What of the donors?-those who in the stress From the lone bourn of life's long pilgrimage Mother of learning, hail ! Oh, mayst thou, prosperous, rejoice Long may thy turrets beckon and thy voice Blessing of studious serenity The ethereal fruit and flower of the wise! And when this age shall pass, as pass it must, And crumble into dust, Thy towers shall still arise, gladding the eyes Öf true men yet to be, And by the side of these Grouped 'mid the gracious trees,- May added halls and new-built spires Lift their enlightening crests above the lawn ; And by her lustrous effluence manifold True harbinger of the new-born world's desires, And as the depths of ignorance decrease Oh, mayst thou, filled with potency anew Nor with the century cease, science. The University graduates marched in a body from Horticultural Hall to the Academy, wearing caps and gowns and hoods distinctive of the degree to be conferred upon them. As they walked across the stage to the seats reserved for them in the parquette, they were greeted with cheers by the great assemblage, which far exceeded the seating accommodations of the auditorium. The orator of the day was Dr. Horace Howard Furness, the eminent Shakespearean scholar. We give this address in full. It will repay many readings. There will be nothing better in these columns during the current year. In presenting Dr. Furness, Provost Harrison said: "I shall not attempt to introduce the gracious and delightful scholar who is now to address us. Known wherever the English tongue is spoken, the apostle of culture, the disciple of Shakespeare-we are one and all waiting to hear the words which will fall from 'the tip of his subduing tongue." When the applause had subsided, Dr. Furness said: In what I am about to say to you, let me tell you in advance that I shall be dry and prosy. But be of comfort: I shall not detain you long, and I shall talk to you as familiarly as though we were sitting in my library and taking counsel together. With many of you this is Commencement Day-a serious occasion, which may well give a young and thoughtful mind pause. In the estimation of the world, you now To morrow "commence" really to live. the dizzying warfare of life begins which will not end until Azrael passes his hand over your features and they are motionless forever. Until to-day, you have been careless boys, without a thought of responsibility. Your work has been prescribed for you; you have had merely to obey orders and follow a path with high hedges on each side. This path and its protective hedges are come this day to an end, and you stand on the border of the open. "The world is all before you where to choose;" henceforth you must hew out your own path. But you are young. Thank heaven for youth! "Fair laughs the morn and soft the zephyr blows" when high courage mantles youthful brows. Will you pardon me, an old scarred veteran, and not think less of my manliness, if I confess that when, radiant with confident hope, you all advance to receive your diplomas from the hand of the Provost, the sight brings "all my mother to my eyes." Those valiant young feet know so little of the cruel stones in the flinty road ahead. Here are some verses, written twenty or more years ago by a young fellow at Har vard, who was standing then on the eve of graduation, where you are standing now: The winds and the waves are wailing, Full speed through the morning dew, I fear and in dread I shiver, At the feet of the coming years; And the night is full of tears. These verses, charming in their youthfulness and simplicity, were written by him who is now Professor Woodberry, and appeared in the "Harvard Advocate." In the following week there came a reply by Prof. William Everett, at that time a member of the College Faculty: From beyond the tears and the darkness, That heralds thy dew-hemmed feet; Live on! for our armies are thinning, Waft the call of thy brother's cheers! See to it, if you are wise, that "the glow of the strong endeavor go not out in the passionate night." More than the fourth of the span allotted by the Psalmist to human life you have now lived. The vital question with you here now is: How are you to dispose of its remaining forty or fifty years that at the close the retrospect may bring you serene content? You remember Sir William Jones's fine translation from the Arabic: On parents' knees, while yet a new-born child Weeping thou sat'st, whilst all around thee smiled, So live that, sinking to thy last, long sleep, Calm thou may'st smile, while all around thee weep. Of course you all wish to be happy. This is what we all wish, and even think ourselves very ill used if we are unhappy. By a blessed provision of our nature, there is a certain, assured, inextinguishable share of happiness within reach of every son of Adam. It lies in work-steady, unremitting work. "Man," says the Bible, "is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward"-but kindly Nature never wholly deserts her offspring; the shelter she provides against these inevitable troubles