BF 171 
 .C9 
 Copy 1 
 
 INTELLECT; AND HOW TO USE IT. 
 
 AN ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 CLIOSOPHIC AND AMERICAN WHIG SOCIETIES 
 
 OP THE 
 
 COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY, 
 
 kL 
 
 June 24th, 1863. 
 
 BY KEV. THEODOKE L. CUYLER 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 
 
 NEWAKK, K J. : 
 
 PRINTED AT THE DAILY ADVERTISER OFFICE. 
 1863. 
 
Jo* 
 
Clio Hall, June 24th, 1862. 
 
 " Resolved, That the thanks of the Society be tendered to 
 
 the Rev. Theo. L. Cutlek for his able and eloquent address, 
 
 delivered to-day, and that a Committee be appointed to solicit a 
 
 copy for publication." 
 
 JOHN T. DUFFIELD, 
 JOSEPH L. MUNN, 
 H. W. JACKSON, 
 T. A. BALDWIN, 
 E. D. LEDTAKD, 
 
 Committee. 
 
 Whio Hall, June 24th, 1862. 
 
 " Resolved, That the thanks of this Society be returned to 
 
 the Rev. Theo. L. Cutlek for his able and eloquent address, 
 
 delivered before the two Societies this morning, and that a copy 
 
 be requested for publication." 
 
 H. C. CAMERON, 
 
 F. B. HODGE, 
 
 S. SAYRE, 
 
 Committee. 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Twenty-one years ago, an inexperienced lad — parting from 
 his classmates — left the gateway of yonder College green to 
 enter upon the march and the bivouac of active life. The 
 auroral light of youth beamed on oar pathway. The future 
 rose before us in many-colored visions of toil and of triumph 
 — of struggle and conflict, of sorrow and joy. 
 
 That future is now the past — sobered by experience into 
 the " light of common day." That lad is before you — an 
 eager visitant to the home of his literary boyhood. 
 
 Wearied by the daily friction of long pastoral toil, I said to 
 myself, let me go home and re- visit venerable Princeton — pro- 
 lific mother of four thousand cultured sons ; — who has nursed 
 on her loving bosom men, the weight of whose spears was 
 "like unto a weaver's beam." I will go and see the spot 
 where Dickinson and Davies watched and prayed beside the 
 cradle of academic culture in a rustic hamlet — where Wither- 
 spoon's voice rang for liberty above the crashing thunder of 
 hostile guns — where Southard and Frelinghuysen (New Jer- 
 sey's twin Castor and Pollux) began their bright career — 
 where young Biddle mused beside the Castalian fount, and 
 Brainerd Taylor mused beside the cross — where James Madi- 
 son sinewed his strength tor great constitutional combats ; — 
 above all, the spot from which America's mightiest philoso- 
 pher soared upward in his chariot of fire — his sepulchre still 
 with you to this day ! 
 
 Coming back to this sacred spot, I find myself at home. 1 find 
 the memories of my boyhood still floating among yonder trees. 
 The old college-bell rings again for me. I hear again in yon- 
 der chapel the call of that roll, which Death has been busy in 
 
calling ever since, and to which many a brave spirit has calmly 
 answered " here !" 
 
 For this home of my youth I feel grateful. Will it be too 
 much for me to say, that I had rather have spent those six 
 educational years in the class-rooms of Princeton than within 
 any other walls in our land ? Some other institutions may 
 boast of greater antiquity or of a more muncificent endow- 
 ment; a larger number of volumes may be stored in the 
 alcoves of Cambridge ; a larger number of students may be 
 gathered under the elms of Yale. 
 
 But if the true heraldry of a college is the names of its 
 sons, then Nassau Hall need not blush to present her catalogue 
 beside theirs. Nor need she fear to claim that for a symmetri- 
 cal influence upon the whole mental character — for practical 
 training in scientific research — for civil pursuits, or for pulpit 
 disquisition, she is the peer of any American University. 
 
 If I may be personal and local in my allusions a moment 
 longer, let me say that I count it an especial favor that my lot 
 was cast here at one of the golden eras of Princeton's history. 
 Never were the class-rooms filled with a larger 'array of pupils. 
 Never were the chairs of both institutions graced with more 
 distinguished incumbents. The polished culture of James W. 
 Alexander then adorned the chair of Belles-Letters. Carna- 
 han presided, with dignity, over the domain of Philosophy ; 
 Torrey's skilful hand held the retort and the blow-pipe ; and 
 an eye, too modest to meet the gaze of a fellow-man, was not 
 afraid to out-watch Orion and the seven stars through the 
 telescope of the astronomer. The flashing wit, and silvery 
 voice of Albert B. Dod, (then in his splendid prime) threw a 
 Dew charm over the higher Mathematics. From all parts of 
 the land Hocked devotees of science to the laboratory of Henry ; 
 while to the other end of the avenue gathered students of theol- 
 ogy to sit at the feet of the sainted Miller, and the two incom- 
 parable Alexanders. 
 
 With the teachings of these greal men, 1 rank the advan- 
 
 of the i \v<> Literary Socities, which in those days were 
 
 held to be supplements to, and not substitutes for the regular 
 
curriculum of the college. As training-schools for the bar, 
 the forum and the pulpit, they cannot be overrated ; none but 
 a fool would despise them. Many a man has made a more 
 splendid figure in public life from the culture and discipline 
 received in Whig Hall. And for myself, I am grateful that 
 in the period of life most susceptible to female beauty I paid 
 most assiduous court to that muse with the white neck and the 
 snowy limb, whose motto is " Prodesse Quam Conspici." 
 
