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At an early hour yesterday morning throngs of graduates began to assemble in and about the college yard. The morning air was clear and bracing. A cloudless sky and a dazzling sun lent beauty and life to the busy scenes which were being enacted in our college world. Many a hand-shaking was there and many a joyful smile of recognition 'as the graduates assembled at their various posts.
The main nave and the steps of Gore Hall were the gathering places of the official guests, the members of the faculty and the veteran alumni of 1821 to 1849.
The later graduates of 1850-1871 met on the south-east side of Sever, and Harvard's latest nurslings from 1880 - 1886, were to be found on the driveway from Gore Hall to Harvard street.
The literary exercises in Sanders Theatre:-
ORDER OF THE PROCESSION TO SANDERS THEATRE.
Band.
The Chief Marshal and Aids.
The President of the Association of the Alumni.
The Orator and the Poet of the Day.
The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
The Honorable and Reverend the Overseers.
The Governor of the Commonwealth and the President of the United States.
The Governor's Aids.
The Members of the President's Suite.
The United States Senators from Massachusetts.
The Lieutenant-Governor and the Adjutant-General.
The President of the State Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The Secretary of the State Board of Education.
The Mayors of the City of Cambridge and of the City of Boston, preceded by the Sheriffs of Middlesex and Suffolk.
Delegates from other Institutions of Learning.
And other Invited Guests of the University.
Professors and Assistant Professors of the College Faculty, The Faculty of Divinity,
The Faculty of Law, The Faculties of Medicine, Dental Medicine, and Veterinary Medicine, and the Faculties of the Scientific Departments.
Other Officers of Instruction and Government in the University.
Professors of other Colleges and Universities.
Holders of Honorary Degrees from the University.
The Pastors of the Churches of the Six Neighboring Towns of 1642.
The Committee of Arrangements.
The Alumni of Harvard College and the Graduates of the Professional Schools in the Order of their Graduation.
By half-past nine o'clock, the sidewalks on Harvard and Main streets, outside of the yard, were one mass of humanity. The front of the First Parish Church was hidden by the crowd which had wisely selected this point as one where the procession from Boston, accompanying President Cleveland was to wheel and make its entrance into the college yard. To preserve the festive air of the entire scene, the Boston Cadet Band played from its position before Gore Hall, the bells all over Cambridge were ringing out their welcome to our President, as slowly his escort conducted him along the streets of Cambridgeport. At last the yard was reached at ten o'clock, and cheers and music gave notice of the fact to the waiting throng. The Lancers acted as body-guard to the President and to the officials who accompanied him. After reaching the gateway opening on Harvard Square, the body-guard formed in line, while the President's party drove past and, amid the booming of cannon on the Common, entered the yard. At Gore Hall, President Cleveland was received by the President of the University and was escorted into the Library by the state doors on the south - which so few of us have ever seen opened. In the mean time, the graduates resting on Main street wound back again and reached almost to Sever. In addition to this, there was another long line on the west of the Library, and in front of Boylston Hall were the old alumni. The procession in two lines abreast began its march around the quadrangle. Each class as it passed by cheered University Hall. Thence the route was to Harvard Square, and thence via Cambridge street to Sanders. The entrance to the theatre, however, was greatly hindered by the crowds on the steps, and by the difficulty of quickly finding seats for such a multitude. Long after the head of the procession had reached the theatre, the younger graduates at the end were but just passing Weld, so that it need scarcely be said that the last five hundred were unable to enter the theatre.
SANDERS THEATRE.At half past nine o'clock the whole upper balcony was occupied by ladies for whom it had been reserved. At ten minutes past ten there was a sudden commotion, when Mr. Charles Reed, marshal, led Mrs. President Cleveland in from the north door to a seat between Mrs. President Eliot and Mrs. Secretary Endicott. Next to them in turn sat Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Mayor O'Brien. Cols. Stearns and Wallace presented Mrs. Cleveland with some choice flowers amidst great applause. At 10.30 a loud peal of applause greeted Dr. Holmes as he mounted the platform, and a few minutes later President Eliot entered at the head of the procession. As the most honored guest of the day, President Cleveland, entered, he was welcomed with great enthusiasm. In a few minutes the platform was filled by the faculty and invited guests.
