m M^>**> 
 
 a 
 
 
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 (Dnr Sllttta Slater. 
 
 AN 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 THE ASSOCIATION 
 
 THE ALUMNI OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE, 
 
 ALPHEUS S. PACKARD, 
 
 AUGUST 5, 1858. 
 
 BRUNSWICK: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY J. GRIFFIN. 
 
 1858. 
 

 U- u1-8«< 
 
EOWDOIN COLLEGE, AUG. 5, 1858. 
 Prof. A. S. Packard. 
 
 Dear Sir, — At the close of the very acceptable Address 
 delivered by you, this day, before the Association of the Alumni of 
 Bowdoin College, upon motion of Hon. Charles S. Daveis, LL.D., it 
 was voted, unanimously, 
 
 "That the cordial thanks of the Association be presented to Prof. 
 Packard for his excellent, appropriate and expressive Address, deliver- 
 ed on this occasion, and a copy be requested for the Press." 
 
 With sentiments of high regard, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 Egbert C. Smyth, 
 Secretary of the Alumni Association. 
 
 BOWDOIN COLLEGE, AUG. 12, 1858. 
 
 My dear Sir, 
 
 I submit the Address delivered before the Association 
 of the Alumni on the fifth instant to their disposal. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 A. S. Packard. 
 Prof. E. C. Smyth, Secretary. 
 
ADDEESS. 
 
 Mr. President and Brethren of the Alumni, — - 
 I should not have undertaken the office of addressing 
 you on this occasion, had I supposed that the main in- 
 terest or the success of this first gathering under the 
 renewal, after several years interruption, of our Associ- 
 ation of the Alumni, would depend upon the public 
 discourse. The occasion of itself speaks to us with a 
 power which no formal rhetoric can reach. We meet 
 as brethren, sons of the same benignant mother, who 
 from homes, near or remote, after years of absence, it 
 may be, and diverse experience of the trials, toils, the 
 successes, the reverses and changes of life, have gath- 
 ered in the midst of these fondly remembered scenes, 
 to gladden our eyes and refresh our spirits with the 
 sight of these familiar Halls, these whispering pines, 
 these spacious academic grounds, or to survey the im- 
 provements which years have made in the condition 
 and prospects of the mother of us all. The estrange- 
 ments of the world, if such there are, or have been, all 
 for the time forgotten, we come to greet one another 
 once more; to renew again our vows of devotion to 
 her who nourished our youth with the principles of 
 virtue and the elements of wisdom and knowledge, 
 
and to pledge our faith to one another, as her sons, as 
 brothers, as fellow commoners in the great republic of 
 educated men ; that we will promote her highest wel- 
 fare, cherish steadfast friendship, each for the other, 
 and stand, each in his lot, as the friend and supporter 
 of the great interests of public virtue, of heaven-born 
 science and sound learning in the land. No language 
 or argument of the speaker, however appropriate or 
 eloquent, can acid to the dignity, or the moving appeals 
 of the occasion itself. 
 
 To many of us when we entered this morning 
 within the College precincts, it doubtless occurred, that 
 the most prominent and affecting impression of such a 
 meeting of graduates is, that our riper years, our mid- 
 life, in some perhaps, our declining days are brought 
 face to face with our own youth. The man of sixty 
 or seventy summers meets himself, the youth of six- 
 teen. It is scarcely less affecting than the visit, after 
 long absence, to the home of our childhood. We 
 freshen our recollections of the second early home of 
 our heart's affections, — of the scenes where character 
 received an impression less permanent and important 
 only than that of the paternal fireside. These are 
 gladsome, and yet sad hours. The chain of friendship 
 is brightened anew. We meet the companions of ear- 
 lier clays, or fancy summons departed ones who long 
 since buried their perished hopes and fair promise 
 in early graves, or who have passed away in the midst 
 of an honorable, useful and successful career. We re- 
 joice in our hearts as we look again upon the once fair- 
 haired, blooming, playful youth of college days, who 
 sat at our side in the reciting room, or took part in 
 
society debates, now that years have gone by, in the full 
 strength of manhood's prime, come back to be for the 
 clay a youth again, bearing well earned honors the re- 
 ward of earnest effort and persevering toil, with care- 
 worn brow under the responsibilities of office or of sta- 
 tion or profession or busy occupation, or crowned with 
 the bays which the genius of poesy, or fiction, or his- 
 tory, or science, or learning bestows on her votaries, 
 with a name familiar to the world of letters. Who of 
 us, too, as he came into the presence of his Alma Mater, 
 and has trodden these paths, has not been constrained 
 to reflect on the use which he made of the opportuni- 
 ties here so freely granted ; yet more, on the use he 
 might have made of them; and then, on the fruits 
 which have since been gathered from the sowing of 
 those precious years ; and more still on the far richer 
 and more abundant harvest which by a more faithful 
 culture might have been stored. May the lessons and 
 admonitions of this Alumni clay be fruitful of good to 
 us all ! 
 
 On the evening before the Commencement of 1835, 
 our brother, the Hon. Charles S. Daveis, of the class of 
 1807, on invitation of those of our number then resi- 
 ding in this immediate neighborhood, delivered a dis- 
 course at a public meeting of graduates and friends 
 with reference to the formation of a society of Alumni. 
 An Association was accordingly then formed, the ob- 
 ject of which was, as was expressed in its constitution, 
 "to strengthen the bond of union among the Alumni, 
 and to cherish in their hearts a sense of their obliga- 
 tions to their Alma Mater." Tuesday evening before 
 Commencement was appropriated each successive year 
 
to the meetings of the Association, and public address- 
 es were delivered, or social gatherings were held, nntil 
 1851, when this arrangement, from various causes that 
 we need not take time to enumerate, ceased. The re- 
 vival of the Association, which we now inaugurate, on 
 a plan which gives it more prominence and scope, it 
 being proposed that the Phi Beta Kappa shall give 
 place to it every third year, promises more efficiency. 
 It at once becomes, far beyond the former arrangement, 
 an important part in the general organization of the 
 College. 
 
 The peculiarity of this occasion, then, perhaps also 
 I may be permitted to add, my own long connection 
 with the College as a teacher, justifies my impression 
 that the speaker will best meet the wishes and expec- 
 tations of his brethren by announcing as his subject, 
 our Alma Mater. He does not propose to trace, as was 
 so well done at our Semi-Centennial Celebration, the 
 history of the College and of its progress, which, ex- 
 panded with fuller and richer detail into a volume, 
 will be issued in due time, and will be valued by every 
 alumnus as one of his treasures. And yet around her 
 memory, I must think, most naturally and appropriate- 
 ly cluster the reflections suggested by the circumstan- 
 ces under which we now meet. My object will be to 
 strike the key-note of the occasion, and to re-animate, 
 as I best may, our affections for the common mother 
 of us all. 
 
 A royal Governor of Virginia in a despatch to the 
 government at home once said : " I thank God, that 
 there are no free schools, nor printing ; and I hope we 
 
shall not have them these hundred years." Such has 
 never been the spirit of the descendants of the Pilgrims. 
 Their thorough, intense Protestantism would not suffer 
 them to hoard up the treasures of learning in cloisters 
 for a privileged class. At the beginning of things in 
 its new home, it devised institutions for their widest 
 diffusion ; — the Common School, and then the College. 
 Hence what may be well called, and what in some re- 
 spects is peculiarly, the American System of Education, 
 almost coeval with the landing of the Pilgrims, the cita- 
 del of their strength and centre of their power. We 
 may well pride ourselves on an ancestry, who, before 
 they had a sure dwelling place of their own on the 
 borders of the wilderness, in their feebleness and penu- 
 ry, and encompassed by appalling dangers, as one of 
 their earliest legislative acts, founded Harvard College, 
 not for sons of wealth, but for the sons of the State. 
 To the noble, universal spirit of self-sacrifice of that 
 heroic age faithful witness is borne by the records of 
 Harvard, in which the names of donors may be still 
 read; of one who bequeathed a number of sheep; of 
 another who gave a quantity of cotton cloth worth nine 
 shillings ; of a third who presented a pewter flagon 
 worth ten shillings ; of others who gave severally a 
 fruit dish, a sugar spoon, one great salt, a small trench- 
 er salt ; the "poor emigrant," as says President Quincy, 
 "struggling for existence, selecting from the few rem- 
 nants of former prosperity, plucked by him out of the 
 flames of persecution and rescued from the perils of the 
 Atlantic, the valued pride of his table, or the precious 
 delight of his domestic hearth, i his heart stirred and 
 his spirit willing' to give according to his means to- 
 
10 
 
 wards establishing for learning a resting place and for 
 science a fixed habitation." 
 
