a college education added nothing 
 more to the sum of human felicity than the con- 
 sciousness of this tender love for Alma Mater, the 
 cherishing mother of our minds, it would be among 
 the best and most effective agencies for the progress 
 and refinement of society. 
 
 We are already so far removed from the beginnings, 
 that the sense of antiquity steals with its softening 
 influence over us, as we recall the past of Harvard 
 University. Ancient visages adorn our walls, and 
 look down from the canvas upon our festal assem- 
 blies. We begin to count our years by centuries. 
 Quaint traditions have descended to us from the 
 days of the Fathers, and the hues of eld are creeping 
 over our academic halls. " My own belief," says Dr. 
 Arnold, " is, that our Colleges of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge are, with all their faults, the best institutions 
 of the kind in the world, — at least for Englishmen." 
 And so I say, " My own belief is, that our Colleges of 
 Cambridge, and Amherst, and Yale, and others like 
 them, are the best institutions of the kind in the world, 
 — > at least for Americans." I have felt the mighty 
 rush of solemn and impressive associations, that sweep 
 like a tide upon the soul, at Oxford and Cambridge. 
 I have paced the quadrangles, meditated among the 
 
97 
 
 cloisters, read in the libraries, and wandered over 
 the green lawns and soft meadows in those old Uni- 
 versity towns ; I have gazed on the portraits and 
 statues of their illustrious men ; I have delighted 
 my sight with the architectural splendors of their 
 venerable colleges, chapels, schools, and theatres. 
 The effects of the education there obtained are 
 wonderful and admirable. We see a body of gen- 
 tlemen formed under its influence unsurpassed in 
 the world ; we see a dignified and learned clergy ; 
 statesmen blending the classical tastes they have 
 acquired with manly abilities in practical affairs, 
 adorning the drudgery of business and the details 
 of official duty with the graces of the Muse. Can- 
 ning and Pitt and Fox, refreshing their energies, 
 exhausted in the strife of the Senate, or with the 
 cares of government, by gladly drinking at the 
 Pierian spring ; Brougham, writing essays on an- 
 cient eloquence, and translating Demosthenes ; Car- 
 lisle, filling the interval between two viceroyalties 
 by studying on the spot the topography of Troy; 
 Gladstone, illustrating the scholarship of the age, 
 while unbending from the severe toils of arranging 
 the budget and adjusting the revenues of a mighty 
 empire, by writing three volumes on Homer, which 
 henceforth no student's library can spare, — these 
 great scholars and statesmen tell us what the high- 
 est forms of English education do for the leaders 
 of thought and action in our mother land. 
 
 Again, the German Universities have been justly 
 held up to our admiration, — not quite so justly 
 13 
 
98 
 
 to our imitation. The vast erudition of the Ger- 
 man professors, their profound speculative powers, 
 the gigantic contributions they have made to the 
 treasures of learning-, entitle them, as a body, to 
 our reverence. They have made the study of the 
 German language a necessity to learned men every- 
 where. The freedom of their lecture-rooms, the 
 endless accumulation of books in their libraries, 
 the liberality with which the stranger is allowed to 
 avail himself of them, give the German Universities 
 an eminent and most beneficent position in mod- 
 ern culture. He who denies this because German 
 speculation has sometimes lost itself in the clouds 
 of mysticism, or because German rationalists have 
 sometimes attempted to undermine the established 
 truths of history, sacred and profane, by the sense- 
 less jargon of the " mythical theory," or because a 
 few German naturalists have striven to dethrone the 
 Creator, and to set up in his place an inexorable 
 law, as the Merimnophrontistae of the old comedy 
 exalted Dinos to the place of Zeus, — he who, 
 offended by these intellectual excesses, rejects the 
 good there is in the profound and faithful studies 
 of German scholars and philosophers, runs into a 
 fanatical extreme in the opposite direction. The 
 German scholars and German Universities have per- 
 formed an important part, and perhaps have a still 
 more important part to perform, in the progress of 
 science and letters. Recognizing fully the merits 
 of the English and German Universities in their 
 respective spheres, I yet do not hesitate to compare 
 
99 
 
 our New England system — not in a boastful, yet 
 not in a deprecatory spirit — with theirs. American 
 colleges have a somewhat different task to accom- 
 plish from that either of the German or the English. 
 The young American, passing from the university 
 into the world, is seized by the current of events, 
 and strongly and inevitably borne along. All too 
 soon he becomes a politician, philanthropist, re- 
 former. The questions which agitate the age as 
 the winds lash the heaving ocean, belong not, at 
 least in their party aspect, to academic life. The 
 young man here must learn the principles which 
 shall help him to meet them when the moment 
 comes ; but he must not be absorbed in the ques- 
 tions themselves, while he is gathering strength 
 and ripening for the future. Let there be at least 
 these short years of calm for intellectual growth. 
 Let there be no premature excitement of passions, 
 however laudable in themselves, by turning the 
 thoughts of academic youth from liberal pursuits 
 to the smoke and dust of the conflict, in this brief 
 prelude, soon to be followed by the tragic compli- 
 cations, the fierce emotions, the bitter, unsparing 
 warfare, that rage over the field of life. Here let 
 a barrier to the encroaching sea of political and 
 philanthropic strife, over which it may not pass, be 
 raised. Let our academic holidays be the truce of 
 God, wherein all may lay aside their armor and meet 
 on the common ground of the literae huma?iiores, — 
 the humaner letters, as good learning was once 
 beautifully called. There are places enough, times 
 
100 
 
 enough, occasions enough, for the gaudia certaminis, 
 — the joys of battle. For God's sake, let the din 
 of war never be heard in the grove of the Academy. 
 Our young American needs, more than the Euro- 
 pean youth, the training that shall give him com- 
 posure and self-command, — that shall give him the 
 mastery of his faculties, and the habit of steady 
 action. He is a citizen of a vast republic, wherein 
 every man has his career to open, his fortune to 
 make, his success to achieve. He feels every mo- 
 ment the social or party pressure, and the weight 
 of individual responsibility. These very circum- 
 stances make the period in which we live one which 
 tempts the young man into premature activity. He 
 is allured into the busy scene when his faculties are 
 but half unfolded ; his principles are yet uncer- 
 tain ; his views vague ; his hopes gorgeous as the 
 rainbow, and perhaps as fleeting and unsubstantial. 
 His tastes are unformed, and his moral being crude 
 as the unripe fruit of early summer. A solid char- 
 acter is not the growth of a day; the intellectual 
 faculties are not matured without long and vigorous 
 culture. To refine the taste is a laborious process; 
 to fortify the reasoning power with its appropriate 
 discipline is an arduous undertaking ; to store the 
 mind with sound and solid learning is the work of 
 calm and studious years. It is the business of the 
 higher education to check this fretful impatience 
 which possesses us, this crude and eager haste to 
 drink the cup of life which drives us onward to 
 exhaust the intoxicating drafts of ambition. 
 
101 
 
 By our laws a man becomes his own master at 
 one-and-twenty. Our Constitution provides that the 
 President of the United States must be at least 
 thirty-six ; and Aristotle makes this same age the 
 suitable one for a man to marry. True it is that 
 one man is older, in all that constitutes true man- 
 hood, at five-and-twenty, than another who has 
 passed his grand climacteric. This difference comes 
 partly from natural endowments ; but chiefly it is 
 made by the different use of natural endowments. 
 One has dawdled life away, half asleep or some- 
 thing worse, till all the energies he had are made 
 unfit for use. Another, fortunate in the early dis- 
 cipline of parents, who knew better than to yield to 
 his childish folly, — who neither spoiled his bodily 
 health by indulging his appetites, nor his mental 
 health by yielding to him when he shrank from 
 toil, as all boys will shrink at times, — passed from 
 school to college, applying the manly habits already 
 formed to the appropriate labors of the place, shirk- 
 ing no task, however trying, on any plea of laziness 
 or dissipation. He enters life in the glory of his 
 early manhood, with faculties unfolded, strengthened, 
 and alert; joyously marching on his way, however 
 steep and hard, to assured success ; helpful to others 
 who cannot help themselves ; master of his passions ; 
 no fanatic of one idea, but giving hospitable wel- 
 come to all good thoughts, which ripen in his true 
 and genial nature into virtuous action. Such is the 
 educated youth, — such is the champion of stainless 
 honor, armed with weapons of immortal temper, 
 
102 
 
 whom Harvard loves to send forth into the world 
 to do heroic work. The young man who would 
 achieve lasting renown must learn to curb his fiery 
 impulses and subdue the wandering of his impas- 
 sioned thoughts ; and this the studies of the Uni- 
 versity most readily help him to do. I do not say 
 there is no other way of achieving this result. But 
 this is the shortest and most effective way. Great 
 men conquer great difficulties, and show themselves 
 great in doing so ; but they remember what the 
 difficulties were, and strive to put them out of the 
 way of their successors. Washington and Franklin 
 were not University men ; but the former, in his last 
 message to Congress, recommended a University, 
 for which he appropriated a part of his fortune, 
 and the latter founded one. Franklin was not a 
 classical scholar, but he provided the means whereby 
 others should become classical scholars, and, wishing 
 to make a present to our library which should sig- 
 nalize his appreciation of good learning, he sent, not 
 Poor Richard, but a handsome copy of Virgil. 
 
 But if severe training be necessary for effective 
 mental action, what room is left for spontaneous im- 
 pulse'? some may ask, — what channel for inspiration 1 
 For among those who question the ancient methods, 
 we hear a great deal said about inspiration and spon- 
 taneity, — pardon me the word, I never used it before. 
 Without discipline, there is no spontaneous action 
 worth having, — no inspiration that deserves to be 
 listened to. St. Paul drew an illustration from the 
 Grecian games ; let me ask the advocates of spon- 
 
103 
 
 taneity what they think of the principle as applied 
 to the boat-races in which our young friends have 
 so much distinguished themselves. Are the careful 
 diet, the early hours, the daily testing of vigor and 
 skill, the total abstinence from hurtful drinks and 
 food, the training of the eye, the ear, the hand, — 
 are all these spontaneous actions \ Does the man 
 who pulls the stroke-oar do it by spontaneity? I 
 know not, — I never tried it ; but I should not like 
 to pull against such a man with all the spontaneity 
 I could muster. 
 
