AN ORATION BEFORE THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY OF HARVARD
UNIVERSITY, JULY 26, 1853.

BY

HENRY W. BELLOWS.

CAMBRIDGE:

JOHN BARTLETT,

BOOKSELLER TO THE UNIVERSITY.

1853.

ORATION.

BRETHREN OF THE PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY,

GENTLEMEN AND LADIES:

When this honored University calls a son from the metropolis of trade to be the tongue of one of her chief festivals, she doubtless respects the importance of the place on which she fixes her maternal eye more than the gifts of her child, and invites the citizen rather than the alumnus to her rostrum. Speaking purely as a scholar, I should unaffectedly feel that I had nothing to offer worthy this audience or occasion; but as the occupant of a student's post in the great mart of our commerce, I may perhaps, without immodesty, claim the attention due to a messenger from the chief city to the chief university of the land, from the head-quarters of American Life to the head-quarters of American Literature.

While, then, the more frequent, and perhaps the most natural use of this occasion, is to point out and urge home the duties which Literature and Scholarship owe to our national character and popular life, the pretensions under which I have sought shelter

oblige me to reverse this method, and to endeavor to show what the History and Life of the country are doing for Literature and Scholarship, or rather for that great end which learning and letters serve, the intellectual life of the nation.

Before crossing the threshold of the subject, let me propitiate the learned judges in this court by a full confession. I have no intention of presenting both sides of a question which undeniably has two fronts. It is my avowed purpose to plead the cause of our national instincts and practical culture, against the doubts and shrugs of retired and fastidious students; to vindicate the intellectual life of action from the contempt of scholarship; to show that literature must take the tide, instead of stemming the flood, of our national ideas, and concede nothing to the fears and counsels which pronounce the triumphs of freedom and humanity the defeats of taste, genius, and learning. At a fitting time, I could urge with equal zeal and sincerity upon the active classes of the community, the claims of letters and scholarship; but surely the misdirection of argument towards those already convinced is everywhere too common, and scholars need not to hear the praises of learning, or workers the glories of action. Let me, then, not seem ignorant or unmindful of the student's view, because my present object and the jealous hours confine my attention to the popular aspect of our subject; which, for the convenience of a handle, I will call "The Leger and the Lexicon: or Business and Literature in Account with American Education."

Coming together to-day as representatives of lib

eral studies, it is at once observable that our relations to each other as scholars are not the characteristic relations of our intellectual existence. We are for the most part engaged in the stirring professions and active duties of our American life; accustomed to little uninterrupted study, with narrow opportunities of choice in our mental pursuits, and able to steal from professional toil only the rarest occasions for intercourse with each other, or with the Muses. And yet, perhaps, no class of students in the world is more accustomed to intellectual toil; - for the professional, that is, the usual, life of educated men in this country is one of intense mental exertion, a profoundly thoughtful life, though not characteristi cally scholastic or literary. And in this respect we represent only fairly the country itself, — which manifests an amount of intellectual energy unexampled in the history of nations, with small claims at present to a national literature.

And this points to the fundamental peculiarity of our mental life, its popular and practical character. A studious class does not originate, control, or represent it. It is our fortune to live in a land where Life is more interesting than Literature, and Men more promising than Books; where Thought finds its natural outlet in action, not in speculation, and Doing and Being take rightful precedence of describing and recording. The distinction between the literary and the intellectual character, though most obvious, is not always kept in view. A man of letters may not be a man of thoughts, and a man of thoughts may not be a man of letters, and for Man