FESTIVAL AT EXETER.*

MR CHAIRMAN :

I RISE to second the motion submitted by the gentleman who spoke last, (the Rev. Professor Ware, Jr,) that the report of the committee be accepted. I do so, sir, with great satis. faction; and I desire, at the same time, to express my thanks to the committee for the judicious arrangements made by them for this interesting occasion. I scarcely feel it necessary to enlarge on the several topics embraced in the report. This has been done with such ability by the chairman in presenting it, (His Honor L. Saltonstall, the mayor of the city of Salem,) that I feel there is little occasion for me to add any thing to his statement. It seems to me that a more interesting occasion than the present cannot easily be imagined. Our revered preceptor has devoted a very long period to his arduous duties as a guide of youth - a period equal to one fourth part of the time since the settlement of New England. He now proposes Emeritus in the highest sense of the word -to retire, in his green and vigorous old age, and pass the honored evening of a useful life in tranquil repose from its labors, and philosophical enjoyment of its blessings; and we, his pupils, have come, for a second time, to take an affectionate leave of him. On former occasions, he dismissed us to higher seminaries of education, or to the walks of active life: we are assembled, on this occasion, to take a respectful notice of his retreat; to dismiss him, if I may so express it, to his well-merited retirement.

This festival was celebrated at Exeter, on the 23d of August, 1838, in honor of Dr Abbott, who on that day resigned the place of Principal of Phillips Exeter Academy, which he had filled for fifty years.

When we parted from him before, the minds of most of us effervescing with the spirits of youth; busy, and filled with the thoughts of the untried scenes opening upon us; ignorant of life, ignorant of ourselves, we were scarcely in a state to reflect with calmness on the nature and extent of the obligations of a pupil to a faithful instructer. Time and events have passed. We have reaped, or are reaping, the harvest which was sown under his care; the experience of our lives has shown the benefits of the paternal encouragements and the gentle restraints of our youthful days; and we now come, a sort of living posterity, with the deliberate acknowledgments, with the reasoning gratitude, which one generation pays to the services of another which precedes it. The kind Providence which has continued the life and usefulness of our revered preceptor, enables us to pay, and him to receive, those grateful honors which, in the course of nature, are generally breathed over the graves of the departed. It is in some degree as if the coming generations could be hastened forward, and made to pass, not in the shadowy vision of the mystic glass, but living and substantial, in long procession, with offerings of gratitude to a public benefactor. Happy are we both in the tender and the reception of these offices of gratitude; and late be the day when they shall be succeeded by any others!

I have already intimated, Mr Chairman, that the measures adopted and proposed for testifying our respect and affection towards our revered and beloved preceptor, on this interesting occasion, have my entire approbation and concurrence. The first was to procure his portrait by a distinguished artist. This has been done: you, sir, have been pleased to submit to this meeting the correspondence which has passed on this subject between the trustees of the Academy and a committee of which I had the honor to be a member. The trustees have kindly acceded to our request, that this portrait - among the most successful efforts of the distinguished artist (Mr Harding) by whom it was executed -should be hung up in the hall of the Academy. It strikes me, I own, sir, as a peculiarly appropriate manifestation of

respect, now that the time has arrived when the presence of our preceptor will no longer be given in these apartments, the scene of his fifty years' labors, the scene of the early studies of nearly two thousand alumni, whose feelings, I am sure, are truly represented by the goodly proportion of them here assembled, that this portrait should be suspended on their walls. There, sir, whether seen by us, who in times past have often gazed on the original with respect, but henceforward, in all probability, shall, the most of us, see his face no more; or whether, in after times, contemplated by future generations, who shall occupy these halls when we and our respected teachers shall alike have passed away, — it will be regarded, I am confident, as a deserved tribute to solid worth, and prove, I trust, an incentive to like fidelity. Hanging as it does directly opposite to the portrait of the honored founder of this institution, (John Phillips,) it will speak volumes of instruction to the youth of other times.