 The most beggarly ballad-singer that earns his 
 daily bread by twanging his harp and singing his 
 poor old songs at cottage doors, has won his skill 
 of hand and voice and style by long and persist- 
 ent training. The immortal verse of Homer was 
 no careless outpouring of sudden impulse. We 
 may be sure that the unapproachable perfection of 
 his transcendent composition was the result of lono- 
 and careful cultivation. It is true that he inherited 
 a language formed under the happiest influences of 
 nature, by a race who possessed a manly vigor and 
 an exquisite susceptibility to the beauty of sound 
 and form. The Ionic Greek, which he learned from 
 his mother's lips, was the most wonderful instru- 
 ment on which poet ever played. For every mood 
 of man's changing mind, for every affection of the 
 heart, for every form of outward nature, it possessed 
 that peculiar felicity of expression which places the 
 things described directly before the hearer. And 
 Homer inherited from his birth each gift and grace 
 
104 
 
 with which the gods have ever crowned their dar- 
 lings. His vigilant eye let no object, great or small, 
 escape its lightning glance : his ear drank in the 
 melodies of nature and art ; his exquisitely-strung 
 nerves vibrated to every breath of heaven, every 
 voice of passion, every stirring impulse of the soul. 
 But he stored his mind with all the knowledge of 
 his age. He travelled over the ancient Grecian 
 world, and, with a keenness of observation which no 
 naturalist of modern times has ever surpassed, he 
 noted the phenomena of Nature on the bosom of the 
 stormy sea, on the resounding shore, in the silence of 
 the star-lit night, at the rising of the sun, at the 
 setting of the Pleiades. And when the inspiration 
 came upon him, and his thoughts voluntarily moved 
 harmonious numbers, the thought and knowledge 
 and discipline were there ; the listening throngs at 
 the Ionian festivals knew that they stood in the pres- 
 ence of the greatest creative intellect, — the wisest of 
 men, — the favorite of the heavenly powers. From 
 that clay to this the law has remained the same. The 
 gods have placed labor before excellence, and the 
 condition is inexorably enforced, the price sternly 
 exacted. The superiority of genius is not only a 
 superiority of natural endowment, but a force of will 
 and a faculty of toil, that bring all natural endow- 
 ments into the highest and the most efficient activity. 
 The proper objects of a University are twofold. 
 First, educating young men to the highest efficiency 
 of their intellectual faculties, and to the noblest cul- 
 ture of their moral and religious natures. To accom- 
 
105 
 
 plisli this end, both experience and reason have 
 shown that the study of the classical languages of 
 antiquity, — the Greek and Latin, — the mathemat- 
 ics, and the physical sciences, and intellectual philos- 
 ophy, are the best means. Other sciences and other 
 departments of literature are added, according to 
 time, taste, and inclination, for practical utility and 
 literary accomplishment. Instruction in the modern 
 languages is provided, as they are the keys to the 
 precious treasures of literature, in which the culti- 
 vated nations of Europe have embodied their best 
 thoughts. The two great languages of antiquity 
 have been taken as the basis of literary culture ; 
 first, because geographically they stand in a central 
 position in the long line of Indo-European tongues, 
 and secondly, because, as instruments for the expres- 
 sion of thought, they rose, in the long succession of 
 centuries, to the highest point of perfection. Speech, 
 in itself, is one of the grandest and most beautiful 
 objects of study. Taking it in all its relations and 
 forms, we may call it the chief distinction of man. 
 It is one of the divinest miracles of our being. 
 When we speak, we set in motion an organism 
 framed with inexpressible skill, by the hand of the 
 Almighty Creator. What curious and subtile adapta- 
 tions have been contrived to make the act of speech 
 not only possible, but easy, — so easy, and so natu- 
 ral, that we never pause to reflect upon the wonder 
 of the phenomenon. The articulating organs, so ex- 
 quisitely constructed and adjusted ; the elastic air, 
 that serves so many other beneficent purposes in the 
 14 
 
106 
 
 economy of the universe; the intellect, created, as 
 all science shows, in the image of the Divine mind, 
 transmitting its commands from the brain, where it 
 sits enthroned like a god, along the speeding nerves 
 to its servants, the articulating organs; the im- 
 pulse, moving on the wings of the breeze, sweeping 
 through intervening space, knocking at the porches 
 of the ear, and delivering the message — a bodiless 
 thought — to another kindred mind ; — how com- 
 monplace, yet how mysterious, how divine ! No 
 wonder that Rhenius, a missionary in the East, in the 
 Preface to his Tamil Grammar, exclaims, " To God, 
 the Eternal and Almighty Jehovah, and Author of 
 speech, be glory for ever and ever." But these two 
 languages are not only the perfection of the forms of 
 speech ; they contain the most admirable composi- 
 tions in every species of literature, and they stand in 
 point of time also at the head of that European civil- 
 ization to which we belong. Nothing can change the 
 past ; the position they occupy, the influence they have 
 exercised over the course of thought and the forms of 
 expression in literature, are immutable facts. What- 
 ever progress the nations may make in knowledge 
 and the diffusion of intellectual culture among the 
 people, the Greek and Roman writers will hold their 
 place as the venerable teachers of the European world. 
 You cannot cut off the fountain-head ; you cannot 
 stop the stream. To the end of time the great 
 classic authors of Greece and Rome will be the 
 models of all that is noble in expression, elegant in 
 style, chastened in taste. Doubtless the human race 
 
107 
 
 advance in general knowledge and culture, and in 
 command over the facts of nature and the laws of 
 dynamics, as they move on through the ages. But 
 the twin peaks of Parnassus still rise, and only one 
 poet soars to the side of Homer. The Bema stands 
 silent and solitary in Athens, and no orator has 
 ascended its steps and plucked the crown from the 
 brow of Demosthenes. The Cephissus and the Ilis- 
 sus listened to the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle ; 
 but no modern Cephissus and Ilissus so haunt the 
 memories of cultivated thinkers as these slender 
 streamlets. He would be a bold man who asserted 
 that any dramatic poet has surpassed, or that more 
 than one have equalled, JEschylus and Sophocles. 
 There have been many more populous and wealthy 
 cities than Athens, but only one Athens has illus- 
 trated the history of man, — there has been but one 
 Athens in the world. Time has not dimmed her 
 ancient glories ; her schools still school mankind ; 
 her language is the language of letters, of art, of sci- 
 ence. There has been but one Acropolis, over which 
 the virgin goddess of wisdom kept watch and ward 
 with spear and shield. There has been but one 
 Parthenon, built by the genius of Architecture, 
 and adorned with the unapproachable perfections of 
 Phidian statues ; and there it rises in the pathetic 
 beauty of decay, kindling in the blaze of the noon- 
 day sun, or softly gleaming under the indescribable 
 loveliness of the full moon of Attica. 
 
 Great moralists have taught the lessons of wisdom 
 and goodness in every generation of men ; but only 
 
108 
 
 the Son of God rose to diviner strains than Socrates, 
 whose teachings of the obligations of duty, the im- 
 mortality of the soul, the forgiveness of injuries, the 
 certainty of judgment to come, sanctify the rocky 
 chamber where he held those dialogues recorded by 
 the most beloved of his disciples, and where, when 
 the great discussion ended, and the setting sun was 
 still lighting the hill of Mars, Hymettus, Lycabettus, 
 and the Acropolis with its unequalled glories, he 
 died a martyr's death, because he would not disobey 
 his country's laws. 
 
 A liberal education, a university education, aims 
 to train the mind in these high studies, to make it 
 familiar with these inspiring examples, to refine the 
 taste, exercise the judgment, soften the heart, by 
 these humanizing arts. I have dwelt a few moments 
 on this department of university education, partly, I 
 suppose, because the studies of my life have been 
 more especially consecrated to its cultivation; but 
 partly also because the utility of these pursuits, and 
 their fitness to hold the conspicuous place which our 
 system assigns them, have been vehemently ques- 
 tioned. The discipline of the exact sciences and 
 their practical usefulness, the importance of cultivat- 
 ing the powers of observation, and guarding against 
 the illusions of the senses, the value of a careful 
 initiation into the philosophy of the mind, and the 
 political sciences, no man in his senses ever denied. 
 
 I believe the education founded on the studies of 
 which I have spoken, is the best for a young man 
 considered as a rational being; and if best for a 
 
109 
 
 young man as a rational being, it is also the best 
 preparation he can have for any special department 
 of life. He will not only be the better lawyer, clergy- 
 man, physician, for having had it, but he will be the 
 better citizen, the better merchant, the better banker, 
 the better everything. The late Colonel Perkins once 
 told me, that if he were then in active life, (he was at 
 a very advanced age at the time,) and had to choose 
 for his counting-house between two young men, of 
 equal natural abilities, of equal excellence of char- 
 acter, the one having received a college education, 
 with no special preparation for business, the other 
 with a good school education and the most careful 
 training in book-keeping and the other arts which 
 have a special bearing on commercial pursuits, he 
 should prefer the college man. The ground of judg- 
 ment taken by that eminent and venerable merchant 
 was, that the university man could easily master the 
 details of the business, with the general culture his 
 education had given him, so as to be equal to his 
 rival in that special thing ; and that done, he would 
 always be, in other respects, the superior. And I 
 have been told by an eminent professor of natural 
 science, who formerly belonged to a foreign univer- 
 sity into which came pupils from the gymnasia, 
 where a classical course was required, and others 
 from the so-called real schools, where the studies 
 were exclusively practical and scientific, that invaria- 
 bly the classical men made the most rapid progress 
 in the study of the natural sciences, for which the 
 preparation of the others, in a superficial view, would 
 
110 
 
 be supposed to have best qualified them. The rea- 
 son was the same as that given by the merchant: 
 that the gymnasia furnished a more complete exer- 
 cise of the intellectual powers, and he who had been 
 subjected to it was better fitted for any special de- 
 partment in the university. I think these views are 
 sound and philosophical ; and while I do not claim 
 that a university education is essential to professional 
 pursuits, practical business, or public life, I would 
 strongly urge it upon every young man looking for- 
 ward to either of these careers, who can command 
 the time and the pecuniary means. Our assemblage 
 of establishments adapt themselves, however, to the 
 various conditions and objects of men. We do not 
 require a young man to pass the undergraduate de- 
 partment in order to enter the scientific or profes- 
 sional schools, because we know that many who will 
 greatly profit by these schools cannot spare the time 
 required by the college ; yet I have not the slightest 
 doubt that in every one of these cases a previous 
 college course would in after life prove to be an ines- 
 timable blessing. I should be glad to illustrate this 
 topic at greater length, but passing time warns me 
 that I must forbear. 
 
