strange and unfriendly clamor, from this mighty region, it may be reechoed, with increased strength and a sympathetic response, from the rising millions of the Northwestern States. Yes, sir, they do more. They ask you, to make yourselves rich, in their respect, good-will, and gratitude;—to make your name dear and venerable, in their distant shades. They ask you, to give their young men cause to love you, now, in the spring-time of life, before the heart is chilled and hardened; to make their old men, who, in the morning of their days, went out from your borders, lift up their hands for a blessing on you, and say, "Ah, this is the good oldfashioned liberality of the land where we were born!" Yes, sir, we shall raise an altar, in the remote wilderness. Our eyes will not behold the smoke of its incense, as it curls up to heaven. But there, the altar will stand; there, the pure sacrifice of the spirit will be offered up; and the worshipper who comes, in all future time, to pay his devotions before it, will turn his face to the Eastward, and think of the land of his benefactors. EDUCATION OF MANKIND.* MR. PRESIDENT and GentlemEN,-IT has given me peculiar satisfation, to obey your call, and appear before you, on this occasion. I take a sincere pleasure, as an affectionate and dutiful child of Harvard, and as an humble member of the branch of our fraternity, which is there established, in presenting myself, within the precincts of this ancient and distinguished Seminary, for the discharge of the agreeable duty which you have assigned me. I rejoice in the confidence, which your invitation implies, that I know neither sect nor party, in the Republic of Letters; and that I enter your halls, with as much assurance of a kind reception, as I would those of my own revered and ever gracious Alma Mater. This confidence does me no more than justice. Ardently and gratefully attached to the Institution in which I received my education, I could in no way so effectually prove myself its degenerate child, as by harboring the slightest feeling of jealousy, at the expanded and growing reputation of this, its distinguished rival. In no way, could I so surely prove myself a tardy scholar of the School, in which I have been brought up, as by refusing to rejoice in the prosperity and usefulness of every sister institution, devoted to the same good cause; and especially, of this, the most eminent and efficient of her associates. There are recollections of former times, well calculated to form a bond of good feeling between our Universities. We cannot forget, that, in the early days of Harvard, when its existence almost depended on the precarious contributions of its friends,—contributions, not of munificent affluence, but of pious poverty,-not poured into the academic coffers, in splendid donations, * An Address delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Yale College, New Haven, Connecticut, August 20th, 1833. but spared from the scanty means of an infant and destitute country, and presented, in their primitive form, a bushel of wheat, a cord of wood, and a string of Indian beads, (this last, not a little to the annoyance of good old President Dunster, who, as the records of the Commissioners of the United Colonies tell us, was sorely perplexed, in sifting out, from the mass of the genuine quahog and periwinkle, bits of blue glass and colored stones, feloniously intermixed, without the least respect for the purity of the Colony's wampum,*) we cannot forget, that, in that day of small things, the contributions of Connecticut and New Haven, as the two infant Colonies were distinguished,-flowed as liberally to the support of Cambridge, as those of Plymouth and Massachusetts. Still less would I forget, that, of the three first generations of the Fathers of Connecticut, those who were educated in America received their education at Cambridge; that the four first Presidents of Yale were graduates of Harvard; and that, of all your distinguished men, in church and state, for nearly a hundred years, a goodly proportion were fitted for usefulness in life within her venerable walls. If the success of the child be the joy of the parent, and the honor of the pupil be the crown of the master, with what honest satisfaction may not our institutions reflect, that they stood to each other in this interesting relation, in this early and critical state of the Country's growth, when the direction taken, and the character impressed, were decisive of interminable consequences. And while we claim the right of boasting of your character and institutions, as, in some degree, the fruit of a good old Massachusetts influence, we hope you will not have cause to feel ashamed of the auspices, under which, to a certain extent, the foundation of those institutions was laid, and their early progress encouraged. In choosing a topic, on which to address you, this morning, I should feel a greater embarrassment than I * Hazard's State Papers, Vol. II. page 124. do, did I not suppose that your thoughts, like my own, would flow naturally into such a channel of reflection, as may be presumed at all times to be habitual and familiar, with men of liberal education and patriotic feeling. The great utility of occasions like this, and of the addresses they elicit, is not to impart stores of information, laboriously collected; not to broach new systems, requiring carefully-weighed arguments for their defence, or a multitude of well-arranged facts for their illustration. We meet, at these literary festivals, to promote kind feeling; to impart new strength to good purposes; to enkindle and animate the spirit of improvement, in ourselves and others. We leave our closets, our offices, and our studies, to meet and salute each other, in these pleasant paths; to prevent the diverging walks of life from wholly estranging those from each other, who were kind friends, at its outset; to pay our homage to the venerated fathers, who honor, with their presence, the return of these academic festivals; and those of us who are no longer young, to make acquaintance with the ardent and ingenuous, who are following after us. The preparation, for an occasion like this, is in the heart, not in the head; it is in the attachments formed and the feelings inspired, in the bright morning of life. Our preparation is in the classic atmosphere of the place, in the tranquillity of the academic grove, in the unoffending peace of the occasion, in the open countenance of long-parted associates, joyous at meeting, and in the kind and indulgent smile of the favoring throng, which bestows its animating attendance on our humble exercises. When I look around upon the assembled audience, and reflect, from how many different places of abode, throughout our Country, the professional part of it is gathered, and in what a variety of pursuits and duties it is there occupied; and when I consider that this, our literary festival, is also honored with the presence of many, from every other class of the community, all of whom have yet a common interest in one subject, at least, I feel as if the topic, on which I am to ask your attention, were imperatively suggested to me. It is, the nature and efficacy of Education, as the great human instrument of improving the condition of man. Education has been, at some former periods exclusively, and more or less at all former periods, the training of a learned class; the mode, in which men of letters, or the members of the professions, acquired that lore, which enabled them to insulate themselves from the community, and gave them the monopoly of rendering the services, in church and state, which the wants or imaginations of men made necessary, and of the honors and rewards, which, by the political constitution of society, attached to the discharge of those services. I admit, that there was something generous and liberal in education; something popular, and, if I may so express it, republican, in the educated class, even at the darkest period. Learning, even in its most futile and scholastic forms, was still an affair of the mind. It was not, like hereditary rank, mere physical accident; it was not, like military power, mere physical force. It gave an intellectual influence, derived from intellectual superiority; and it enabled some minds, even in the darkest ages of European history, to rise, from obscurity and poverty, to be the lights and guides of mankind. Such was Beda, the great luminary of a dark period, a poor and studious monk, who, without birth or fortune, became the great teacher of science and letters to the age in which he lived. Such, still more eminently, was his illustrious pupil, Alcuin, who, by the simple force of mental energy, employed in intellectual pursuits, raised himself from the cloister, to be the teacher, companion, and friend, of Charlemagne; and to whom it has been said that France is indebted, for all the polite literature of his own, and the succeeding ages.* Such, at a later period, was another poor monk, Roger Bacon, * Cave, Hist. Lit. Sæc. VII., An. 780, cited in the Life of Alcuin, in the Biographia Britannica. |