 Young gentlemen of the Societies, this is a literary festivity. 
 The purpose for which you are banded together is intellectual 
 advancement. You are here equipping yourselves for the 
 mental and the moral encounters of life. These college class- 
 rooms and these literary halls are the Gymnasium of the 
 mind ; and when your education is completed here, you are to 
 go out into the world and commence your studies. The intel- 
 lects here trained are to be employed on that arena before you 
 — and on the method of their employment depends the issue 
 of success or of failure — on this hangeth the glory of life or 
 its inevitable shame. 
 
 Intellect — and how to use it — is the theme I have chosen 
 for the hour. Let me offer you briefly such practical thoughts, 
 with such illustrations from human history and biography as 
 I have been able to throw together in the intervals of a most 
 exacting profession. 
 
 For what has the Creator given us our brains ? Why are 
 affluent mental gifts bestowed upon some men? And how 
 may even moderate abilities be made most effective for the 
 promotion of truth, and the well-being of humanity ? These 
 are questions that concern young men — especially those who 
 are placed on the highest planes of intellectual culture and in- 
 fluence. All men are concerned in these questions ; for a 
 great man is, perhaps, the greatest fact in the history of an 
 age. No more decisive influence can be brought to bear upon 
 any age, or any community, than the employment of its high- 
 est intellect for truth or for error — for God and the right, or 
 for the Devil's wrong. Intellect ennobled — purified — heaven- 
 directed is the universal power to build up, Intellect pervert- 
 
8 
 
 ed, corrupted, sin-directed is the most terrible of agencies to 
 pull down and destroy. "How shall I use my intellect?" is 
 the most vital moral problem -that can come before the court 
 of your conscience. 
 
 Some men hold that talents are given for the same purpose 
 that wealth is often inherited — for mere personal luxury. 
 There be intellectual millionaires who decorate their mind, as 
 a palace, for pride to walk through. Its superb picture- 
 galleries, whose walls a creative imagination has clothed with 
 visions of entrancing beauty — its saloons of receptiveness, in 
 which stately thoughts do come and go — its costly libraries, 
 where memory stores up its massive accumulation, shelf on 
 shelf — its statue-lined corridors and halls, are but the splendid 
 realm which self has adorned by the " might of its own power, 
 and for the honor of its own majesty." Scarcely a living being 
 is the wiser, the better, the happier for such mental monopo- 
 lists. They stand in the midst of humanity as the marble 
 mansion of a selfish Duke might stand in the midst of a pov- 
 erty cursed and squalid peasantry. While the nabob is gorg- 
 ing at his rosewood table, or lounging before his Murillos, the 
 poor Lazarus without is begging crumbs for the lean and 
 hungry brats, such as Murillo portrayed upon his canvass. 
 One man surfeits ; the others starve. There is enough for all, 
 if it were distributed. Distribution is Heaven's law — whether 
 the treasures be in the lordly mansion, or in the lordly mind. 
 For God never gave to man fine intellectual powers — vigor- 
 ous understanding — strong-winged imagination — cunning in- 
 vention, or soul-rousing eloquence for the owner's sole use 
 and benefit. Talent is trust. Let no man covet it, unless 
 there come with it wisdom from above to ensure it a right 
 direction. 
 
 One student uses his brain — as he uses his midnighl lamp — 
 merely to illuminate, the page before his single eve. Another 
 man makes his intellect a meridian sun ! How bountifully docs 
 the full urn ot noonday overflow ! Not only on Alpine peaks, 
 and "heart of the Andes," kindled into pyramids of fire, but 
 down into modest vales the sunlight foils — warming the honey- 
 
9 
 
 suckle o'er the cottage doorway — lifting the tiny wheat blade 
 from its earthy tomb — and even when some solitary daisy is 
 shaded beneath an overgrown tree, the generous sun wheels 
 round and round, until before nightfall the daisy too is reached, 
 and fills her little cup with golden light. Such full-orbed in- 
 tellects there be. They turn midnight into noon. Upon the 
 most elevated minds and the most favored classes their rays 
 may fall the earliest ; but at length the lowliest vallies of 
 human life are warmed in the celestial influence. So rose the 
 tent-maker of Tarsus upon a benighted age. Amid the gloom 
 of the sixth century shone out Augustine — amid the prejudice 
 of the fifteenth beamed Christopher Columbus. The sixteenth 
 century came in with clouds and darkness on its awful front. 
 God said "let there be light," and Luther was ! When his sun 
 departed with its trail of glory, the moral heavens beamed, in 
 turn, with Lord Bacon, Milton, Isaac Newton, Leibnitz, Pascal, 
 Edwards, Chalmers — each an overflowing orb of truth. 
 
 Have you never observed the descriptive phrase which In- 
 spiration employs to set forth the moral benefactors of man- 
 kind ? The phrase employed is the happy one of " watering," 
 conveying the noble thought that it is the office of great intel- 
 lect both to descend and to distribute. 
 
 In the torrid lands of the Orient, it was the wont of mon- 
 archs to construct vast reservoirs on the mountain-sides. 
 These were filled by the rains of heaven. When the summer- 
 heats had drank the gardens and the vineyards dry, the waters 
 of the reservoir were conducted down, and forthwith the wilted 
 vine lifted its head again, and the drooping fig-tree smiled. 
 Green grew the pomegranate at the water's cool touch ; and 
 golden grew the barley-haryest. So on the heights of influ- 
 ence God replenishes intellectual reservoirs. He fills them 
 from on high. He fills them to irrigate the masses below 
 them. The truths that accumulate there will stagnate if self- 
 ishness lock up the sluice-gates. But let it be your ambition, 
 young gentlemen, to accumulate for others ; freely receiving, 
 freely give. Let not the curse that rests on him who hedges 
 round his well in season of drought — or on him who locks 
 
10 
 
 up his granary in time of famine rest on you, for intellectual 
 stinginess ; the meanest of misers is he who hoards a truth. 
 