 Socrates deemed himself happy that he was about 
 to migrate after death to a blessed region, where he 
 should meet and converse with the souls of Homel- 
 and Hesiocl, and other good and famous men. The 
 scholar now may enjoy the anticipated happiness of 
 Socrates. He may read the very words, glow with 
 the very thoughts, fill his memory with the very im- 
 
Ill 
 
 ages, that revolved in the capacious genius of the old 
 Ionian singer, whose undying verse still reproduces 
 the Hellespontine shore, still echoes with the multitu- 
 dinous plashing of the sea, and repeoples with heroic 
 forms the plain of Troy, over whose silent fields the 
 Simois and Scamander steal their languid way, as 
 the traveller, Iliad in hand, sweeps along the spark- 
 ling waters, with Ida, Gargarus, and the Mysian 
 Mountains in sight, while Tenedos, and Imbros, and 
 Samothrace, rich with poetical memories, flash like 
 gems on the bosom of the iEgean deep. An English 
 gentleman, Mr. Calvert, hospitable and generous like 
 Axylus of old, owns the immortal plain, and is re- 
 claiming it with British capital from the exhaustion 
 of centuries of barbaric possession. But the genius 
 of Homer holds it by an older title, recognized as 
 inalienable by the whole educated world ; and the 
 scholar who sails its neighboring waters and treads 
 its shores is the intellectual guest of him who has 
 owned it by the right of song for more than three 
 thousand years. Is it not something, too, to ascend 
 the Bema, — that illustrious rock, — and recall the 
 majestic words of Demosthenes, which entranced the 
 souls of his countrymen, and kept the arms of 
 Philip and Alexander for twenty years at bay, — the 
 very words of matchless grace and resistless force 
 wherein the master's fiery inspiration flowed'? Is 
 it not something to repeat, under the shade of the 
 Morian trees, the very phrases in which Plato deliv- 
 ered his divine philosophy to his disciples, while the 
 breezes played among the weird old olive groves, 
 
112 
 
 sacred to Athene, and the silvery waters of the 
 Cephissus went murmuring- by, more than two thou- 
 sand years ago? When Cicero visited Athens, he 
 turned aside at the Peiraic gate and passed up the 
 plain to the colonnaded walks of the Academy, 
 that he might refresh his soul with the exalting 
 associations of the spot, even before he beheld the 
 wonders of art that crowned the Acropolis, or con- 
 versed with the accomplished men who in that age 
 still crowded the gardens, the schools, the Leschae, 
 and the porticos. To the scholar of the present day 
 the enjoyment is more exquisite, the delight of such 
 associations more intense. 
 
 But I must tear myself away from these classic 
 memories, that recall moments that were eras in my 
 intellectual life, — hours, happy hours, too quickly 
 fled. 
 
 I have said that the object of a university was 
 partly to educate the young, — the picked and chosen 
 youth — the jeunesse doree — of the country; but it 
 is also in part the duty of the Professors to add to 
 the literature and science of their respective depart- 
 ments. The university that fails to do this fails in 
 an essential portion of its proper business. For the 
 men of Harvard, I proudly and gratefully appeal to 
 the judgment of the world. Natural and mathemati- 
 cal science, law, philosophy, poetry, are daily receiv- 
 ing important accessions from the heads and hands 
 of our Professors. Leading works in all the prov- 
 inces of the intellectual domain might be enumerated, 
 which have been produced by them within the last 
 
113 
 
 ten years. But in this presence I forbear. In the 
 other branches of academic duty, the all-important 
 question is, Does the training of Harvard rear up a 
 race of men, — high-minded men'? Public and pri- 
 vate munificence has built and filled yonder Library 
 and these learned halls. The same generous spirit 
 has endowed these professorships. Have the objects 
 of all these noble endowments and costly sacrifices 
 been attained? Are all these diligent labors, these 
 watchful cares, daily and nightly exercised by the 
 academic body, rewarded by the bright accomplish- 
 ments and honorable characters of the young men 
 who annually go forth from these ancient halls into 
 the busy world? If not, let these ancient halls 
 crumble to the earth ; let yonder noble library be 
 scattered or burned by invading barbarians ; let 
 yonder museum, which now contains in its ample 
 spaces an organic world, be levelled brick by brick, 
 and the great naturalist who has gathered its treas- 
 ures from every quarter of the earth return to 
 the land whose great loss we have thought our 
 exceeding gain in his coming. But no ; the halls, 
 libraries, museums, shall stand, and their means of 
 progress and utility shall be indefinitely enlarged. 
 The naturalist shall stay where he is. There is no 
 end to the public and private blessings they confer 
 under his inspiring genius. Proudly and gratefully 
 I go before the world with these graduates of Har- 
 vard, — from the noble man who stands at the head 
 of the long catalogue of illustrious living names, to 
 the class that received their diplomas yesterday. 
 15 
 
114 
 
 There are some who doubt the wisdom of our 
 system and the fitness of our discipline, but behold 
 the results. I make no boastful comparisons, but 
 wherever I meet a Cambridge man I know that I 
 am in the society of a gentleman. I think I have 
 studied the Cambridge student long enough to un- 
 derstand his qualities. I know that he sometimes 
 cherishes fantastic and paradoxical theories of his 
 own rights, especially as against the requirements of 
 the Faculty; I am aware that he sometimes labors 
 under strange delusions as to the insidious designs 
 of tutors and proctors against his peace and dig- 
 nity, for I have been a tutor myself; but I doubt 
 if the faults of students are as great as those that 
 other persons of the same age would exhibit, if as- 
 sembled in equal numbers, and, like them, partially 
 removed from the influences of general society. I am 
 convinced that they have better safeguards against 
 serious moral dangers than other young men enjoy. 
 Nowhere, I think, is the influence of high character 
 more powerful or pervading. I know of no form of 
 society where, with the greatest inequality of social 
 condition and of wealth, such absolute justice is done 
 to merit. Rich and poor, country boys and city boys, 
 candidates well prepared and candidates ill prepared, 
 here come together. In spite of the errors of opinion 
 and conduct which sometimes, in moments of excite- 
 ment, they exhibit in their bearing towards the au- 
 thorities under which they are placed, in their con- 
 duct toward each other, in the honors they award to 
 each other, I firmly believe that no society of men 
 
115 
 
 in the world, young or old, are governed by a more 
 absolute sense of perfect and impartial justice. 
 
 We used to hear in former times of charity schol- 
 ars. Young men destitute of this world's goods, but 
 rich in hope and aspirations, were above the false 
 pride of refusing to perforin services which the more 
 fastidious tone of our day would perhaps call menial, 
 to earn thereby money to pay, in whole or in part, 
 the cost of their education. The rich classmates of 
 such a scholar never made him feel, by scornful look, 
 or haughty manner, or stinging allusion, the sense 
 of inequality. The same student who, in Commons 
 Hall, waited upon his wealthier classmates, or rang 
 the morning bell, or kindled the fire in the reci- 
 tation-room, presided in the evening over one of the 
 literary societies, into which the rich young man 
 felt himself honored to be admitted as a common 
 member. Hand inexpertus Joquor. This generous 
 principle of scholarly association, making a student's 
 position in the most important respects dependent 
 upon what he is, and not upon what he has, is a 
 noble characteristic of college life. But the poor 
 scholars are not the only charity scholars. Rich 
 and poor are alike the beneficiaries of the founders 
 and benefactors of the University. In the eye of 
 the law, the college is only a great charity, and 
 the permanency of its rights, privileges, and powers 
 stands upon this ground alone. The teaching of 
 the learned professors, the use of these museums 
 and libraries, the countless benefits of a residence 
 here, are procured for rich and poor alike, — from 
 
116 
 
 what or by whom'? Not from the charges paid in 
 term-bills, but from the well-directed charities of 
 past generations and the present. These precious 
 opportunities, which money cannot purchase, are 
 open to the richest as well as the poorest, for half 
 the sum paid for tuition at some of our private 
 schools. The wealthiest scholar is dependent on 
 charity for seven eighths of what his education 
 costs, and the poorest only for a trifle more. The 
 difference between the richest and the poorest this 
 year has been but thirty dollars. Every student 
 who has ever been graduated at this University, 
 whether he waited at table, made fires, rang bells, 
 kept monitors' bills, or clothed himself in purple 
 and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day, 
 has been a charity student, nothing more. 
 
 The general type of character formed under these 
 varied and contrasted influences is one in which 
 truth, honor, generous feeling, brotherly kindness, 
 most generally and permanently prevail. We meet 
 it in all the walks of life, in practical affairs, in 
 the professions, in church, in state. It is not often 
 found in its highest development, but when it is, 
 how lovely does it rise before us ! Purity, manli- 
 ness, and ardent youth harmonize well together. 
 The union of these high qualities with the grace- 
 fulness of opening life and glowing manhood, is 
 everywhere a lovely spectacle, which the gods may 
 contemplate witli delight. Nowhere is it lovelier 
 or more beloved than among its kindred youth at 
 college. Have you not watched such a young man 
 
117 
 
 in his daily walk? Refined in manners, gentle in 
 bearing, quiet in speech, never uttering a coarse 
 word or a doubtful jest, he moves like the angel 
 of Milton, severe in youthful beauty. He is devout 
 and religious without ostentation, but without the 
 dread of showing that he is religious on all fitting 
 occasions. The harmony of his life is felt by the 
 lightest of his companions. Do his fellow-students 
 doubt his virtue, sneer at his purity, scorn his gen- 
 tleness \ He who thinks so greatly misjudges their 
 generous natures. In his calm and saintly presence 
 vice shrinks abashed, and tries to hide her ugliness ; 
 the loose phrase and suggestive song die away upon 
 shamed and silenced lips. His speech is precious 
 as gold ; his opinion sways like the sentence of a 
 sage; his father's pride, his mother's joy, the idol 
 of his sister's heart, — is this being a dream of 
 fancy % God forbid. I seem to see him now, 
 standing in bodily presence before me. Alas ! he 
 sleeps in yonder city of the dead. His memory, 
 crowned with amaranthine virtues, is the viewless 
 presence in which he lives among us. 
 
