Neither Church street nor any of the streets north of Kirkland street, (not then so called,) nor Quincy street, nor any of its parallels, nor Cambridge street, nor, I think, Broadway, nor Harvard street, nor Mount Auburn street, had then been opened. The old Charlestown Road, now known as Kirkland street, (probably the first road opened in Massachusetts after the landing of the venerable progenitor of the orator of the day,) and the old road through Cambridgeport, not a very old road then, for it was laid out about 1793,- furnished the only direct communication with Boston. The only public vehicle was an old-fashioned two-horse stage-coach, which made the trip twice a day. The railway, I need not add, is a thing of yesterday. What Steward Gannett would have thought, if told that in forty years his quiet mansion would give way to a station-house, it would be hard to say.

As to public buildings in the neighborhood of the University, with the exception of the Episcopal church, no one of the churches now standing was then in existence. The old parish church has disappeared, with its square pews, and galleries from which you might almost jump into the pulpit. It occupied a portion of the space between Dane Hall and the old Presidential House. I planted a row of elm and oak trees a few years ago on the spot where it stood, for which, if for nothing else, I hope to be kindly remembered by posterity. The wooden building now used as a gymnasium, and, I believe, for some other purposes, then stood where Lyceum Hall now stands. It was the county court house;

and there I often heard the voice of the venerable Chief Justice Parsons. Graduates' Hall did not exist; but on a part of the site, and behind the beautiful linden trees still flourishing, was an old black wooden house, the residence of the professors of mathematics. A little further to the north, and just at the corner of Church street, which was not then opened, stood what was dignified in the annual college catalogue (which was printed on one side of a sheet of paper, and was a novelty) as "The College House." The cellar is still visible. By the students, this edifice was disrespectfully called "Wiswall's Den," or, for brevity, "the Den." I lived

in it in my freshman year. Whence the name of " Wiswall's Den" was derived, I hardly dare say: there was something worse than "old fogy" about it. There was a dismal tradition that, at some former period, it had been the scene of a murder. A brutal husband had dragged his wife by the hair up and down the stairs, and then killed her. On the anniversary of the murder, and what day that was no one knew, there were sights and sounds, flitting garments daggled in blood, plaintive screams, stridor ferri tractæque catenæ, enough to appall the stoutest sophomore. But, for myself, I can truly say, that I got through my freshman year without having seen the ghost of Mr. Wiswall or his lamented lady. I was not, however, sorry when the twelvemonth was up, and I was transferred to that light, airy, well-ventilated room, No. 20 Hollis; being the inner room, ground-floor, north entry of that ancient and respectable edifice.

As to academic buildings, properly so called, neither Graduates' Hall, Dane Hall, Holworthy, University, or Gore Hall, nor Divinity Hall, nor the Scientific School, nor the Observatory, then existed. Of the fifteen or twenty dwelling-houses in or near the college inclosure, the old Presidential House and the house east of it alone were standing in my time, and one or two then standing are gone. The college buildings then in existence were Massachusetts, Harvard, Hollis, Holden, and Stoughton, the latter of which was built but three years before I entered. On the lower floor of Harvard were the chapel and commons hall; above were the library and the philosophy chamber. But Holden, although the smallest of the five buildings, was, in some respects, the most remarkable. Its western end was divided into four recitation-rooms; its eastern end contained, on the ground-floor, the chemical lecture-room and laboratory; and up stairs the anatomical lecture and dissecting-rooms. In these last-named rooms was given all the instruction to the students of the medical school, and to the undergraduates of the senior class who chose also to attend the lectures. In the four rooms just mentioned, at the western end of the building, the four college classes attended their daily recitations, not in subdivisions as now, but

altogether; the classes being about as large as at present. Yet there was no crowd or inconvenience. There was room for every tutor, and every professor, every course, and every class. The smallest classes filled it; but the largest did not crowd it. Nor was the want of elbow-room ever felt, till we moved out of Holden into ten or fifteen, spacious lecturerooms and recitation-rooms in the other college halls, in which we have suffered greatly for want of accommodation ever since. I really think the name of " Holden" must have something to do with its capacity for holding everybody and every thing.

