than when recommended by the attractive graces of youth on the one part, and experienced by the sanguine frankness and confidence of youth on the other. He hopes always to look back, others have said they do so, to the formation and enjoyment of college friendships, as among the happiest passages of his life; and to the end that he may never have anything but satisfaction, — that he may never have compunctious visitings, in that retrospect, he intends now to take care that none shall ever have it to say that his friendship was a calamity to them, but that, on the contrary, as many as possible shall have it to say, and that, too, as cordially and gratefully as possible, that he was always a benefactor to them, in respect to their principles and habits, as well as to their present pleasures. He would like to meet, hereafter, as many as may be, in the walks of life, who should have occasion to testify, that at an age when all influence was peculiarly important, they never experienced any but what was good from him. He thinks of the community. It looks on all its youth with an intense solicitude; and it means to demand of each one of them, in good time, according to the measure of his powers, place, and acquisitions, in the post of honor of a public or of a private station, such service as, under the influence of a liberal public spirit, he shall be found capable of rendering. And certainly it has not been at such pains to accumulate for him such an apparatus of means for mental cultivation, and is not at such pains, year by year, in its highest quarters, to superintend their improvement and use, so that he may have their utmost benefit, -without intending to demand from him its large equivalent, in true service to all its high interests, in those select spheres of action, where man is to act most vigorously, widely, and beneficently. He owns some obligations to the patrons, on whose high-souled bounty he is living and learning here; from the full-handed generosity of the prince and the prelate, the noble and the sage, to the no less enlightened and hearty, if less furnished zeal for letters, which did not feel itself too poor, and, in its poverty, would not allow itself to be too falsely proud, to come hither with its dedicated contribution of the widow's single mite. I know not which is more moving, whether the impatient anxiety of the first Christian dwellers on this soil, to provide for those interests of the mind, to which they were wise enough to see that all other interests are but consequents and subjects, and to build a temple for learning and Christianity, while as yet they had hardly built a hut for themselves,-or the filial perseverance of so many of their children in later times, evinced in the proportion of more affluent means, to sustain and enlarge the seasonable endowment; whether the far-reaching and well-provided beneficence of those illustrious friends to liberty, truth, goodness, and their race, who turned their keen eyes, and stretched their loaded hands to us across the ocean, the Hollises, the Holdens, and others fitly named along with them, —or the hardly but magnanimously earned, the hardly but cheerfully spared gifts, of a few shil lings, a quantity of cloth, a number of sheep, even a flagon, a trencher, a spoon,* by which others, in our day of small things, took care to show, that, as far as they were concerned, every man, neither ashamed to do his little, nor backward to do his much, should do his part towards the great object; 'contributions,' well says our historian, 'from pious, virtuous, enlightened penury, to the noblest of all causes,' and contributions, let us add, of the buried, unseen, unremembered basis, without which the magnificent superstructure would not now be standing. I know not, I say, in which of its thus varied aspects, the high charity, on which our minds are now fed, is most moving; but I understand nothing of the constitution of that mind, which, contemplating it in either aspect, is not moved to firm resolve, that, for itself, the generosity, so devoted, shall not prove to have been expended in vain. Such is at least the resolution of him of whom we are speaking; and as he considers the just claims of those, to whose pious bounty he here stands so much indebted, so he considers, again, them who have preceded him here in the enjoyment of the advantages which that procured,-the wise, and great, and holy, who from generation to generation have drunk in their spirits' best inspiration on this spot; - those starbearers on our catalogue, so many of them, if I may reverently say it, now sceptre-bearers in the courts of heaven. His thought is, that we, who have come * Pierce's History of Harvard College, p. 17. here into their place, and they who have gone higher, all make one brotherhood. We bear the name they bore. We have professedly taken up with them a common cause. We ought to be animated by a common spirit. As we glory in their characters and labors, as if they belonged to us, he thinks that, if heavenly spirits may look on earthly things, they are equally intent on ours, — solicitous for ours, if heavenly spirits may be, as if we too belonged to them. 6 Rapt in celestial transport, they, Yet hither oft a glance from high They send of tender sympathy, To bless the place, where on their opening soul He thinks of the posterity, which by a forwardreaching mind is always making heard its imperiously awful claim, in tones resounding and re-resounding through the dim vastness of its still widening dominion; the posterity, which influences going forth from this place are undoubtedly to bless or to ban. If it be true, that, under providence, human affairs are subject to the management of human minds; if it be true, that, according as they are managed, consequences worthy of serious consideration, pregnant with grave meaning, will result; if it be a fact, that over human destiny, as we call it, there presides an earthly sovereign, even principled wisdom; that truth and righteousness are the elements of public and universal well-being and advance; if it be indubitable, that truth and righteousness, if they have any dwelling, must dwell in individual minds and hearts; and if it be true, that educated men are able to do something to push on their empire, and attract them worshippers; - then it is true, that there is something, which each and every educated man ought to look upon posterity as imploring at his hands. If it be true? That which was once future is now history, and it has written down its answer to that question. It has recorded, that it is true. All which ever has been worthily done, was once to be done; and unless they, who have done it, had given the heed, of which I am speaking, to the demands which the future was making on them, accomplished it never would have been. We, my friends, have much to do in this way, if we would not shame our forerunners here. What this our country has done for the cause of man, others might much better estimate; I presume not to have a judgment on it. But, of what it has done, more or less, I venture to ask your attention to the inquiry, how much had its germ and origin at the spot where we stand; and to suggest, that if we, of this college, mean to endeavor to do, for the future, anything like what was done, by our predecessors of this college, for what is past to us, but was future to them, we have taken no small work in hand. If I am able to judge,' said, at the beginning of the last century, a clergyman of the neighboring city,* than whom the institution never had a more serviceable friend, - if I am able to judge, no place of education can well boast a more free air than our little college may; and when I visited the famous universities in England, I was proud of my * Dr. Colman. |