There is a passage in that Roman history in which we were wont to be here so faithfully taught, that was recalled to my mind as I cast my eye this morning from one to the other of these interesting portraits. In the expiring days of the Roman republic, there were two distinguished men, the leaders of a band like-minded with themselves, who sought by a bold and bloody stroke to retard the accelerated downfall of Roman liberty. They did but delay this downfall for a moment. A Hydra race of oppressors sprung from the blood of him they had cut off; and after two generations, the day arrived (so dark and jealous was the tyranny of the times) that their images were not permitted to be borne through the streets at the funeral of Junia. But not thus was the memory of the illustrious deceased to be banished from the minds of men. "Præfulgebant," says Tacitus, (if we may quote Latin in the open air; and why not speak the language in the open academy of heaven which we were taught in yonder hall? )— "Præfulgebant Cassius atque Brutus, eo ipso, quod effigies eorum non visebantur." In the days of the agony of American independence, when the blood-red star of her liberties was rising through cold and dubious

clouds, the founder of our Academy, with that generous forecast into futurity which he possessed in common with the other members of his family, was determined that jointly with the torch of civil and political freedom, the light of intellectual and moral culture should also be kindled. trying time, when desolation and impending ruin stalked through the land, and when the most natural thought of the man of property would be to secure it in some safe investment for the benefit of himself and family, our founder chose to invest the fruits of his industry and frugality in the cultivation of the intellect of the rising generation. There, sir, he safely invested it; and without a glance at the future,looking only to the past,—may we not say that a return has already been realized, which will endure when all the forms and investments of property in earthly things shall have passed away? His donation has already yielded an interest of two thousand immortal souls trained in their early years to learning and virtue; and now, as at the close of two generations we behold the portrait of this distinguished benefactor of society hung up in the hall of the institution he founded, and smiling upon that of the man whom he selected to carry on this glorious work, and who for fifty years has done it with assiduity never for one moment abated, who would not prefer the pure fame of these real friends of humanity to the doubtful renown of a whole gallery of heroes? Never will come the day when the light of their unenvied greatness will need to be concealed; never will the portraits of our founder and preceptor require to be hidden from sight; and as long as they are seen, to the end of time, they will recall the memory of men, whose wealth and talents, whose purposes and lives, were consecrated to the improvement of their race.

Not less appropriate, sir, as it seems to me, is the next measure proposed by the committee that of raising a fund by subscription, among the alumni, adequate to endow a scholarship at Harvard College, to be called the Abbott scholarship, and to be always filled by some worthy pupil of Phillips Exeter Academy. No mode of perpetuating the memory

*

of a distinguished instructer can be imagined, more in keeping with the nature of his desert; and never could such a tribute be more fitly paid. We need but cast our eye over the catalogue the telltale catalogue-just published, to perceive the great numbers of pupils prepared at this institution for the various places of collegiate education. Among them are some of the names of which the country has most reason to be proud. The honorable chairman has spoken of some of them, and in particular has paid the tribute which the hearts of all who knew him will never cease to pay, to the memory of Buckminster, one who, cut off in the morning of his days, gave an impulse to literature in the community in which he lived, which in an ordinary case would have been deemed a proud result of a long life of well-directed effort. Nor would I be thought to disparage the importance of the course of studies in the Academy, by which, without preparation for college, so many have been trained to usefulness and distinction in life. The name of one who represents the country with distinction abroad (Governor Cass) has already been mentioned. He is far distant, but his heart is with us. I shall ask permission to place an extract from a letter lately received from him among the memorials of this day's proceedings.

But fully appreciating the importance of either department of the Academy, the foundation of a scholarship at the university, to bear his name, will be regarded as an appropriate tribute of respect to one who has directed the preparatory course of so many of the students of that and other collegiate institutions. In this way his services will be, in some sense, continued in his retirement from the Academy, and even after his retirement from life. Somewhat of the salutary influence of our beloved preceptor will even then be felt. "Non omnis morietur." Yes, sir, I rejoice in the anticipation, that to the end of time, so long as America shall subsist in the family of nations, and while one stone of Harvard shall be left upon another, this foundation-consecrated to

* The catalogue gave the ages of those educated at the Academy.