cal truth, time awful declaration of Nature herself to the presence of her God-the emblem of his Unity, and of his Immensity.

(14) Gentlemen, you cannot desire too much these interviews (as it were,) with time native truths of creation, or what arc of a precisely analagous character, the typical facts of Revelation. Both kind are some thing which cannot be defined to you: to know them, you must feel them; and all your other studies are only so far really useful, as they help you to the acquisition of this better knowledge; and after you have attained this knowledge, all other lesser arts and accomplishments will naturally flow from it; according to original capacity for them. Young men spend a great deal of time often uselessly, in the attainment of what is called eloquence, and other popular accomplishments. Now, I believe that a talent for eloquence is really a gift of nature;--at least, that easy gracefulness of style and manner, which seems to be the characteristic of what is popularly esteemed eloquence, is absolutely the gift of nature;-some minds, aye, and noble minds, might study rhetoric and elocution a thousand years, and never he able to attain that swavity of graceful periods, and of engaging looks and gestures, which steal from men their souls and reason, and make them for the time being, the bond slaves of the speaker; - this is a dominion, which none but the native born Princes of the Tongue, the very Syrens of Persuasion need aspire to;-it is absolutely beyond the reach of most of us, and however clear it may be as an object of ambition to the youthful mind, still it is the rarest of all endowments; to most of us there is written on it nefas; the sooner therefore we relinquish all such aspirations, the better; we cannot be poets. we cannot be orators, in the big sense of the term; but. gentlemen, we may be what is of far greater worth; we may be honest men, and sensible men too; and if we are to believe Horarce :

"Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons." (9)

But this sapientia, this just moral taste, we never will acquire by reading books of rhetoric, and eloquent extracts-choice morsels of' poetry and eloquence. I beseech you eschew these, if you would save yourselves from ridicule and folly. Never hunt after gracefulness of style and eloquence by reading striking passages; never accustom yourselves to adopt the language of feeling; never seek for
it.	T beseech you feel rightly, think wisely. Of all kinds of hypocricy, rhetorical hypocricy is the most abominable;-it corrupts the public mind; it impairs our confidence in magnanimity and true honor; it is the bane of the republic;-let us admire then herein the wisdom of nature, which has denied to the majority the gift of natural eloquence ;-for hence it is that their flimsy rhetoric is not able to impose upon us; we see through their thread-bare coat of tropes, and common places, and eloquent passages, and heartily despise them. The first and best ingredient in scholar-(15) ship, gentlemen, as in every thing else, is honesty; and

9. "Knowing how to write correctly is both the beginning and the source."
if eloquence be any thing, that also is the first principle of eloquence. Let us study to be sincere; and if our feelings are not so good as we could wish them, not so magnanimous, not so liberal, not so benevolent, instead of investing them with a rhetorical garb of magnanimity and liberality, and benevolence, let us rather seek to have them renovated at that Fountain, to which I have referred, which serves not only to purify the understanding from error, but also radically to change the dispositions of the mind-to heal the waters.-"Eloquence is the Daughter of Virtue." This is Milton's definition, and the best. To which I shall add, that, although a man may once or twice gain over a' multitude to admire him by an exhibition of factitious eloquence, nothing will stand the test of enduring use, but wisdom and goodness; and consequently it should be our first endeavor to attain these; for these are the sources of solid and vigorous thought, and, if of plain, yet just expression;-for the external developments of our moral and intellectual powers depend much on original conformation of mind, and partake of its character;-
-if that he symmetrical and well proportioned, our expressions will be such--our language and action will be beautiful and simple--if not, it will be the contrary, or something else; but whatever that may be, however faulty our expression, or how much soever it may deviate from the most perfect standard, still if our ideas are clear, and stand out from the canvass of the mind-are alive and instinct with moral principles and veneration for the Deity, they will not fail to make a useful impression at least, if not the most agreeable one.

