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ada and New England, and by bands of wretched captives, dragged from their homes, at midnight, to a miserable slavery among the French and Indians. The alternate action of the two nations who stood at the head of the civilization of the world, had been felt for a century in these still valleys and venerable forests; but it was felt only to add the arts of civilized destruction to the horrors of savage warfare. One century of peaceful improvement and hopeful progress was blotted from the history of this portion of frontier America.

But the seeds of improvement were sown even in this bloody soil. One of those generous spirits who, from time to time, are raised up to accomplish great objects, was stationed in this corner of the commonwealth, in command of the line of forts erected for border defence. You know that I allude to the founder of this college. He foresaw, even then, the probable destinies of the country. He knew that the dreary forest was not designed forever to encumber the soil. He beheld it yielding to the march of civilization. As he heard the crash of the sturdy trunk, falling beneath the narrow axe of the settler; as he saw the log cabins slowly rising on the edge of the clearing, and beheld the smoke here and there curling up in the lonely and mysterious woods; as he heard the voice of the mountain stream, then babbling unheeded over the rocks, his sagacious mind overleaped the interval of years. He was called, by his intrepid spirit and his country's voice, to take an active part in the first scenes of the war of 1755. A presentiment of his fate seems to have been upon his mind. Before plunging into the campaign, he made provision for the appropriation of his fortune to furnish the means of education to the people whose struggles, in settling this region, he had witnessed and shared. His will was made at Albany, on the twenty-second of July, 1755, bequeathing his property for the foundation of this institution; and, on the eighth of September of the same year, in an engagement with the troops under the Baron Dieskau, he fell at the head of his regiment. Eighty years, only, have passed away. The laudable purposes of your founder have been more than fulfilled; and out of the living

fountain struck open in the desert by his generous bequest, abundant streams of piety and learning have flowed and are flowing.

Colonel Williams's character was of no ordinary mould. At a distance from the seat of his benefaction full justice has not been done to his memory. A man of the happiest temperament, a gentleman of the true natural stamp, unassuming and simple, supplying the deficiency of a learned education by large experience of men and things, acquired in foreign travel, in the legislature, and in the army, yet modestly lamenting what others did not trace, his want of early advantages; without a family, but the patriarch of the frontier settlement where he was stationed, he fell, in the prime of early manhood, a victim to his patriotic zeal. A brief sketch of his biography, in one of the early volumes of the Massachusetts Historical Collections,* informs us that he witnessed, with humane and painful sensations, the dangers, difficulties, and hardships, which the settlers of these valleys were obliged to encounter; and that, to encourage them, he was accustomed to intimate the purpose which was carried into effect in his will. I regret not to have found Colonel Williams's views on this subject preserved somewhat in detail. It would have been exceedingly interesting to see the topic of education, in reference to the wants of a newly-settled country, as it presented itself to the practical view of a man of ́his character, on the eve of a war. As no such record, as far as I know, has been preserved, you will pardon me for attempting to present the subject to you, under the same light in which he may have contemplated it.

"My friends," (we may conceive he would say to a group of settlers, gathered about old Fort Massachusetts, on some fit occasion, not long before his marching towards the place of rendezvous,) "your hardships, I am aware, are great. have witnessed, I have shared them. The hardships incident to opening a new country are always severe. They are heightened, in our case, by the constant danger in which we

* First Series, Vol. VIII. p. 47.

live from the savage enemy. At present, we are rather encamped than settled. We live in block-houses; we lie upon our arms by night; and, like the Jews who returned to build Jerusalem, we go to work, by day, with the implements of husbandry in one hand and the weapons of war in the other. Nor is this the worst. We have been bred up in the populous settlements on the coast, where the school-house and the church are found at the centre of every village. Here, as yet, we can have neither. I know these things weigh upon you. You look upon the dark and impenetrable forests, in which you have made an opening, and contrast it with the pleasant villages where you were born and passed your early years, where your parents are yet living, or where they have gone to their rest; and you cannot suppress a painful

emotion.