Back in the chancel sat the President and Fellows of the University. In the first row, beginning at the left, sat President Cleveland, Gov. Robinson, Gov.-elect Ames, Mr. George Bancroft, Mr. Lowell, the Hon. John Taylor, representative from Cambridge University, England, Prof. Creighton, of Emmanuel College, England, Judge Cooley, Dr. Holmes, J. D. Dana, Mark Hopkins and President Dwight. Other prominent guests on the platform were: Sir Lyon Playfair, Signor Lanciani, Mr. Winthrop, Presidents McCosh, Robinson, Adams, Gilman, Barnard, Bartlett, Hyde, Smith, Seelye, Pepper, Brainard, Carter, Angell and Buckham. Professors Allen, Brush, Baird, Smith, Leidy, Dana, Drisler, Chase, Hall, Gildersleeve and Hedge. Dean Gray, Judge Brigham, Dean Huntington, Father Byrne, Major Powell and Karl Schurz, and a body of instructors occupied the rest of the platform and the first few rows in the pit.
The graduates scrambled for seats like school boys, in their eagerness to hear and see all the exercises of this memorable day. Now one great rumbling and rushing resounded through the building, as the few fortunate undergraduates got a foot of standing room, and then a mighty hush fell on the assemblage, as the president of the alumni association arose and made a short introductory address, welcoming the guests and especially the president of our great republic. At this point the building fairly shook with the cheers and applause of all present.
The following was the warm and earnest prayer by Prof. F. G. Peabody.
PRAYER.Almighty God, who hast formed the generations of mankind into one family, a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it has passed. Put into our hearts to-day the spirit of prayer and praise and thanksgiving. We thank thee, Our Father, for the wonderful and increasing stream of blessings on which the life of our university has been born and in which we have found the depth and breadth of thy love and help. Grant that the faith of the fathers may not depart from the children; that this may be the age of integrity, of simplicity, and of reverence. We pray for our university; make her great through her influence; make her prosperous through her usefulness. We pray for all institutions of learning; that teachers may be taught of thee, that scholars may find that wisdom that comes from above. We pray for our country; as she has been able to withstand these evil days, so in the days of her greatness help her still to stand. We pray for those in authority over us, that they may be able wisely to rule others because their hearts are taught of thee. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ abound among us here. May, the love of God our Father be the light that guides our way; and the communion of his Holy Spirit be the strength of our life as it has been through the past, so now, into the unknown future and evermore. Amen.
A beautiful rendition of Gounod's hymn, "Domine salvam fac," was given by the anniversary chorus, which occupied the gallery above the platform. Mr. James Russell Lowell arose to speak. The sound of welcome that greeted him was deafening, and it was some moments before he could commence his memorable oration. His words, of which we can only print extracts, held the audience spell-bound from beginning to end, and were interrupted more than once by applause and laughter.
LOWELL'S ORATION.It seems an odd anomaly that, while respect for age and deference to its opinions have diminished, and are still sensibly diminishing among us, the relish of antiquity should be more pungent, and the value set upon things, merely because they are old, should be greater in America than anywhere else. It is merely a sentimental relish, for ours is a new country, in more senses than one, and, like children, when they are fancying themselves this or that, we have to play very hard in order to believe that we are old. But we like the game none the worse, and multiply our anniversaries with honest zeal, as if we increased our centuries by the number of events, we could congratulate on having happened a hundred years ago. There is something of instinct in this, and it is a wholesome instinct, if it serve to quicken our consciousness of the forces that are gathered by duration and continuity: if it teach us that, ride fast and far as we may, we carry the past on our crupper, as immovably seated there as the black care of the Roman poet. The generations of men are braided inextricably together, and the very trick of our gait may be countless generations older than we.
Mr. Ruskin said the other day that he could not live in a country that had neither castles nor cathedra's, and doubtless men of imaginative temper find not only charm but inspiration in structures which nature has adopted as her foster children, and on which Time has laid his hand only in benediction. It is not their antiquity but its association with man that endows them with such sensitizing potency. Even the landscape sometimes bewitches us by this pathos of a human past, and the green pastures and golden slopes of England are sweeter both to the outward and to the inward eye, that the hand of man has immemorially cared for and caressed them. The nightingale sings with more prevailing passion in Greece that we first heard her from the thickets of a Euripidean chorus. For myself, I never felt the working of this spell so acutely as in those gray seclusions of the college quadrangles and cloisters at Oxford and Cambridge, conscious with venerable associations, and whose very stones seem happier for being there. The chapel pavement still whispered with the blessed feet of that long procession of saints and sages and scholars and poets, who are all gone into a world of light, but whose memhries seem to consecrate the soul from all ignoble companionship.