I do not mean by this, as if I thought all culture of voice or expression unnecessary; but I am convinced that an undue attention has been paid to this, and that it has been unhappy so far as it leads the mind from the proper attention to the essentials of education; for the love of these, the study of these bring every thing else in their train;-have the leading fact, the Taurus Gregis (10) , the natural glory of the herd, and the rest will follow; the same study of geometry, physics, theology, history, which will put you in possession of distinct, vivid conceptions on all these, with a passing attention to the composition of language, will make you a better speaker, and writer too, than if you made accomplishments your sole aim:-make not that an end, which God designed to be a means.

And here I am led to say something of the Latin and Greek languages; for it may be thought that any recommendation of the study of things instead of words, shall be fatal to these, and show them useless. Now, I believe that the study of these has just the opposite tendency, and that it makes a man think light of words and their composition, and much of things; I mean moral things, and mental things, as well as physical things: and I believe that (16) the study of these languages should be kept up as a branch of liberal education, if for no other reason, to turn minds more on principles, and discourage that idolatry of language so common. For I have always observed, as a fault of mere English scholars, that they have a prodigious attachment to words. They are constantly finding fault

10. "bull of the herd"
!k_ _with your grammar or style, if it should not happen to be in the fashion, which has been recently established by some of their authorities, to which they pay a most overweening deference. They resemble, in this respect, those small minds, which we some times meet with in provincial towns, which are exceedingly solicitous for the observance of etiquette, and to have every thing modelled in dress and manners, after what they have understood to be the right standards; - the grace of novelty, the beauty even of rudeness and nature, they have no conception of; they are time slaves of custom, which exercises a most unpropitious tyranny over their minds. Now, I know of no way in which the mind can get out of these external formalities but by travel, local mental travel;--you must obey the partial standard, until you procure a sight of the universal; you must reverence words, and phrases, amid expressions, and those too of time last King's coinage, unless you have learned that,

"The rank is but the guinea's slamp,
The man's the goud for a' that."

By translating other languages, we begin to discover that there is a certain universal language, the type of all our dialects; and that this language is made up of ideas, sentiments-the genuine coinage of the human heart, in all ages, and nations - the immutable truths of human nature, to which all our dialects must conform, and to which all national and local idioms must do homage. I say, when we begin to travel out of the national into the universal language, why then at last we begin to perceive that words have ideas - their types and models, their origins - to which they appeal, and if they have not, they are empty things -breath, sound, or fury - signifying nothing. For, when we have words for which we have not the analogues in other languages; there is a presumption that the ideas they stand for are either none, or of secondary and local value; in a word, you see that the study of language is nothing else but the study of the first principles of language, which are ideas, sentiments; and it draws the mind directly from the dress of thought to the thought, from the vehicle to that which is borne on it, from the -horse to the rider--the Man, the Knight: - and none but those who have experienced it, can tell the advantage of this, and how instantly it cheers and animates the mind, to feel the natural glow of a first idea, above and beyond the mist of language; for example, that beautiful Scriptural idea expressed by the term, "the grace of God;" how perfect, how divine is it in itself! But I will venture to declare (17) that nine out of ten of those who hear it daily, have no lively impression of it, just on account of the familiarity of the phrase;-but when they first read in their Greek Testament, the expression, "He cliaris Tou Theou,"(11) and feel the native force of the phrase, it seems altogether a new idea; it is the living type of the truth, which they behold; the difference is like that between hearing and seeing.