 The sources of intellectual power are various. The range 
 of employment for your mental attainments will be as various 
 also as your several pursuits in life — far too wide for the reach 
 of a single hour's discussion. But there are two sources of 
 mental power and usefulness, which are opened to every young 
 man who has a brain to think or a heart to feel. Learning 
 and Eloquence — getting the truth and giving the truth— are 
 the two most attainable possessions for every healthy mind. 
 For while the Creator has bestowed great analytical acumen as 
 a gift comparatively rare — while the imagination, which can 
 
 " Glance from heaven to earth, 
 From earth to heaven," 
 
 belongs to a favored few — while fertility of invention is a 
 monopoly of genius, yet nearly every healthy intellect can 
 acquire truth and impart it. Young brethren, every affirma- 
 tive man in your class (who is not smitten with congenital bar- 
 renness) may become measurably learned and measurably elo- 
 quent. For what is learning but storing the interior man 
 through the five conduits of sight, touch, smell, taste and hear- 
 ing, and so storing it that . every precious parcel shall be at 
 arm's reach in the instant of need ? This depends on industry 
 — not Genius. (Unless you make Genius to be the power of 
 doing with prodigious rapidity, what other minds effect by 
 slow and steady strain — as the driving-wheels of a locomotive 
 achieve the same number of revolutions in a minute that the 
 wheel of a baggage-wagon accomplishes in an hour.) 
 
 Within the last few years England and America have laid 
 in their honored graves two men, who were prodigies of ac- 
 quirement unsurpassed. One of them lies by the side of 
 Addison in Westminster Abbey. The other — a name-sake of 
 Addison — lies by the side of President Edwards in yonder 
 Westminster Abbey of. America. One of them, when at 
 school, was known among his school-fellows as " Macaulay, 
 the Omniscient." From boyhood he was a terrible toiler. He 
 saw every thing; he heard every thing; he read every thing; 
 
11 
 
 he remembered every thing. It is even said that if every copy 
 of Milton's Paradise Lost had been committed to the flames, 
 the whole of the matchless epic could have been recovered, 
 line for line, from the tablets of Macaulay's memory. That 
 Macaulay had genius none will deny ; but his special power 
 was the power of acquiring, classifying and presenting vast 
 arrays of truth, and so presenting them as at once to enrich 
 the memory and captivate the understanding. He was one of 
 the distributing reservoirs of History. He is the father and 
 founder of a school of authorship, in which he as yet stands 
 without an equal. Other men have penetrated into profounder 
 political philosophy. Others have preserved a more rigid im- 
 partiality. But no other man has combined in himself such 
 power of acquisition, and such power of presentation — such 
 exhaustless wealth of knowledge " from the royal cedar to the 
 hyssop of the wall" — such enthusiastic conception of the 
 grand and heroic, mingled with such detestation of what is, 
 sensual, selfish and devilish in human history. In his own 
 fine language it may be said of him that " among the eminent 
 men whose bones lie near him in the Great Abbey, none has 
 left a more stainless, and scarcely one a more splendid name." 
 
 If Macaulay had no superiors in Britain, he certainly had 
 one American rival in powers of acquisition and retention. 
 His own attainments in the domain of letters and of civil his- 
 tory were not more remarkable than the attainments in sacred 
 literature, in oriental reseach, and in ecclesiastic history, by 
 Joseph Addison Alexander. 
 
 As I pronounce that hallowed name, the visions of student- 
 days come back before me. I seem to see again that form as 
 it once stood in that sacred desk ; I seem to hear again those 
 plaintive tones as they once melted on this air. That square, 
 massive head, (which we fancied to be like to Napoleon's,) 
 rises once more before us ; the ruddy glow on the cheek a 
 beautiful emblem of the soul-health within. From those lips 
 we seem to hear again those streams of concinnate exegesis — 
 those brilliant bursts of impassioned vehemence — those tides 
 of holy emotion — all poured forth in a voice that sometimes 
 2 
 
12 
 
 swelled through the vestibule to passers in the street, and 
 sometimes hushed itself to the plaintive melody of a lute. 
 
 Such a reservoir has not been opened from any American 
 pulpit in our generation. No man ever saw the bottom of 
 that profound, capacious, all-containing, inexhaustible intel- 
 lect. No man ever laid a task too heavy on that herculean 
 memory. From a single reading he could commit a whole 
 discourse ; from a single perusal he rose up master of an intri- 
 cate volume — his mental recreations were other men's arduous 
 toils. A thousand pulpits are the richer for the accumulations 
 of that one busy and beautiful life — that career of labor and 
 of love. Alas for us, that such a life should have ended ! 
 Alas! for the bereaved town — the bereaved seminary and 
 church, that never can grow reconciled to its bereavement ! 
 We go into our libraries, and behold two fatal gaps in two 
 favorite departments of study ; and we ask ourselves " who 
 will ever finish yonder magnificent History since Macaulay's 
 hand has forgot its cunning ? Who will ever carry on those 
 affluent commentaries since Addison Alexander has passed to 
 the loftier knowledge and clearer light of the Heavenly world ? 
 