Are we to suppose that these memories were less dear and gracious to the Puritan scholars, at whose instigation this college was founded, than to that other Puritan who sang in the dim religious light, the long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults, which these memories recalled? Doubtless, all these things were present to their minds, but they were ready to forego them for the sake of that truth, whereof, as Milton says of himself, they were members incorporate. The pitiful contrast which they must have felt between the carven sanctuaries of learning they have left behind, and the wattled fold they were rearing here on the edge of the wilderness, is to me more than tenderly - it is almost sublimely - pathetic. When I think of their unpliable strength of purpose, their fidelity to their ideal, their faith in God and in themselves, I am inclined to say, with Donne, that
"We are scarce our fathers' shadows cast at noon."
Our past is well nigh desolate of aesthetic stimulus. We have none, or next to none, of these aids to the imagination of these coigns of vantage for the tendrils of memory or affection. Not one of our older buildings is venerable, or will ever become so. Time refuses to console them. They all look as though they meant business and nothing more. And it is precisely because this college meant business - business of the gravest import - and did that business as thoroughly as it might with no means that were not niggardly, except an abundant purpose to do its best, it is precisely for this that we have gathered to-day. We come back hither from the experiences of a richer life as the son who has prospered returns to the household of his youth, to find in its very homeliness a pulse, if not of deeper, certainly of fonder, emotion than any splendor could stir. "Dear old mother," we say, "how charming you look in your plain cap and the drab silk that has been turned again since we saw you! You were constantly forced to remind us that you could not afford to give us this and that which some other boys had but your discipline and diet were wholesome, and you sent us forth into the world with the sound constitutions and healthy appetites that are bred of simple fare. It is good for us to commemorate this homespun past of ours, good in these days of reckless and swaggering prosperity, to remind ourselves how poor our fathers were, and then we celebrate them because for themselves and their children they chose wisdom and understanding and the things that are of God rather than any other riches. This is our Founders' day, and we are come together to do honor to them all.
This two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of our college is not remarkable as commemorating any venerable length of days. There is hardly a country in Europe that cannot show us universities that were older than ours now is when ours was but a grammar school with Eaton as master. Bologna, Paris, Oxford, were already famous schools when Dante visited them 300 years ago. We are ancient, it is true, on our own continent, ancient even as compared with several German universities more renowned than we. It is not, then, primarily the longevity of our alma mater, upon which we are gathered here to congratulate her and each other. Kant says somewhere, that as the record of human transactions accumulate, the memory of man will have room only for those of supreme cosmopolitical importance. Can we claim for the birthday we are keeping a significance of so wide a bearing and so long a reach? If we may not do that, we may at first affirm confidently that the event it records and emphasizes is second in real import to none that has happened in this western hemisphere. The material growth of the colonies would have brought about their political separation from the mother country in the fulness of time, without that stain of blood which unhappily keeps its own memory green so long. But the founding of the first English college here was what saved New England from becoming a mere geographical expression. It did more, for it insured, and I believe was meant to insure, our intellectual independence of the old world.
I think this foundation of ours a quite unexampled thing. Surely never were the bases of such a structure as this has become and was meant to be, laid by a community of men so poor, in circumstances so unprecedented, under what seemed so sullen and averted stars. The colony was in danger of an Indian war, was in the throes of that antinomian controversy which threatened its very existence, yet the leaders of opinion on both sides were united in the resolve that sound learning and an educated clergy should never cease from among them or their descendants in the commonwealth they were building up. In the midst of such fears and such tumults Harvard college was born, and not the Marina herself had a more blusterous birth or a more chiding nativity. The prevision of those men must have been as clear as their faith was steadfast. Well they knew and had laid to heart the wise man's precept: "Take fast hold of instruction; let her not go, for she is thy life."
