Advice by Which every Aspiring Woman may Profit.

[The following thoughtful and beautiful address was delivered by Professor C. L. Cocke, LL.D., to the full graduates of Hollins Institute, at its last Commencement. We were, so pleased with it that we asked Dr. C. L. Cocke to furnish it for publication.-Religious Herald.]

SPEECH TO FULL GRADUATES.

During your connection with this Institute, young ladies, you have been repeatedly called to this stand to receive testimonials to your fidelity and success in the studies you have prosecuted-testimonials which it is always a pleasure to us to bestow, and which aspiring students so much delight to receive. You come now for the last time, and you come to receive the highest honors which this Institute confers-honors honestly won and richly deserved.

This hour is an important epoch in the individual life of each of you. But a few hours ago you entered this chapel as school girls— all through your past years, from infancy to the present moment, at every step you have taken and in all relations, you have been subject to an ever-kind and solicitous and wakeful guardianship. At the close of this exercise you will leave this presence with life and destiny in your own hands. It will be for you to determine what that life and destiny shall be-what record you will make in that world to which you go, of abounding privileges and possibilities; but, alas, alas! equally abundant in influences to retard, to deceive, and to ruin. Young ladies, I would remind you, in these parting words, that scholastic attainments, however varied and wide their range, do not, and cannot, comprehend all culture and all knowledge. The best schools can give you only the initiatory steps to a true and elevated culture and open to you the sources of knowledge. From the very

nature of the case they can do no more. They finish no education -they give no complete knowledge on any subject. It is the aftergrowth-the expansion, the development, and acquirements of after years they look to.

You may have labored, as you suppose, long, faithfully, and successfully, and certainly you have or you could not sit on those seats to-day; and yet the fields of your toil have broadened, and expanded, and grown more beautiful and attractive, the farther you have pushed your researches. They are indeed boundless-knowledge, in any of the great fields of human thought and research, is without limit—it is infinite. You study what are called the philosophies and sciences of things, material and immaterial. Your eyes open upon a marvelous system of forces, of laws, of principles, all nicely adjusted, all harmoniously working to results, and producing, in both the world of mind and the world of matter, results beautiful, varied, stupendous. A thousand times you had looked forth upon the world of nature, a thousand times you had admired its ever changing forms and freshening beauties, its grandeurs, its glories; and a thousand times you had marked the progressive development of mind in yourselves and in others. But never before had you gone below the surface and contemplated that wonderful system of laws and forces which, from year to year, from century to century, from age to age, with no cessation, with no rest from their toils, without confusion, without a single jar, work on to their wondrous and countless developments. But, young ladies, you are still in elementary knowledge. These same laws and forces permeate, not only the vast fabric upon which you tread, in all its constituent parts—its oceans, its mountains, its mineral substances, its animal and vegetable kingdoms, its spiritual and intellectual life; but they rule and reign and control in other spheres and systems-in those vast orbs which beautify and adorn the midnight sky, many of them far exceeding our own in volume, in variety of substance, and, it may be, in teeming life-nay, more, they project beyond all these into that vast and dread unknown, where neither the vision of man nor the foot of angel has ever wandered.

And what mind has ever reached its fullest development, or found a limit to its capacities? The varied and stupendous achievements of some minds have astonished the world, enlightened the ages; and their power and their influence are to widen, intensify and impress, until generations shall come and go no more. These minds never realized that their capacity to receive and their power to grasp, to analyze and expound, had been exhausted. On the contrary, the

more they acquired and the more they were exercised, the greater was their capacity for the reception of truth and their expansion and reach of grasp. And, so far as the book of Nature and the book of Revelation testify, there is to be no limit in the life beyond-ever advancing, ever developing, without ever reaching a limit, as countless ages roll on.

You study language and literature, and you imagine, and others imagine, that you know much-and you do know much according to the standards which prevail in general society. But what do any of us know as compared with what we do not know? We live in a marvelous age. Does not each generation flood the earth with works of science and literature, new and fresh, teeming with thoughts and discoveries, which all the past failed to develop? And language itself-who has fully sounded its depths or measured its import and its laws? Are we not in this "age to come," this age to which all other ages looked and for which they sighed-the crowning era in the grand march of all the ages, when "knowledge should increase and many go to and fro"--are not we, even now, debating the meaning and measureless import of words spoken when "first the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"

And so of music. What master has ever reached the full compass of his own voice or measured the depths of his own soul? This grand era in which we live was ushered in with music. The sublimest strains ever wafted on earthly breezes, or that ever saluted mortal ear, were on that clear autumnal night of holiest mood:

"The corn fields, bathed in Cynthia's silver light,

Stood ready for the reaper's gathering hand;
And all the winds slept soundly. Nature seemed

In silent contemplation to adore

Its Maker. Now and then the aged leaf
Fell from its fellows rustling to the ground;

And as it fell, bade man think on his end.