 Within the first ten years of its history a memorial 
 was addressed to the Commissioners of the United 
 Colonies proposing a general contribution for the main- 
 tenance of poor scholars at the College ; and a recom- 
 mendation was accordingly made "to every family 
 throughout the plantations who is able and willing to 
 give, to contribute a fourth part of a bushel of corn, 
 or something equivalent thereto, as a blessed means of 
 comfortable provision for the diet of such students as 
 stand in need of support." The site of the building is 
 now shown in Boston, where was the place of deposite 
 for these humble contributions. The world had never 
 witnessed the like before. All respect and honor to 
 that devotion to the highest good of man, which 
 prompts men to invest of their abundance or of their 
 straitness, whence they look for no return except in 
 the increase of knowledge and virtue! 
 
 Little did the founders of the College at Newtown 
 imagine, or the ten ministers who a few years after 
 met at Branford in the neighboring colony each, as he 
 laid down a number of volumes, saying, " I give these 
 books for founding a college in Connecticut," that they 
 were giving birth to a new idea in the world ! But so 
 it was; for they were to give the first demonstration 
 of the power of the people to accomplish a work which 
 had before been reserved for the resources of a power- 
 ful hierarchy, or a lordly aristocracy, or for regal mu- 
 nificence alone. The idea of the American college was 
 doubtless derived from institutions in which the fath- 
 ers of our republic had imbibed their love of learning; 
 
11 
 
 but it was framed in accordance with the genius of the 
 new institutions which had here taken root, and in 
 some respects has not its counterpart elsewhere on the 
 globe. With few exceptions our Colleges, though char- 
 tered by the State governments, have been founded by 
 the people, and more than by any class of our citizens, 
 to their honor be it said, by the pastors of the church- 
 es, and are dependent mainly on the free contributions 
 of the people. Governments cannot interfere with their 
 privileges, nor in their management, except so far as 
 their charters permit. In whatever degree they enjoy 
 Legislative patronage, they cannot nourish without the 
 confidence of the people. Their Faculties are mostly 
 clerical; and that, because no community will patron- 
 ize an Institution without the control of a decidedly 
 Christian influence. They have all, with I think but 
 two exceptions, (and neither of these are in other re- 
 spects after the model of the rest,) a strictly religious 
 parentage. Their foundations were laid in prayer. 
 The motto of the oldest might with truth have been 
 adopted by each, with the two exceptions referred to, 
 in its inception and progress, Ckristo et Ecclesice. The 
 attempt to secularize them would be suicidal. The 
 studied effort, in the establishment of a Southern Uni- 
 versity under the direction and influence of a potent 
 name in the politics of the country, to exclude Chris- 
 tianity from its halls, signally failed through the silent 
 power of the religious sentiment which has since per- 
 vaded that State ; nay we may say, through the innate 
 tendencies at work within every genuine Protestant 
 College. Such an attempt will probably never be re- 
 peated. This active moral and religious influence con- 
 
12 
 
 statutes a peculiarity of the American system. Many 
 of us remember the testimony to this point borne by a 
 distinguished Professor of Harvard at our Commence- 
 ment table three years since. At one of the German 
 Universities he gave a Professor some account of the 
 discipline of the American Colleges, particularly with 
 reference to its moral and religious tone, — the stated 
 morning and evening service of the chapel, and the 
 watch over the morals and character of the members. 
 The German uttered an exclamation of surprise and 
 gratification ; " Would God, we had the same !" Our 
 Colleges, moreover, throughout, exhibit another marked 
 difference from similar institutions in England. They 
 have multiplied the departments of study, at the ex- 
 pense of the thoroughness and extent to which a small- 
 er number of branches are carried. We have no Uni- 
 versities after the European model, though several as- 
 pire to the name. In one instance the Chancellor of 
 a chartered University was its only teacher, and stated 
 with great simplicity, that, as the Institution had no 
 buildings, he had taught the students in an apartment 
 of his own dwelling. With the single exception, so far 
 as I am informed, of Charlottesville, every College and 
 University has been a re-production of Harvard and 
 Yale; and when you hear of a new College in the land, 
 you presume at once, that it has its four classes of 
 undergraduates, its course of four years, its annual 
 Commencements, substantially the same studies and the 
 same methods of instruction and discipline. I repeat 
 it, little did the twelve men who in 1637 were appoint- 
 ed by the General Court of the Colony of Massachu- 
 setts Bay "to take order for a College at Newtown," 
 
13 
 
 know what a work they were doing ! — that they were 
 committing to the virgin soil of the new world a seed, 
 which was to yield its kind in succeeding generations, 
 until it has already in two hundred years multiplied 
 more than a hundred fold ! 
 
 This zeal for education, so strikingly characteristic 
 of the Pilgrim stock and the Scotch Presbyterians, is 
 borne with them in their emigrations. The examples 
 of Harvard and Yale were followed in what was called 
 " the Log College," erected by the senior Tennent at 
 Neshaminy, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, whence were 
 sent forth some of the leading Presbyterian ministers 
 of the first half of the last century, and that was the 
 germ, transplanted, of the College of New Jersey ; — 
 by Dartmouth, established in 1770, in the forests of 
 New Hampshire for the teaching of Indian and English 
 youth ; literally at first a log cabin, for the President and 
 his household and students. Scarcely had this ray of 
 illumination begun to shed its beams, when the light 
 of the Divine favor shown down upon them "in 
 manifest tokens," as the first President Wheelock re- 
 cords, "of the gracious presence of God by a spirit of 
 conviction and consolation, until scarcely one remain- 
 ed who did not feel a greater or less degree of it." — 
 Whenever a State is admitted into our Union, nay even 
 before it has emerged from its dependence as a Territo- 
 ry, it is in accordance with the law of American growth, 
 that a College be founded. A few Home Missionaries 
 amid the forests of the Wabash, kneel down upon the 
 snow and dedicate to Heaven a site for a College which, 
 to use the words of another, " had no existence save 
 in their own faith and the Divine decrees, and on that 
 
14 
 
 very spot it is raised in due time by a prayer-hearing 
 God," and is now numbered among the useful and 
 Heaven-blessed institutions of the mighty West. Our 
 El Dorado of the Pacific has already devoted of its gold 
 to open the richer treasures of learning to its youth ; 
 Oregon has its Pacific University, and the far off islands 
 in mid-ocean, but little more than thirty years ago in 
 deepest, darkest barbarism, under the impulse of the 
 New England element which has become incorporated 
 with their population, no mean portion of it from our own 
 State and from this College, have within the year sent 
 to our Atlantic cities for aid in the establishment of a 
 College. A hundred years ago there were six Colleges 
 in the United States; in 1800, twenty-five. They now 
 number one hundred and forty, besides forty-six Theo- 
 logical Seminaries, and perhaps as many Law and 
 Medical Schools. Within the last fifteen years, three 
 Colleges a year have been added. 
 
 In like manner the founding of our own College is 
 due to a few Congregational pastors and members of 
 the other professions of this vicinity. It is now with- 
 in two months of seventy years since petitions were 
 sent to the General Court of Massachusetts by the Cum- 
 berland Association of Ministers and the Court of Ses- 
 sions of this County, for the incorporation of a College 
 in the County of Cumberland. After repeated delays, 
 caused by conflicting opinions regarding name and 
 place, Hancock and Bowdoin being rival candidates 
 between the political parties in the Legislature for the 
 distinction of the name, and Portland, Gorham, North 
 Yarmouth, Freeport, New Gloucester, Brunswick, and 
 Winthrop in Kennebec County, urging respective 
 
15 
 
 claims for the location, at last a bill was enacted, June, 
 1794, establishing the College under the name of Bow- 
 doin, which received the signature of Samuel Adams, 
 Governor of Massachusetts. Brunswick was selected 
 as its site on account of its central position at that time, 
 and as a compromise between conflicting claims. 
 
 I will not occupy time in a detail of the hindrances 
 and embarrassments which the infant enterprise en- 
 countered through the eight years which passed before 
 the College went into operation. Suffice it to say, to 
 the honor of its friends, that it was only through their 
 steady perseverance, unflagging zeal, great personal 
 sacrifice, and a generous and noble public spirit, that 
 the project was not given up in despair. In July, 1801, 
 the Boards of Trustees and Overseers met in this town 
 at the house* of John Dunning, inn-holder, to choose 
 a President of the College, when a most auspicious se- 
 lection was made of Bev. Joseph M'Keen, pastor of the 
 Congregational Church in Beverly, Massachusetts. In 
 November of the same year, Mr. John Abbot, a gradu- 
 ate of Harvard, was chosen Professor of Languages. 
 In September, 1802, these gentlemen, having accepted 
 their appointments, were inducted into office. The 
 novel occasion attracted a large assemblage, comprising 
 men of the first distinction in the Commonwealth. A 
 college edifice, which at the meeting of the Boards on 
 this occasion received the name of Massachusetts Hall, 
 was ready for the temporary accommodation of the 
 President's family, and for students. But there being 
 no church edifice in the village, a platform and accommo- 
 
 * The old tavern, which stood midway down the street on the left, and was 
 burned two years since. 
 