The fame and usefulness of all institutions of learning depend on the greatness of those who teach in them, and great teachers are almost rarer than great poets. We can lay claim to none such (I must not speak of the living) unless it be Agassiz, whom we adopted; but we have had many devoted and some eminent. It has not been their fault if they have not pushed farther forward the boundaries of knowledge. Our professors have been compelled by the necessities of the case (as we are apt to call things which we ought to reform but do not) to do too much of work not properly theirs, and that of a time so exacting as to consume the energy that might have been ample for higher service. They have been obliged to double the parts of professor and tutor. During the 17th century we have reason to think that the college kept pretty well up to the standard of its contemporary colleges in England, so far as its poverty would allow.
But the chief service, as it was the chief office of the college during all those years was to maintain and hand down the traditions of how excellent a thing learning was, even if the teaching were not always adequate by way of illustration.
It was a community without charm, or with a homely charm at best, and the life it led was visited by no muse even in dream. But it was the stuff out of which fortunate ancestors are made, and twenty-five years ago their sons showed in no diminished measure the qualities of the breed. In every household some brave boy was saying to his mother as Iphigenia to hers: "Thou borest me for all the Greeks, not for thyself alone." This hall commemorates them, but their story is written in headstones all over the land they saved.
To the teaching and example of those reverend men whom Harvard bred and then planted in every hamlet as pioneers and outposts of her doctrine, Massachusetts owes the better part of her moral and intellectual inheritance. They too were the progenitors of a numerous and valid race. My friend Dr. Holmes was, I believe, the first to point out how large a proportion of our men of light and leading sprang from their loins. The illustrious chief magistrate of the republic, who honors us with his presence here today, has ancestors italicized in our printed registers, and has shown himself worthy of his pedigree.
Let us, then, no longer look backward, but forward, as our fathers did when they laid our humble foundations in the wilderness. The motto first proposed for the college arms was, as you know, "Veritas," written across three open books. It was a noble one, and, if the full bearing was understood, as daring as it was noble. Perhaps it was discarded because an open book seemed hardly the fittest symbol for what is so hard to find, and if ever we fancy we have found it, so hard to decipher and to translate into our own language and life. Plato's question still murmurs in the ear of every thoughtful, and Montaigne's in that of every honest man. The motto finally substituted for that, "Christo et Ecclesiae," is, when rightly interpreted, the same, for it means that we are to devote ourselves to the highest conception we have of truth, and to the preaching of it. Fortunately the Sphinx proposes her conundrums to us one at a time and at intervals proportioned to our wits.
The questions for us are: In what sense are we become a university? And then, if we become so, what and to what and to what end should a university aim to teach now and here in this America of ours whose meaning no man can yet comprehend? And, when we have settled what it is best to teach, comes the further question, How are we to teach it? Whether with an eye to its effect on developing character or personal availability, that is to say, to its effect in the conduct of life, or in the chances of getting a livlihood? Perhaps we shall find that we must have a care for both, and I cannot see why the two need be incompatible, but if they are, I should choose the former term of the alternative.
When President Walker, it must be now nearly 30 years ago, asked me, in common with their colleagues, what my notion of a university was, I answered: "A university is a place where nothing useful is taught; but a university is possible only where a man may get his livelihood by digging Sanscrit roots." What I meant was that the highest office of the somewhat complex thing so named, was to distribute the true bread of life, the "pane d'egli angeli," as Dante called it, and to breed an appetite for it; but that it should also have the means and appliances for teaching everything, as the mediaeval universities aimed to do in their trivium and quadrivium. I had in mind the ideal and the practical sides of the institution, and was thinking also whether such an institution was practicable, and, if so, whether it was desirable in a country like this. I think eminently desirable, and if it be, what should be its chief function? I choose rather to hesitate my opinion than to assert it roundly. But some opinion I am bound to have, either my own or another man's, if I would be in the fashion, though I may not be wholly satisfied with the one or the other. Opinions are "as handy" to borrow our Yankee proverb "as a pocket in a shirt," and, I may add, as hard to be come at. I hope, then, that the day will come when a competent professor may lecture here also for three years on the first three vowels of the Roman alphabet, and find fit audience, though few, I hope the day may never come when the weightier matters of a language, namely, such parts of its literature as have overcome death by reason of their wisdom and of the beauty in which it is incarnated, such parts as are universal by reason of their civilizing properties, their power to elevate and fortify the mind - I hope the day may never come when these are not predominant in the teaching given here. Let the humanities be maintained undiminished in their ancient right. Leave in their traditional pre-eminence those arts that were rightly called liberal, those studies that kindle the imagination and through it irritate the reason, that manumitted the modern mind, those in which the brains of finist temper have found alike their stimulus and their repose, taught by them that the power of intellect is heightened in proportion as it is made gracious by measure and symmetry. Give us science, too, but give first of all, and last of all the science that ennobles life and makes it generous.