 Gentlemen, it is high time for me to close. 
 God grant that we may all work together for the 
 prosperity of the common mother of our minds. 
 God grant that these young men, who come up 
 year by year, may under the influences of the place 
 be strengthened for every good word and work. 
 If I may be thought, hereafter, to have wrought 
 in some humble measure toward this consumma- 
 tion, — if I may, in some humble measure, have 
 
118 
 
 contributed to the enlargement of the bounds of 
 science, the diffusion of a literary taste, the estab- 
 lishment of liberal and enlightened sentiments, the 
 elevation of the standard of Christian and scholarly 
 character, the strengthening of the bonds of patri- 
 otic devotion to the honor and glory of our com- 
 mon country among the successive classes, drawn 
 from many and distant States, — if by the conse- 
 cration of the remainder of my life to these objects, 
 I shall close my career of service here with the 
 consciousness of having advanced these high aims, 
 to which the University, if faithful to itself, must 
 ever aspire, that will be renown enough. 
 
THE DINNER 
 
 ASSOCIATION OE THE ALUMNI 
 
THE DINNER. 
 
 The procession re-formed at Gore Hall, soon after the 
 exercises were finished at the Church, and proceeded to 
 Harvard Hall to the dinner. The capacity of the room 
 was severely tested by the six hundred persons who were 
 present. Dr. Holmes, Vice-President of the Association 
 of Alumni, presided, having President Felton and two 
 ex-Presidents, the Hon. Edward Everett and Dr. Walker, 
 on his right, and Dr. Osgood, Governor Banks, and Chief 
 Justice Shaw on his left. A blessing was asked by the Rev. 
 Chandler Robbins, and the company dined. After this, the 
 Musical Society of the Alumni sang, " Non nobis, Domine," 
 and Dr. Holmes addressed the company as follows : — 
 
 " Brothers, by the side of her who is mother of us all, 
 and friends, whom she welcomes as her own children ! 
 
 " The older sons of our common parent, who should have 
 greeted you from this chair of office, being for different 
 reasons absent, it has become my duty to half fill the place 
 of these honored but truant children, to the best of my 
 inability. A most grateful office, so far as the expression of 
 kind feelings is concerned ; an undesired duty if I look to 
 the comparisons you must draw between the government 
 of the association existing de jure, and its government tie 
 facto. Your President (Hon. R. C. Winthrop) so graces 
 every assembly which he visits, by his presence, his dignity, 
 his suavity, his art of ruling, whether it be the council of a 
 16 
 
122 
 
 Nation, the legislature of a State, or the lively democracy 
 of a Dinner-table, that, when he enters a meeting like this, 
 it seems as if the chairs stood back of their own will to let 
 him pass to the head of the board, and the table itself, that 
 most intelligent of quadrupeds, the half-reasoning mahog- 
 any, tipped him a spontaneous welcome to its highest scat, 
 and of itself rapped the assembly to order. Your first 
 Vice-President (Mr. Charles Francis Adams), whose name 
 and growing fame you know so much better than his bodily 
 presentment, has not been able to gratify your eyes and 
 cars by showing you the lineaments and stirring you with 
 the tones inherited from men who made their country or 
 shaped its destinies. You and I have no choice, therefore, 
 and I must submit to stand in this place of eminence as a 
 speaker, instead of sitting a happy listener with my friends 
 and classmates on the broader platform beneath. Through 
 my lips must flow the gracious welcome of this auspicious 
 day, which brings us all together in this family temple, 
 under the benignant smile of our household divinities, 
 around the ancient altar fragrant with the incense of our 
 grateful memories. 
 
 " This festival is always a joyous occasion. It reassem- 
 bles a scattered family, without making any distinction ex- 
 cept that which age establishes, — an aristocracy of silver 
 hairs, which all inherit in their turn, and none is too eager 
 to anticipate. In the great world outside there are and 
 must be differences of lot and position ; one has been fortu- 
 nate, another, toiling as nobly, perhaps, has fallen in with 
 adverse currents ; one has become famous, his name stares 
 in great letters from the handbills of the drama of his gen- 
 eration, another lurks in small type among the supernu- 
 meraries. But here we stand in one unbroken row of 
 brotherhood. No symbol establishes a hierarchy that di- 
 vides one from the other; every name which has passed 
 into our golden book, the Triennial Catalogue, is illumi- 
 
123 
 
 nated and emblazoned in our remembrance and affection 
 with the purple and sunshine of our common Mother's 
 hallowed past and hopeful future. 
 
 " "We have at this time a twofold reason for welcoming 
 the return of our day of festive meeting. The old chair 
 of office, against whose uneasy knobs have rested so many 
 well-compacted spines, whose uncushioned arms have em- 
 braced so many stately forms, over whose inheritance of 
 cares and toils have ached so many ample brows, is filled 
 once more with a goodly armful of scholarship, experience, 
 and fidelity. 
 
 " The President never dies. Our precious Mother must 
 not be left too long a widow, for the most urgent of reasons. 
 We talk so much about her maternity, that we are apt to 
 overlook the fact that a responsible Father is as necessary 
 to the good name of a well-ordered college, as to that of a 
 well-regulated household. 
 
 " As children of the College, our thoughts naturally cen- 
 tre on the fact that she has this day put off the weeds of her 
 nominal widowhood, and stands before us radiant in the 
 adornment of her new espousals. You will not murmur, 
 that, without debating questions of precedence, we turn 
 our eyes upon the new head of the family, to whom our 
 younger brothers are to look as their guide and counsellor, 
 as we hope and trust through many long and prosperous 
 years. 
 
 " Brothers of the Association of the Alumni ! Our own 
 existence as a society is so bound up with that of the Col- 
 lege whose seal is upon our foreheads, that every blessing 
 we invoke on our parent's head, returns like the dew of 
 Heaven upon our own. So closely is the welfare of our 
 beloved Mother knitted to that of her chief counsellor and 
 official consort, that in honoring him we honor her under 
 whose roof we are gathered, at whose breasts we have been 
 nurtured, whose fair fame is our glory, whose prosperity is 
 
124 
 
 our success, whose lease of long life is the charter of our 
 own perpetuity. 
 
 " I propose the health of the President of Harvard Uni- 
 versity. We greet our brother as the happy father of a 
 long line of future Alumni." 
 
 President Felton, on rising to respond, was received with 
 three cheers and warm applause. 
 
 " Mr. President, — I thank you for the pleasant manner 
 in which you have referred to me. I rise only to offer my 
 acknowledgments for the greetings which I have had here 
 and elsewhere, to-day. It is true, the morning opened 
 with stormy scenes in nature ; but storms in nature clear 
 the air, and now we are in the enjoyment of unclouded 
 sunshine. I have occupied too much time of this assem- 
 bly, in another place, to feel justified in making you a 
 speech now, if I, had the physical strength to do so. You 
 are aware, Sir, that it is a warm day, but not by the con- 
 clusive experience of it that I have had. I have had my 
 share of both time and labor already. I thank you, breth- 
 ren, one and all, for the cordial greeting you have extended 
 to me, I thank you for the friendly manner in which you 
 received what I said to-day, — said sincerely and earnestly, 
 though in a somewhat loose and unfinished form. I can 
 only add, that, in my future labors here, I intend to be 
 guided by the principles which I endeavored to expound, 
 because they are principles not adopted for the moment, 
 but deduced from the experience of more than thirty years 
 of college life, and I, at least, have no doubt of their 
 soundness in the main, though I am aware that different 
 minds look upon the same subject with different views. 
 Paying all respect to every difference of opinion, and not 
 expecting that my opinions will be adopted without discus- 
 sion and debate, and perhaps, at times, opposition from the 
 young, and even — what is more formidable still — disap- 
 
125 
 
 probation from the old ; yet, when I am satisfied from 
 my own reason and experience, I shall not be deterred 
 from carrying them into execution so far as depends on 
 me. No one, I think, can be more sensitive than I am to 
 the good opinion, or more desirous to gain the friendly 
 regard, of those who have been educated in these same 
 academic- shades with me, — too sensitive, perhaps, for my 
 own happiness ; bat one thing I can promise, that no 
 unconscientious compliance with the prejudice of the mo- 
 ment, or the whim of the moment, shall turn me from the 
 straightforward course of duty which, when I accepted this 
 place, I resolved to enter upon. 
 
 " I take this occasion to return my thanks to the Governor 
 of the Commonwealth for the manner in which he spoke of 
 the educational institutions of the State. I know, from 
 my association with him on the Board of Education, that 
 during his official period he has taken an active and most 
 enlightened interest in them all, from the University 
 down to the common school. I thank the Orator of the 
 Alumni for the genial words which he has addressed to 
 me. Peculiarly pleasant to me was it to listen to his 
 voice upon this occasion, for he is an old friend and a 
 cherished pupil ; and, though much younger than I, one 
 with whom I have always maintained the most agreeable 
 relations of literary intercourse and personal friendship. 
 My thanks are especially due to the great body of educated 
 gentlemen who have received with so much kindness what I 
 had to say, — more than I expected, far more. To one and 
 all I offer my sincerest and most deep-felt acknowledgments. 
 
 " I might perhaps fairly ask some indulgence for the im- 
 perfections of my performance. During the past term I 
 have been crowded with double duties as Professor and 
 President. I have had the Commencement Latin to 
 master, and that, you know, gentlemen, is not, in all its 
 forms and phrases, quite Ciceronian. The closing term of 
 
126 
 
 the year is always laborious for students, Professors, and 
 President, and I have had my full share of toil. Be- 
 sides the multiplying details of proper college work, I 
 have had to preside over the Visitation of the Theological 
 School, I have had to attend the meetings for the examina- 
 tion and admission of the largest class that has ever been 
 offered for the University, — representing a larger number 
 of States, I believe, than any class that has ever entered 
 here before. In the midst of all these cares I have had to 
 prepare my address for to-day. I think I may, therefore, 
 claim a merciful construction. I have come to the conclu- 
 sion, that, if I survive the present week, I am good for at 
 least fifty years to come." 
 
 The President. — "To lead the procession of our breth- 
 ren as the oldest graduate is a title to our respect and cour- 
 tesy. To have performed long and faithfully the duties of 
 the head of an institution like this University is of itself 
 a claim to our grateful recognition. To have taken a part 
 during two generations in the councils of national or mu- 
 nicipal government, is to have been twice a citizen, and to 
 merit twofold honors. When to the crown of patriarchal 
 years is added the recollection of a double lifetime given to 
 the interests of liberal education, and to the cause of good 
 government, in the city and in the republic, the common 
 tribute of respect is too languid for the glow of our grati- 
 tude, and we rise in spontaneous concert at the name of 
 Josiah Quincy." 
 