 Lest any one should be discouraged by the presentation of 
 such prodigies of mental acquisition as the two celebrated ex- 
 amples just cited, let me say that they owed their eminence 
 and usefulness to herculean industry. Young men, choose for 
 your patron-saint, industry. Get some starling to cry work — 
 work — work — study — study — study. Study every thing, but 
 with a bearing on your own line of intellectual labor. Concen- 
 trate on one point, or a few points, " as a gardener, by severe 
 pruning, forces the sap of the tree into two or three vigorous 
 limbs, instead of suffering it to become a sheaf of spindling 
 twigs." Concentration is the secret of strength. "Stick to 
 your brewery," said the great Rothschild to Mr. Buxton, "and 
 you will be the first brewer of London. Try to be brewer, 
 banker, manufacturer and merchant, and you will soon be — in 
 the gazette." 
 
 " Mr. A often laughs at me," said Professor Henry once 
 
 in yonder College Laboratory, "often laughs at me, because I 
 
13 
 
 have but one idea." He talks about every thing, aims to excel 
 in many things, but I have learned that if I ever make a 
 breach, I must play my guns continually upon one point. 
 
 This sober wisdom met its reward. He gave his days and 
 nights to physical science. From the time when, an obscure 
 youth, he studied Silliman's Journal by fire-light, in a log- 
 cabin, on to the day when English dukes and earls rose up to 
 do him respect, he had but one aim in life — to add to the sum of 
 human knowledge. He found the earth and air full of elec- 
 tricity, and he found, too, that the galvanic current slow, but 
 steady, and continuous, was worth a thousand brilliant electric 
 flashes. He set to work upon this, with might -and main. 
 He linked battery to battery ; harnessed the subtle fluid 
 into gigantic magnets, and made it lift prodigious burdens. 
 And when at last, by his untiring toil, a chaos of facts was 
 marshalled into the symmetry of a science, when, in obedience 
 to his guidance, (in common with other co-laborers) the elec- 
 tric current mounted the wires as a message-bearer round the 
 globe — then did the Genius of Truth, crown Joseph Henry 
 with the benediction, " thou hast sought me and found me, 
 because thou didst search for me with all the heart." 
 
 II. Thus much for the acquisition of knowledge, which de- 
 pends upon a busy biain. It is the result of concentration, 
 and industry invincible. 
 
 Eloquence, on the other hand, which is the second source of 
 intellectual power that I am commending to you — eloquence 
 is the golden product of an inspired heart. No elaboration of 
 rhetoric — no oratorical culture can produce it, which ignores 
 the spontaneous emotions of an honest, fearless, loving heart. 
 
 Would you rule men • from the rostrum, from the bar, or 
 from the sacred desk ? Let no devil cheat you out of your 
 conscience ; let no callous critic shame you out of your honest 
 emotions. 
 
 For what is eloquence but truth in earnest ? The mind's 
 best words spoken in the mind's best moments. 
 
 When truth gets full possession of a man's conscience — when 
 all his sensibilities are aroused and his sympathies in full play 
 
14 
 
 — when the soul becomes luminous, until the interior light and 
 glow blazes out through every loop and crevice — when, from 
 head to foot, the whole man becomes the beaming, burning 
 impersonation of truth — then is he honestly, naturally, irre- 
 sistibly eloquent. To this a great head is not always essen- 
 tial ; a great heart is, and must be. 
 
 David wailing over his self-ruined darling Absalom — Paul 
 pleading before Felix, until the guilty man paled to the color 
 of his marble throne — Martin Luther, stretching up to the full 
 height of his manhood, in those words, ''here I stand, I can- 
 not otherwise ; God help me ; Amen" — Patrick Henry, sound- 
 ing the key-note to Bunker Hill, in, "give me liberty, or give 
 me death !" — Whitfield, depicting the perils of a lost soul on 
 the verge of the pit, until the plumes on Duchesses' head- 
 dresses quivered, and Chesterfield cried out, " Good God ! he 
 is gone!" — Kossuth, sounding the requiem of his dead nation- 
 ality — and Alexander Duff pronouncing his sublime farewell 
 to the heathery hills of Scotland — these men were eloquent, 
 not by special inspiration of the head, but by overpowering 
 inspiration of the heart. The burning soul kindled the lips ; 
 and the baptism of eloquence came in the form of a " fiery 
 tongue." 
 
 The loftier the emotion, observe, the more impressive the 
 utterance of the orator. The same law applies to eloquence 
 that applies to hydrostatics. If the jet is to be thrown to a 
 great height in the public fountain, the spring that feeds the 
 fountain must have a lofty birth-place on the mountain -side. 
 He who is false to the better instincts of his soul, seldom can 
 be eloquent. To the limber-tongued politician laboring with 
 cunning speech to make the worse appear the better side, 
 to the hireling pleader who barters justice for a fee, or to the 
 hireling priest who sells souls for salary — nature denies to 
 such that gift which she reserve's for the leal and loyal spirit. 
 
 The grandest achievement of eloquence has been reached 
 when the orator has received the fullest celestial baptism of 
 love —when self has become swallowed up in the glory that 
 surrounds the cross of Calvary. 
 