By far the most important change that has been introduced into the theory and practice of our teaching here by the new position in which we find ourselves has been that of the elective or voluntary system of studies. We have justified ourselves by the familiar proverb that one man may lead a horse to water, but ten can't make him drink. Proverbs are excellent things, but we should not let even proverbs bully us. They are the wisdom of the understanding, not of the higher reason. There is another animal which even Pindar could compliment only on the spindle side of his pedigree, and which ten men couldn't lead to water, much less make him drink when they got him thither. Are we not trying to force university forms into college methods too narrow for them? There is some danger that the elective system may be pushed too far and too fast. There are not a few who think that it has gone too far already, And they think so because we are in process of transformation, still in the hobble dehoy period, not having ceased to be college, nor yet having reached the full manhood of a university, so that we speak with that ambiguous voice, half bass, half treble, or mixed of both, which is proper to a certain stage of adolescence. We are trying to do two things with one tool, and that tool not specially adapted to either. Are our students old enough thoroughly to understand the import of the choice they are called on to make, and if old enough, are they wise enough? Shall their parents make the choice for them? I am not sure thot even parents are so wise as the unbroken experience and practice of mankind. We are comforted by being told that in this we are only complying with what is called the spirit of the age, which may be, after all, only a finer name for the mischievous goblin known to our forefathers as Puck. I have seen several spirits of the age, in my time, of very different voices, and guiding in very different directions, but unanimous in their propensity to land us in the mire at last.
I am familiar with the arguments for making the study of Greek, especially, a matter of choice or chance. I admit their plausibility and the honesty of those who urge them. I should be willing, also, to admit that the study of the ancient languages without the hope or the prospect of going on to what they contain, would be useful only as a form of intellectual gymnastics. Even so, they would be serviceable as the higher mathematics to most of us. But I think that a wise teacher should adapt his tasks to the highest, and not to the lowest, capacities of the taught. For those lower, also, they would not be wholly without profit. One of the arguments against the compulsory study of Greek, namely, that it is wiser to give our time to modern languages and modern history, than to dead languages and ancient history, involves, I think, a verbal fallacy. Only those languages can properly be called dead in which nothing living has been written. If the classic languages are dead, they yet speak to us, and with a clearer voice than that of any living tongue.
Harvard has done much by raising its standard to force upward that also of the preparatory schools. The leaven thus infused will, let us hope, filter gradually downward, till it raises a ferment in the lower grades as well. What we need more than anything else is to increase the number of our highly cultivated men and thoroughly trained minds; for these, wherever they go, are sure to carry with them, consciously or not, the seeds of sounder thinking and of higher ideas. The only way in which our civilization can be maintained, even at the level it has reached; the only way in which that level can be made more general and be raised higher is by bringing the influence of the more cultivated to bear with more energy and directness on the less cultivated, and by opening more inlets to those indirect influences which make for refinement of mind and body. Democracy must show its capacity for producing not a higher average man, but the highest possible type of manhood in all its manifold varieties, or it is a failure. No matter what it does for the body if it do not in some sort satisfy that inextinguishable passion of the soul for something that lifts life away from prose, from the common and the vulgar, it is a failure. Unless it know how to make itself gracious and winning, it is a failure. Has it done this? Is it doing this? Or trying to do it? Not yet, I think, if one may judge that commonplace of our newspapers that an American who stays long enough in Europe is sure to find his own country unendurable when he comes back. This is not true, if I may judge from some little experience, but it is interesting as imploying a certain consciousness, which is of the most hopeful augury. But we must not be impatient; it is a far cry from the dwellers in caves to even such civilization as we have achieved. I am conscious that life has been trying to civilize me for now nearly 70 years with what seem to me very inadequate results. We cannot afford to wait, but the race can. And when I speak of civilization I mean those things that tend to develop the moral forces of man, and not merely to quicken his aesthetic sensibility, though there is often a nearer relation between the two than is popularly believed.
