but the spirit of endowment is with us as well.

Presently one observed at this dinner a note of difference, which
afterwards gave food for reflection. It was this: All the speakers,
one after the other, without exception, referred to the free
institutions of the nation, to the duty of citizens, and especially to
the responsibilities of those who were destined by the training and
education of this venerable college to become the leaders of the
country. Nothing whatever was said, by any of the speakers, on the
achievements in scholarship, literature, or science made by former
scholars of the college; nothing was said of the promise in learning
or science of the young men now beginning the world. Now, a year or so
ago, the master and fellows of a certain college of the older
Cambridge bade to a feast as many of the old members of that college
as would fill the hall. It was, of course, a very much smaller hall
than that of Harvard; but it was still a venerable college, the
mother, so to speak, of Emmanuel, and therefore the grandmother of
Harvard. The master, in his speech after dinner, spoke about nothing
but the glories of the college in its long list of worthies and the
very remarkable number of men, either living or recently passed away,
whose work in the world had brought distinction to themselves and
honour to the college. In short, the college only existed in his mind,
and in the minds of those present, for the advancement of learning,
nor was there any other consideration possible for him in connection
with the college. Is there, then, another view of Harvard College?
There must be. The speakers suggested this new and American view. The
college, if my supposed discovery is true, is regarded as a place
which is to furnish the State, not with scholars, for whom there will
always be a very limited demand, but with a large and perennial supply
of men of liberal education and sound principles, whose chief duty
shall be the maintenance of the freedom to which they are born, and a
steady opposition to the corruption into which all free institutions
readily fall without unceasing watchfulness. This thing I advance with
some hesitation. But it explains the inflated patriotism of the
carefully-prepared speech of the governor and the political (not
partisan) spirit of all the other speakers. Oxford and Cambridge have
long furnished the country with a learned clergy, a learned Bar, and
(but this is past) a learned House of Co