 The entire company rose and gave cheer on cheer for 
 Quincy, and, after the band had played a waltz, the Har- 
 vard Club sang Horace's Ode, " Integer Vitae." 
 
 The Peesident. — " We are honored by the presence of 
 the Chief Magistrate of the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
 setts. The debt which scholars owe to statesmen can only 
 
127 
 
 be repaid in words ; would that they were always golden 
 ones ! What English monarch's name is so often upon Eng- 
 lish lips as that of him who founded the school of Eton, — 
 
 ' Where grateful Science still adores 
 Her Henry's holy shade 1 ' 
 
 I speak the general sense of our men of science and letters 
 when I say that our distinguished Chief Magistrate could 
 not have shown a more filial kindness for this Mother of 
 ours, if she had held him in her lap and counted him, as 
 she certainly would have done, in her list of " first schol- 
 ars." I propose the health of his Excellency, Governor 
 Banks ; he has taken the State for his college, and stands 
 at the head of his class." 
 Music, — " Hail to the Chief." 
 
 The Governor responded as follows : — 
 
 " Mr. President and Gentlemen, — I could not but feel 
 sensibly the honor you have conferred upon me by the 
 sentiment which has been so kindly received. I am afraid 
 that, if I take too literally the words in which it has been 
 given by the distinguished President, some other gentle- 
 man may remind me in his own words, that the class of 
 which he speaks is that same old 'Freshman Class of one.'' 
 I am sure, Sir, that any place that he assigns a man is a 
 good one for the person for whom it is assigned. As for 
 the Governors, Sir, they belong to that class of evils of 
 which we can never have but one at a time. 
 
 " I am certainly, Sir, delighted to find the Alumni of 
 Harvard University in so joyous a mood. Indeed, I did 
 not know that she had had any grief at all, until I heard it 
 from the President, or that she had been in widowhood for 
 any considerable length of time. When I saw her last, she 
 had an excellent husband, and I should like to know under 
 what laws she has taken the liberty to let him go from her ? 
 The Commonwealth has, indeed, an interest, not only in 
 
128 
 
 the prosperity of the institution, hut in the general good- 
 feeling and enjoyment with which her anniversaries are 
 celebrated. Indeed, I do not know anything that does the 
 Commonwealth a greater service than a little good-humor. 
 And if there is any citizen that we could not spare from 
 the Commonwealth, it is the gentleman who sits at my 
 right (Dr. Holmes), because he gives us so many good 
 hits that we enjoy. Sometimes I think, Sir, we have a 
 little too much wisdom in this Commonwealth, — that it 
 would be better if we knew a little less and enjoyed our- 
 selves a little more. There is a soberness that incrusts 
 our people, exceedingly becoming on grave occasions ; but 
 there are a great many opportunities when we could do 
 without it very well indeed. And I am happy to say, that 
 this is one of those occasions, and also, that I have never 
 seen six hundred faces looking so well as these that are 
 before me. 
 
 . " I really wish, Sir, I had been a graduate of this Univer- 
 sity. It seems to me that I must have had a good time. 
 And I well remember, Sir, when I was quite young, — 
 younger, almost, than I like to think, — how many times I 
 came down from the little town where I lived, and walked 
 in the shade of the trees, and heard the voices of the young 
 men that were then here, and wished that I might have 
 been one of them. It does not matter, Sir, what comes to 
 a man in after life, nor how great his success may be, — I 
 can say it from my heart and from my experience, — there 
 is nothing in the world that will take the place of the dis- 
 cipline and training that young men can have in a Uni- 
 versity like this. I wish that every son of the Common- 
 wealth might have the privileges of this institution, that he 
 might enjoy its advantages, and once a year look as happy, 
 gentlemen, as you are looking to-day. 
 
 " There is something more in the matter of education 
 than we are accustomed to think. I do not know why it 
 
129 
 
 is, but the philosophy of this country seems to have run in 
 a settled current of opinion, that leaves out of considera- 
 tion the character of men. We rely upon institutions, — 
 some of us upon what we call abstract principles, but 
 " institutions " is the great idea for us. If we can have an 
 institution for everything, we don't want anything else. 
 There is the ballot, — that is a great institution ; there is 
 the jury, — that is another great institution; and there is 
 this or that great organism in our system of government, 
 which we highly prize ; and we say that if the people of 
 France, of Russia, of Austria, of Italy, could only have the 
 advantage of our institutions, they would have a govern- 
 ment as perfect as that which we possess. But to me, Mr. 
 President, it seems that, above all institutions, a good gov- 
 ernment requires men. And though institutions may be 
 conveniences for good and great men, there can be no 
 government, and no security for individual or public rights, 
 where there is nothing but institutions ; and where there 
 are true and great and good men there will be good gov- 
 ernment, and security for public and private right, whether 
 or not there exist any institutions whatever. And my 
 heart feels gladdened when I see that there is undoubtedly 
 aroused attention, on the part of the people of the Common- 
 wealth and the country, to the necessity of a more thorough 
 and manly culture than we have enjoyed, — not principally, 
 perhaps, for the mind, but as much or more for the body, 
 and recognizing the fact that out of the strength of the 
 body, concurrent with the action of the brain, and the prin- 
 ciples prompted by this symmetrical education, there is a 
 security for the rights of the public, whether men be poor 
 or rich, whether they be weak or strong. And I give you, 
 Sir,— 
 
 " Prosperity to this and every other institution on the 
 face of the earth, which is engaged in the work of creating 
 men." 
 
 17 
 
130 
 
 The President gave the next regular toast : — 
 
 "The Orator of the Alumni, — We have this day reaped 
 a twofold pleasure from his presence, in ' The Graduate's 
 Return,' as spoken and as acted in his own person." 
 
 Music, " Luce Serene," by the Harvard Club. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Osgood responded as follows : — 
 
 " Mr. President, — One way of serving our friends is to 
 speak for them when asked ; another way, and I think it is 
 the much better way, is to hold our tongue. Now I claim 
 that the Alumni ought to be content with what I have done 
 for them, for I have not only spoken three quarters of an 
 hour, but I have omitted, positively, half an hour of my 
 discourse. Now the Alumni have on their record various 
 donations I remember, and among other things, a pewter 
 mug valued at six shillings. Perhaps holding my tongue 
 for half an hour might be entered upon the books as work, 
 and credited to some similar amount. 
 
 " But, Sir, it would be wrong for me to fail to renew the 
 fellowship of former days, and to express the great satisfac- 
 tion which the returning graduate feels, not only in finding 
 so many persons who are congenial friends, but in finding 
 so many persons of diverse feelings, in finding that the list 
 of our graduates is made up of so many materials, and that 
 the sons of Harvard are united, — and united, powerful, 
 because they are willing to accept the varying tendencies 
 of a great many minds, in that enlarged spirit which be- 
 comes educated men. Now, some persons look upon differ- 
 ence as a ground of discord, and it may be that some of the 
 young Alumni suppose, because certain of the elder gradu- 
 ates do not think exactly as they do, that the elder gradu- 
 ates ought to be expurgated from the Alumni catalogue ; 
 whereas the young graduates need the elder men, and per- 
 haps the elder graduates need the younger men. I don't 
 
131 
 
 know any better symbol of the fellowship of our Harvard 
 men than that free speech which is now flowing so gener- 
 ously here. I read, in a work on ' The Philosophy of the 
 Fine Arts,' recently issued from the press, that the first of 
 the fine arts is prose speech, — because that, more than the 
 plastic arts, more than architecture, painting, and sculp- 
 ture, more than the other vocal arts, more than music and 
 poetry, is as large as the world of the free spirit itself. 
 I believe the diction of Harvard, drawn from the wells of 
 English pure and undefiled, is an illustration of this truth. 
 The prose of Harvard has expressed all the generous senti- 
 ments that Harvard accepts, and has pointed out the modes 
 of generous fellowship which Harvard ought to urge. 
 
 " We are proud, some of us who live in our city, in be- 
 ing visited by various members of the Alumni. Sometimes 
 the young and enthusiastic politician, fresh from Congress, 
 comes to address us, and the whole city hangs upon his lips, 
 remembering that he has repelled the weapons of barbar- 
 ism with the weapons of civilization. Then we are visited 
 by one of our elder brethren who charms us all with his 
 eloquence ; and no man in America draws so many sensi- 
 ble men and fair women to hear him as that our elder 
 brother. He is old in years, — he says, I don't say so, — 
 but he is young in heart, — young enough to be the cham- 
 pion of our America in the tilt with the morose conservatism 
 of the Old World, not only defending his cause, but carry- 
 ing the war, I will not say into the enemy's country, but 
 into the foreign land. We like him ; we like the progres- 
 sive element, we like the conservative element ; and the 
 glory of our Harvard should be that it is generous to all. 
 The poorest of all bigotries is that which quarrels not only 
 with different types of opinion, but different types of char- 
 acter. God has made some men in the conservative mould, 
 — more cautious, more attached to institutions, more ra- 
 tional, more real, and others more given to abstractions, 
 
132 
 
 more hopeful, more radical, — just as in the prismatic tints 
 he has made one ray to differ from another. Now let the 
 sons of Harvard be generous ; let not the yellow quarrel 
 with the red ; let not the blue quarrel with the green ; but 
 let all stand together, and shine together, one bright and 
 blessed light upon the darkness of the unlettered world. 
 " Mr. President, I give you as a sentiment : — 
 " The good fellowship of the sons of Harvard, — not only 
 without a break, but without ajar." 
 
 Dr. Holmes gave : — 
 
 " Among those who have sat in the chair of our beloved 
 University is one whose eloquent tones have delighted more 
 listeners than those of any living speaker of his time and 
 nation. What echoes have not grown musical in repeating 
 his accents. Shall we call upon him, then, as an orator? 
 But literature will insist on claiming him as a scholar. 
 Shall we call upon him as a scholar ? But the State will 
 say he belongs to her as a Senator, or an imperial envoy, 
 or in some other exalted capacity. Shall we drop all these 
 claims and call upon him as an honored private citizen ? 
 But the columns of the political newspapers and the elec- 
 tion placards deny him that blissful obscurity. There is 
 nothing to be done but to leave him his choice of titles, and 
 to name him simply as the Honorable Edward Everett." 
 