11. "The grace of Cod"
I might dwell at much length on this subject; but a hint is enough. I merely suggest, if you would not be the slaves of language-if you would entertain that proper contempt, which every man should feel for that artificial style of writing and speaking, which seems to have been intended, not for the expression of ideas, but the concealment of them-read the Latin and Greek authors. Most of their productions have been struck off in the heat of action, and have the prints of reality on them; their writers were actors, and wrote not for fame, but for a local, a bona fide end-not for immortality - and hence they are immortal; for whenever any individual sets about writing for immortality, his work is sure to be mortal; it is ten to one but it die within the year; there is nothing of man that can be good and enduring that has been produced contrary to the laws and conditions of his nature. Man is born to perform a part, a specific part, in a specific period; and when he does that in earnest, without any other hope, but to recommend himself to God, and to the love and esteem of his co-temporaries, what he executes, assumes a sterling value, not for his own age merely, but for posterity; for its chief interest to posterity is the stamp it wears of the age and country; it is not the image merely of the individual, but of the epoch; and hence the chief interest of the most ancient writers; the best of them had but a local purpose to fulfil, and they fulfilled it well; for they did it with all their heart, from an intense sympathy with their age and nation. Socrates hardly travelled out of Athens; his mind was intensely vocal, and (although it may seem a paradox,) for this very reason, most interestingly universal; for it is the locality of our affections that concentrates them, and gives force and type to the intellect. Herodotus was the first, and he is almost the only historian, a pure and perfect historian, without any mixture of philosophy, (the reader can find his own phil osophy;)-and what is the reason? He had no other design but to delight and fascinate his countrymen; he wrote for that purpose only; and hence the charm of his simple and delightful compositions; his eye was single, and his whole body is full of light: --and so Homer's poems; it is pretty clear that they were not written originally at all-but what then? They were such a perfect copy of the mind of his age, that a Greek, who had heard them once, could never forget them; they were written on his heart; he literally got them by heart. It is an entire illusion, this-which modern critics and writers talk about-the love of posthumous (18) fame. I will undertake to say it has never produced any thing admirable; tile man, who will produce any thing good must do it for his cotemporaries, for his neighborhood; hie was born for that purpose; let him do his part meantime locally; God will provide that there shall be others born, who will talk and write for the instruction and benefit of posterity.

You have then the secret of the success of the best writers of antiquity. They wrote to please themselves and their countrymen, and, for the most part, were actors, not writers merely;-it is true you find Horace rejoicing in his immortality: but Horace is inferior to the Greeks; and his spirit is neither so fresh, nor so buoyant, nor so elastic as theirs; it breathes too often of the langor and fastidiousness of retirement. Some fragments of the older poets preserved in Cicero, mark a much more hale, and fresh, and active spirit-to be sure, not so terse and courtly; but, generally speaking, to be courtly, is to be unnatural.
But am I not turning aside from the object of this address, --which is to represent as the design of a liberal education, to reach the first principles of things, the beginnings, the native fountains of philosophy, of eloquence, of animation? You will find I am not; for these early writers, who wrote for immediate use, and earnestly, to benefit their contemporaries, contain within them, on that very account, the rude germs of all right philosophy and civil government, and legitimate and rational delight. You will say there is in them none of the forms and generalities of philosophy; none, and on that account they are the best and properest witnesses, as to what are the real natural principles of all civil philosophy.  The abstract is there interwoven with the concrete; their writings are prophecy; - an individual natural exhibition of human actions-the ensample or type of an immutable principle, a law, which was destined to unfold itself in similar or analogous effects, in every succeeding age and country. We, the philosophers of this remote age, having now before us many of these exhibitions or portraitures of human transactions, remarking the operations of analagous principles among them, endeavor to construct a universal, or abstract civil philosophy; that is to say b a verbal formular expression of the fixed, immutable, unseen energies, which, behind the curtain of events, we feel to be the spring of them, and the causes perpetual whence they flow; but still how very feebly and imperfectly does our abstract philosophy ex press these energies, in comparison with the events themselves which are (so to speak,) the very images and patterns of them. Besides all this, in early ages, before the relations of human society became so complicate as they are now, and so modified by artificial law, you are more certain of having the true reading of nature the text had not yet suffered from so many interpolations, so that in the page of early history, you find more of the genuine, native (19) good and evil of human nature; --the reading receives less obliteration from hypocricy-is more palpable and distinct; there is less of theory, and more of fact, in short-so that you have a better chance of learning the principle, which, if you are a man who would be liberally instructed, is what you wish to come at. I have heard it stated by lawyers, that the testimony of a plain unlettered man to any transaction, was more to be depended upon frequently than the evidence of a man of education; for his theory mingles more with what lie sees, and falsifies its lineaments:-for a like reason is the testimony of Homer or of Herodotus, more intrinsically valuable, as to the natural sentiments of mankind on certain subjects, than would be that of writers of a more philosophical age;-but all this goes to show what aid these writers can afford us in the discovery of those principles of human philosophy, which it is the object of a liberal education to recover, to ascertain, and to inculcate. Let a man take up the Odyssy of Homer in the original, and read it carefully through, marking the points on which he requires information, and he will be astonished at the amount of instruction he will gain from it.