16 
 
 dations for spectators were erected for the ceremonies 
 of inauguration, in the pine grove in the rear of the 
 College Halls near the present cemetery. The scene 
 in which they were participating could not but have 
 deeply affected the principal actors. After years of 
 struggle and anxiety and great perplexity, seated be- 
 neath the overshadowing forest and witnessing the 
 ceremonial which opened in this new part of our land, 
 then scarcely reclaimed from the wilderness, an insti- 
 tution which they trusted would, by the blessing of 
 Heaven, do much for the future honor and welfare of 
 the community, their bosoms glowed with emotions of 
 satisfaction and joy. It seemed indeed as if a fountain 
 of health-giving waters had gushed forth in the desert. 
 On the day following the inauguration, eight were ex- 
 amined for admission into College, of whom one came 
 from Boston, another from Newburyport, evincing the 
 interest and the confidence felt by the mother State in 
 the new child of promise.* Thus fifty-six years ago 
 the College set forth on its career of usefulness and 
 honor. 
 
 The graduate of these later clays cannot easily con- 
 ceive the circumstances which made the founding of 
 the College and its first ushering into life a desperate 
 enterprise, or estimate the full import of our language 
 when we say, that strong love for learning and for 
 man, and stronger faith only, could have accomplished 
 the undertaking. To the rest of the world the College 
 seemed to be placed in the ends of the earth, — a notion 
 not yet corrected in some quarters. The population 
 
 * One or two passages are taken from an Historical Sketch of the College 
 prepared by the author several years since for the Am. Quarterly Kegister. 
 
17 
 
 of the District of Maine at that time was one hundred 
 and fifty thousand. Portland was a thriving town of 
 four or five thousand inhabitants. Our neighbor city 
 Bath was a small village, just entered on her career as 
 a port of entry. Wiscasset was the most enterprising 
 and flourishing sea-port on our coast east of Portland — 
 rivalling even that — a well known centre of wealth, 
 fashion and gayety. The shores of her beautiful har- 
 bor used to repeat the echoes of heavy guns from 
 British shipping, moored in her waters, celebrating the 
 national holidays of England. Hallowell and Augusta 
 were just emerging from the wilderness, almost without 
 access from this town except on horseback. In 1803 
 or 1804 Justice Parker of the Supreme Court on his 
 eastern circuit achieved the passage in a sulky, which 
 was deemed an exploit. About this date Col. Estabrook, 
 a well known citizen of this town, established a mail con- 
 veyance to Augusta for one or two passengers, and that 
 was an era. Thomaston was a radiant point at that 
 time, whither Gen. Knox and his imposing mansion, 
 beautifully situated on St. George's, and his princely 
 hospitality attracted visitors from all the region round, 
 and in large numbers from Boston and more southern 
 cities. Castine was a thriving village on a narrow 
 projection into Penobscot Bay. Bangor was as yet a 
 mere hamlet. At Lewiston was a single house and 
 saw mill. Besides villages of less account on the sea 
 board, the rest of Maine was an interminable wilder- 
 ness, invaded here and there only by more enterprising 
 settlers mostly from the mother state. The only post- 
 roads wound along the coast from the Piscataqua to 
 the Penobscot, while beyond was a terra incognita to 
 travellers by land. 
 
18 
 
 The son of a Massachusetts home, destined for the 
 College, perhaps was committed with bed and bedding 
 to the custody and tardy progress of an Eastern 
 coaster lying for freight and passengers at the T. wharf 
 in Boston, and after a week's, he might congratulate 
 himself if it were not a two week's voyage, he and 
 his reached this his far off place of exile. A letter 
 posted in Boston, heralded along its slow and winding 
 way by the rumbling of the lumbering coach and the 
 echoes of the postman's horn at every village, after 
 four days arrived at its destination in the semi-weekly 
 mail. Or did the Boston parent of a son about to 
 graduate, or some zealous friend of learning and of 
 the rising college purpose to be present at Commence- 
 ment, after more ado of preparation than a voyage of 
 these clays by ocean steamer to Liverpool, his long 
 and toilsome journey in his private carriage of four or 
 five days afforded more of incident and variety than 
 a journey now to Washington or Niagara. The pas- 
 sage of the impetuous, and at times perilous, Pis- 
 cataqua in a scow, introduces him to the endless 
 forests, the hills, rocks, and the gridiron bridges of 
 Maine, the evil report of which has reached his ear. 
 He makes his slow progress over the long, rugged, toil- 
 some miles of Cape Neddock, and Wells, relieved by 
 the enchanting views of the broad Atlantic, which 
 burst as by enchantment on the eye at York, and then 
 of the magnificent beaches and the in-rolling waves 
 breaking in long sheets of foam (all now lost to railway 
 travellers) ; he passes the fine falls of the Saco river 
 and the dense gloom of the Saco woods, admires the 
 charming site of Portland and its thrift and promise ; 
 
19 
 
 then on this hand catching charming views of the Cas- 
 co Bay, on which his eye cannot tire, — (the wayfarer 
 of to-day loses all that beauty,) — at length wearied and 
 dusty, after the last long ten miles, slowly emerging 
 half a mile below us on the plain, he gets sight of a 
 single three storied edifice of brick — a plain, unpainted 
 chapel of wood — a church and spire yet unfinished — 
 a President's house of most modest pretension, and a 
 few humble scattering dwellings. This was Bowdoin 
 College as it was at the Commencement of 1806. 
 
 A photograph of the personages who graced or 
 honored the earlier Commencements would impress, I 
 think, even the present generation. The laudatores 
 tepiporis acii may be allowed to think, that if we have 
 gained in some respects, we have lost in others. 
 The habits of social life which imparted a distinction 
 and grace to the assemblages of that day, on such an 
 occasion, have long since passed away. The entire 
 want of such facilities of intercourse, as are now en- 
 joyed, made the gatherings perhaps more select. Visit- 
 ors came in their own conveyances. The line of the 
 College fence, from the tavern, (which used to stand in 
 what is now the northwest angle of the College yard,) 
 almost to the woods, was occupied with chaises and pri- 
 vate carriages. Buggy or wagon is a later invention. The 
 occasion, moreover, was particularly attractive to men 
 of learning or of leisure. The difference I have allu- 
 ded to was particularly observable in costume. Chief 
 Justice Jay once said, that "the French Ke volution 
 banished silk stockings and high breeding." The full 
 dress of a gentleman abjured what was beginning to 
 be regarded as the democracy of pants and adhered 
 
20 
 
 still to the federalism of breeches and powdered hair 
 with a queue. Even the graduating class appeared in 
 silk gowns, breeches and black silk hose. The Presi- 
 dent, and Professors also, added the Oxford cap. The 
 black stock was then exclusively a military appoint- 
 ment. 
 
 There were really men of acknowledged distinction, 
 whose form and features and bearing we love to recall 
 to mind : and in this I draw on my own recollections. 
 It was a great occasion with me, when a mere child I 
 was brought the long and memorable drive of twenty 
 miles to attend the Commencement of 1810. The 
 church was not crowded, as in these days, for the Wis- 
 casset boy found easy access and comfortable standing 
 in the south gallery of the old church, near the choir, 
 and could look down on the whole. My recollections 
 are particularly distinct of the Greek oration of the 
 deep-mouthed Wise, of the bachelors, probably because 
 it was all Greek to me ; and of the brilliant master's 
 oration pronounced a Domino Daveis, whose comparison 
 of something to "a popinjay flying into the clouds" 
 attracted my notice, as I perceived that it was receiv- 
 ed with much applause by the gentlemen on the plat- 
 form. 
 
 Some who hear me have a distinct impression of 
 several personages, without whom we used to think a 
 Commencement could not be ; of Alden Bradford, each 
 of whose names betrays his lineage ; in' whose veins 
 flowed unmixed Puritan blood ; whose manners exhibi- 
 ted the highest polish of the most cultivated society of 
 the time, and whose taste and studies through life were 
 devoted to the memory of the fathers of New England ; 
 
21 
 
 — of Wilde, in due time to be elevated to the Supreme 
 Bench of Massachusetts, with clear beaming eye of 
 hazle, of fine intellectual features expressing in the 
 highest degree character, humor, and amiableness, then 
 in brilliant reputation as a leading attorney at every 
 bar in the State;- — of Mellen, his compeer, of com- 
 manding person, of graceful bearing and speech, of 
 eminent legal acumen and learning, of various culture 
 and taste, of genial humor and sparkling wit, which 
 never wounded, while it made him the charm of every 
 social circle. When Maine became an independent 
 State, as the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 
 he gave our Judiciary a reputation which it still re- 
 veres. We recall, too, the respected, admirable Long- 
 fellow, the irreproachable and incorruptible, of retiring 
 modesty, and yet of ability, learning, and clear argu- 
 mentation in union with a sincerity of character, which 
 won the confidence of Judge and Jury, of refined and 
 courteous bearing, the sure friend of worthy young 
 men ; — and Ore, fearless, tenacious of his purpose, ab- 
 rupt, unceremonious in his exterior, of great astuteness 
 and grasp of mind, at the same time alive to the grace 
 and elegance of Horace and of the masters of English 
 style, — in his prime, the acknowledged head of the 
 bar of Maine. 
 