 Music, " Stride la Vampa." 
 
 Mr. Everett was received with loud and prolonged ap- 
 plause. When silence was restored, he spoke as follows : — 
 
 " The only title by which I wish to be known on the 
 present occasion is that of a dutiful, affectionate, and grate- 
 ful son of Harvard. With respect to the eloquent descrip- 
 tion just given by my valued friend, the Orator of the Day, 
 of the value of prose speech, I regret that his practice was 
 
133 
 
 not more in accordance with his doctrine ; he would not 
 else, as he candidly admits, have robbed us of that half- 
 hour of his own glowing and impressive prose, to which we 
 should all have listened with so much pleasure. His Ex- 
 cellency the Governor, who has addressed us with so much 
 power and feeling, alluded, in pathetic terms, to the emo- 
 tions with which he had, in his youth, listened to the cheer- 
 ful strains which, on public occasions, were sometimes 
 heard from the academic shades, and his regret that it had 
 not then fallen to his lot to join the joyous circle. I could 
 not listen to those touching remarks, and reflect on the 
 efficient services which he has rendered to our ancient 
 University, in promoting the endowment of the Museum 
 of Natural History, without repeating the beautiful in- 
 scription on the bust of Moliere, in the French Academy, 
 ' Nothing is wanting to his glory, — he is wanting to ours.' 
 " I suppose, Sir, of all the titles to which you have been 
 good enough to allude, that of an ex-President of the Uni- 
 versity is the one by which I may with the greatest propri- 
 ety address you, as most assuredly there is nothing in my 
 humble career that I pride myself upon more, than that I 
 was thought not unworthy to be placed at its head. I 
 stood in that relation but a short time, but I sometimes 
 return to these classic precincts with somewhat of the feel- 
 ings of the retired tallow-chandler, of whom the well-known 
 story is told. Having relinquished the partnership, he was 
 desirous, after a while, of resuming it. This, however, 
 could not be, and he then begged to be permitted, at least, 
 to come and lend a hand on melting clays. Now, Sir, this 
 is a melting day in more than one sense. "We have had 
 two of the great natural solvents powerfully at work ever 
 since sunrise, but I have not lately enjoyed a happier day. 
 I suppose that the spectacle of four ex-Presidents of an 
 institution like this, assembled on the same stage to assist 
 at the inauguration of their successor, was never witnessed 
 
134 
 
 before. It reminds rne of a little occurrence (His Excel- 
 lency kindly permits us to indulge in a jest) on the day of 
 my graduation. A young Chinese tradesman was invited 
 to one of the Commencement entertainments, and, knowing 
 our language but imperfectly, was a good deal pestered 
 with questions about the institutions of his own country ; 
 among others, whether there were any colleges in Canton. 
 He probably thought that college was the general name of 
 all corporations, for whatever object, (as indeed it is in 
 Latin,) and answered that there were two colleges, each of 
 which had four Presidents, and no students, — an arrange- 
 ment which would lighten the burden of administering the 
 discipline of the institutions, rather more than it would 
 promote the cause of education. 
 
 " I cannot, however, Sir, (to pass to a more serious 
 strain,) speak on behalf of the ex-Presidents without feel- 
 ing to what disadvantage I do it. If you, on entering 
 upon the duties of the chair, thought it necessary to apolo- 
 gize for taking the place of the distinguished President and 
 first Vice-President of the Association, (men worthy in all 
 respects of the praises bestowed by you upon them, but 
 with whom no other person would think you were yourself 
 unequally matched,) how can I but feel oppressed, in 
 speaking for him, the Nestor of ex-Presidents and Alumni, 
 who stands alone, by so many titles, in our respect and 
 affection, — whose presence, though but for an hour, has 
 added so much to the dignity and interest of the day, and 
 whose necessary withdrawal from its further excitements is 
 so deeply felt by us all. 
 
 " There is no one who can better congratulate our hon- 
 ored friend, who now accedes to the chair, than we who 
 have gone before him. We know the nature of the duties 
 to be performed, — of the rewards to be hoped for in their 
 conscientious discharge. When I reflect, that, since the 
 resignation of President Quincy, our Alma Mater has sue- 
 
135 
 
 cessively called three of us into her service, whose united 
 terms have not equalled his, and has at length intrusted 
 her interests to you, Sir, (President Felton,) whose vigor- 
 ous constitution and locks unbleached by time afford a 
 promise, if not of the fifty years to which you have play- 
 fully alluded, yet certainly of a long, long period of service 
 and usefulness, I am reminded of that most magnificent 
 verse, in the oldest and greatest of poems, (scarcely less 
 familiar to you, Sir, than your mother tongue,) the verse 
 which describes the descent of Neptune from Samothrace 
 to iEgse, while woods and mountains trembled beneath the 
 immortal feet of the god : — 
 
 Tpls fxkv ope^ar lav, to 8e rirparov tuero reKfiap. 
 ' Thrice he strode on his march, but the fourth time he came to the goal.' 
 
 " Our new President enters upon his office certainly 
 under the happiest auspices. As the Governor has ob- 
 served, the unanimous choice of the academic boards called 
 him to the place ; and that election has been ratified by 
 the equally unanimous voice of the Alumni, and the hearty 
 approval of the public. This, too, at a time when, un- 
 der the skilful administration of our honored friend, Dr. 
 Walker, the institution had reached a point of unexampled 
 prosperity, and no thought of any but first-rate qualifica- 
 tions in a successor would have been tolerated for a mo- 
 ment. Not only had larger classes than ever before begun 
 to resort to the institution, equalled only by that which has 
 been entered this week, but the standard of scholarship in 
 the classics, in other branches of polite literature, in the 
 exact sciences, in mental philosophy, has become so much 
 higher than when I was an undergraduate, that it hardly 
 seems the same institution. Then, Sir, the professional 
 and scientific schools, the collections, the apparatus, and 
 the libraries, and the means of pursuing the most advanced 
 studies in every department, make it a real Universitas 
 
136 
 
 artium. In this prosperous condition we now commit it 
 trustingly to your charge, and look for its steady progress ; 
 and if I might venture a hint at what we elder brethren 
 would recommend, it would be that our young friends, the 
 undergraduates, would hit upon some way of working off 
 the exuberant spirits of youth a little more generous and 
 kindly toward the new-comer, — a little more thoughtful 
 and considerate toward their true friends, the Faculty, — 
 than those which (notwithstanding the general manliness 
 of the student) still, to some extent, prevail. I say their 
 ' true friends,' for while I was connected with the Uni- 
 versity, never did I see, on the part of the Faculty, the 
 slightest indication of a harsh or vindictive feeling toward 
 their charge. 
 
 It is, lacking one year, two centuries and a quarter from 
 the date of the institution, — no inconsiderable period in 
 any country, and one which, in this country, goes back to 
 the very cradle of the settlement. May we not take an 
 honest pride in reflecting on the large number of distin- 
 guished men, in Church and in State, who, during this 
 period, have acknowledged this seat of learning as their 
 nursing mother, — standing, as it did, alone in the British 
 Colonies for two generations, and never in after times — 
 no, never for an hour — filling a lower place among her 
 sisters than that which she now fills ? Two centuries of 
 time have elapsed, — centuries which have changed the 
 aspect of the world at home and abroad, — which have 
 wrought a succession of revolutions that have shaken the 
 most ancient thrones to the foundation, during which the 
 Colonies have passed through that " struggle for life," of 
 which we now hear so much from the physiologists, into 
 the condition of thirty-three independent States, and with 
 nearly as many millions of people ; and our noble Harvard 
 still maintains as honorable a rank among the sister institu- 
 tions, numerous and reputable as they are, as at any former 
 period of her history. 
 
137 
 
 " But let us not forget that the sister institutions are not 
 only numerous and highly respectable, but animated, many 
 of them, by a generous spirit of emulation, well calculated 
 to keep the older seminaries on the stretch. Among all 
 the wonders of the great West, nothing struck me more 
 than the ample provision made and making in every branch 
 of education. The state of society does not yet call for 
 Universities on the same scale as the oldest and best fur- 
 nished in the Eastern States, but our brethren in the West 
 are rapidly, if I may use the homely expression, treading 
 on our heels. I had the pleasure three years ago of visit- 
 ing a seminary in the interior of Michigan, — an Indian 
 wilderness within the memory of man, — which, for the 
 character of its chancellor and faculty, for its scientific col- 
 lections, and its observatory, would have done no discredit 
 to one of the oldest States, and the entire expense of the 
 establishment defrayed by the Commonwealth. I assisted 
 about the same time at the inauguration of a University at 
 St. Louis, which for liberality of endowment, and, what is 
 better, liberality of principle, bids fair to be a radiating 
 centre of intelligence to that mighty valley of the Missis- 
 sippi. The school funds of some of these new States 
 approach the fabulous. That of Illinois exceeds four mil- 
 lions of dollars. That of Texas exceeds two millions of 
 dollars; while the separate counties, in that State, have 
 landed endowments for common schools, amounting in the 
 aggregate to over two millions of acres of land, and the 
 University fund exceeds 220,000 acres. In the cities of 
 Cincinnati and Chicago I saw schools, which, for the scale 
 of expenditure and accommodation, are not exceeded in 
 Boston. 
 
 " We cannot contemplate these rising institutions with 
 
 anything but delight ; from the walls of old Harvard we 
 
 bid them God speed; they are in no small degree our 
 
 intellectual offspring. These new republics are doing, in 
 
 18 
 
138 
 
 their infancy, what our fathers did in the infancy of Mas- 
 sachusetts ; they arc furnishing us a common ground of 
 intellectual sympathy between East and West, which you, 
 Sir, I am sure, will rejoice to foster: — and Heaven grant 
 that two centuries hence they may boast of their ancient 
 and venerable Yales, and Harvards, and Dartmouths, and 
 Columbias, and Princetons, and William and Marys, as 
 we now boast of ours." 
 