Gentlemen, you will not be astonished at the earnestness with which I urge upon you the study of the fundamental principles, the fontal truths of human society; when you reflect, what evil arises from the ignorance of them, and
in how much danger they are of being unknown at the present time; for, as I have before hinted, the very splendor and perfection of the results, tend to blind our sight to the perception of their origins. I might illustrate that in our government. What are the fontal truths of the American government-what are the sources from which it has arisen-and in unbroken connection with which alone it can look for its perpetuity? -I may seem to ask a question, which all school-boys can immediately answer. - You refer me to the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal," - "that the governments instituted among men derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," &c. - Now, gentlemen, I do not deny that these are truths - and important truths-yes, first principles in politics; but political first principles are not first principles in themselves, but flow from others, which are elementary moral principles, and these again the offspring of theological principles; for theological principles are the fountains of moral principles, and moral principles of political principles; what then, you perceive that we must ascend - we must ascend in time, and we must ascend in principles. To find the origin of the American government in time, we go higher than '76; to find its origin in principles, we go higher than the lucubrations of politicians-not disparaging these, but esteeming them the shadowings of other substances.--Gentlemen, the theory of the American government has its fountain head in the well spring of Christianity; it began to gurgle upwards into light, eigh (20) teen hundred years ago, and its descent from Heaven-the memory of man runneth not so far backwards. But the first marked declaration of the most valuable characteristic of the American government - that which is the very gem in its forehead, and which now shines afar across the broad Atlantic, attracting by its pure light, the oppressed of every land-was, rather is, that first verse of tile Divine Sermon on the Mount:

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven." -This may seem far-fetched; but it is substantially true nevertheless, that it was Christianity which first raised to his pro per estimation and place in society, the laboring man, designated poor in spirit; as he certainly was, since he was oppressed and felt his oppression; and it was the proclamation of the equality of all men before God, and the paramount value of moral worth and a regenerated mind to all other distinctions, which first enabled the laboring man-who, among the Greeks, and Romans, and Jews, had been enslaved and insulted-to look up-at first to CHRIST, to acknowledge Him his master, and to serve Him, and from that service-that willing service-to work out first his spiritual and moral freedom; and where that once is, well grounded in the soul and conscience, political freedom will not be long in springing up by its side, or rather from it, as its vital root-but not with any convulsions of society, or suddenness, or immediatism, but as the slow and imperceptible progress of vegetation - "first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear;" and suck under the benign and auspicious influences of the Christian Religion has been the actual pregress of true emancipation among the enslaved and degraded portion of mankind from the moment this divine benediction of "the Sermon on the Mount," was uttered up to the present hour. And this could be shown by an appeal to undoubted historical facts, had I now
the time; but it is sufficient to say, that as the Sun of Christianity wheeled above the horizon, and took each day a larger and larger circuit in the heavens, advancing northward and westward in its diurnal and annual course, slavery and oppression gradually sunk;-as the snows of winter are melted gently, and not violently, on the return of the vernal heat (through a certain kind provision of nature, which philosophy explains to us,) thus moral evil and political degradation, step by step, sunk and disappeared before the Sun of Christianity; so that, in England where once nearly all laborers were slaves, the name of slave at last is expunged and obliterated from the records of her laws; an( this so peacefully withal, that none can positively tell, when the last vestige of the evil disappeared, and the most that history car inform us of, is the mere fact of its gradual extinction, under the influences of the Christian religion; so surely in this case, as in thousands of others, has that prophecy been fulfilled-"a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench til (21) he send forth judgment unto victory;" -and wonderfully contrasted also is this beautiful economy of the Divine Providence with men's artificial schemes of benificence-so headlong, so impatient, so unthinking. - But I almost forget my design-to show, that the just and enlightened estimation of the place and honor of the laboring man in society, so characteristic of the very genius of the American government, is nothing else but the result, the late but legitimate result of a grand principle of the Christian Religion, whose professed aim it is, to help up the fallen-to raise those that are bowed down-to seek and to save that which is lost-in a spiritual sense, I am well aware; but that cannot be, without its being done in a moral, in a political, in a natural sense at the same time. There were Republics before the American Republic; but never one of the same considerate and benevolent spirit, whose real aim is the greatest good of all-the lowest, the middlemost, the highest, but looking most benignantly, as it were, on the lowest, as most needing maternal vigilance and encouragement. - I have shown a fundamental principle in the government of this country-its origin and its influence. Gentlemen, if you love your country, cherish this principle of her well-being in your hearts; look, that you be the protectors, and defenders, and elevators, of those who are the least able to protect, to defend, and to elevate themselves; in this you will show yourselves Christians, you will show yourselves men, and make the best return to your country for that liberal education which she has bestowed upon you. Remember, it is a vital principle of this government, that it contemplates the elevation of the laboring man. And liberal education is conferred upon a few-not as a privilege of rank, but as the means of effecting this object.