1-5 
 
 And where should we look for the highest realizations of true 
 eloquence, but in the pulpit? Where is there less excuse for 
 tameness, for affectation, for heartlessness, for stupidity? 
 Where can the strongest intellect find fuller play ? For the 
 ambassador of truth has not only the loftiest of themes, but 
 his text-book is the most perfect of models. In it may be 
 found every thing that is most sublime in imagery — most 
 melting in pathos — most irresistible in argument. The min- 
 ister of Christ need not betake himself to the drama of Greece 
 — the forum of Eome — or to the mystic retreats of German 
 philosophy ; he need not study Chatham in the Senate Cham- 
 ber, or Erskine at the bar. He may ever be nurturing his 
 soul amid those pages where John Milton fed, before those eyes 
 which had " failed with long watching for liberty and law," 
 beheld the gorgeous visions of " Paradise." He may be ever 
 amid the scenes which inspired Bunyan to his matchless 
 dream, and taught Jeremy Taylor his hearse-like melodies. 
 The harp of Israel's minstrel is ever in his ear — before his eye 
 moves the magnificent panorama of the Apocalypse. He need 
 but open his soul to that "■ oldest choral melody" the book of 
 Job ; if it used to inspire Charles James Fox for the Parlia- 
 ment-house, why not himself for the pulpit ? Paul is ever at 
 his elbow to teach him trenchant argument — John to teach 
 persuasion, and a heart of steel must he have who is not 
 moved to pathos in the chamber of heart-stricken David, or 
 under the olive-trees of Gethsemane. The Bible is the best of 
 models too, for it is always true to the life. It reaches up to 
 the loftiest — down to the lowliest affairs of existence. The 
 same divine pencil that portrayed the scenic splendors of the 
 Revelations and the awful tragedy of Golgotha, condescends 
 to etch for us a Hebrew mother bending over her cradle of 
 rushes — a village-maiden bringing home the gleanings of the 
 barley -field, and a penitent woman weeping on the Saviour's 
 feet. What God has ennobled, who shall dare to call com- 
 mon? What true orator of nature will fear to introduce 
 into the pulpit a homely scene, or a homespun character — a 
 fireside incident or a death-bed agony — the familiar episodes 
 
16 
 
 of the field and the shop, the school-room and the nursery. 
 He does not lower the dignity of the pulpit ; he rather imparts 
 to it the higher dignity of human nature. 
 
 Would that the pulpit — which is the most potent educator 
 among us — would that every pulpit were thoroughly liberated, 
 not only from a time-serving expediency that muffles its re- 
 buking thunders, but from a contemptible petit-maitreism that 
 curbs its free manly activities. 
 
 From the pulpit, the statesman should learn the "higher 
 law " of justice and of right ; the merchant should learn the 
 golden rule of integrity. Before the pulpit the politician 
 should breathe an atmosphere of such crystal purity that a 
 descent into the Avernus of our ordinary " politics " would be 
 instant suffocation. The patriot should find his minister more 
 patriotic than himself; the maiden should be the purer for his 
 delicacy ; the mother should find a christian culture made the 
 easier for his luminous portraiture of the child-life's joys and 
 sorrows. His every utterance should be a fresh inspiration to 
 the artist — a fresh stimulus to the intellect of the scholar. No 
 man should build so high, but the pulpit should build above 
 him. No reckless youth in his wildest aberration of profligacy 
 should ever reach a pitfall or a precipice that had not been 
 mapped out to him before-hand in the pulpit. And on life's 
 rough highway, no sinning sufferer should faint or fall — or be 
 flung into thicket so dense and dark, but over him should 
 bend Christ's messenger of love, and into his bleeding wounds 
 should distil the balm of Heaven's Gospel. 
 
 In all this, is there no scope for the loftiest intellect? 
 
 Jfl. Young gentlemen, I trust that I have not wearied you 
 by this didactic homily. Lest I may do so, let me invite you 
 (before I close) to an episode in the history of American elo- 
 quence. It furnishes an illustration of the employment of in- 
 tellect on an occasion, and (or a purpose of transcendent inter- 
 It is not new to you in the whole outline; but some of 
 my limningB may present to you new features of the spectacle. 
 In these Bad tunes the scene has a striking, and almost melan- 
 choly significance. 
 
17 
 
 The twenty -sixth of January, 1830, will ever be memorable 
 in the forensic history of the Republic. It was a day to be 
 remembered. From an early hour of that January morning 
 the great avenue of Washington was lined by a steady proces- 
 sion moving up to the Capitol. To witness the expected con- 
 flict, "Washington sent forth its first and its fairest ; every city 
 in the land was represented in the splendid assemblage. Be- 
 fore twelve o'clock, the Senate Chamber was overflowing into 
 the Rotunda, and men were offering bribes for a few inches of 
 breathing-room within the charmed enclosure. One enormous 
 member, from Alabama, (the weightiest legislator that ever 
 obstructed the view of the public from any political question) 
 became wedged in behind the Yice President's chair. Unable 
 to move, he became slowly imbedded in the crowd — like a 
 broad-bottomed schooner settling at low tide into the mud. 
 Unable to see, he drew out his knife, and after a long effort he 
 pierced a hole through the stained glass that flanked the pre- 
 siding officer's chair. The aperture, which tradition says was 
 long visible in that window, is the memorial of Dixon H. 
 Lewis's curiosity to witness the greatest of American debaters 
 deliver the greatest of American orations. 
 
