By Edgar Judson Rich, '87.

ODE.

By Lloyd McKim Garrison, '88.

Shortly after eleven o'clock yesterday morning the classes grouped themselves in four knots at their respective gathering positions, and cries of "'87," "'88," etc., resounded through the Yard. The procession formed in the order of classes, with the Seniors in the lead, and marched to Sanders Theatre. As the procession entered the theatre, the Pierian Sodality from its position on the stage, began Mendelsohn's "Cornelius March." During the performance of this piece the classes sought their seats, the Seniors in the body of the house, the Juniors in the left divisions of the first balcony, the Sophomores to the left and right of the centre division, and the Freshmen on the extreme right of the first balcony. The centre division was reserved for members of the faculty and guests of the college. Among these were to be seen President Eliot, Reverends Phillips Brooks, Edward Everett Hale; Sir Lyon Playfair; Prof. Creighton of Emmanuel College, Cambridge; Col. Higginson; Waldo Higginson, with whom was his guest, Hon. F. A. Channing, M. P.; Major Russell; Ex-Mayor Green, of Boston; Rev. Alexander McKenzie, Leverett Saltonstall, John T. Wheelwright, G. E. Woodberry, H. K. Oliver. Roger Wolcott, and others. The second gallery was reserved for graduates and their friends. In these two reserved portions and scattered throughout the entire house, many ladies added color and brightness to the scene. At last the seats were filled, and crowds pressed into the passage-ways behind. Sixteen hundred faces looked expectantly toward the stage as the Pierian moved aside and Rev. A. P. Peabody, conducted by Mr. Winthrop Wetherbee, chairman of the Literary Committee, led the way up the central steps to the stage, followed by the four speakers of the day. They proceeded to their seats ranged behind the reading-desk in the center of the stage, and waited until all should be quiet. As the venerable form of Dr. Peabody rose before the audience, a still greater hush fell upon the assemblage, and with deep reverence they listened to the opening words of the ceremony which was to commemorate the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of our great College. In stirring and heartfelt words, Dr. Peabody recalled the past glorious success of the college, and invoked God's blessing upon it for the future. At the close of the prayer, the orator of the day, Mr. Hamilton, '87, stepped forward, and pausing a moment until the last sound in the house was hushed, he began in a clear, forcible voice the

ORATION.

The anniversary which we are met this morning to observe is one of extraordinary significance. We commemorate the quarter-millenium of a university which, "first among equals," has striven to give form to American education; we commemorate the triumph of Puritan life and the widening success of that struggle of Puritanism which, running through eight generations, would perfect a form of education distinctively Puritan, yet wholly American. We commemorate the progress of that idea of liberality in education, which, cherished first and most ardently at Harvard, has passed from her to every kindred American institution. While commemorating the work of Harvard University, we foresee the inevitable fulfillment of her hopes, and therefore celebrate the natal day of a university at once the oldest and the newest in the land. Newest, I say, as well as oldest, for Harvard University from the days of Increase Mather has maintained as a fundamental principle that a university founded "for Christ and the Church," and holding the motto, "Truth," ought in no wise to depart from the path marked out in that famous resolve, libere philosophari, made so early in her history. It has been her endeavor during more than two centuries to think without bigotry and to train men who not only shall think, but also shall act in that spirit of advance which seeks to keep pace with the spirit of the age.

It is wise, upon an occasion like this, that we should seek instruction rather in the past than in the present. And through these two and a half centuries we are carried back into the morning of our national life, back into those sober religious days of sturdy New England Puritanism where we find ourselves with men who, in the spirit of their Cromwell, have determined to secure forever on these quiet shores, a retreat from "The King's Return to His Own Again." For "it was," as our own poet says, "the drums of Naseby and Dunbar that gathered the minute men on Lexington Common; it was the red dint of the axe in Charles's block that marked One in our era." What marvel, then, that we see these men of duty, with their motto, "Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work," taking orders for a college at Newtown and appropriating for its establishment "a year's rate of the whole colony," that, so runs the record, "the Commonwealth may be furnished with knowing and understanding men and the churches with an able ministry." Yet this was "the first occasion on which a people ever taxed themselves to found a place of education,"