 The President. — "Without the Law, our civilization 
 would soon become barbarism ; without Judges, our law- 
 yers would never agree ; without a wise Chief, our Judges 
 would never decide. Suffer me, then, to propose the 
 health of the Honorable Lemuel Shaw : — 
 
 ' Chiefcst of Chiefs ; a brain without a flaw; 
 If chaos touched it, it would turn to Law.' " 
 
 Chief Justice Shaw rose, amid the cheers of the company, 
 and said : — 
 
 " Mr. Chairman, — You impose upon me a difficult task 
 in requiring me without preparation to rise amidst this 
 torrent of eloquence, in which it would greatly please me 
 if I could participate ; but as I am sure I should only 
 interfere with other parties, I shall not extend my speech 
 over any considerable time. But, Sir, I never can feel 
 unprepared when the Law and the Judicature of the coun- 
 try are called in question, and called in question in such a 
 stylo of approbation. Sir, in the name of the Jurispru- 
 dence of the Commonwealth, in the name of those who are 
 called upon to administer it, I heartily thank you, and the 
 gentlemen who arc present, for the sentiments you have 
 expressed, and the manner in which they have been re- 
 ceived by this distinguished intellectual company. Mr. 
 Chairman, it would be very easy, if I thought it necessary, 
 on an occasion like this, to point out various modes in 
 
139 
 
 which the jurisprudence of the country is indebted to its 
 Universities. It would be a theme requiring considera- 
 tion. Sir, what would be the condition of any country, of 
 any government, of any system of government, that had 
 not a judiciary department ? Would it not be a machine 
 without its balance-wheel, a steam-engine with all its power 
 on of popular force, and of legislative power, without 
 means of control ? Sir, the judiciary is a necessary ingre- 
 dient in every well-ordered government ; and it is to the 
 University — no, Sir, to the Universities of this whole com- 
 munity — that we are to be indebted for it. 
 
 " Sir, I participate with all my heart in the sentiments 
 which have been so frequently expressed to-day, that the 
 great object of all this University training, of this higher 
 department of education, is to make men fitted for all the 
 departments of society, and not for any particular profes- 
 sion. Up to a certain point, Sir, we are all trained in the 
 same way, and to the same purpose, and I regard the culti- 
 vation of learning as one of the means of extending that 
 civilization, that refinement, that improvement, that ad- 
 vanced society, that liberty protected by law, which is to 
 pervade the whole United States. It brings us into contact 
 with each other ; States meet States ; Universities meet 
 Universities, — and there is a common brotherhood ex- 
 tended throughout the whole of the educated part of the 
 community. I look forward, therefore, Sir, to the cultiva- 
 tion of learning, not merely as a means of advancing the 
 church, or advancing the law, or of promoting any particular 
 department of science, but of training men to fit them for 
 every department ; and for that purpose we all travel along 
 the same common road. I look to the cultivation of the law 
 as one of the means of that general union which is to per- 
 vade our States, and bind us together as one people. 
 
 " Nearly all the States of this Union have derived their 
 principles of jurisprudence from that great body of wise 
 
140 
 
 laws and wise precedents called the Common Law ; and 
 wherever it is studied, whether in Michigan or in Massa- 
 chusetts, in Connecticut or any of the Western States, the 
 basis is the same. I therefore, Sir, ask the attention of this 
 educated body of men to the great importance of the Dane 
 Law School, a department of this University. Here, Sir, 
 young men are trained in those principles of common law 
 which belong to all the States ; and therefore come here 
 and gather up those principles, and, while they are doing it, 
 may form associations and opinions which tend to produce 
 a common feeling of brotherhood throughout the States. 
 I therefore, Sir, while I ask your kind and affectionate 
 regard to the general institutions of Alma Mater, ask your 
 attention also to that particular department of it which 
 now may be considered as the Law School. Sir, it is not 
 without experience that I claim to make some remarks 
 upon this subject. I have been conversant both with the 
 University and with the administration of the law for a 
 longer period than any person now in the community. 
 Sixty years ago to-day, I received my primum g-radum, 
 which many of you have received to-day. As student, 
 practitioner, and judge, I have been conversant with the 
 jurisprudence of Massachusetts ever since. I hope that it 
 will be extended. And I can conceive that this institution, 
 bringing together youth from all the States, is among the 
 means of forging a bond of union among all the States, 
 socially and politically ; and I will therefore, Sir, express it 
 in a sentiment which I intended to read, without any re- 
 marks : — 
 
 " The Dane Law School of Harvard College, — Appar- 
 ently a small battery, but conducted on principles of true 
 science : may it extend the genial warmth as well as the 
 gladsome light of jurisprudence to every part of our land ; 
 and may it ever remain as one wire of that electric metal- 
 lic cable, the aggregate strength of which shall bind to- 
 gether all the United States." 
 
141 
 
 The President. — "I am afraid that I shall have no re- 
 sponse to the toast which I am about to read ; but I know 
 you will be glad to hear it, and express your kind feelings 
 to one who is absent : — 
 
 " The distinguished Historian, once at the head of our 
 University, — He has divided his time between the Father 
 of his country and the Mother of his countrymen, the 
 Alumni. We desire him to show his face to the present 
 generation." 
 
 Three cheers were given for President Sparks. 
 
 The President. — "I am more fortunate in respect to 
 the next sentiment which I shall announce : — 
 
 " The late President of Harvard University, — Long a 
 teacher in human and divine science, we may follow his 
 footsteps by the light they have shed on both. Let us con- 
 gratulate those who will be privileged still to listen to those 
 expositions of sacred truth which come mended from his 
 tongue. A long and happy afternoon and evening to the 
 retiring President." 
 
 Music, — " Di Quella Pera," by the Band. 
 
 Dr. Walker, on rising, was received with the most en- 
 thusiastic cheering and applause, which continued for some 
 minutes. When at last the plaudits which greeted him 
 subsided, he spoke as follows : — 
 
 " The ex-Presidents are so unreasonably numerous that 
 we have come to the conclusion to speak by our representa- 
 tive. The company, therefore, will be pleased to consider 
 that the speech which has been made by one of my distin- 
 guished predecessors (Mr. Everett), was made for the ex- 
 Presidents, — that, in short, with the exception of a few 
 sentences, in which he seemed to forget himself, the speech 
 was mine as much as his. It is too late in the afternoon, 
 
142 
 
 and not precisely ' the thing,' to preach a sermon on one 
 of the subjects which, I am happy to say, met with your 
 favor. 
 
 "There is also another reason, — they have been heard 
 two or three times. I cannot sit down, however, without a 
 word of encouragement to my friend who has taken the 
 place I so recently held. 1 believe that there is a common 
 impression that the office is an onerous and thankless one. 
 But I believe no such thing. The public will expect from 
 my friend his best, and he will give it, and I know from 
 my own experience, that he will find it received with a 
 kindness which will fill him with gratitude and wonder." 
 
 Dr. Walker resumed his seat amid the same enthusiastic 
 expressions of the respect and affection of the Alumni which 
 welcomed him on rising. 
 
 The President gave the next sentiment : — 
 
 " The Senate of the United States, — And the distin- 
 guished son of Harvard College, who carries the light of 
 the lessons lie learned within these walls to illuminate the 
 councils of the nation, — The Honorable Charles Sumner." 
 
 Three cheers were given for Mr. Sumner. 
 
 The Peesident. — " In spite of his thousand deprecating 
 gestures, I am determined that you shall look upon the 
 good-bumored face, if you do not hear the words, of 
 
 " The Great Naturalist, — The man who has found per- 
 petual youth among a community of fossils." 
 
 Professor Agassiz was received with immense cheering as 
 he rose. I [e spoke as follows : — 
 
 " You know, Mr. Chairman, that the fossils have long 
 ceased to speak or utter any sign of life ; and yet, when we 
 
143 
 
 look upon them, they tell us the history of the beginning of 
 that creation which concluded with the introduction of men 
 upon earth. It is therefore well worth while that we should 
 bring them together and try to understand their teaching ; 
 and it is demanded to-day for this institution. Single- 
 handed I began, bringing together here and there speci- 
 mens, with very little means, which I could ill afford to 
 spend in that way ; but the time came when I could make 
 an appeal to the community in behalf of my cherished ob- 
 jects of study, and friends and the State have within a year 
 erected yonder Museum ; and if the community is as liberal 
 in the future, I hope to see an institution second only to 
 two institutions in the world ; even now it is number nine 
 among the museums that exist. 
 
 " And, Gentlemen, it has not been by begging, that I 
 have obtained the means of doing this. It has not been re- 
 quired of me that I should appeal personally to anybody ; 
 but spontaneously every one understanding what the pro- 
 gress of science required, — what the University required 
 for the advancement of some of its branches, — has 
 come forward and thrust these means into my hands. 
 And though, to complete the plan that I have laid out, very 
 large sums are required, I will not make myself a bore 
 by begging anywhere. But I will avail myself of such 
 an opportunity as this to tell you what is wanted to 
 raise an institution, in less than ten years, equal to the 
 British Museum and the Jardin des Plantes, in their cor- 
 responding departments. Simply this : that you should 
 give me annually one seventh of what you have given me 
 to spend last year, and that you thus enable me to secure 
 the labors of those devoted sons of science, who, consid- 
 ering its advancement more than their own prosperity, 
 have devoted all their lives to making collections, and are 
 now on the border of the grave, and who look for a safe 
 resting-place for their collections, from which they are 
 
144 
 
 going to part. Let that Museum be the shelter where all 
 these collections shall find a resting-place, and then in less 
 than ten years we shall have one of the first three Museums 
 that exist in the world." 
 
 The President. — "I give you, 
 
 " Our Sister Colleges, — One in aim with our own, one 
 in heart, — would they were all in presence Avith us to-day. 
 We must quote the national motto, ' E Pluribus Unum,' 
 and take one for many, — the Rev. Dr. Stearns, President 
 of Amherst College." 
 
 Three cheers having been given for Amherst College, Dr. 
 Stearns rose and said : — 
 
 "Mr. President, — Having performed the duties assigned 
 to me to-day, I supposed that I had escaped from your shots ; 
 but as you have called upon me, I will take this opportu- 
 nity to say one word out of respect and love to my old 
 Alma Mater. I have formed new connections in one re- 
 spect, but I cannot forget my old love. In connection with 
 the very prayer which my mother taught me to repeat, I 
 was instructed also to feel the charm which there ever is in 
 the words ' Harvard College.' I was not only educated 
 here myself, but here three of my brothers graduated, my 
 father graduated, my maternal and paternal grandfathers, 
 and, I believe, one of my ancestors in every generation 
 from the settlement of the country down to the present 
 time. I have a right to say, therefore, whatever my pres- 
 ent connections and my present duties were, — I love old 
 Harvard ; and I have a right to say that I love that large- 
 hearted brother of the class of 1827 who has been inaugu- 
 rated as President to-day. What he was in College, he has 
 been ever since, and he will be in time to come. I predict 
 for him an honorable administration, and the good-will of 
 all the graduates in successive classes hereafter, if not even 
 to-day. 
 