 The place was worthy of the hour, and the combatants. It 
 was the old Senate chamber — the battle-arena of the giants — 
 the same hall which had once resounded to the polished elo- 
 quence of Rufus King, and which had echoed back the mur- 
 murs of applause that greeted the farewell address of Henry 
 Clay. On that memorable morning the chamber was thronged 
 with nearly all the eminent men whom any one thinks of 
 when he thinks of American oratory. From the President's 
 chair lowered the portentous eye, and cast-iron brow of John 
 C. Calhoun. Before him sat Yan Buren and Forsyth, and 
 Woodbury — the eloquent Hayne and the. strong-minded Clay- 
 ton — the omniverous Benton, who aimed to know everything, 
 and the indefatigable Quincy Adams, who actually succeeded. 
 In the seething crowd that day was the gaunt skeleton form of 
 John Randolph, of Roanoke — the eccentricity who once closed 
 a four days speech by saying, " Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to 
 
18 
 
 take my seat; for I am just approaching the threshold of my 
 subject." The imperial figure of Clay, and the thoughtful 
 face of Silas Wright, were alone wanting to have made it the 
 most brilliant assemblage of civilians since the era of the 
 Eevolution. 
 
 In the midst of that breathless chamber — where the echoes 
 of Col. Hayne's silvery eloquence were still lingering on the 
 air — Daniel Webster arose! His friends remarked, that in 
 deference to the great occasion, he had arrayed himself in 
 the old Whig costume of Burke and Fox — the u buff and 
 blue." An austere beauty clothed his swarthy countenance. 
 Within the cavernous eyes the furnace-fires were slowly kin- 
 dling. The signal-gun of the memorable speech was in those 
 well-known words which have oft been rehearsed on the plat- 
 forms of Nassau Hall. I need not recite them. Nor need I 
 detain you to review all the points of that colossal effort, nor 
 tell you how the constitutional cannonade rolled its three hours 
 of unbroken thunder, until the last miserable shred of " nulli- 
 fication " was shot in ribbons from the wreck ! Nor need I 
 tell you how, in his Olympian wrath, the orator turned sud- 
 denly upon the Senator from New Hampshire, with the terrific 
 sneer, " I employ no scavengers" — -and the Senator ducked his 
 bald head as if dodging an actual bombshell ! 
 
 And how, when Mr. Webster pronounced the magic words, 
 "there is Massachusetts, behold her for yourselves! — there 
 is her history ; the world knows it by heart ! — there is Con- 
 cord and Bunker Hill, and there they will remain forever," 
 the sons of the old Bay State present bowed their heads, and 
 wept right out like little children. How shall I tell you with 
 what awe-struck silence they all listened to the deep diapason 
 of the closing passage — the grandest that ever fell from Ameri- 
 can lips? 
 
 "Mr. President — When my eyes shall be turned to be- 
 hold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him 
 shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once 
 glorious Union ; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; 
 on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fra- 
 
19 
 
 ternal blood ! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, 
 behold the gorgeons ensign of the republic, now known and 
 honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, not a 
 stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured — bearing 
 for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all 
 this worth f but everywhere, spread all over in characters of 
 living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over 
 the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole 
 heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American 
 heart — Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable /" 
 
 It is no wonder that the New England men that day strode 
 the avenue with the port of conquerors — it is no wonder that 
 the whole land opened their hearts to it as the looked-for 
 "evangel " of constitutional law, and the most majestic utter- 
 ance of the American Union's organic vitalizing principles. 
 
 " Mr. Webster," said a friend of ours once to the Great Ex- 
 pounder, " which of your own productions do you place first ?". 
 He replied, "my friend, Mr. Everett, prefers my speech on 
 Gen'l Jackson's Protest. The mass of my countrymen prefer 
 my reply to Col. Hayne. But I prefer the first speech I ever 
 made at Plymouth Kock." Perhaps the great statesman was 
 right. His reply to Hayne does indeed stand as the high- 
 water mark to which forensic oratory has yet attained in the 
 United States. But in that better time coming, when the sun- 
 light of love has melted off the last manacle — when, to the 
 silvery music of falling chains, America is marching up to her 
 destiny, then it will be confessed that Daniel Webster never 
 stood more strong and never more glorious than when he stood 
 forth the champion of Freedom on Plymouth Kock ! 
 
 I have presented to you this episode for a double reason. It 
 furnishes a fine illustration of eloquence — of trenchant argu- 
 ment, made " red hot " by noble passion. It furnishes a strik- 
 ing example, too, of intellect employed for one of its loftiest 
 ends — the elucidation of great political truths, and the enforce- 
 ment of those principles that save a country. 
 
 And when, in all the range of human historv, has a loftier 
 3 
 
20 
 
 goal been set before the human mind than that which Provi- 
 dence now presents to America's best intellect — even no less 
 than the salvation of the Kepublic, " time's noblest offspring," 
 if not its "last?" Not only the grandest eloquence may be 
 evoked, but the profoundest study and the broadest knowledge 
 are in requisition. 
 
 Into the thick of this crisis Providence is bringing you, my 
 young friends, and those of you who graduate to-day are to 
 be ushered at once into the arena of this prodigious struggle. 
 From studying history, some of you are now to live history, 
 and help in making history for time to come. From these 
 quiet retreats where you have been putting on life's armor, 
 you are to go forth to try now the mettle of your steel. 
 
 The great problem which you and I are to do our humble 
 part towards settling, is no less than the problem how to re- 
 store, how to rebuild, how to perpetuate the grandest federated 
 government that ever shed its sunshine on a people. 
 
 On this great topic of the hour, permit me a few frank 
 word here, where free speech has always been held sacred. 
 For in these days silence is suspicion, and neutrality is treason. 
 