of life is-work, work to the very last day of life. With the knowledge that your happiness depends on work, you are strengthened for the decision which to-morrow thrusts upon you. Will you take the steerage of your own course, and, selecting the butt and sea mark of your utmost sail, bend all your energies to reach it? Or will you aimlessly drift, the sport of wind and tide, and gain your final haven water-logged, with tangle and bitter brine your only freight? Ah me! if to choose were all that is needful! if, after the choice be made, the goal were as good as won! But out in the world the winds and the currents are so strong that, even with the stoutest heart, we can barely outride the storms, and, should final wreck overwhelm us, where lies the fault? Is it in the ship or in our seacraft? If, with the bravest front, we are borne down in a fair battle, is it not that we are unskilled in the use of our weapons? We have been attacked in quarters where we least expected, and, alack! we are unprepared. If a man knows but one parade in fencing, his chances in a duel are slim. Ay, there's the rub! Our valor has been great enough, but our resources have been too few. Here is the Achilles heel. Here lies the fatal error. How is it to be remedied? What provision can be made for an unexpected onset, for the "occasion sudden," as my Lord Coke has it. CULTURE NOT SUPERfluous. Clearly the answer is: Our resources must be increased. What are our resources? They are the talents, the abilities with which nature has endowed us; and they are to be developed, like all things else, by cultivation; and, if we are wise, by cultivating them to the utmost extent within our power, not a square inch of our minds should lie fallow. The result of this cultivation is, if you will permit the tautology, culture which is strictly a process, but generally understood as a result. It is an object dearly sought by all. There cannot be a civilized man so brutish as to be willing to remain uncultivated. There is a certain parable concerning talents which strikes home to us all. Culture is generally supposed to be something reserved only for those whose time is free and at their own disposal. On the stern, prosaic lines of our daily professional lives culture is assumed to be a superfluous ara-. besque, an ornamental flourish. Believe me, this is not so. Culture is an arabesque, but it is not superfluous. It is essential to our best success in life, and it is of vital and infinite importance to every active mind. Thus you stand to-day. To some one pursuit you are to devote your lives. To it you must bend all your energy. To grasp its highest rewards you must strain every nerve. In it no thoroughness can be too exacting or too minute. And in addition to all this you must be men of culture-the wider our culture the greater are our chances of success in our chosen pursuit. Wherefore, in one aspect, this culture has actually a mercantile, a downright pecuniary value. It widens our horizon, opens new avenues of thought, quickens our perception, matures our judgment and inspires that calm composure wherein lies the mastery of an untoward situation. Culture never slumbers and never deserts us. When we are sore bestead it suggests expedients, and summons to our side the sages of the past. Lo, these are some of the resources wherewith culture furnishes us ! Like the universal blessings of nature, like light, like air, like the warm sun, culture is free to all. In varying degrees, it is within the reach of the humblest and the highest. Like death, it may be found in the stately mansions of the rich and in the dwellings of the poor. (You all remember the Horatian line, "Mors pulsat," etc.) Whatever the rank in life, whether young or old, whatever the calling or profession, whether lawyers or doctors or merchants, there is no station that is not broadened by culture. No learning can be too multifarious for a lawyer; no fact in human ethics valueless to a physician, no widening of the scope of political economy a matter of indifference to the merchant; no breath, fresh from the field of literature, uninvigorating to the country boy by a winter's fire. This liberal culture is to be gained by reading, reading, reading; for which the opportunities in this favored country are almost the birthright of all. By you, collegebred men, it is to be gained by building in the foundation here laid during your college course; and unless you do rear a fair structure on these foundations, the time expended here in laying them has been wasted; and let me tell you that at the close of life the reflection is not cheerful which reveals that some of its very choicest years have gone for naught 'tis a fine thorn for pillows, and I wish the luckless wretch who tries to sleep thereon joy of it. But some of you may say, "It's all very well to extol culture to the skies, and dazzle our eyes with its charms; but how, in the name of all the gods at once, are we to find time to acquire a thorough knowlenge of all human learning?" Fair and