145 
 
 " I wish to take this opportunity to thank my friends of 
 Harvard College for the sympathy they have accorded me 
 since my connection with Amherst. The President of to- 
 day was one of the first persons whom I consulted as to the 
 expediency of assuming the office of President of the Col- 
 lege at Amherst. The President who has just retired was 
 another whom I consulted ; and it was owing much to the 
 cordiality with which they treated that subject, and the 
 information they gave me, that I was induced to accept 
 the position which I now occupy. Amherst College can- 
 not compete in all respects with Harvard. It is probable 
 she never will. She is a daughter of Harvard, of which 
 the good old mother will not have reason to be entirely 
 ashamed. She is very considerable of a College. We have 
 nine large public edifices, besides the President's house. 
 "We have as large classes as Old Harvard had when I grad- 
 uated. We have cabinets which are acknowledged to be 
 some of the best in the country. I will not go further in 
 our praise, but if you will come up to Old Amherst, we will 
 show you from our towers Mount Tom, and Holyoke, and 
 the Pelham Hills, and Connecticut River, and as beautiful 
 scenery as the eye of man was ever cast upon. 
 
 " Some of my friends have said of me that I am apt 
 sometimes to look through Cambridge spectacles. I have 
 introduced an occasional innovation, and among the rest 
 one which was somewhat criticised. It was the introduc- 
 tion of the President's cap and gown, — which were never 
 seen in Old Amherst before. I was warned against the 
 questionableness of the act. I was told that I was ventur- 
 ing, and I did not know but I was. I thought, however, 
 that, if they said there was a fool's cap on my head, there 
 should be grit enough under it to Avear it there. I wore 
 it, Sir, and perhaps it was not altogether offensive to Old 
 Amherst. 
 
 " The day I entered upon my duties was very much like 
 19 
 
146 
 
 the present, — a hearty good rain all the morning. One of 
 the patrons of the College, who had come from somewhere 
 among the everlasting hills, remarked that he ' did not like 
 the reign of this new President.' But, Sir, we have all 
 learned that what begins in a storm is often followed by- 
 glorious sunshine ; and I believe it may be in Harvard as it 
 was in Amherst. 
 
 " I meant to tell you how I came on with gown and cap. 
 One of the venerable men, whom I love most sincerely, 
 took me aside and said, very gravely : ' Dr. Stearns, I have 
 heard of but one adverse criticism upon your administra- 
 tion thus far.' I began to tremble in my shoes, for I did 
 not know what I might have done. ' What is it ? ' said 
 I. ' Why,' said he, ' that cap.' ' And what of the cap ? ' 
 ' Why,' said he, l it is an innovation.' ' And what objec- 
 tion is made to the innovation ? ' ' Why,' said he, ' if I 
 must tell you, the wearer of such a cap as that may be 
 supposed to carry a little vanity under it.' ' Sir,' said I, 
 ' is that all ? ' ' Yes,' said he, ' it is all.' ' Sir,' said I, 
 ' you have lived long enough to know that every man must 
 have some foible ; I agree with you that this is mine, — 
 and I think, if you live to see the next Commencement, you 
 will see it there again.' Now to think, Mr. President, — 
 and I make this remark partly to myself and partly to the 
 new President of our Alma Mater, — to think of vanity 
 when a man first wears the Commencement or Presi- 
 dential cap, — when he is full of academic cares, and his 
 stomach is overloaded with the Commencement Latin, 
 from which he fears that he shall not be relieved, unless it 
 is by his own demise ! Be that as it may, the cap in Am- 
 herst College has become an institution, and Young Am- 
 herst, I believe, likes it very well. I will not detain you 
 longer, except to say that, if you will come to Amherst, we 
 will not show you all the glories of Harvard, but I think 
 we will show you something in the daughter which will not 
 make you ashamed that Old Harvard is her parent. 
 
147 
 
 " I will give you, in conclusion, my best wishes for the 
 administration of the new President, — my best wishes for 
 the College ; may the administration be long and brilliant, 
 and the career of the College be more and more glorious 
 unto the end of time." 
 
 The President gave : — 
 
 " The Scholarship of the Country, — One of its best repu- 
 tations has disguised himself as a lawyer, and made the 
 profession believe him a very good one. We ask the Hon. 
 George S. Hillard to unmask and show us the face of one 
 of our own elegant and accomplished scholars." 
 
 Three cheers were given for Mr. Hillard, but he having 
 retired from the hall, no response was made to the toast. 
 
 The following sentiment was given : — 
 
 " The Pulpit of the Great City, — It takes a good head, 
 a brave heart, and a stirring voice, to banish sleep from its 
 cushioned seats. Our brother, Dr. Bellows, has them all, 
 and we want to hear his voice among us." 
 
 Dr. Bellows was received with cheers, and he spoke as 
 follows : — 
 
 " Mr. President, — . Having lately knocked down the 
 Doctors of Medicine with seeming impunity, you now ven- 
 ture to crack up the Doctors of Divinity ! I shall not ven- 
 ture to speak for the American pulpit, Sir, nor for the 
 contributions Harvard has made to its learning and power. 
 But I shall take advantage of the moment your call allows 
 me, to say a word about our Divinity School. The Law 
 School and the Scientific School have had their advocates, 
 and they have gained their causes with this audience. 
 Will you not permit me to plead the cause of the theo- 
 logical department of the University ? We have heard, Sir, 
 
148 
 
 with pain, in our part of the country, that you are thinking 
 of amputating that member of the University. Sir, we 
 protest against so fatal a mutilation of the Body of Learn- 
 ing. You will destroy the very right of this institution to 
 the name of University, if you cut off so integral a portion 
 as the department of Divinity, — one of the three great 
 departments of the higher learning, as we have heard to- 
 day. Nor, Sir, is it necessary to take this course to escape 
 the suspicion of sectarianism. Rather enlarge than dimin- 
 ish the theological culture of the University. Allow any 
 denomination that will, to endow a theological professor- 
 ship, and nominate an incumbent of its own choice, and 
 give students the privilege of attending the lectures of such 
 Doctors in Theology as they prefer, and you will enlarge 
 the influence and popularity of the institution, without 
 adopting the remedy worse than the disease, namely, 
 putting out the right eye of the University to cure a squint. 
 " But, Sir, my devotion to Harvard does not depend upon 
 her good behavior, either in this or other respects. I 
 have just given the greatest proof of my loyalty by bringing 
 my only son away from the metropolis of the country — 
 from the open portals of Columbia College, where, judging 
 by the salaries, the Professors ought to be two or three 
 times as distinguished as those of Harvard, and with a 
 King for a President — to this my own Alma Mater. Nay, 
 Sir, I have withstood a greater temptation, for a College 
 dearer than any other to my pride and my hopes was draw- 
 ing hard upon my heart, — Antioch College, — almost a 
 child of this, the young Harvard of the West, — which has 
 recently called a distinguished Alumnus of yours to her 
 Presidency, a man whom the College honored itself yester- 
 day by decorating with a Doctorate of Divinity. But, Sir, I 
 withstood the College of my adopted home, and the Col- 
 lege of my devoted anxieties and most earnest hopes, for 
 the College of my own nurture. 
 
149 
 
 Recently visiting that young "Western Harvard, I was 
 intensely impressed with the responsibilities of all College 
 Presidents. Listening to the twenty-eight orations of the 
 graduates, I was reminded of the difficulty of the wine- 
 tasters, one of whom detected iron and the other leather in 
 the butt of sherry, into which, when decanted, an iron key 
 with a leathern thong was found to have fallen. The ora- 
 tions smacked nine parts of Horace Mann and one part of 
 Thomas Hill, who had been hardly a year in the College. 
 What can exceed the splendor of the opportunities, if it be 
 not the grants of the responsibleness of officers at the head 
 of institutions like this, when they are thus seen com- 
 municating a flavor to all that flows from these public 
 fountains ? 
 
 " But, Sir, I have exhausted my privilege, and, as I have 
 no sentiment to offer, I am fortunate in having found in 
 the car this morning, making my way through the rain, a 
 stanza which must have been dropped on the previous trip 
 by some retired hatter, who had given expression to his 
 feelings, in view of the dampness that threatened the 
 inauguration : — 
 
 " Though winds do blow and waters flow, 
 And envious clouds may pelt on, 
 Her sacred crown no floods can drown, 
 While Harvard keeps her Felt-on." 
 
 Dr. Holmes here read extracts of letters from the Presi- 
 dent of the Alumni, of interest to the Association. Then 
 the band played " Home, Sweet Home," and accompanied 
 the chorus of " Auld Lang Syne," with which the festival 
 closed. 
 
[W 
 
 fk« 
 
{ l \MJ\ VUJV 
 
 ADDRESSES 
 
 AT THE INAUGURATION OF 
 
 COKNELIUS CONWAY FELTON, LL.D., 
 
 PRESIDENT OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 
 
 THE FESTIVAL OF THE ALUMNI, 
 
 THURSDAY, JULY 19, 1860. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 SEVER AND FRANCIS 
 
 BOOKSELLERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 1860. 
 
H281 83 | 
 
V o* 6 !--. °*o '°'* V .— . V «/.- ■ 
 
 v-6* 
 
 
 ^d* 
 
 <w .-ate-. \>j : 
 
 
 
 v * AT ^> • 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 v»cr 
 
 >* 
 
 
 -AqV 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 v v 
 
 
 
 '* AV V. • 
 
 A <^ *^TT* g* ^b 
 
 
 
 V v i 
 
v- ^-^m-^ v-w*v %--?w f ^ v* 
 
 o_ * 
 
 ^v 1 
 
 
 
 
 .G v ^>- "o • * * A 
 
 
 VV 
 
 
 ,1^ • 
 
 . -» flV ^ ."< 
 
 -o^ 
 
 
 «4°A « 
 
 • • * " ** 
 
 ^ a-^ ^t'i** ^ « v \&ifc ^ a^° *;4^*- ^ «, v ^ 
 
 _> ■» a? u ^.. o "v JSs.Nj^ * aa ^C<v • iCIilfO' * <t? ^ <> v, 
 
 ^°^ v 
 
 
 r * 
 
 <r» «» 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^^ OCT 83 
 
 «ami~ucc;tpr 
 
 -°.»* A <*