But it is also a principle in politics, that "all just powers are derived from the consent of the governed." Has this also sprung from Christianity? Does Christianity also make provision for "the majesty of the People?" or does she discountenance the idea as impious - as fostering a spirit alien to humility? The effeminate and misguided admirers of arbitrary Power would make us believe so; but I ask if she that implants moral worth in the bosom, and takes care to secure the allegiance of the heart to the moral laws of God, as of prime obligation, does not make the best provision for establishing at least, if not proclaiming the
majesty of human nature-of collective Man; if those, who are radically and morally reformed, under the renovation and power of this heaven-descended religion, are entitled to the style of "Kings and Priests to God;" how far is this from the appellation, "Sovereignty of the People!" There is a moral sovereignty pre-established in the mind of even the humblest individual; is he then so far from the claim of political sovereignty? A plain man, who wears God's image-who thinks and feels justly, in his place--is not his opinion entitled to some weight and consideration? is it not to help to make up "the consent (22) of the governed?" It is true it never did, until Christianity had conferred upon him his recovered dignity; for even most of the free governments of antiquity were but the democracies of the rich--the manualist was a slave and in disesteem, however honest his heart. The majesty of the People, in its full sense, is an idea originating in the Christian Religion.--The Powers, that be,-that is, the essential Powers, (Hai ousai,)  (12) - "are ordained of God;" nascuntur non fiunt - they are created, not made; they are the natural, inborn magistracies of the State, and although rude and undefined, -majestic from their very origin, as beheld in the intire body of the nation-the whole People. Paul's meaning is often misconstrued; there is a divine right attached to government; but in the PERSON of the People originally--in that of the Magistrate by sanction. The faculties of government and law are the innate statutes of Nature-the ordinations of God, held in the people, and by and through magistracies of their appointment, to be exercised to "the terror of evil doers, and the praise of those that do well;"-and hence the whole are considered responsible for the manner in which they provide for the discharge of these offices and magistracies. If they do it negligently, and to the detriment of right, they suffer; if faithfully, and to the greatness of the end, they prosper. The whole People are responsible for the exercise of those magisterial faculties, which are implanted in them, after the same manner that an individual is accountable for the use which he makes of his reason and free will, and all those mental and physical powers, which appertain to him.  Survey the matter on all sides; contemplate the American government in all its original bearings-the maxims on which it rests-the feelings and principles from which it has emanated-and you will find all these, although familiarly spoken of under the names, common sense, fundamental principles, acknowledged rights, &c. &c.; yet owing their true character as well as existence, to the Christian Religion:

"Igneus est ollis vigor, et coelestis origo Seminibus."   (13)

