where he _commenced_ Bachelor of
Divinity.--_Hist. Sketch of First Ch. in Boston_, 1812, p. 211.

COMMENCEMENT. The time when students in colleges _commence_
Bachelors; a day in which degrees are publicly conferred in the
English and American universities.--_Webster_.

At Harvard College, in its earliest days, Commencements were
attended, as at present, by the highest officers in the State. At
the first Commencement, on the second Tuesday of August, 1642, we
are told that "the Governour, Magistrates, and the Ministers, from
all parts, with all sorts of schollars, and others in great
numbers, were present."--_New England's First Fruits_, in _Mass.
Hist. Coll._, Vol. I. p. 246.

In the MS. Diary of Judge Sewall, under date of July 1, 1685,
Commencement Day, is this remark: "Gov'r there, whom I accompanied
to Charlestown"; and again, under date of July 2, 1690, is the
following entry respecting the Commencement of that year: "Go to
Cambridge by water in ye Barge wherein the Gov'r, Maj. Gen'l,
Capt. Blackwell, and others." In the Private Journal of Cotton
Mather, under the dates of 1708 and 1717, there are notices of the
Boston troops waiting on the Governor to Cambridge on Commencement
Day. During the presidency of Wadsworth, which continued from 1725
to 1737, "it was the custom," says Quincy, "on Commencement Day,
for the Governor of the Province to come from Boston through
Roxbury, often by the way of Watertown, attended by his body
guards, and to arrive at the College about ten or eleven o'clock
in the morning. A procession was then formed of the Corporation,
Overseers, magistrates, ministers, and invited gentlemen, and
immediately moved from Harvard Hall to the Congregational church."
After the exercises of the day were over, the students escorted
the Governor, Corporation, and Overseers, in procession, to the
President's house. This description would answer very well for the
present day, by adding the graduating class to the procession, and
substituting the Boston Lancers as an escort, instead of the "body
guards."

The exercises of the first Commencement are stated in New
England's First Fruits, above referred to, as follows:--"Latine
and Greeke Orations, and Declamations, and Hebrew Analysis,
Grammaticall, Logicall, and Rhetoricall of the Psalms: And their
answers and disputations in Logicall, Ethicall, Physicall, and
Metaphysicall questions." At Commencement in 1685, the exercises
were, besides Disputes, f