On vale and lake, on wood and mountain high,
With pensive wing outspread, sat heavenly Thought
Conversing with itself. Vesper looked forth
From out her western hermitage, and smiled.
And up the East unclouded rode the Moon
With all her stars gazing on earth intense,
As if she saw some wonder walking there.
Such was the night, so lovely, still, serene,"

when suddenly the angelic choir, on bended wing, came sweeping by, singing in full chorus,

Glory to God in the highest,

And on earth, peace,

Good will toward men.

That is the key-note of the present era; that is the music to which you should aspire. And so of art, and so of everything.

Young ladies, when you reach your homes and mingle in society a little, and gain sufficient confidence in yourselves to be really yourselves, you will probably begin to discuss problems of science, and, now and then, give a quotation from the ancient or modern classics, or play a little classical music, or catch up, by the way, a "wo-begone" school boy and solve his difficult problems for him, thus enabling him to astonish his class and his teacher, as girls will do sometimes; and then you will find kind-hearted friends, simple-minded people, gathering around to tell you how much you do know. "You know Latin," "you know Shakespeare," "you know Philosophy," "you know Mathematics," "you know Music," "and pray what more do you wish to know?" "Your knowledge is complete, you have a finished education."

These kind, good people have stood in your way long enough, and in the way, too, of progress in this Southern land. Many a boy of noble impulses and the best gifts has been consigned to obscurity, to want and wretchedness, by such untimely and unseemly praise. Many a girl of brilliant endowments, whose genius might have illu mined the literature of a continent, has been cheated out of her true and noble mission by the short-sighted weakness of her friends. Finished education! Complete knowledge! Young ladies, suffer no man or woman to mock you in phrase so false and deceptive. Tell them they know not what they say-tell them you have taken but the first step, that your eyes have opened on a vast shoreless ocean, sweeping on and on in majestic grandeur forever, and that you have gathered from its heaving bosom but a few beautiful pearls and caught up a few floating fragments from its ever restless surface.

Graduation from school does not imply full and complete knowledge on any subject, or in any department of learning. No institution of Europe or America, no school of the ancients or of the mod. erns, with all their advanced thought and multiplied appliances, has ever sent forth a single graduate possessed of all knowledge on any subject of scholastic study, or whose mind had reached its highest discipline or fullest development.

The object of true scholastic training is, first, the discipline of the powers; and, second, the opening to its pupils the sources of knowl

edge. In these processes, of course, much information is imparted. But to stop here and read and study no more would be fatal to the fond hopes of parents and friends, fatal to the hopes and interests of society, so far as centred in yourselves, fatal to your own aspirations for position and influence in life. What! Stop at the very point you have been so long toiling to reach in order to successful progress? Never; let no graduate of this school be guilty of such folly. Follow not the example of thousands, and tens of thousands, in this Southern land, who have laid aside books, music, and all literary labors on their final Commencement day. Read and study, young ladies-not the light literature of the day, but books that are books-books of thought, books of breadth and depth and grasp of meaning-that your powers may be still farther disciplined and invigorated, that your mental vision may be expanded, and your fund of knowledge enlarged.

And, further, young as you are, and confined as you have been to school and home-life, you have not looked out upon the world nor contemplated the wonderful progress of your own country and people. Marvellous, indeed, are the advances of this people in numbers, in wealth, in learning, in everything that gives prominence and prowess to a nation. You have read of the great nations of other countries and other times-their great cities, their great armies, their bloody and interminable wars, their learning, their religions, their social and political institutions, their decay, their death-but, to-day, your own country and people are the wonder of the world, and all the world seems to be on tiptoe to see this great wonder, for they are coming in from all quarters, as to the land of promise-we have actually to make laws to keep them out. What we are to become as a nation, a government, and a people, all the experiences of other nations in all the ages of the past cannot foreshadow-the conditions are new, the environments are different. Our broad expanse of territory, washed on the East and on the West by mighty seas and oceans, safe and unmolested highways to every nation and people of earth; our genial climes of every temperature; our genial soils of every mold and every product; our majestic rivers, mountains and lakes; our free laws, free education and free religion-every man, and every woman, too, at perfect liberty to pursue untrammelled and unmolested his chosen calling, and rise to the highest point of which he is capable, in the service of himself, his country or his God-all, all point to a future of transcendent greatness. And in this greatness, learning, in both extent and variety, is to be the most prominent and potent fac