 The great problem of the hour is — how to restore, how to 
 strengthen, how to perpetuate our beloved Union. For we 
 are beginning now to see that — under its original conditions — 
 our federal Union was never strong enough for the strain that 
 was to come upon it. Federated governments or republics 
 need not be weak or be short-lived. That United Eepublic 
 which stout William of Orange founded amid the fens of Hol- 
 land, stood more than two centuries, and then only gave place 
 to a constitutional monarchy. The Swiss Confederation has 
 existed ever since that night when, on the greensward of Grutli, 
 William Tell and Arnold Melcthal swore the great oath for 
 Helvetic liberty. No convulsions, civil or religious, have ever 
 been able to shatter the political Union that exists between 
 England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. All these were small 
 states in territory compared with us, you say; but as an offset 
 to this fact, they were exposed to the collisions and interfer- 
 
21 
 
 ences of powerful rivals close to their borders. Their Unions 
 have existed for generations ; but ours, after increasing threats 
 and increasing perils of dissolution, was cloven asunder by 
 armed treason in the seventy-third year of its existence. 
 
 For from its birth, one fatal element of weakness entered 
 into our republic. Some of the States came into the Union 
 reluctantly. South Carolina (I do not wonder at it) hesitated 
 to vote for the Declaration of Independence. At first she 
 gave her vote against that memorable charter of freedom ; and 
 only reconsidered it for an enforced unanimity. I fear that ft 
 is too true that our now fallen and dishonored sister — the 
 wilful " Effie Deans " of the national household — once made 
 unchaste proposals of alliance with the British Crown. South 
 Carolina was not alone in refusing, at the outset, allegiance to 
 our glorious Constitution. Georgia (then embracing Alabama 
 in its limits) joined with Carolina in rejecting the Constitution, 
 until a recognition of the slave trade for twenty years was 
 introduced into the document.* In the Convention, Mr. Kut- 
 ledge, of South Carolina, said, " the true question at present 
 is, whether Southern States shall, or shall not, be parties to 
 the Union." Mr. Pinckney re-echoed the sentiment. His 
 colleague stood out with him until brought in by a surren- 
 der, most abhorrent to the first instincts of moral right. But 
 this is not all. There was not only a diversity of social 
 institutions between the States of the North and the South, 
 but growing out of it a diversity of sentiment on the fun- 
 damental principles of free government. As early as 1776, 
 John Adams wrote to one of our Generals — " however, my 
 dear friend Gates, all our misfortunes arise from a single source, 
 the resistance of the Southern colonies to Republican govern- 
 ment." " Popular principles," he says, " are abhorrent to the 
 inclinations of the barons of the South." Even then the sage of 
 Quincy detected the germ of the discordance ; even then he 
 
 * These historic facts are drawn from an address by Hon. Senator Sumner, in 
 Not., 1861. 
 
22 
 
 discerned on the face of the sky that little cloud, "no larger 
 than a man's hand," which has since gathered volume and 
 blackness, until the whole land smokes under its hideous 
 apocalypse of fire and blood. He saw then that we were at- 
 tempting the experiment of CJnion without unity. For three- 
 quarters of a century we have been trying, with ever varying 
 fortunes, to preserve political Union, without civil and social 
 and moral unity. Two widely different organisms of society 
 have existed, and now exist, on the two sides of that geographic 
 line once traced by the surveys of Mason and Dixon. I do not 
 stop to-day to discuss the moral rightfulness or wrongfulness, 
 the good or the evil of these differing systems of labor and of 
 social life ; I merely indicate the great fact, that in the North 
 and at the South there prevail two diverse and conflicting 
 organisms of society. And time, instead of assimilating, has 
 only widened the chasm that yawned between them already, 
 when John Adams and Pinckney joined hands over the Con- 
 stitution. The growth of the nation has but widened the 
 breach. Every year of development has developed the organic 
 difference ; every year has only made the " iron " harder, and 
 the " clay " softer in the feet of the national image. The peo- 
 ple of the northern portion of the federation have been con- 
 stantly becoming more democratic in their opinions and their 
 usages ; this has been intensified by foreign immigration. The 
 people of the South have been growing correspondingly more 
 aristocratic in their principles of living; and this tendency has 
 been increased by the increasing price of their great staple of 
 production and the increased money value of the servile class 
 that produced it. At length, when the organic conflict grew 
 too strong for the bonds of nationality, the decaying cord 
 snapped, and disunity became disunion ! 
 
 " Secession," said a prominent man in the rebellious conven- 
 tion of South Carolina last year, "secession is no spasmodic 
 effort that has come suddenly upon us. It has been gradually 
 culminating for a long series of years." Mr. Rhett contended 
 (in the same Convention) that secession was " not produced by 
 