The tendency of a prosperous democracy, and hitherto we have had little to do but prosper, is toward an overweening confidence in itself and its homemade methods, an over estimate of material success, and a corresponding indifference to the doings of the mind. The popular ideal of success seems to be more than ever before, the accumulation of riches. I say "seems," for it may be only because the opportunities are greater. I am not ignorant that wealth is the great fertilizer of civilization, and of the arts that beautify it. The very names of civilization and politeness show that the refinement of manners which made the arts possible is the birth of cities where wealth earliest accumulated because it found itself secure. Wealth may be an excellent thing, it means power, it means leisure, it means liberty.
But these, divorced from culture, that is, from intelligent purpose, become the very mockery of their own essence, not goods, but evils fatal to their possessor, and bring with them, like the Nibelung hoard, a doom instead of a blessing. I am saddened when I see our success as a nation measured by the number of acres under tillage, or of bushels of wheat exported, for the real value of a country must be weighed in scales more delicate than the balance of trade. The gardens of Sicily are empty now, but the bees from all climes still fetch honey from the tiny garden plot of Theocritus. On a map of the world you may cover Judea with your thumb, Athens with a finger tip, and neither of them figures in the Prices Current, but they still it in the thought and action of every civilized man. Did not Dante cover with his hood all that was Italy 600 years ago? And, if we go back a century, where was Germany unless in Weimar? Material success is good, but only as the necessary preliminary of better things. The measure of a nation's true success is the amount it has contributed to the thought, the moral energy, the intellectual happiness, the spiritual hope and consolation of mankind.
Our scheme should be adapted to the wants of the majority of undergraduates, to the objects that drew them hither, and to such training as will make the most of them after they come- Special aptitudes are sure to take care of themselves, but the latent possibilities of the average mind can only be discovered by experiment in many directions. When I speak of the average mind, I do no mean that the courses of study should be adapted to the average level intelligence, but to the highest, for in these matters it is wiser to grade upward than downward, since the best is the only thing that is good enough. To keep the wing-footed down to the place of the leaden-soled, disheartens the one without in the least encouraging the other.
In the college proper, I repeat - for it is the birthday of the college that we love and of which we are proud - let it continue to give such a training as will fit the rich to be trusted with riches and the poor to withstand the temptations of poverty. Give to history, give to political economy the ample verge the times demand, but with no detriment to those liberal arts which have formed open-minded men and good citizens in the past, nor have lost the skill to form them. Let it be our hope to make a gentleman of every youth who is put under our charge, not a conventional gentleman, but a man of culture, a man of intellectual resource, a man of public spirit, a man of refinement, with that good taste which is the conscience of the mind, and that conscience which is the good taste of the soul. This we have tried to do in the past; this let us try to do in the future.
They who, on a tiny clearing pared from the edge of the woods, built here, most probably from the timber hewed from the trees they felled, our earliest hall, with the solitude of ocean behind them, the mystery of forest before them, and all about them a desolation, must surely (si quis animis celestibus locus) share our gladness and our gratitude at the fulfilment of their vision. If we could have but preserved the humble roof which housed so great a future, Mr. Ruskin himself would almost have admitted that no castle or cathedral was ever richer in sacred associations, in pathos of the past, and in moral significance. They who reared it had the sublime prescience of that courage which fears only God, and could say confidently in the face of all discouragement and doubt: "He hath led us forth into a large place: because he delighted in me he hath delivered me." We cannot honor them too much; we can repay them only by showing, as occasions rise, that we do not undervalue the worth of their example.
Brethren of the alumni, it now becomes my duty to welcome in your name the guests who have come, some of them so far, to share our congratulations and hopes to-day. I cannot name them all and give to each his fitting phrase. Thrice welcome to them all, and, as fitting, first to those from abroad, representatives of illustrious universities, that were old in usefulness and fame when ours was in its cradle, and next, to those of our own land, from colleges and universities which, if not daughters of Harvard are young enough to be so, and are one with her in heart and hope. I said that I should single out none by name, but I should not represent you fitly if I gave in special greeting to the gentleman who brings the message of John Harvard's College Emmanuel. The welcome we give him could not be warmer than that which we offer to his colleagues, but we cannot help feeling that in pressing his hand our own instinctively closes a little more tightly as with a sense of nearer kindred. There is also one other name of which it would be indecorous not to make an exception. You all know that I can mean only the president of our country. His presence is a signal honor to us all, and to us all I may say a personal gratification. We have no politics here, but the sons of Harvard all belong to the party which admires courage, strength of purpose and fidelity to duty, and which respects, wherever he may be found, the
Justum et tenacem propositi virum.
who knows how to withstand the
Civium ardor prava jubentium.