 Several of the Clergy of those earlier days of the 
 College, to whose self-denying efforts and counsels and 
 prayers the College owes such a debt of gratitude — we 
 love to bring before us their familiar forms, and pay a 
 tribute to their memory ; — the learned, accomplished, 
 gentle and courteous Jenks, an early and steadfast 
 friend of the College, with a compass and variety of 
 
erudition beyond all others, devoted to the interests of 
 literature and sound learning next only to the cause 
 of his Divine Master; and who, even within these few 
 months, — his outward ear almost closed to the voices 
 of earth, but his inward man renewed day by day, — 
 may have been seen at the daily meeting for prayer in 
 Boston, and then may have been met at the Athe- 
 naeum, or at the American Academy, or the Oriental or 
 Historical Society, or as one of the committee of visita- 
 tion of Harvard, with the life of younger years, prompt 
 to the call of duty and Christian love; — Brown, too 
 soon for us summoned to higher and more weighty re- 
 sponsibility in that memorable contest for the char- 
 tered rights of Dartmouth, which enlisted the first le- 
 gal talent of the country, and involved the stability of 
 all our seminaries of learning, and to sacrifice his life 
 in the service; — Gillet, the acute Theologian, de- 
 voted to his chosen work, skilled, as few were, in his 
 pure nervous felicitous style ; — Nichols, of elegant 
 and varied scholarship, and firm grasp and power of 
 intellect, whose fine classical front and features and 
 his whole bearing revealed a character to command 
 respect and love; — Payson, the servant of God, of 
 faith and prayer, and fervid eloquence, whose is a name 
 known and honored in the churches of our own and 
 other lands. I shall be excused for introducing into 
 this portraiture another of the neighboring clergy, one,- 
 (I may say without the charge of undue estimation by 
 a son,) of high personal bearing, of polished manners, 
 eminently a lover of youth to the last day of extreme 
 age, who loved Harvard, his own Alma Mater, with 
 fond devotion and imparted of the same devotion to 
 
23 
 
 Bowcloin — he could not transfer the whole — was 
 present at most of the annual examinations for many 
 years, and, I believe, at each of the first twenty-four 
 Commencements. Our photographs would not be com- 
 plete without one figure well remembered by the older 
 graduates, which probably attracted quite as much no- 
 tice as any other, arrayed in a broad skirted coat 
 with heavy cuffs and flaps, a doublet or waistcoat ex- 
 tending almost to the knees, a full bottomed wig and 
 large cocked hat, the Rev. Mr. Eaton of Harpswell * 
 
 Of the first distinction among the friends and pa- 
 trons of the infant College was a gentleman who often 
 honored the earlier Commencements with his presence, 
 Dr. Benjamin Vaughan. A native of England, allied 
 to noble families, educated at Trinity, Cambridge, and 
 then at Edinburgh where he took a degree in medicine, 
 an intimate friend of Drs. Aiken, Price, and Priestly, a 
 member of Parliament, Fellow of the Royal Society of 
 Edinburgh, he sought refuge in this country from im- 
 pending political turmoil consequent on the French 
 Revolution. He selected for his future home a spot on 
 the banks of the Kennebec in Hallowell, which to 
 the prophetic eye of taste presented the richest land- 
 scape of town, fields, wooded heights, verdant lawns 
 and the flowing river, and there lived in true republi- 
 can simplicity a life of elegant, scholarly retirement, 
 and active usefulness; his ample library and apparatus 
 and his abundant stores of science and learning ever 
 open ; maintaining correspondence with men of science 
 and letters in his native and his adopted home; ever 
 ready for projects of public or private good ; adminis- 
 
 * All those named were of the Board of Trustees, except Mr. Eaton, who 
 was of the Overseers. 
 
24 
 
 tering to the poor in sickness, or to his friends, for 
 which his education and reading had well prepared 
 him, and still remembered with gratitude for his valua- 
 ble aid and advice when a fatal pestilence swept over 
 this part of our State. He did not despise what must 
 have seemed to him the day of small things. Our li- 
 brary and apparatus, nay, the Institution throughout, 
 has reason to remember with veneration and love this 
 early and steadfast friend. Nor should we omit to 
 mention a brother of this man of note, a true English 
 gentleman, Charles Vaughan, Esq., a member of our 
 Overseers ; nor a brother-in-law, John Merrick, Esq., 
 who a year or two later emigrated to this country ; 
 whose superior powers of conversation and the elegant 
 simplicity of whose rural residence made it attractive 
 to all visitors whether of our own or other lands. The 
 elastic, upright carriage, the active interest and intelli- 
 gence of this gentleman of fourscore, and his venera- 
 ble flowing locks are at once recalled to mind by re- 
 cent graduates who have met him year after year at 
 the Mineralogical Lecture, at which, in his annual vis- 
 its, he loved to refresh his mind on subjects which were 
 his great delight. All these gentlemen were unfailing 
 friends, and through them relatives of the family in 
 England and Jamaica have been valued friends, of the 
 College almost to this day. This remarkable cluster 
 of families of refinement and culture made the town 
 of Hallowell for many years more known abroad than 
 any other in the District of Maine. 
 
 But to return to the life of the College. Emanuel Col- 
 lege at Cambridge in England was founded in 1585 by 
 Sir Walter Mildmay. When he presented himself at 
 Court, Queen Elizabeth said to him: "Sir Walter, I 
 
25 
 
 hear you have erected a Puritan foundation." "No, 
 your majesty/' he replied, " far be it from me to coun- 
 tenance anything contrary to your established laws. 
 But I have set an acorn, which when it becomes an 
 oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof." 
 We have reason to thank God for some of the fruits 
 of his planting ; for on that foundation were reared 
 many of our Pilgrim Fathers, who, by the good hand 
 of God upon them, planted in this new world the seeds 
 of religion and civil freedom. He prepared room before 
 the mighty growth, caused it to take deep root, and it 
 hath filled the land. 
 
 At the close of our first chapel service, held on 
 the lower floor of Massachusetts Hall, the mem- 
 bers of the first class were lingering in front of the 
 building, and Thorndike, idly perhaps, planted an 
 acorn by the doorway. It vegetated, and, guarded 
 from injury, grew. Some interest attached to the tiny 
 shrub when it was found the next season to be still 
 alive. By permission of the President, who mean- 
 while had removed to the house erected for him, it 
 was transplanted to a corner of his garden. The acorn 
 has now become a large tree, and birds of the air 
 lodge in its branches, — an emblem of the constant 
 growth of the College, more vigorous, however, as 
 being in a more genial soil for the rearing of souls 
 than our plain affords for any vegetable product. We 
 owe grateful acknowledgements to that Providence 
 which appointed such men to give character and posi- 
 tion at once to the new Seminary; men of compre- 
 hensive views, who labored to lay a broad foundation 
 on which to build for ages to come. Most of them 
 4 
 
26 
 
 were sons of Harvard, and were resolved that the re- 
 quirements for admission and the curriculum of the 
 College should be on the level of the oldest Institu- 
 tions. Previous to the opening of the College, the 
 President and Professor elect were commissioned to visit 
 the other Colleges, and to bring back the results of 
 their experience for the benefit of the new enterprise. 
 Pres. M'Keen was an alumnus of Dartmouth, but had 
 been a Pastor in the vicinity of Cambridge. The first 
 Professors and Tutors were all from Harvard; and 
 thus the infant life of the College was nurtured under 
 the best influences and advantages which the country 
 could afford. 
 
 At the Commencement of 1810, to which I have 
 referred, I, a mere child, was shown by the kindness 
 of Mr. Bradford, a Trustee, my father's friend and 
 neighbor, the College Library, a vast collection, it 
 seemed to me, occupying the whole of one end of the 
 old Chapel Hall and counting more than one thousand 
 volumes. I can remember, that previously, in 1807, 
 at the time of the dedication of the church on the 
 site of that in which we are now assembled, Prof. 
 Cleaveland showed my father, who led me by the 
 hand, the Cabinet of Bowdoin College, all embraced 
 in a small case in an apartment of Massachusetts Hall 
 on the lower floor, a common college room. It had 
 been President M'Keen's parlor, and is included in the 
 present Chemical Lecture room. Chaptal's Chemistry 
 was the text-book in that science. Lectures were 
 given, so far as could be done, with a few retorts and 
 a gas apparatus presented to the College by Prof. 
 Dexter of Harvard. This apparatus has some interest 
 
2? 
 
 attached to it • for it was manufactured in the labora- 
 tory of Dr. Beddoes of the " Pneumatic Institution," 
 as it was called, at Bristol in England ; and at the 
 time it was made, young Davy, afterwards the world- 
 renowned Sir Humphrey Davy, was an assistant. This 
 apparatus has been used every year since. Though 
 the Professor had a few specimens to show, Mineralogy 
 had not fairly seen the light. This new science, when 
 I was admitted to the Freshman class of 1812-13, had 
 been added to the curriculum. That year was sig- 
 nalized by the addition of the large and valuable 
 private library of Mr. Bowdoin and the gallery of 
 paintings. Our annual Catalogue, printed, as was 
 then the style, on a single broad sheet to be fastened 
 to the wall of the College room, presented the array 
 of President, two Professors, two Tutors, two Resident 
 Graduates, and thirty-seven students. A permanent 
 increase of undergraduates began to be perceived in 
 1816. 
 
