". . . like a Pharos founded on a rock,"

was planted, at the promptings of weakness, in a new land among a free people. On this anniversary morning we know how she has stood during successive generations, as inflexible in purpose as when a humble Puritan "School of the Prophets," she listened to the preaching of her first president, the devout Dunster. She has trained clergymen, schoolmasters, soldiers, statesmen, mechanics. Through her quarter-millennium they have entered her doors, received her instruction, and passed on to their work. And, as in the beginning these walls re-echo still the footsteps of the ambitious, pressing on toward the future. Would that, if but for a moment, we might recall the departed good and great of Harvard's line, that we might conjure from the "doggerel dirge and Latin Epitaph" some fitting memorial to the many who have gathered in these halls and lingered among the shadows of these elms! But no; they are forgotten. Of John Harvard himself, the most meagre traditions remain, and only his munificence to our University, preserves from oblivion his name. "He died upon a date, misstated upon his monument, - a monument which does not mark his grave!"

Looking back through this quarter-millenium, can we not see that the work of the University has been the work of a people; a work marked at times, it is true, by prejudice and intolerance, at times by liberality and magnanimity; now betraying feeble struggles and powerful temptations, now recalling waves of enthusiasm "on whose crumbling crests we sometimes see nations lifted for a gleaming moment?" Can we not see how her influence has grown from her work? Consider for a moment that influence. Each generation, as it has passed, has bequeathed to the University some ample accumulation of wealth, some new lesson of "Truth" learned, some old problem of life solved. Nobly has she repaid her bequests! Not the Commonwealth of Massachusetts alone, but the whole country, through state and territory, has been furnished from her graduates, "with knowing and understanding men, and the churches with an able ministry." In 1699, it was truly, if somewhat quaintly said, to the General Court by the Earl of Bellamont, while Governor of Massachusetts, "It is a very great advantage you have above other provinces, that your youth are not put to travel for learning, but have the Muses at their doors." For this advantage, keeping pace with the increase of population and wealth, has given to the State of Massachusetts a foremost place in refinement and learning and to her metropolis a classic name. The influence of Harvard has been fundamental, for she has promoted a freedom of thought; through her call for an earnest individuality, she has inspired her sons to more courageous persistence as pioneers of intellectual reforms. In the privations of poverty the instruction at Harvard has always encouraged a noble ambition and effort, as, in prosperity, it has lent new meaning to affluence and culture. In sectarian disputes and political reformations; during "the vicissitudes of the infant settlements;" through the perilous struggles of a patriotic resistance to injustice; amid the fires of a civil strife testing a great social principle, Harvard University, whether tried by penury, or endangered by a prosperous growth, has stood throughout, a conscientious champion of "Truth," and a fearless preacher "for Christ and the Church."

Some future orator, on some distant anniversary, will recall, perhaps, this day. I charge him to forget not, in the gratulations of that occasion, the Puritan founders of Harvard. Let their memory, as a widening influence, through his words, reach on and out, like the light of the setting sun, though they themselves have passed from us and risen on another and sublimer life. But if there is yet one lesson to be drawn from this hour it is surely this, that the future history of Harvard, like the voice of our widest usefulness, calls to us, as the students of a great university, for the best work and noblest living, - to make, as says Carlyle, some nook of God's creation a little fruit-fuller, some human hearts a little man-fuller. And as Harvard, at once the oldest and the newest, Harvard first among equals, but ever first, passes from us into the future, let us recall again those burning words spoken so recently to us here: "Your country needs a new enthusiasm. To whom but to you, her young men, shall she look to give it her? You are the trustees of posterity. On whom else shall she call to wake the deep slumber of careless opinions; to startle the torpor of an immoral acquiescence; to kindle burning aspirations; to set noble examples; to cleanse the Augean stables of politics and trade; to shame false ideals of life; to deepen the lessening sense of the sacredness of marriage; to make your Press nobler and less frivolous; to make the aims of society more earnest; to make homes pure; to make life simple; to defy the petty and arrogant tyrannies of the thing which calls itself public opinion; to trample on the base omnipotence of gold? She calls to you! Will you hear her voice, or will you, too, make, like the young ruler, the great refusal?"

The Glee Club, which had thus far sat on the right of the stage, moved to the centre and sang Eichberg's magnificent National Hymn. At the conclusion of this, Mr. Palmer delivered.

Long years ago, the stern New England rock

A wizard smote, and straightway forth did gush,

Here in this wilderness that felt the shock,

A fountain, filling all the forest's hush

With joy. Our College was that woodland spring,

The Puritan was he who there made flow

A fount that in the years to come should swing

Its mighty tide through all the land, and show

How great is truth to conquer wrong and woe.

More than two centuries with frost and snow