He has left the helm of state to be with us here, and so long as it is intrusted to his hands we are sure that, should the storm come, he will say with Seneca's pilot, "O, Neptune, you may save me if you will; you may sink me if you will; but, whatever happen, I shall keep my rudder true."
At the conclusion, every man and woman in the house arose and cheered and did homage to the great orator of the day.
After another beautiful interlude by the chorus, Dr. Holmes read his poem in loud and clear tones, which must have surprised many who did not know how vigorous and hearty our beloved poet still is.
HOLMES' POEM.While in their still retreats our scholars turn
The mildewed pages of the past, to learn
With ceaseless labor of the sleepless brain
What once has been and ne'er shall be again,
We reap the harvest of their patient toil
And find a fragrance in their midnight oil,
But let a purblind mortal dare the task
The embryo future of itself to ask,
The world reminds him with a scornful laugh
That times have changed since Prospero broke his staff.
Could all the wisdom of the schools foretell
The dismal hour when Lisbon shook and fell,
Or when the shuddering night that toppled down
Our sister's pride beneath whose rural crown
Scarce had the scowl forgot its angry lines
When earth's blind prisoners fired their fatal mines
New realms, new worlds, exulting science claims,
Still the dim future unexplained remains;
Her trembling scales the far-off planets weigh,
Her torturing prisms its elements betray, -
We know what ores the fires of Sirins melt,
What vaporous metals gild Orion's belt.
Angels, archangels may have yet to learn
Those hidden truths our heaven-taught eyes discern;
Yet vain is knowledge, with her mystic wand,
To pierce the cloudy screen and read beyond;
Once to the silent stars the fates were known,
To us they tell no secrets but their own.
Three grave professions in their sons appear,
Whose words well studied all well pleased will hear;
Palfrey, ordained in varied walks to shine,
Statesman, historian, critic and divine;
Solid and square behold majestic Shaw,
A mass of wisdom and a mine of law;
Warren, whose arm the doughtiest warriors fear,
Asks of the startled crowd to lend its ear;
Proud of his calling, him the world loves best
Not as the coming, but the parting guest.
There are the patriarchs looking vaguely round
For classmates' faces, hardly known if found;
See the cold brow that rules the busy mart;
Close at its side the pallid son of art
Whose purchased skill with borrowed meaning clothes,
And stolen hues, the smirking face he loathes.
Here is the patent scholar; in his looks
You read the titles of his learned books;
What classic lore those spidery crow's-feet speak!
What problems figure on that wrinkled cheek!
For never thought but left its stiffened trace,
Its fossil foot-print, on the plastic face,
As the swift record of a raindrop stands,
Fixed on the tablet of the hardening sands.
On every face as on the written page
Each year renews the autograph of age;
One trait alone may wasting years defy, -
The fire still lingering in the poet's eye,
While Hope, the siren, sings her sweetest strain, -
Non omnis moriar is its proud refrain.
As to that hour with backward steps I turn,
Midway I pause; behold a funeral urn!
Ah, sad memorial! known but all too well
The tale which thus its golden letters tell:
This dust, once breathing, changed its joyous life
For toil and hunger, wounds and mortal strife;
Love, friendship, learning's all-prevailing charms,
For the cold bivouac and the clash of arms.
The cause of freedom won, a race enslaved
Called back to manhood, and a nation saved,
These sons of Harvard falling ere their prime
Leave their proud memory to the coming time.
How strange the prospect to my sight appears,
Changed by the busy hands of fifty years!
Full well I know our ocean-salted Charles,
Filling and emptying through the sands and marls
That wall his restless stream on either bank,
Not all unlovely when the sedges rank
Lend their coarse veil the sable ooze to hide
That bares its blackness with the ebbing tide.
In other shapes to my illumined eyes
Those ragged margins of our stream arise;
Through walls of stone the sparkling waters flow,
In clearer depths the golden sunsets glow,
On purer wave the lamps of midnight gleam,
That silver o'er the unpolluted stream.