 Not to pursue details, we cannot but remark on the 
 influence of a College even so humble and unpretend- 
 ing. It is said of Luther, that when asked why he 
 was accustomed, as he entered his school, to bow to 
 his pupils, he replied: "because I enter the presence 
 of future burgomasters, princes and dukes of the 
 empire." Could one, with like foresight and like feel- 
 ing of reverence for dignities, have entered that plainest 
 of all structures, the College chapel of those days, 
 where were assembled my own contemporaries, or the 
 private rooms where they gathered for recitation, he 
 might well have doffed his hat, and with profound 
 obeisance have rendered homage to the youth before 
 
28 
 
 him ; for in those seven classes, with an average of eleven 
 members, future years were to reveal a distinguished 
 Senator of the United States, four RejDresentatives in 
 Congress, a Governor of the State, a Chief Justice of 
 the Supreme Court, two Attorney Generals, a President 
 of a College, four college Professors, the present senior 
 Secretary of the American Board of Missions, the 
 Head of one of the oldest and most honored of the 
 Academies of New England,* and many besides, who 
 in all the professions have rendered valuable service 
 and exerted important influence. 
 
 But such results, — and how they multiply in our sub- 
 sequent history we shall soon see, — are not all to be 
 ascribed to the College ; for the best appointed college 
 cannot create. Its object is to form-, and, although, as 
 we have already intimated, during the infant years of 
 our College the enterprise seemed to those who thought 
 themselves quite in the neighborhood of Attica, like 
 setting up a school of philosophy and belles lettres in 
 Boeotia, or on the far oif shores of Thrace, it ap- 
 peared in due time, that the acorn, after all, was 
 planted in a vigorous soil. 
 
 The most unwelcome agency for our Alma Mater 
 I ever undertook, was in an effort some years since on 
 the sea-board to procure funds for her pressing necessi- 
 ties. I returned with the conviction that I had proved 
 a most unsuccessful solicitor in her behalf. An indi- 
 vidual of abundant means, who knew my purpose, 
 forestalled any personal application from the unwel- 
 come visitor by a somewhat violent tirade in the 
 street in a blustering winter's clay on the uselessness 
 
 * Phillips, Exeter, N. H. 
 
29 
 
 of collegiate education and of Colleges. He knew 
 better, doubtless, though he gained his point. We 
 confess, that many have had all the advantages of the 
 best appointed college, and have squandered them, 
 and become worse than useless men. So have many 
 proved worthless who were never within College Halls, 
 sons of affluence and high station, who would better 
 never have been born. 
 
 Could our Alma Mater have form and speech, and 
 the Genius of the Pine tree State summon her to give 
 account of her stewardship of the charter which was 
 committed to her keeping sixty-four years ago, by 
 which she was enjoined " to promote virtue, piety and 
 the knowledge of languages and of the useful and liberal 
 arts and sciences," with no undue exultation she might 
 unroll the catalogue of her sons who laid here the 
 foundation of their subsequent career of usefulness 
 and honor, and show the names of a President of the 
 United States, six Senators and sixteen Eepresentatives 
 in the National Congress, four Governors, one Chief Jus- 
 tice and five Justices of Supreme Courts, six Presidents 
 and thirty-four Professors of Colleges and Professional 
 Schools. She might refer to the two hundred Clergy, 
 many of whom were led within these Halls to conse- 
 crate their lives to their Redeemer, — some, as the event 
 has proved, called to eminent service in their Master's 
 cause; to the model Missionary,* whose name is now 
 held in highest consideration at the Sublime Porte, and 
 will be handed down to coming generations with affec- 
 tion and reverence throughout the dominions of the 
 Sultan ; to the Pastorf for several years of a promi- 
 
 * Cyrus Hamlin, 1834. f George L. Frentiss, 1835. 
 
30 
 
 nent Church in the Presbyterian communion in the 
 city of New York; — to another,* by whose earnest, 
 fearless eloquence the Church of the Puritans on 
 Union Square has been stirred as the trees of the 
 wood by a mighty wind; — and yet a third,f whose 
 learning and general culture and fine theological mind 
 have made the Theological Chair of the Union Semi- 
 nary one of the ablest in the land ; and to another, J 
 whose acquisitions in sacred literature and resources 
 of general learning, and his often quaint, pointed and 
 always simple, yet vigorous Saxon have given him an 
 honored name at the West as well as among ourselves; 
 to others too, fast rising into eminence, as expounders 
 and defenders of the faith in our own and other States; 
 and to many besides, who, though they be not called 
 Rabbi, — for Alma Mater has not been lavish of her 
 honors, even upon her own children, — though they be 
 not heard on platforms, yet by their devotion, stead- 
 fastness in doctrine, and earnestness of life have praise 
 in the churches. She might also refer her inquisitor 
 to her own Courts of Law and show there the major 
 part of the practicing attorneys from among her own 
 sons; and those too who have gained honorable dis- 
 tinction as advocates and jurists in other States. She 
 could remind her of a son of Bowdoin, her own son 
 too,§ on whose lips courts of law and crowded halls of 
 National and State legislation, and masses on political 
 fields hung enchanted by the marvel of his ceaseless 
 flow of language, metaphor, poetic illustration, and ar- 
 gument; — of another, 1 1 her own, and our Alma Mater's 
 
 * George B. Cheever, 1825. f Henry B.Smith, 1834. $ Calvin E. Stowe, 1824. 
 $ Sergeant S. Prentiss, 1826. ]| Samuel S. Boyd, 1826. 
 
son too, whose professional life has been spent in the 
 State of Mississippi, whose eminent success at the bar 
 and whose reputation for legal learning, superior 
 ability and high accomplishment might have elevated 
 him to the Bench of the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, had not local considerations ruled the day. 
 
 Our Alma Mater in rendering account of herself 
 could also refer to names honored in letters. A friend 
 of my own who edited the U. S. Literary Gazette, pub- 
 lished in Boston, (1824 to 1826,) once asked me about 
 a young man in our College who sent him so fine 
 poetry. It was Longfellow, a fair haired youth, bloom- 
 ing with health and early promise. I reported well 
 of him, as one whose scholarship and character was 
 quite equal to his poetry. Were we to visit the court 
 of the accomplished Pedro II., Emperor of Brazil, or 
 any court in Europe, or any circle of literary culture 
 in the world of letters, we should find his a familiar 
 name to all lovers of purity, simplicity, grace and 
 matchless skill of versification, and his Psalm of Life a 
 minstrel's song for his own and other lands. Our 
 Alma Mater could point to the name of another* of the 
 same class, whose success in a peculiar and attractive 
 vein of fiction, and his vigor of conception and of style 
 have given him rank among the most marked fictitious 
 writers of the clay. She could mention two brothers,*]" 
 whose name is a favorite with childhood and youth, as 
 were those of Barbauld and Edgeworth forty years 
 ago, or which, in writings designed to illustrate the 
 fundamental truths of the Christian faith and life, or on 
 grave historic themes, is familiar wherever the English 
 language is read. 
 
 * Nathaniel Hawthorne. f Jacob Abbot, 1820. John S. C. Abbot, 1825. 
 
32 
 
 But our Alma Mater, with a true mother's heart, 
 would never forget that the children who cherish her 
 memory and the great interests dear to her with equal 
 devotion, perhaps with equal effect, may be quite as 
 much among those whose acts and agencies are less 
 known. Remember the saying of Carlyle : " The 
 hands of forgotten brave men have made this a world 
 for us." Every educated man may be, the great 
 majority are, lights where they dwell. All cannot be 
 suns in the same system, but the faint glimmer of the 
 distant star, which we should hardly miss were it 
 blotted out from our heaven, reveals a central orb 
 blazing with effulgence in its own sphere. 
 