Follow the life and work of that little seminary during those first years of poverty and suffering, dependent for very existence upon a precarious benevolence and tossed upon every sea of political and religious controversy that rocked the province. Though led at times into error, and once, during the frenzy of the Salem witchcraft, even tempted to persecution, still she remains true to the motto upon her walls - raising higher and higher the standard of the literature of the country and sending forth from her doors larger and wiser men. Long before the resistance to the Stamp Act; before the fearless voice of Patrick Henry rang out; before Faneuil Hall had thrown open its doors to an eloquent patriotism, a graduate of Harvard, in his Commencement Thesis, "announced the whole doctrine of the Revolution" in words that sounded like a tocsin through the land. And, as if in answer to the summons, there passed from the college halls, in quick succession, an Otis, a Warren, a John Hancock, a Quincy, and a younger Adams.

We are told that at the period of the Revolution even the undergraduates caught the inspiration of the times, and that their declamations and forensic disputes breathed the uncompromising spirit of liberty. With the enthusiasm of the hour they voted unanimously to take their degrees clothed only in the manufactures of their native land; and when Washington, on Cambridge green, took command of the American army, the students forsook the college in a body that its halls might shelter the patriot troops. Pass through the transcept of this hall, raised as a memorial to those sons of Harvard who fell in the last war, and there upon the tablets upon the walls read a Mother's proud testimony to the patriotism of her twelve hundred and thirty-two volunteers, who, as one man, followed their flag to the front; and trace her tribute to the memory of her three hundred and sixty one martyrs who gave their lives to the cause. Nor let us forget at this hour and in this place that the gray covered as devoted hearts as the blue, and that many a soldier of the South who fell on the field of battle claimed Harvard as his Alma Mater.

Thus it has ever been in the history of the University. In the necessitous provincial days fostering a spirit of fortitude, in the early crisis of Independence inspiring to patriotism, in the hour of trial admonishing to duty, she has always taught her students to study, not only the wisdom of the past, but also the lessons of the present, and the more perplexing problems of the future. And for this reason, if for no other, Harvard stands where she does to-day as the representative university of the representative republic. The reforms of which she is a leading exponent, are simply the necessary outcome of the call of a nation for an enlargement of the higher education. Constantly has the university, down through the long list of her honored faculties, endeavored to meet the educational needs of the country, and it has been this endeavor which has assured to Harvard the eminent success that she now enjoys. Thus, although an outgrowth of Puritanism, she nevertheless has sought to become a cosmopolitan university in a country by no means Puritan; and though surrounded and often restrained by conservative influences of the most positive character, she has struggled continually not to be conservative. And as the school at Newtown, founded originally as a Theological Seminary, soon became, in compliance with the country's need, a college, so, later, when it was discovered, to the amazement of many, that all education is not comprehended in

Lingua, Tropus, Ratio, Numerus, Tonus, Angulus, Astra,

the college broadened into a university - a university so extensive, that in her instruction to-day we see the most recent sciences placed upon an equality with mathematics and the classics.

The university now has reached another great epoch in her work with the adoption of reforms, as startling to the present conservative conception of education as they may appear destructive to the time-honored significance of the academic degree. But much of this alarm arises from the failure of the American college in the past to keep pace with the nation's spirit and growth. The attempt upon the part of Harvard to meet the demands of a growing people very naturally has given much occasion for criticism. The origin of such criticism, however, is by no means recent. We read that many "godly men of the province," even in the seventeenth century, "conceived a great sorrow" from a like cause. And even earlier, the one Indian youth, whom tradition recalls as having received a degree by the side of his Puritan brothers, doubtless heard the same question discussed.

But the very criticism of a progressive institution evidences the necessity for education in the future to meet the demands of an advancing practical life. Is it not high time that a country like our own, which has given to the world such signal triumphs of non-collegiate training in the pursuits of industry, and has witnessed in mechanics and engineering the proudest attainments of inventive genius, should offer to her sons a university training adapted to fit them as well for a life of manly work as for a life of cultivated leisure? The call for collegiate students to interest themselves less in what concerns them as mere catalogues of books, than in that which concerns them as "men and leaders of men" was heard in this very hall, in that scathing arraignment of the American scholar which is finding in the broadening claims of education its justification and confirmation.

It was the hope of the founders of the University that "so long as New England or America hath a name on the earth's surface," the fame and fruit of their work should be "blesseed." Two centuries and a half have passed away since the college, which, in the words of one of her most famous presidents, now stands