Along the shores what stately temples rise,
What spires, what turrets print the shadowed skies!
Our smiling mother sees her broad domain
Spread its tall roofs along the western plain;
Those blazoned windows' blushing glories tell
Of grateful hearts that loved her long and well,
Yon gilded dome that glitters in the sun
Was Dives' gift, - alas, his only one!
These buttressed walls enshrine a banker's name,
That hallowed chapel hides a miser's shame;
Their wealth they left, their memory cannot fade.
Though age shall crumble every stone they laid.
From high-arched alcoves, through resounding halls,
Clad in full robes majestic Science calls,
Tireless, unsleeping, still at Nature's feet
Whate'er she utters fearless to repeat,
Her lips at last from every cramp released
That Israel's prophet caught from Egypt's priest.
I see the statesman, firm, sagacious, bold,
For life's long conflict cast in amplest mould:
Not his to clamor with the senseless throng
That shouts unshamed "Our party, right or wrong,"
But in the patriot's never ending fight
To side with Truth, who changes wrong to right.
Let not the mitre England's prelate wears
Next to the crown whose regal pomp it shares,
Though low before it courtly Christians bow,
Leave its red mark on Younger England's brow.
We love, we honor the maternal dame,
But ther priesthood wear a modest name,
While through the waters of the Pilgrim's bay
A new-born Mayflower shows her keels the way.
Too old Grew Britain for her mothers bead's, -
Must we be necklaced with her children's creeds?
Welcome alike in surplice or in gown
The loyal lieges of the Heavenly Crown!
We greet with cheerful, not submissive mein
A sister church but not a mitred Queen!
When Dr. Holmes had regained his seat amidst rousing applause, Pres. Eliot arose, and with these words conferred the following degrees.
CONFERRING OF DEGREES.PRESIDENT ELIOT arose and said: By authority committed to me by the President and Fellows, and the board of overseers, and in the favoring presence of the nation's chief magistrate and of all these applauding friends, I now proceed to confer the highest distinction which it is in the power of universities to give upon the following men who have won for themselves renown in letters, science, the learned professions or the public service, and who have come hither to take part in this festival:
DOCTORS OF LAWS.George Dexter Robinson, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; Lucius Quintius Curtius Lamar, George Frisbie Hoar, Chas. Taylor, Mendell Creighton, Right-Hon. Sir Lyon Playfair, Timothy Dwight, Ezekiel Gilman Robinson, Joseph Leidy, Charles Kendall Adams, Mark Hopkins, Frederick Henry Hedge, Edward A. Park, William Seymour Tyler, Jonathan Ingersoll Bowditch, Edward El bridge Salisbury, Charles Deane, James Dwight Dana, James Hall, Roswell Dwight Hitchcock, Henry Drisler, Lincoln Flagg Brigham, Thomas McIntire Coolidge, Spencer F. Baird, Prof. Gildersleeve of Johns Hopkins, Asa Hall, Cyrus W. Mitchell, Henry L. Abbott, George Jarvis Brood, John Wesley Powell, Walbridge Abner Field, John Shaw Billings, Rudolfo Lanciani, Charles Marsh, M. Cleveland, Theodore Dwight Woolsey, John Greenleaf Whittier.
DOCTOR OF DIVINITY.William Dewitt Hyde, George Clark Fisher, Egbert Coffin Smith.
Finally Rev. Dr. Peabody gave his benediction to the assembled throng, all of whom arose when the venerable Minister stepped forward.
A great mass of people awaited the exit of President Cleveland, who, with some other illustrious guests, proceeded on foot to President Eliot's house. Mrs. Cleveland, Mrs. Eliot, Mrs. Endicott and Mrs. O'Brien, and other invited ladies followed in carriages. A lunch was served at the President's house, to which all the above remained. Mean while hungry and thirsty humanity sought space at Adam's, Massachusetts Hall, and every other "victualing" place; and those graduates who were unfortunate enough not to obtain tickets to the gymnasium appeased their hunger at these resorts.
At half past two o'clock the procession again formed much in the same order as in the morning, and headed by the Cadet Band, went over to Memorial and the gymnasium. Here again all available space was occupied by the fortunate holders of tickets.
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