 The guardian genius of the State might require of 
 our Alma Mater account of what has been done at 
 this her own home in the cause of science and learn- 
 ing and religion, and she might remind her, that one,* 
 who more perhaps than any other may be called the 
 Father of Mineralogy in this country, fifty-two years 
 ago began his studies with her approving smiles over 
 a peck of Vermont stones obtained from his friend Dr. 
 Dexter of Boston; then gained a new impulse from a 
 small cabinet of foreign specimens from France, which 
 her chief patron had bequeathed to her keeping ; and 
 then ten years subsequently, which had been filled 
 with long days of labor and short nights of rest, sent 
 forth a work on the new science, which gave him a 
 name at once in every school of science in Europe. 
 A gentleman has told me within a day or two, that he 
 visited the fine cabinet of minerals in the Collegio 
 Romano at Rome in 1855, and the accomplished Pro- 
 fessor of Mineralogy asked him, if among the American 
 
 * Prof. Cleaveland. 
 
33 
 
 savans he knew Prof. Cleaveland, and expressed him- 
 self in terms of high commendation of this work and 
 inquired with great interest when the long promised 
 new edition would appear. Furthermore she might 
 say, that in the midst of the meagre appointments and 
 resources of her earlier years and in manifold labors 
 and cares, there was here meditated and composed 
 Addresses for the graduating classes, and Lectures on 
 great doctrines of Christian faith, which have given 
 the author* a name among the ablest moralists and 
 theologians of the land ; — that by another,-)- who in 
 retirement is spending a cruda viridisque senedus and 
 devotes himself to literary labor, was given to the 
 press a series of Baccalaureate and other discourses 
 replete with the lessons of wisdom, experience and 
 Christian devotion, and honorable to the literature of 
 the country ; — that in the stated calls of office a text- 
 book in Rhetoric % was here composed which was re- 
 published in London, has passed through sixty editions 
 in our own country, and still maintains its position as 
 the best elementary treatise on that subject; — that 
 here have been laboriously digested and published, a 
 system of Intellectual Philosophy and a Treatise on 
 the Will, 1 1 which have been adopted as text-books 
 in many of our highest Institutions and in most of 
 our schools and academies ; while the same laborious 
 pen has produced other works on topics of practical 
 religion, read throughout our own country, commended 
 in England, and within a few months read with interest 
 and high approval by one of the lights of the Univer- 
 
 *Pres. Appleton. f Rev. Dr. Allen of Northampton, Mass., late President of 
 the College. % By Prof. Newman. || By Prof. Upham. 
 5 
 
34 
 
 sity of Gottingen. She could also say, that in obe- 
 dience to the same calls of her daily life a System of 
 Algebra* was prepared and published several years ago 
 which first adapted the best French methods to the 
 American mind, and received the warm commendation 
 of the American mathematician, Bowditch, was adopt- 
 ed as a text-book for several years at Harvard, and 
 has been long used and is still used in the Protestant 
 Seminary at Constantinople, on account of its adapta- 
 tion not to the "American only, but the human mind ;" 
 which has been followed by a whole course of College 
 Mathematics, crowned with a Calculus, so clearly and 
 satisfactorily developed and with so much originality, 
 as to draw forth emphatic approval in high quarters, 
 and constituting, it is affirmed by competent judges, an 
 era in the means of elementary instruction in this 
 profound and difficult branch ; — a course of mathe- 
 matics adopted, she could remind her questioner, in 
 her own public and private schools, and introduced 
 into other Colleges. 
 
 Besides these more conspicuous returns made by the 
 College to her guardian State, if pressed still farther, 
 she might complete her account and refer to the in- 
 fluence the College has exerted and is still exerting 
 on the interests of popular education. When she sends 
 forth an annual contribution of from one hundred to 
 one hundred and fifty teachers to our common schools, 
 and moreover supplies competent instructors for our 
 High Schools and Academies, under their influence 
 many a youth, and through him many a neighborhood, 
 from the St. Croix to the Piscataqua, has been stimu- 
 
 * By Prof. Smyth. 
 
35 
 
 lated to higher aims. Slie may with reason insist, 
 that to her oldest College the State is indebted for a 
 fair proportion at least of the honorable character she 
 holds among the States of the Union. She might 
 add, too, that the officers of the College have done 
 somewhat in promoting the cause of popular in- 
 struction by personal efforts. This town might be sum- 
 moned to testify what a debt she owes to some of them 
 in establishing and perfecting, amid serious opposition 
 and conflict, its present excellent system of graded 
 schools. Nay, were the truth spoken, every town in 
 the State owes a tribute to one of our number 
 especially, who, by personal advocacy of the graded 
 system of schools before a Committee of the Legisla- 
 ture, with a force of argument and earnest persuasion 
 that made some of our Legislators marvel, that a 
 College Professor could labor so heartily and so effi- 
 ciently, and even for common schools, was instru- 
 mental in effecting that a particular provision in rela- 
 tion to the schools of this town should become a 
 general law for the whole State. 
 
 As we have said already, we by no means claim all 
 this for the College. The acorn was planted in a 
 kindly soil. The fact, itself, that the District of Maine 
 was remote from the centres of commerce, wealth and 
 social life, — that it was so largely an unredeemed wil- 
 derness, — and furthermore its three hundred miles of 
 sea-coast,- — last of all the impulse communicated to her 
 prosperity when she assumed the dignity of an inde- 
 pendent State, — all combined to invite the accession 
 of an energetic, intelligent, self-reliant, enterprising 
 class of citizens. The children of so hardy a parentage, 
 
36 
 
 it might be expected, would exhibit similar qualities 
 of character. Some of us have heard the testimony 
 borne by the present Head of the College to the im- 
 pression made upon him when he took the chair of 
 Sacred Literature in the Theological Seminary at Ban- 
 gor. He was struck by the indications he saw of supe- 
 rior elements of efficiency and usefulness in the young 
 men he found there, many of them recent graduates 
 of this College. Similar testimonials we have from our 
 Medical Professors, who assure us, that a comparison 
 of the lecture room here with the lecture rooms of 
 other States is honorable in a high degree to Maine. 
 Quite recently, if I do not misjudge, Mr. President,* 
 proofs have been given again and again in the Halls 
 of Congress, and elsewhere, that Maine and our Alma 
 Mater too must have had brave materials out of which 
 to make such men. 
 
 The College has at times had an evil report, de- 
 served it may be, for what institution is long free from 
 reproach. It would be a marvel, if there were not al- 
 ways unworthy members of a college community; — 
 youth, who by some sad mistake found admission 
 among their betters, but who were quite as likely to 
 have brought their worthlessness with them, as to have 
 contracted it after they came. Could any College or 
 University Halls have speech, they might reveal scenes, 
 at the remembrance of which the actors blush with 
 shame, and always will; but more, which when long 
 years have passed and results have appeared, will quick- 
 en and move to earnest thought and reverence the 
 visitor that turns his steps thither. These are the 
 
 * Hon. William P. Fessenden. 
 
37 
 
 memories and associations which constitute what has 
 been called the invisible wealth of University or Col- 
 lege, scarcely less to be prized than libraries or museums 
 or galleries of art. The visitor at Oxford fails not to 
 go and muse beneath the shades of "Addison's walk;" 
 or to gaze at the tower over the gate-way of Trinity, 
 in which Newton solved the problem of the Universe; 
 or beneath the Tower of Pembroke to look for the 
 window from which Johnson, struggling with poverty, 
 but too proud to receive a gift, flung into the quad- 
 rangle the shoes which some unknown, sympathizing 
 fellow-collegian had placed at his door ; and to gain 
 new aspirations from the thought, that he is breathing 
 the same atmosphere that the Hookers, the Chilling- 
 worths and the Lockes breathed two centuries ago ; or 
 at Cambridge he will seek where Milton felt "the stir- 
 rings of the gift divine," and his love of freedom kin- 
 dled into an unquenchable flame. Our American sys- 
 tem does not contemplate resident scholarships, and is 
 therefore not likely to be rich in such memories, still, 
 college life among ourselves, is not, as it may often seem 
 to the looker on, all a frolic and a farce. Countless are 
 the tales of humor and fun, which proceed from all 
 College and University Halls. But there is a hidden 
 life within their precincts, just as there is in each one's 
 breast. Nobler aspirations, the pursuit of higher aims, 
 the protracted labors, the generous contests, and the 
 buoyant hopes of pure and ennobling ambition, are 
 never published abroad. It is not so in subsequent life. 
 But the secret is revealed sometimes in private records, 
 in correspondence where friend unbosoms the most 
 sacred feelings to friend, or in the diary where the 
 
38 
 
 scholar notes them for his own eye alone. The larger 
 part of those whose names are borne on college cata- 
 logues, we trust, have enrolled themselves for a high 
 purpose, and know for what they have come, and are 
 ever pressing toward their goal ; and in every college 
 precinct it may well excite reflection, that many are 
 there laying foundations for future usefulness, perhaps 
 fame. Would that every youth, when he is received 
 to the arms of our gracious mother, might be inspired 
 with the ambition to add what he may to make this 
 the home of elevating associations and remembrances 
 in coming years! Such memories stimulate the sense 
 of obligation felt by her sons to their Alma Mater and 
 enliven their devotion to her interests and welfare. 
 The highest minds and purest and warmest hearts 
 most highly appreciate and profoundly cherish such 
 attachments. The Marquis of Wellesley, a great name 
 in the British annals of this century, at the close of 
 his career of great achievements in war and states- 
 manship, when life was wasting, expressed the desire, 
 that his body might be laid in the chapel of Eton Col- 
 lege. This sentiment is finely expressed in the lines, 
 one of the last productions of his pen: 
 
 " Sit mihi, primitiasqne meas lenuesque triumphos 
 " Sit, revocare tuos ; dulcis Etona, dies. 
 "Auspice Te, summse mirari culmina famas, 
 " Et purum antiquse lucis adire jubar 
 "Edidici puer, et jam primo in liraite vitse, 
 " Ingenuas verse laudis amare vias." 
 
