UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE.*

MR VICE-CHANCELLOR, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN:

PERMIT me, on behalf of myself, and my respected colleagues, whom you have been pleased to associate with me, to return our united and grateful acknowledgments for the compliment which you have paid us. They are due, sir, on every account for the hospitality with which you have received us, for these academic honors with which you have clothed us, and doubly so for the kindness and courtesy which marked the manner in which they were bestowed.

This is an occasion, sir, on which foreign nations may with propriety be represented in your academic halls. The cause which brings us together- the cause of science and literature in their largest extent, of the training of mind, and of the formation of character, as my worthy colleague opposite (Chevalier Bunsen) expressed it these are not objects peculiar to you. Though the modes of promoting them, as the Lord Chancellor observed, are eminently national, as we see them developed in your ancient seminaries, yet the cause itself, the objects themselves, have an interest wide as the civilized world.

There is another reason for which foreign nations may claim to be represented here. The Lord Chancellor alluded to the great men whom your two universities, and this uni

In reply to a toast complimentary to the American, and the other foreign ministers, given by the Vice-Chancellor, (Rev. Dr Archdale,) at the public dinner at Emmanuel College, on the 4th of July, 1842, on occasion of the installation of the Duke of Northumberland, as chancellor of the university of Cambridge.

versity in particular, have produced in days gone by, — and justly did he allude to them, — as among the greatest boasts of your country. But they lived not for you alone; they belong not to England alone. Your castles and your towers, your fleets and your armies, your fertile fields, your crowded cities, your wealth, your power, these belong exclusively to England; but your great men, your Bacons, and your Newtons, these belong not only to England, but to the world. May I not say, as the Vice-Chancellor has been pleased particularly to allude to me, that they belong, eminently, in common with you, to that kindred people beyond the sea, whose humble representative I am?

I have said that these great men belong not only to England, but to the world; they would belong to the world even did they cease to belong to England. The Lord Chancellor turned our minds back to the foundation of your university: let us cast a thought in the other direction, and see what, by possibility, may happen hereafter. It is possible — though in the highest degree improbable still it is possible that this great fabric of modern civilization may be dissolved. I am not, indeed, one of those who believe in a youth, manhood, and decline of nations as a necessary condition of humanity. That idea, as I think, is not drawn from any law of human progress, but borrowed from the ill-applied analogy of other times. I not only trust, but believe, that our present civilization will be permanent; that it is founded on principles too solid to admit of the overthrow and confusion of the present family of nations, and the return of barbarism. But if this should unhappily prove otherwise; if a catastrophe like that which befell the improved nations of antiquity awaits the modern European world; if the existing national families should be dispersed; if this noble English which we speak should cease to be a vernacular tongue, and strange dialects arise among strange races, and for a while the light of Bacon, and Dryden, and Newton, children of Cambridge, should here go down, it would but sink to rise again. That light cannot forever be extinguished. While the laws of the human mind, yes, while the orbits and attractions of

the heavenly luminaries remain unchanged, these your great men must be the teachers of their fellow-mortals. Yes, sir, to borrow the words of your greatest poet, who passed his academic life in the very next college to that in which we are now assembled, and in what language but that of Milton can I hope to do justice to Bacon and to Newton, if their star should ever set in your horizon, it must be to rise again on other regions with new splendor.

"So sinks the daystar in the ocean bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and, with new-spangled ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."

One word more, and that, perhaps, too personal to myself, and I will relieve your attention. I could not but be struck, when the long roll of the names of your benefactors was read yesterday, with the reflection that I myself received my education at an institution beyond the sea, whose origin is due to a pupil of this very college, Emmanuel, where we are now assembled, which, as you are aware, was one of the favorite colleges with the non-conformists. A considerable number of the New England clergy were educated here. But a very few years after the first settlement of my native state, Massachusetts, the second in the United States of America, when all was a savage wilderness around them, the fathers of the colony made a provision, too small to be named here, but great for their means and condition, to found a college or school. This was done in the year 1636. A youthful stranger came from Old England to New England the following year. He lived but to make his will, bequeathing half his estate to endow that small school. It rose immediately to the rank of a college; its course of studies was modelled after that of the English universities; and its first class was graduated just two centuries ago, in 1642. Of this class, Sir George Downing, whose estate, after one or two intervening generations, was bequeathed for the foundation of Downing College, was a member. That stranger was John Harvard, a master of arts of Emmanuel. The name of the place where the 55

VOL. II.

new college was founded, was changed from Newtown to Cambridge, in honor of this ancient academic city, and the university thus founded, till the close of the seventeenth century the only one in the United States, still holds a most distinguished place among its younger sisters. When, therefore, I enter these halls of the ancient institution, it is with feelings of respect and love which I want words to express, and I am ready to bow my head with gratitude, while I exclaim, Salve, magna parens!

MEETING OF THE ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY

AT BRISTOL.*

MR HANDLEY, MY LORDS, AND GENTLEMEN :

I BEG that you will believe me when I tell you, that I am deeply sensible to the very kind feeling which you have been pleased to express towards myself and my country. I do not readily find words for a fitting acknowledgment. To be received with so much cordiality, in a foreign land, by such a company, containing so many persons of the highest position and distinction, almost overpowers me. Let me say, however, sir, that there is no part of this great and prosperous country where such a reception could be more welcome to me. There are some associations of very ancient date between the city of Bristol and the United States. It is a somewhat singular, and to me, on the present occasion, an interesting circumstance, that the history of North America, as known to the civilized world, runs back to this spot. Its very first chapter was written in the chamber of the "Merchant Venturers' Society" of Bristol. I am not now alluding to the incident which I mentioned the day before yesterday, at the dinner of his Honor the Mayor, that Columbus himself in early life was engaged as a pilot between this port and Iceland; although that fact is certainly one of some curiosity in your history. It has even been thought to have a connection with the history

Reply to a complimentary toast given by the president (Mr Handley) of the Royal Agricultural Society, of England, at the public dinner at Bristol, on the 14th of July, 1842.