softly, young sir; when did I say that this same blessed culture must be " 'thorough?" I said it must be extensive, but I breathed no syllable that it must be thorough or profound. For, look you, in the youth of the world, what was the amount of the entire stock of all human knowledge? When the whole science of electricity was comprised in the solitary fact that if amber be rubbed, it attracts straws; when all that astronomy revealed was that stars were exhalations which the rising sun dispersed; when in all chemistry there were but four elements--earth, air, fire and water-and when no music was heard more ravishing than that extracted from three strings stretched across a tortoise shell, or than breath blown through a reed—then, in that happy, golden age, every man was an encyclopedia, and culture, thorough and profound, might be acquired in an hour; then any child could pluck up the whole tree of knowledge by the roots. But we have changed all that; we are now the heirs of forty centuries, and the heaven-high sequoias of Mariposa only very faintly symbolize the gigantic proportions of that same present tree of knowledge, and the concentrated devotion of a lifetime is demanded for a thorough mastery of a single tiny twig. WHERE REFUGE LIES. Now, if we are to follow those who assert that we must be unflinchingly thorough in all our reading, this state of affairs is truly distressing. For dear life's sake, we are forced to be thorough in our one chosen profession, and yet over and beyond all this we are told that we must be cultivated, thoroughly cultivated; whereupon a single glance at the present illimitable fields of human achievement in science, in the arts, in poetry, fills us with abysmal despair. To attain to this culture, at once thorough and general, would require a lifetime of hyperborean nights and days. What is to be done? Where lies our refuge? What solution is there to this terrifying problem? It is that if we would be cultured we must be superficial. Aye, it is even so. Culture in this year of grace is superficiality. The generally cultured man is a superficial man. And why should we find anything appalling therein? Can we not be superficial and happy? Because we cannot distinguish all the varieties of solidago must we forego the charm of recognizing Golden Rod when it transforms an autumn meadow into a field of the cloth of gold! Because we cannot expound the theories of the binary stars are we to forbear to name the constellations of the midnight sky? Shall we close our Homer because we cannot name the ships that went to Troy? A little knowledge is not a dangerous thing. If I cannot, for lack of time, drink deep of the Pierian spring, let me, in heaven's name, at least take a sip. But, say the advocates of thoroughness, by reading superficially, by not taking notes, and by not finishing one book to the very last sentence before another is begun, we impair our minds and weaken our mental powers. Be not dismayed. Take courage and be assured that if you are faithfully thorough in one field there is no danger of impairing your mind by being superficial in a hundred others. Culture is not mental discipline. It is a healthy relaxation, mental expansion. I will not say that some sort of system in general reading is not beneficial; but it is wholly secondary and depends much on the temperament of the reader. If you like to take notes, it will do you good; if not, it will make the reading distasteful. Of prime importance is it to read for our own pleasure. The benefit that flows therefrom will come unheeded and unconsciously. Unless we take pleasure in our reading not a particle of good shall we derive from it, not a line will be assimilated, no more than food that is eaten when we are not hungry. To be consistent the advocates of thoroughness should maintain that when we sit down to dinner we must eat thoroughly, and finish one dish before we touch another. Not a pea must be tasted before the last flake of potato has been devoured. Does nature proffer us no beauty in shallowness? Do the shores of a lake sink at once to its greatest depth? Is it not from the shallows that water lilies make glad the soul of man when they bare their heart of gold to the rays of the morning sun? Is, then, this superficial culture altogether charming? Aye, when with frank brow it acknowledges itself to be as superficial as it really is. But let culture once affect profundity, let it but once prank itself out in the garb of thoroughness, and it sinks beneath an honest man's contempt. Woe worth the day when you affect, either in culture or in aught else, to be other than what you really are! Acknowledge that you have made a brave attempt to "know everything of something and something of everything," as the saying is, and proudly own your superficiality; confess your limitations, and, as the Talmud says, "Teach thy tongue to say, 'I do not know."" your culture respectable and admirable. Then is Of course, if you are so happily endowed by nature that you can be thoroughly versed