 Of his yet more renowned brother, the late Duke 
 of Wellington, it is related, that on some visit to the 
 same Eton in his old age, while gazing on those well 
 remembered scenes of his boyhood, when allusion was 
 
39 
 
 made to the exploits of his manhood, he exclaimed, 
 " Yes, yes, it was at Eton, that Waterloo was won." 
 
 We should do our Alma Mater great injustice, and 
 should be untrue to the kind Providence which has 
 guarded and blessed the College, if we omitted particu- 
 lar reference to the Christian devotion which watched 
 over its incunabula. Succeeding generations will have 
 occasion to remember with gratitude, that the choice 
 of the first President fell on one who, of a true catholic 
 spirit, with firmness and wisdom gave the right direc- 
 tion to the religious character of the College, and that 
 on his early removal by death, the weighty trust was 
 committed to another of like spirit, who to ardent love 
 of learning added deep devotion to the interests of true 
 piety, and whose great weight of character established, 
 as we trust, on a sure foundation the vital interests of 
 the College. We would ever bear in mind, that the 
 solicitude of Christian people and of the churches of 
 Christ in behalf of this Institution, constitute an essen- 
 tial element of its prosperity. However imposing its 
 array of edifices and appointments, we know, that they 
 are of little account without the cordial sympathy and 
 prayers of ministers and churches in its behalf Let 
 but the suspicion possess the public mind of unsound- 
 ness in a high-toned moral sentiment, and of treachery 
 to the faith and spirit of Protestant Christianity, — the 
 flower of our youth will not be sent to imbibe poison 
 within its walls, but will be committed elsewhere to 
 better influences. Would time permit to portray the 
 interior Christian life of the College from its infancy, 
 sometimes faint and flickering, then breaking forth in 
 brightness, could you have listended to the story, as it 
 
40 
 
 has recently been composed by the Collins Professor, 
 from a wide correspondence with graduates of almost 
 every class to 1839, with care and discrimination and 
 a just estimate of influences, deserving the highest com- 
 mendation, above all with fervent recognition through- 
 out of the good hand of God upon the College, it would 
 awaken in all hearts grateful surprise and warmest 
 gratitude to Him who has ever been watching over the 
 College, and who, in answer to fervent prayer, will con- 
 tinue to watch over it still. 
 
 The graduates of earlier years often contrast the 
 present curriculum, apparatus, the means and methods 
 of instruction, with those of their day. It would be a 
 reproach indeed, if, as years and college generations 
 sweep along, there were no improvement and advance. 
 At my own admission, forty-six years ago, I was exam- 
 ined in Virgil, Cicero, the Greek Testament and the 
 four fundamental rules of Arithmetic. That was fully 
 up to the standard of the day. The course of college 
 studies was about in the same ratio to that of the pres- 
 ent time. The advance which subsequent years have 
 made in what is required of candidates for admission 
 and in the amount accomplished in the studies of the 
 College, does not seem to me so worthy of notice, as 
 the marked improvement in the style of teaching. We 
 certainly may claim that methods of instruction in 
 some branches have been entirely changed, and in all, 
 are more efficient and are attended with more impor- 
 tant results. For example, the blackboard, now an essen- 
 tial of common school apparatus, was not introduced 
 until 1826. Teaching throughout is no longer empiri- 
 cal, but scientific. In the profession of teaching the 
 
41 
 
 life, labors and example of a Dr. Arnold have signal- 
 ized this half century. If I may borrow the language 
 of commerce, so familiar to us Yankees, the master of 
 Kugby has raised stock in this calling many per cent. 
 His intense fervor, his truthfulness, profound conscien- 
 tiousness, sincere and fervent piety, energy and cour- 
 age, aided by a vigorous, independent understanding, 
 and embellished by learning and high culture, have 
 given a new position to the teacher. It was seen, that 
 a man of first rate powers and cultivation might de- 
 vote himself enthusiastically to this work. The result 
 is, the general advance of education in the community 
 at large ; as much even in the Common Schools, per- 
 haps even more, than in the University. Children in 
 the schools of the Village District of this town now 
 accomplish more in discipline and actual attainment 
 in some branches, than Freshmen in College forty years 
 ago. And thus is imposed on us the necessity of in- 
 creased activity to maintain our standing ; — not so 
 much by multiplying branches, as by the extent and 
 method and thoroughness of instruction. 
 
 Much has been written and more declaimed on the 
 subject of Collegiate Education. Schemes have been 
 devised with the view of popularizing, as it has been 
 termed, the highest Seminaries, in order to adapt them 
 to what is alleged to be the increased demands of the 
 age. A demand has been pressed with great urgency 
 and persistence, that they shall be thrown open to 
 those who are designed for mechanical and commercial 
 pursuits ; in a word, that they be made more practical ; 
 the implication being, that, as their system has been 
 ordered for centuries, they are not practical. All I 
 
42 
 
 have to say is, that strictures, to which the English Uni- 
 versities have been exposed, do not by any means ap- 
 ply to the Collegiate System of this country. When 
 we hear or read sarcasms on the arbitrary routine of 
 our College System, — on "the ritual of Harvard or 
 Yale," and the repugnance to control of some strong- 
 willed youth commended, and Sir Walter Scott's remark 
 quoted, that " the best part of every man's education is 
 that which he gives himself;" and again Sir Benjamin 
 Brodie's, that " high education is a leveller which, while 
 it tends to improve ordinary minds, may in some cases 
 prevent the full expansion of genius ;" and yet again, 
 Dr. Newman's," how much better for the active and 
 thoughtful intellect to eschew the College and Univer- 
 sity than to submit to a drudging so ignoble, a mock- 
 ery so contumelious;" — we think it enough to reply, 
 that Sir Walter did not cease to lament to his last days 
 his misimprovement of the curriculum of Edinburgh ; 
 that, in the general system of public education every- 
 where, there is the preliminary course for professional 
 study, and next the professional course, each having 
 its distinct province and each essential to the general 
 end ; that no system can be made for genius, or the 
 conceit of genius alone ; and, furthermore, that as 
 to what is called the unpractical in the collegiate 
 course of study, that system is eminently practical 
 which furnishes the mind with the instruments and 
 the forces wherewith to apply itself to the work of life. 
 Said Dr. Arnold ; "It is not knowledge, but the means 
 of gaining knowledge, which I have to teach : " — pre- 
 cisely what our college system professes to do. 
 
 Let it also be borne in mind, that every effort made 
 
43 
 
 in this country thus to "popularize" education, from 
 the "parallel courses," (the classics being excluded from 
 one, and both ending in the usual Academic degree,) 
 down through the scheme of University students as 
 they were denominated, to the last great show of 
 popularization, have, it is believed, signally failed to 
 meet expectation. The argument, as set forth with 
 marked ability by the Faculty of Yale several years 
 since, and in repeated discussions down to the recent 
 able and satisfactory exposition of the subject by Profes- 
 sor Barnard, late of Alabama, now President of the 
 University of Mississippi, is a triumphant vindication 
 of those Institutions which have resisted innovations 
 on the judgment of centuries, and the wisest friends 
 of the highest education have become settled in their 
 convictions. The true policy, in our country es- 
 pecially, is, if we would secure the highest end of 
 education, to guard with jealousy the interests of 
 thorough scholarship. To lower the standard of disci- 
 pline and attainment in the college, as experience 
 shows, tends to reduce the standard at every subordi- 
 nate degree in the system. Talk as we may about 
 the practical, and in estimate of its importance we yield 
 to none, there is demand, never greater than at this 
 day, for true scholarship, as much as for engineering, 
 or for skill in business. Those who have been longest 
 engaged in the reciting room are sometimes too fully 
 aware, that each generation requires more minute and 
 extensive* attainments to meet their wants; that 
 scholarship is not retrograde, but on the advance. 
 We trust it is so with ourselves. It was a testimony 
 borne many years ago to this College at Andover, by 
 
44 
 
 one whose name this country holds in honor as the 
 Father of Biblical science in the land, a testimony 
 honorable and gratifying at the time, that the gra- 
 duates of Bowdoin were characterized by sound schol- 
 arship. Better cherish pride of scholarship than 
 pride of numbers ; in accordance with the charac- 
 teristic utterance of President Quincy of Harvard, 
 "Don't count, but iveigh us." What is always a trait of 
 solid attainment, our sons have generally exhibited a 
 becoming modesty. If any of them have discovered 
 that Bowdoin is the centre of the world, the news has 
 not yet reached her ears. Could the case be sub- 
 mitted to the body of our graduates, whether it shall 
 yet be more true, that a Bowdoin degree shall mean 
 what it bears on the parchment, we cannot doubt 
 what the verdict would be. Let us solicit the co- 
 operation of all who have concern in our preparatory 
 schools, to sustain and raise our standard. I am sure, 
 as having occasion to feel the pressure of such in- 
 quiries, I shall be pardoned if I express the earnest 
 desire, that candidates for admission may not be en- 
 couraged to ascertain, if they can, the lowest possible 
 amount of preparation, with which they may gain an 
 admittatur — with conditions. 
 