Antecedently to this, these were theories, philosophical visions, which had a celestial but not a terrestrial substance; it was Christianity, which first popularised them, and stamped on them that very name, common sense, which they now carry. There was a time in the history of mankind, when the practised principles of this government would have been regarded as the most unfounded

12. "The essence or being of thins"
13 "Fiery is that vigor, and heavenly the origin of these seeds."
whims of political insanity. And there are still those found, who affect to think lightly of them-speaking of them, as but an experiment, and bidding us wait the issue-and so, they are-I would willingly own it--the genuine principles of a free government are an experiment; but what kind of an experiment? the same kind of experi (23) ment - applying the same Lest, the same trial, which the moral government of God makes use of--which puts it to the proof, to the probation of some sixty or seventy years, more or less, whether we shall choose to be individually the children of light, or the children of darkness, to obey God or the Devil; at last, men hold their civil rights and immunities under the same tenure and condition, which they do their moral and intellectual endowments-the writing is, "to him that ha th, shall be given-to him that hath not, shall be taken away, even that which he seemeth to have." It is a glorious experiment-a noble trial; who would shrink from it? None but moral and political cowards:

"And free he made thee - but to persevere He left it in thy power."

We know then, where to look for the real causes of our political freedom and happiness; and the discovery is not without its value; for the perfection of the American system must depend on the integrity and operation of those earliest principles which gave it birth. Christianity is the fountain of our rights and blessings; while that is unsealed and pure, we never can despair of the Republic. But let us look to the Rock, out of which we were hewn; from thence is our strength and renovation.

Gentlemen of the Union Literary Society, I have pointed out some of the ends of a liberal education, and have shown that the pursuit of principles is its main business. And I have also shown in what fields of literature those principles are to be sought for-namely, in the spontaneous, unbought evidence given in, by the authors of different epochs of time-more especially of the earlier ages. Let me recommend to you, gentlemen, in the most earnest manner, as you value the wellbeing and freedom of your own understandings, (and I am sure my recommendation is seconded by the voice of your instructors,) that you make it your constant endeavor to seek for these principles of truth, as for hidden treasure; and to seek diligently till you find them. They are sometimes near at hand - sometimes remote. They are not always couched in some set form of words; there are truths beyond the compass of delinition; the most precious truths are generally such,-the truths of Religion, the truths of moral and natural sentiments, the truths of a just and pure taste; and not a few of the truths of social and civil government. There are truths, I say, gentlemen, of such a stamp, that they cannot be reduced to a verbal form: they are to be felt rather than seen; and yet they must be known, in order that we may act from them. How, then, are we to come at such truths as these? By a knowledge of men and things; not as presented in the abstract, but livingly and in the gross; these are the great hieroglyphics of nature, and they must be deciphered by every one. But "men and things" where shall we find-to read (24) them? In our own age and country only? Gentlemen, that is one page of the book, and we ought to peruse it; but it is but one; and from its very nearness, we may
magnify its importance, and take its partial views of truth and nature for the universal. This is the mistake which shrewd men of time world, uneducated, so often fall into. They are often better acquainted with the single page before them than the educated; and take pride to themselves for their knowledge, and think they know all, because they know all that they see. And I would advise you, gentlemen, to gather their knowledge, and to gather it carefully; but it is not liberal education to be possessed of that merely, however practical; but you must peruse the other pages of the vast book of human history-not the contemporary page merely-nor look only at a single segment of humanity, but take in its wide circumference, and read its universal lessons of experience, and from an extensive and commanding circumduction of facts, and feelings, and sentiments of all known ages, arrive at something like a firm, and adequate, and just philosophy of Man.-You may say, let others gather the facts for me-I will be satisfied with the conclusions; they will serve my turn. Gentlemen, this is to enslave our minds: it is not the gathered faded facts that have the moral truths upon them, so really as the fresh contemporaneous ones. So, if you would read the genius of an age, peruse none but the writings of the time. The facts may be distorted by party spirit-by prejudice; but in those very distortions, and prejudices, and angry invectives, you read the true history of the human passions-you behold not the body but the mind of the time. 0, what a picture! what a marvellous picture of the heroic age and simplicity in the writings of Homer! - Gentlemen, there is more history in a single look of Homer-in the very cast of his eye-than in the whole of Gillies' dissertation on the heroic age-excellent as it is.