in every department of human knowledge, by all means fulfill your abnormal mission; the rest of us can only gaze at you with envy and admiration, untinged with any thought of possible emulation. We common folk must be content with thoroughness in one department and superficiality in all else. WHAT TO BEAR IN MIND. Once in a time I was expressing to the late Professor Krauth (who some years ago, together with the revered Professor Allen, lent preeminent distinction to this University) my enthusiastic admiration of his profound knowledge of the language of the New Testament-a knowledge so thorough that of any given verse he could at once give the history of its language from Wiclif to the Authorized Version, and his reply was, "My dear fellow, 'tis only a scale of the butterfly's wing." Hæc fabula docet, master your scale, and then by superficial culture revel in the iridescent beauty of the whole creature when it "waves in the eye of heaven its many-colored wings:" Bear in mind, therefore, that your culture must be not intensive, but extensive; and that it is purely selfish-never for display, but for your own sole benefit; and that by cultivating all your talents you are increasing your resources for the "heady fight" which awaits you in life, and that this cultivation is to be won by reading. Remember, also, that no specialist, however great and thorough, is therefore a cultured man. It is seldom, indeed, that they are not so; but they are cultured in addition to their speciality, not in consequence of it. The question naturally arises, What books shall we read? How can I advise you? By the very conditions of your reading, how can another person cater to you? You are to read for relaxation, and therein you must follow your own sweet will. Your will may not be my will. It is essential-it is indispensable-that you shall enjoy what you read; otherwise you will never assimilate it. It will do you no good. I can prescribe food for your mind no more deftly than I can prescribe food for your body. I can tell you what will prove generally nutritious, but there may be seasons when you loathe solid food and must be fed on gruel. Moods there are when even Beethoven's symphonies are wearisome, and we take unbounded pleasure in an Irish jig. It is a saying trite enough that the bow cannot be forever bent. You must bear in mind that while you are pursuing your chosen profession the bow is stretched to its fullest bend; when the bow is unbent, then culture claims the hour. A FIELD OF profit. Happy, indeed, are you if your minds are in so healthy a condition that you are always sharp set for grave, substantial reading, but you are not to be censured for seasons when you find pleasure in airy froth. Yet see to it, I pray you, that these seasons be but few and fleeting. You are safe as long as you know that therein lies no real culture. There is, however, one field-take my word for it-wherein lies immeasurable profit. It is a realm you can never exhaust; it will widen illimitably every outlook in life. For it you have laid the foundations here in college. It is your Latin. Cling to every shred of it that remains in your mind. Read the poets; let the prose writers, especially Cæsar, be forgotten. Read Horace for his infinite charm of life, of gaiety, of sparkling fun. Read Catullus, and fall in love with Lesbia, and adore her sparrow, and lock arms with Catullus himself in his love of home and of the old familiar furniture, and grieve with him over the bitter loss of his brother. Read Ovid and learn the classic stories of mythology. Read Propertius (I declare to you one of the deepest lessons of my life came to me from the Elegies of Propertius). Read selections of Martial, whose sparkling wit will make you laugh outright. Read with a translation at hand if you need it. The language is, in this regard, of secondary importance. In another regard it is of prime importance-namely, in the invaluable help which its inflections contribute toward understanding our own uninflected language. It ranks in this respect next to Anglo-Saxon in importance. Our own grammar can be known thoroughly only by reference to these two languages. Marsh, in his admirable "Lectures on the English Language," says most truly that "the English student who has mastered the Latin may be assured that he has thereby learned one-half of what he has to learn in acquiring any Continental language." As a grammatical discipline, therefore, Latin is invaluable, and this value lies in its inflected forms. For, as Marsh happily phrases it, "to parse an English sentence you must first understand it; to understand a Latin period you must first parse it." It is this predominance of form over logic that makes Latin the universal key to all language. What I have said in regard to the charm of Latin writers I should like to repeat in regard to Greek. There can be no purer classic pleasure than an hour passed with Eschylus, or Sophocles, or Euripedes, or, in lighter mood, with Aristophanes. Here let me parenthetically express