 But ah ! with all such professions of zeal for high 
 scholarship and such claims of progress, how far short 
 we fall of the European standard need not be con- 
 fessed in this presence. The deficiencies in our best 
 Colleges, to one who has witnessed the process or the 
 results of the German method in particular, are appal- 
 ling ; and the observer may at first be disposed to 
 depreciate unduly what is really accomplished by our 
 
45 
 
 own system. He may well reflect, however, that with 
 the pupil in a German Gymnasium or University, 
 learning is the end ; with us it is only a means. In 
 them, moral influence and control, the moulding of 
 character, is scarcely made of account ; with us it is 
 held to be essential. With them again, the wants and 
 claims of society and of our fellow-men are not made 
 a prominent end and aim of the great duty of life ; 
 with us the great lesson of Christ Jesus, that we are 
 not to live for ourselves, is inculcated as the true end 
 of our being. In a word our system embraces a dis- 
 tinct recognition of the religion of Christ throughout. 
 The German trains and disciplines scholars, — ours, men ; 
 and it is a fair question, whether what we have as yet 
 lost in the higher scholarship we do not gain in the 
 broader culture of a true humanity. Let it be our 
 aim, brothers, to do what we may to elevate the 
 standard of our scholarship, that we may meet the 
 pressing demands of the age, and to be yet more 
 earnest in our efforts to invigorate the Christian life 
 of the College. 
 
 Our Alma Mater, could she speak her mind in the 
 ear of her children, would embrace this opportunity 
 to reveal some secret causes of discontent. She must 
 have a word with them ; for who so interested as her 
 own Alumni, and to whom can she look better for 
 relief. She is too proud to ask alms. But with the 
 rest of the sisterhood, she is dependent on her friends; 
 and though she has reason to acknowledge kindnesses 
 she has experienced, she confesses to some vanity to 
 sustain herself respectably in the family. Some of 
 her sons have planned an Alumni Hall for the public 
 
46 
 
 occasions of the College, especially for such re-unions 
 as the present, and for the Libraries of the Societies ; 
 and she pleads a strait for this convenience. Her 
 Library is far below the times, even for an Insti- 
 tution which does not aspire to the compass of a Uni- 
 versity. The Philosopher of Malmsbury once said in 
 his quaint manner : " if he had read as much as other 
 men, he should have known as little." The heluo libro- 
 rum is a rara avis in his terris, and it would, not be 
 well to stint the library in order to restrain the appe- 
 tite for books. At this hour each department of instruc- 
 tion has most pressing wants, and might well be clamor- 
 ous for a supply. The great deficiency of the country, 
 a serious embarrassment and hindrance in any sphere 
 of investigation, lies in the meagreness of the public 
 libraries. All the college libraries in the United 
 States would not make a Bodleian ; and the Bod- 
 leian, it was affirmed not long since, receives larger 
 additions in a single year, than Harvard in a quarter 
 of a century. 
 
 Our Alma Mater, were opportunity given, could 
 press the claims of our philosophical apparatus, of 
 which she would blush to expose its inferiority to the 
 world without. She would be grateful for the found- 
 ing of prizes in the Classics, or Mathematics or Belles 
 Lettres, as a means of quickening influence on many 
 a studious, well deserving youth. The Berkeley pre- 
 mium at Yale, founded by the Bishop of Cloyne, has 
 been won by many whose names are held in honor 
 throughout New England. Above all would she say 
 a word for many a virtuous youth, who, with aspirations 
 kindled in some village home for the highest education 
 
47 
 
 as a means of the highest good, at length is received 
 to her embrace, not knowing whence his paltry ex- 
 chequer is to be supplied for the expense of his col- 
 lege course ; who through his four years scarcely 
 knows a vacation; toils in the exhausting labor of a 
 winter school, dire necessity compelling him even to 
 encroach largely on the college term and study; then 
 returns worn and weary to rejoin his class, with halt- 
 ing step to recover the ground he has lost by absence ; 
 and, with a spirit depressed by the anxieties which 
 poverty only knows, under the burden of toil and care 
 and effort beyond his strength to bear, to sink perhaps 
 into an untimely grave. A comparatively trifling, 
 stated relief might have cheered and spared him for 
 useful life in the world ; and Alma Mater asks her 
 sons who have known such, and have sympathized with 
 them, to afford the means of aid and relief. No dis- 
 paragement, all know, is cast upon their fellow students 
 when w r e say, that in every college from those who 
 have been taught by bitter experience the full mean- 
 ing of the res angusta domi, have come her most valued 
 jewels. The history of the College affords at once an 
 argument and a motive in favor of her appeal. In 
 1817 the liberality of the State of Massachusetts grant- 
 ed each of her colleges, Harvard, Williams, and Bow- 
 doin, townships of land, a certain portion of the pro- 
 ceeds to be applied for the relief of deserving young 
 men who needed such aid, in the relinquishment of 
 the charge for tuition. At that time it was found that 
 two-thirds of our students were from the wealthier 
 class of the community. The immediate effect of the 
 encouragement afforded by this wise and generous care 
 
48 
 
 of the State for her children, was to reverse the pro- 
 portion. No College can pursue a better policy than 
 to offer inducements for that class of pupils who are 
 likely to value most the advantages and privileges 
 which it affords. Many of her sister Institutions offer 
 such inducements at this time beyond what our Alma 
 Mater can do. 
 
 We have been contemplating chiefly the past of the 
 College, what it has accomplished, and that in a gen- 
 eral and cursory way. What is to be its future ? We 
 believe broad foundations have been laid, in the right 
 spirit, and the rising superstructure gladdens many 
 eyes and encourages hope. For present and future 
 prosperity, next to Him, without whom they that work 
 labor in vain, our Alma Mater must look for her main 
 reliance on her thousand sons. Her vigor and enlarge- 
 ment must depend on the quick and active sympathy 
 which is fostered between her and them. If she prove 
 not unworthy of them, they will not be unmindful of 
 her. Over the great gate of the University of Padua 
 the inscription is still read : " Sic inc/redere, lit te ipso 
 quotidie doctior ; sic egredere, id in dies patrice christicmceque 
 reipuhlicce uiilior evadas." Alas, in poor Italy and under 
 such a dominion, ecclesiastical and civil, a mere form 
 of words! Let the sentiment there inscribed in living 
 stone be in-wrought by faithful hands, day by day, into 
 the minds and hearts of all who, generation after gen- 
 eration, gather within these Halls, and how will the 
 prayers and hopes of the founders be realized ! Then, 
 here will be the seat of liberal learning and culture, 
 and of a pure and elevated life. 
 
49 
 
 In the name of my colleagues in the instruction of 
 the College, a word of congratulation and most cordial 
 greeting to the sons of Bowdoin who have come up to 
 this home gathering. Some of us are yet young in 
 this her most responsible service. Others, through 
 many years of participation in this labor, have had more 
 or less of agency in laying foundations for the larger 
 part of those now assembled. One of our number, a 
 singular example of energy, of promptness ever true to 
 the hour, fidelity, and consummate skill in the lecture or 
 reciting room, during fifty-three years, has taught every 
 son of Bowdoin. Need we say, that teachers remem- 
 ber pupils; — often recall with vivid distinctness their 
 familiar forms, as they sat long years ago in the reci- 
 ting room; and that it causes a thrill of gratification 
 to recognize them when they come back again ? They 
 trace them step by step in the progress of life, rejoice 
 in their usefulness, feel themselves to be sharers in their 
 successes, their honors, and their fame. — As their great 
 reward, they would be remembered in return, so far 
 as they deserve to be remembered for devotion to 
 their trust, for jealous pride in the true honor and 
 the highest welfare of pupils and of the College. In 
 hours of anxiety and despondency no such voices of 
 cheer and hope reach their ears, as those of Alma 
 Mater's own sons, giving assurance of their active sym- 
 pathy in whatever, amid the conflicts and struggles of 
 the College, aims for the promotion of its highest in- 
 terests and the establishment of truth and right. 
 
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