As to these beautiful grounds, now so great an ornament to the institution, they were far less so then. A handsome white paling bounded them on the west; and there, I think, the change has not been an improvement. Within the grounds, a low unpainted board fence ran along south of Massachusetts and east of Hollis and Stoughton, at a distance of two or three rods, forming an inclosure of the shabbiest kind. The college wood-yard was advantageously posted on the site of University Hall; and further to the north-east, stretched an indefinite extent of wild pasture and whortleberry swamp, the depths of which were rarely penetrated by the most adventurous freshman. Of the trees which add so much to the beauty of the grounds, the largest only date from a period before my day. A large majority of the rest were subsequently planted under the direction of Mr. Higginson, the college steward, and Mr. Lowell, a distinguished member of the Corporation; gentlemen of taste and intelligence, who, by this act of liberal forethought, have earned the thanks of every son of Harvard.

Such was the physical aspect of things within the precincts of the University forty-five years ago. Of the intellectual progress which has been made within the same period, time would fail me to speak in fitting terms. It is a common impression among "outsiders," that institutions like this are of a stereotyped character; fixed, rigid, jealous of innovation, slow to adopt improvements. I leave other collegiate institutions in Europe and America to speak for themselves; but I

aver for Harvard, that, during the last half century, she is not obnoxious to the charge. As long as my experience goes back, she has kept up with the progress of the age. Her growth in every thing that pertains to a place of education has been not less signal than in those material aspects I have hastily sketched. With the exception of the medical department, of which the germ existed, all the professional schools have been added to the University since my graduation; and within the college proper, the means of instruction have been multiplied, and the standard of attainment raised in full proportion to the progress of the country in all other respects. When I entered college, four tutors and three professors formed the academic corps, men never to be mentioned by me but with respect and gratitude; but composing an inadequate faculty, compared with the numerous and distinguished body by which instruction is now dispensed. There was no instruction in any of the modern languages, except in French to those who chose to pay for it. The professors were those of divinity, mathematics, and Hebrew; and this venerable language was, I think, required to be studied by every student, whatever his destination in life. A classmate of mine used to boast that he beat us all in this department, though I believe it sometimes happened to him to get hold of the wrong line in the Latin translation at the bottom of the page, in the Hebrew psalter, and so make a misfit all the way down. I do not hesitate to assure our younger brethren, that they enjoy far greater advantages in the means and encouragements to improvement, and, more important than any other, a far higher standard of excellence, than were ever enjoyed by their fathers. And this in every department of knowledge; - in the study of the ancient and modern languages, in exact science, in the kingdoms of nature, in ethics, and in the philosophy of the mind. So far from resisting innovation, if there has been a tendency to extremes in either direction, it has been in too great a readiness to change.

I do not certainly deny that in this University, as in every other which deserves the name of a place of high education, there is a principle of stability as well as a principle of move

ment. There ought to be: the conservative element is as important in our natures and in all our relations as the progressive element. A wise, practical philosophy combines the two. Their union is a primordial law of the universe. The force which draws the planets downward to the sun is as important in the system as that which impels them in the opposite direction; nay, it contributes as much to their onward movement along the eternal pathways of the sky. The harmonious adjustment of the struggling principles preserves the sacred equilibrium of the universe. In an institution for the education of the young, their attention must of necessity be directed rather to the acquisition of the knowledge already recorded, than to the extension of its limits; and under all circumstances, (except as far as mere chance is concerned,) the first step toward the discovery of new truth is thoroughly to master what is already known.

For this reason, in a place of liberal education, those demonstrated principles of science which were true when the morning stars first sang together, and will be true when the heaven has departed as a scroll; those laws of organic and animated nature which laid down the lowest pavements of the everlasting hills, and gave form and sense to the perished myriads which inhabited them, - monsters that have, as it were, been recalled to life by the Orator of the day; those creations of the cultivated intellect which have stood the test of time, the shock of wars, the vicissitude of races; that immortal Iliad which charmed the young civilization of Greece; -the wondrous strains of the tragic trio of Athens; those glorious oratorical thunders which have been so worthily described to-day; the eloquence, the poetry; that divine Æneid, which satisfied the polished culture of Rome, and which with the literature of Greece has stood the fastidious test of modern criticism; above all, those great moral sentiments which bind the rational universe from the throne of God to the lowest intelligence which kneels at his footstool;- I say these great fundamental ideas, conceptions, and laws, and the scientific and literary forms in which they have been clothed and enunciated from the days of Homer, Plato, and Euclid, to