to you the intense pride for our dear old University, wherewith all lovers of true scholarship greeted the recent performance of "Iphigenia"-of infinite credit to your Greek professor for his indefatigable zeal and masterly translation, to your professor of music for his sympathetic rendering of Greek emotion and to the gallant band of performers whose histrionic skill and rare proficiency are beyond praise. One such performance does more to extend the high renown of this University as a seat of learning than a whole year of successive intercollegiate victories in the Franklin Field. It is said that Goethe laid down the rule that we should every day listen to some good music, gaze on some good picture and read some poetry. This, I suppose, was his idea of maintaining a standard of culture; and it strikes me as a very moderate list for a German. To hear good music and see good pictures may be easier of accomplishment in Germany than in this country, although, to be sure, by way of music we can whistle; for pictures, have we not the Sunday papers? All of us, however, can daily read some poetry-a very potent aid to culture. SHAKESPEARE COMES FIRST. 64 First of all, and always at hand, there is Shakespeare, emperor by the grace of God, of all literature," in whose praise it is rank folly to utter one word, only this: If there be in your temperament no nerve which vibrates in response to what you read in Shakespeare, it follows that you are (I deeply regret to say it) unquestionably an instance of what modern physiologists term hereditary reversion; and I am really at a loss to know what advice to give you. On reflection, I think you had better convert all your belongings into money and emigrate to the tropics, where, every morning, fasting and on your knees, you should pray for the development of a prehensile tail, in order that you may rest comfortably with your fellows in an arboreal retreat. Next after Shakespeare come Milton's "Comus" and "Lycidas," which penetrate to the very seat where poetry is throned, and stand unsurpassed in English literature. If these two poems do not enthrall you, close all books of poetry-there is not a vestige of poetry in your soul. I would advise you to devote yourself to the thrilling pages of a city directory. It is unfair to apply to "Paradise Lost" what Voltaire is said to have observed with regard to Dante, that his fame was constantly increasing because he was so little read. Yet there is a grain of truth in it. I think it likely that it is only earnest students of English literature and a few sporadic, ardent lovers of Milton who have read every line of the twelve books. Very many readers begin them and then skip to the end. This is proved by the hackneyed lines which abound in the early books and in the last, but are scanty in the middle. Understand me, I am speaking to you as busy men, indulging in poetry as a relaxation, and as a refuge from the sordid cares of the world. I suppose we all resemble Charles Lamb's "Mrs. Battle," to whom "whist was her business, her duty, the thing she came into the world to do-and she did it. She unbent her mind afterward over a book." WORDSWORTH, LANDOR AND LAMB ARE INEX HAUSTIBLE. This mention of Charles Lamb reminds me to say that if you do not read his essays, brimming as they are with such quiet humor as in the sentence just quoted, you cannot be-I will not say men of culture, but even half educated. From Milton it is a long stretch chronologically-but only chronologically-to Wordsworth, who is inexhaustible. Omit his long poem "The Excursion "-it will inexpressibly weary you unless you are an extremely ardent Wordsworthian-but read his "Laodamia," with its "Elysian beauty, melancholy grace,' his sonnets, which as a modern collection for number and perfection are unsurpassed in English, and above all read, till you know it by heart, his immortal ode, "On the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Our Childhood." No matter how wearied you may be with the day's work, or smirched with the dust and grime of the world's ways, this ode will refresh and cleanse and usher you into a new world of solemn, purifying thought. There is another author whom I would commend to your earnest consideration. It is Walter Savage Landor. I never Of his "Imaginary Conversations grow weary. One of my favorites is that between sop and Rhodope. Who Esop is you all know well enough. His owner, Xanthus, has just purchased a little Thracian girl, Rhodope, who was as exquisitely beautiful as she was pure and guileless. She had approached Esop out of compassion for his repulsive deformity, and Æsop was attracted by her rare beauty and tenderness of heart. Indeed, it would be difficult in all literature-even including the wonderful scene where Richard III. woos and wins Queen Anne-a more masterly portrayal of the power of intellect to render itself so attractive as to obliterate all repugnance to physical ugliness. Esop had been telling some of his fables wherein beasts are represented as talking. |