23 
 
 the result of the presidential election, or by the non-execution 
 of the fugitive slave law. It is a matter which had been gath- 
 ering head for thirty years !" And that paragon of political 
 wisdom, Mr. Keitt, said — " I have been engaged in this move- 
 ment ever since I entered political life !" This gigantic con- 
 spiracy, which with one arm plundered the national armories, 
 the national navy yards, and the national treasure-houses, and 
 with the other struck its poiniard at the nation's life in the 
 capitol, is but the natural, the inevitable result of that organ- 
 ism of society, of which the conspiracy was born. Thirty 
 years ago, in this very town, the most eminent of the living 
 graduates of this college (the Hon. Mr. Senator Southard) fore- 
 told the very result that has j ust come about ; although to his 
 prophetic eye there was not revealed the terrible apocalypse of 
 the seven vials of bloody woe that treason has poured out on 
 our desolated land. It is useless, my countrymen, to disguise 
 the fact any longer. The experiment of attempting cordial 
 unity, and permanent national existence, under two broadly 
 diverse systems of labor — of social life, and of political ethics, 
 has failed. It is not democratic government that has failed, 
 (as the old world absolutists would flatter themselves). It is 
 not the Constitution of '89 that has failed ; it is not republican 
 freedom that has failed ; but a false and fatal attempt to com- 
 bine two hostile and repellant systems in one vast common- 
 wealth has failed, and just in time, too, to save the nation. 
 For this war is not the destruction of the republic, but of the 
 monstrous growths of wrong and political falsehood that for 
 half a century have imperilled the republic's existence. For 
 one, I do not, I can not despair of the Kepublic ! Though no 
 small tempest lieth upon us, yet the hour that shall lay bare to 
 the light of heaven that corner-stone of our national structure 
 --laid in Puritan heroism and prayers — that awful hour has 
 not come, and never will come. Whatever be the present 
 aspect of the conflict, be assured that God will destroy nothing 
 that He deems worth preserving ; He will save nothing which 
 His justice dooms to destruction. If this tremendous convul- 
 
24 
 
 sion shall finally result in making us a homogeneous nation — 
 one in social systems — one in political ethics — one in loyalty 
 to the Constitution and the Union, then shall we look back 
 with gratitude to see how the wrath of treason was made to 
 praise true liberty — how the nation's hard " necessity was 
 turned to glorious gain." In thus settling anew the status of 
 our independence upon a firmer basis, offences will come. 
 Fiery conflicts will rage. Exasperations will continue during 
 the whole generation that has waged this civil war. Eevenges, 
 deep and deadly, will mutter through clenched teeth their 
 maledictions, or lie in ambush to strike the coward blow of 
 retaliation. 
 
 But time and Providence, and the beneficence of right, will 
 heal this stupendous hurt. The day will come when the only 
 vestige of these furious fires will be in the purification they 
 effected of the nation's dross — when the only memorial of all 
 these bitter tears will be the crystalline whiteness of that 
 escutcheon which their tears have washed ; the day will come, 
 — bright with a seven-fold brightness, — when through this very 
 air, now darkened by driving tempest, will rise the resplendent 
 fabric of a Union restored and re-beautified — its whole frieze 
 sculptured over with the story of its achievments — its every 
 pillar hung with glittering shields of victory. 
 
 In this beneficent work of love and loyalty you are to bear 
 your part. For in the words of our gifted Secretary of State, 
 addressed to the late Presbyterian General Assembly's Com- 
 mittee — " The men of our generation, whose memory will be 
 the longest and the most honored, will be they who thought 
 the most earnestly, prayed the most fervently, hoped the most 
 confidently, fought the most heroically, and suffered the most 
 patiently, in the sacred cause of Freedom and Humanity." 
 Can a nobler use be made of the noblest intellect than to con- 
 sume its powers in the salvation of such a country? to the 
 attempted destruction of which so many men of genius have 
 prostituted their resources of cunning and of skill ! Alas ! 
 alas ! for us that from these very walls some of these patricides 
 
25 
 
 should have gone forth ! that some of the companions of our 
 youth, who once sat beside us in yonder class-rooms should now 
 be sitting amid the dark and disappointed cabals of treason ! 
 Alas ! for our beloved Alma Mater, that as she gazes on the 
 gaping wounds of our bleeding country, she 
 
 Should be " made to feel 
 Her culture nursed the pinions that impelled the steel !" 
 
 But that is her misfortune — not her fault. Those misguided 
 men never learned lessons of treason on this sacred soil. They 
 belong, too, to a past never to be renewed. Heaven grant 
 that Nassau Hall has given her last diploma into a hand that 
 shall strike a dastard blow at the nation's liberties ! 
 
 Be it your part, my young friends, to profit by their exam- 
 ple and avoid their errors. Be it yours to vindicate the re- 
 nown of your college — to consecrate yourselves to your G6d 
 and your country. Set out with the solemn resolution never 
 to violate your conscience, and never to compromise the right. 
 Set your faces in the direction in which human events are 
 marching, and the finger of God is pointing. Dare to be 
 right ! Dare to be in the minority ; for truth is often found in 
 the minorities. " The great surge of numbers," as one has 
 said, " rolls up noisily, but flats out on the shore, and slides 
 back into the mud of oblivion. But a true opinion is the 
 ocean itself — calm in its rest, eternal in its power ! The storms 
 and thunders of popular rage and wrong will sometimes pause 
 in their travel round the sphere, and listen to its powerful 
 voice. And if the night comes down to veil it for a time, it is 
 still there, beating on with the same victorious pulse, and wait- 
 ing for the day." 
 
 To-day a Queen of Beauty — more beautiful than ever graced 
 an ancient tournament — entrusts to you her sacred banner of 
 the Right! Unfurl it to the light — never to be furled again. 
 Through whatever of storm and tempest that rage round 
 your head, keep that snowy banner flying — and when at last 
 you fall, let its celestial folds wind round you as your winding- 
 sheet ! 
 
 \. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 021 101 235 3 
 
 26 
 
 And like that heroic Count D'Auvergne, who fell in the 
 thickest of the fight, your names shall never perish. For at 
 the early morn, when the reveille was sounded, and the roll 
 was called, some comrade (at the name of Count DAuvergne) 
 responded—" Died on the field of honor." 
 
 So in coming time— when the long roll of Princeton's heroic 
 sons shall be called off— may your descendants not blush to 
 stand up and respond for you—" Died on the field of honor— 
 for God and Liberty!" 
 
 s 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 021 101 235 3