"You are, more especially, as I perceive, somewhat disheartened at the present moment of impending war. But, my friends, let not your spirits sink. The prospect is overcast, but brighter days will come. In vision I can plainly foresee them. The forest disappears; the cornfield, the pasture, takes its place; the hill-sides are spotted with flocks; the music of the water-wheel sounds in accord with the dashing stream. Your little groups of log cabins swell into prosperous villages. Schools and churches spring up in the waste; institutions for learning arise; and in what is now a wild solitude, libraries and cabinets unfold their treasures, and observatories point their tubes to the heavens. I tell you that not all the united powers of all the French and Indians on the St Lawrence, no, not if backed by all the powers of darkness which seem, at times, in league with them to infest this howling wilderness, will long prevent the valleys of the Hoosac and the Housatonic from becoming the abode of industry, abundance, and refinement. A century will not pass, before the voice of domestic wisdom and fireside inspiration, from the vales of Berkshire, will be heard throughout America and Europe. As for the contest impending, I am

VOL. II.

* Nehemiah iv. 17.

30

sure we shall conquer; if I mistake not, it is the first of a series of events of unutterable moment to all America, and even to mankind. Before it closes, the banner of St George will float, I am sure, over Cape Diamond; and the extension of the British power over the whole continent will be but the first act of a great drama, whose catastrophe I but dimly foresee.

"I speak of what concerns the whole country; the fortune of individuals is wrapped in the uncertain future. For myself, I must own that I feel a foreboding at my heart which I cannot throw off. I can only say, if my hour is come, (and I think it is not distant,) I am prepared. I have been able to do but little; but if Providence has no further work for me to perform, I am ready to be discharged from the warfare. It is my purpose, before I am taken from you, to make a disposition of my property for the benefit of this infant community. My heart's desire is that, in the picture of its future prosperity, which I behold in mental view, the last and best of earthly blessings shall not be wanting. I shall deem my life not spent in vain, though it be cut off to-morrow, if, at its close, I shall be accepted as the humble instrument of promoting the great cause of education.

"My friends, as I am soon to join the army, we meet, many of us, perhaps, for the last time. I am a solitary branch; I can be spared. I have no wife to feel my loss; no children to follow me to the grave. I may fall by the tomahawk, or in the front of honorable battle; on the shores of the stormy lake, or in the infested woods; and this poor body may want even a friendly hand to protect it from insult. But I must take the chance of a soldier's life. When I am gone, you will find some proof that my last thoughts were with the settlers of Fort Massachusetts; and perhaps, at some future day, should my desire to serve you and your children not be disappointed, my humble name will not be forgotten in the public assembly, and posterity will bestow a tear on the memory of EPHRAIM WILLIAMS."

THE BOSTON SCHOOLS.*

MR PRESIDENT:

I NEED not attempt to express my grateful sense of the honor done me in the last toast. It is praise enough for any man to be regarded, by such a company as this, as doing no discredit to the Boston schools. I am sure I owe them more than I can ever repay. They were the friends of my friendless youth and poverty, and gave me a better education than I had the means of getting in any other way.

Of the numerous public occasions of different kinds to which the courtesy paid to my official character calls me, there is none which I attend with greater pleasure than this anniversary. There is, indeed, none in which, whether as parents or citizens, we should take a stronger interest. The importance of schools is certainly not overlooked in this community; but it is not overvalued; it cannot be. Liberal provision is made for their support, but not extravagant provision. No expense which any reasonable man, or body of reasonable men, would recommend for such a purpose could be extravagant. I mean, in a word, that the object is of almost inestimable importance.

Sir, it is of manifold, and, if I may so express myself, compound importance. It is important, in and by the importance of almost every great and desirable object in life, towards the attainment of which education furnishes the means. I do not know that this view of the matter is sufficiently familiar; that it is enough considered that the support

At the public dinner in Faneuil Hall, on the 23d August, 1837, the day of the examination of the schools.

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