XVI.

The Literature and Science of our Country.*

BRETHREN OF THE ALUMNI ASSOCIATION :

THE circumstances under which we meet this day are such as deeply to affect the heart. We have come back from the agitating scenes and toils of life to our beloved Alma Mater, not again to take shelter under her wings, but to mingle our feelings and our congratulations, and to express our earnest desire for her continued prosperity. On an occasion like this, we cannot but recall the views and feelings which we cherished when members of this college, and our youthful hopes, anticipations, and plans. We cannot but ask ourselves, Have those hopes been realized? Has the world been to us as we expected it would be? Have the plans which we then cherished been successful? Or has disappointment met us on our way, and have the heavens, then so serene and pure to our view, been overcast, and charged with tempests that have beat along our goings?

We come back this day after having travelled partly over the journey of life. We have gone, perhaps, even more than half our way. We have parted forever with many who began the journey with us. While we mingle our congratulations, they sleep in the cold tomb. They were as buoyant with hope, and had formed as high anticipations, as we had ourselves. But the hand that directs all our destiny has arrested

* An address delivered before the Association of the Alumni of Hamilton College, July 27, 1836.

them in the midst of their way, and summoned them to the realities of another scene. We, in the mean time, spared by the tender mercy of our heavenly Benefactor, are permitted to assemble here this day, and to separate ourselves for a season from the toils, the cares, and the agitations of the world. We have been tossed, it may be, on the troubled sea of public life. We have mingled in the scenes on which we once looked out in anticipation from the walls of this institution. We have tried that world whose perils and temptations were so often portrayed to us, and we are now ourselves qualified, in some degree, to tell those who follow us of the dangers of the way, and the nature of those scenes in which they must soon be engaged.

First in our feelings on coming back this day from the cares of life, of office, and of our professional callings, will be our joy at the brightening prospects of this institution, and the lifting up a fervent prayer to the God of heaven that the venerable man at whose feet most of us have been permitted to sit, may enjoy the blessings of Heaven to render tranquil and serene the evening of his days; and that the divine guidance may attend him who now presides over its interests, and his fellow-labourers. Next, we naturally cast our eyes abroad upon that country which we love, and to whose interests, in our various professions, we have devoted our lives. We have looked upon that country. Some of us have been in the callings of public life endeavouring to advance its interests. All of us feel a deep solicitude for its welfare. And the question presses itself at once upon our attention, What are its prospects? What is to be its destiny? How are the great interests of learning, liberty, religion, and law, likely to fare in this nation? What is to be its moral character? What its religious and political aspect? What institutions does it need, and how are they to be sustained? What are the dangers which threaten its liberty and its happiness, and how are those

dangers to be avoided? Selecting from these, and from a multitude of similar questions which might be proposed, the one that we deem most appropriate to the occasion, we propose to ask your attention to some remarks on THE LITERATURE AND SCIENCE OF OUR COUNTRY.

We may commence our observations by observing that the progress of science and of truth has everywhere been slow. Nothing in the past would be more interesting than the history of the sciences and arts, and the effects of the various discoveries in the one, and the inventions in the other, on the advancement of society and on the happiness of men. It would be interesting not merely as it would record the development of mind, but because each new-discovered truth in science, and each new improvement in the arts, at once work their way with prodigious power into the very framework of society, and produce rapid and permanent changes on the habits, the opinions, and the laws of a people. It is too late now to recover such a history. The knowledge which would be requisite is buried in the darkness of past times, and has gone forever from the records of the world. The establishment of all truth has cost much. Error gets the advance of it in the human mind, and fastens there with gigantic power. It interests the passions; it incorporates itself with the plans and feelings; it works its way into laws; it pervades the customs of a people. The task of establishing truth in our world in morals, in science, in religion, has not been the easy task of writing down the lessons of wisdom on a tabula rasa, but the work first of removing error, of encountering prejudice, of remodelling established customs and laws. It is not, so to speak, the work of setting stars in the clearness and brightness of an Italian sky, but it is the work of fixing those stars when the sky is overcast with clouds, and when the tempest rolls and the lightnings flash through the heavens. Those tempests

must be scattered, and the sky made serene, before truth will pour its steady radiance on mankind. Men are wrong before they are right. Society is rude, rough, barbarous, before it is enlightened, civilized, refined. There has been no golden age of knowledge and virtue in this world but in the visions of poetry; there has been no peaceful and innocent Arcadia, except in the day-dreams of romance. In these walls we traversed all those retreats of innocence, for they existed only in the books which we read. Man begins his way in error, and slowly advances to the truth. Society begins its way in ignorance, and slowly rises to intelligence and to rational freedom. It has happened, therefore, that every truth that now sheds its lustre on mankind, has encountered long opposition, and been established by the slow work of ages, until, either single or in combination, like a star alone or mingling its rays in the constellation, it has become fixed in the heavens of science. Every truth in geography, in astronomy, in chemistry, in religion, in political science, has met with opposition, and perForeign lands have

haps has cost the life of many a martyr. been visited; desert regions have been traversed; sleepless nights have been passed; opposition has been encountered, until, perhaps, the single truth that was to give immortality to the man and the age, has shone forth with established lustre. Galileo spent his life to perfect the telescope, and was rewarded in a prison; Harvey in defending the doctrine of the circulation of the blood; Jenner in defence of the theory of vaccination; and Columbus in showing that a new world might be reached in the West.

It has been said that we have no literature or science; and foreigners have reproached us for our destitution. They have spoken of us as having produced no works of art that will live, and as having made no important discoveries in science, and ast having no established literature. It is not my purpose to attempt a vindication of our country; still less to notice the

terms in which these accusations have been brought. It might be sufficient to reply to all that foreigners have said of us, that we are an infant people, and that no nation before us has had a task to perform so arduous as we have, or has done it so well. We had a vast, an almost illimitable, territory to occupy, to subdue, to cultivate. Almost interminable forests stretched their shadows over the land, and those forests were to be felled. A most fertile soil, on which the rays of the sun had never shone through the deep and dense wilderness, was to be brought under the dominion of the plough. Towns were to be built, and cities reared, and, a fleet to be constructed whose sails should whiten every ocean. The war of independence was to be fought with the most potent nation of the Old World. Vast rivers, stretching into dense forests, were to be rendered navigable and ascended, and the means invented for braving their currents and reaching their sources. Mountains were to be levelled, and valleys to be exalted, and distant parts of the nation to be connected by facilities for rapid intercommunication. A government was to be formed that should be adapted to a population ultimately of hundreds of millions. This has been done and we may say, without arrogance, that it has been well done. We may inquire of all past generations when such a work has been before accomplished in a space of time so brief as in our own history.

But there are other remarks to be made on this subject. The complaints that have been made of our want of literature and science have, in a great majority of cases, been made by those who have come among us from our own father-land. We may be permitted to say that there is something peculiarly unreflecting and unkind on the part of our British brethren. Can it have been forgotten by them that we have a common literature and science? Till within sixty years we were an integral part of their empire, and subject to the same crown. Their laws were our laws; their language our language; their