There is a prevailing delusion in this country, that because we have a large region, and a fine soil, and spontaneous productions, on that account there is less necessity for hard study or extended reading-and that it will rather interfere with the bold originality of native genius, which, it is believed, would otherwise shoot up with the spontaneous exuberance of the wild forests. Gentlemen, the fancy would be a good one, if the fruitfulness of the mind sprung from the same causes with the fertility of the soil; but it is not so-it is not so. Our minds and bodies are of different orders of being; they are diversi generis (14) ; and the wellbeing and strength of the mind are derived from one order of causes-those of the body from another. But even to pursue the analogy taken up, what is the cause of this immense fertility of our lands? Is it not the decay and decomposition of many ages of vegetation, that have formed the soil, the cause of such rank growth? The first productions on the barren rock are but lichen and moss-curious (25) but not valuable; it is the accumulated mold of a long series of years of vegetation, that makes the ubera glebae. (15) And the analogy holds in mind; it is the accumulation of thought and sentiment of ages of history and experience that forms the right kind of soil, on which our minds must strike root, and grow downwards and up wards. "rooted - deep as high;" it is folly, then, to exclude

14. "of a different order"
15. "the richness of the earth"
Éi_ _ourselves from the benefit of a large mental experience, under the hope of being original, from the silly wish of producing the mere lichen and moss of intellect. No, gentlemen, let us transplant our minds into the best soils, whether these be Greek, or Latin, or English, or American. We intend not to exhibit a resurrection of ancient thoughts; that is far from our intention; but from this mixture of soil to produce fruits in our minds worthy of America-to exhibit intellect, and power, and liberality, as near to the extended standard of the taste of our day, as were those to the standard of theirs. This is the object of a liberal education; this is that consummation so devoutly to be wished for. I object to it, that we should import "the True" and "the Beautiful" of ancient time, altogether in English vessels. I feel ashamed, that all we should know about our older sister republics of the earlier ages, should be through monarchical historians. I cannot bear that the whole history of the world's philosophy should not be read over again in the writings of its cotemporary witnesses, with American eyes and American perceptions. I am sure many moral discoveries would be made-neglected truths would be brought to light.

  "Alpheum fama est hue, Elidisamnem
Occultas egisse vias subter mare, qui nune
Ore, Arethusa, tuo Siculis confunditur undis." (16)

I wish that this, which the poet sings of the stream Alpheus, - that it sunk into the earth in Greece, and holding a subterranean course - pure and unmixed of the waters of the ocean-rose again in thy sweet fountain of pure waters, O Arethusa, the delight of Poetry and of Sicily -I wish, I say, that thus the stream of ancient learning would pass under the sea to us--underneath the British Isles, and gurgle up in many a fresh and lively fountain, over all this delightful land - fertilizing and beautifying the scene with moral truth, and u moral good, and beauty.

But, gentlemen, the task remains with you and your compeers in our happy seats of learning; with you it remains; for it is the privilege of academic learning, to re-assert the great Principles of Thought among your countrymen, as they have appeared from age to age. and in various lands, and now appear, and in this land. May the studies of a just and noble learning qualify youj for this grand - this illustrious enterprise. May Wisdom be shed down upon you from above;--and may you have large and capa (26) cious minds to receive it. In you may Education prove a blessing to the commonwealth; -freely you have received, and freely may you give;--and from such well-springs and fountains of pure and

16. "It is rumored that her Alpheus, the stream of Flis pours forth hidden paths under the sea, which now, O Aretheus, spread over your Sicilian coasts by flood."

benevolent minds, may Knowledge, and Education, and Virtue, and Religion, circulate abundantly into every corner of the land.

THE END.