AN ADDRESS.

To you, Young Gentlemen, who are now taking your leave of this Institution, your future prosperity and promotion must be highly important and interesting. The education you have acquired, is, with most of you, the capital, with which you venture forth into the commerce of life. Let prudence, industry, and economy, be your constant attendants. Hitherto, while intrenched in the narrow limits of collegiate life, you have carried with you the ardent wishes, and engaged the tender anxieties of parental affection. You are now entering on a different scene, where you must more immediately direct and control your own conduct. Of course more anxiety will follow you; and more honor, if you are wise and successful. Those principles and actions, which have raised others to eminence and distinction, you may expect will raise you. It is safe to follow the dictates of experience. This alone ought to be your guide in all cases which fall within its limits. You may consider human life, as you do the science of natural philosophy, in which no real and useful progress can be made without the aid of experiment. Let me advise you always to adhere to the plain dictates of common reason; and never suffer your minds and hearts to be perverted, by that modern new-sprung light, which teaches its disciples, that every thing which has heretofore been esteemed wisdom, is folly; that all those civil and religious institutions,

to which mankind are indebted for all their moral and intellectual improvement, are systems of fraud, founded on ignorance and supported by prejudice. The men who advocate these ideas, exclusively arrogate to themselves the pompous title of philosophers. They consider Newton, and Locke, and Bacon, and Boyle as mere children. They cannot endure such simpletons, for they were weak and credulous enough to believe there is a God. These masters of the new school, consider it as a great stigma upon their dignified independence; as a great sin against the unalienable, sacred rights and liberties, of their "material frames;" to receive instruction from the wisdom of past ages, or from any thing except their own unerring reason. They cannot endure the voice of history, because this relates what ought not to have happened. They consider the present race of men, as a species wholly different, from all those groveling beings, who have existed in the past ages of the world. As the nature of man is found to be wholly different from what it has always appeared to be, new models of society and government must be adopted; for as the scene is wholly reversed, every thing which has formerly been useful, must now be pernicious. Hence the world has been filled with a thousand visionary schemes, announcing the perfectibility of man, the age of reason, the empire of philosophy, the grave of immortality and the divinity of matter. With the patrons of these schemes, it is too vulgar, to believe what has heretofore been believed. They must have something new, something altogether of their own making; it must be wholly detached from common sense, it must be monstrous and prodigious, or it is not philosophy. Novelty to a certain class of mankind, has charms too alluring to be resisted. Hence it is that the modern apostles of moral and political destruction, obtain proselytes to rash adventure and dangerous innovation; proselytes, who like themselves, would break up the great deep, and inundate the globe. Let me advise you, never to relinquish the maxims of experience and the plain dictates of common sense. These will be to you an ark of safety. When every thing around you is perishing in the flood, the top of Ararat will sustain you, and the dove bearing the branch of the olive, will fly to your windows.

I must in the next place guard you against a disposition to neglect the opinions which are formed concerning your conduct. Indifference to censure and applause, is the index of a heart stubborn in its own pride, and hardened by its own wickedness. He who can assume to himself so much importance, as to see no connexion between his own prosperity and the approbation of the wise and virtuous, exhibits the most striking evidence, that he is travelling in the broad road of destruction. The principle he avows and practises, is a principle of unjustifiable, savage and ferocious independence. No one can stand aloof in insulated solitude; no one has a right to sunder the ligaments which bind him to the social body; no one is fortified with such a mound of majesty and glory, that can need no aid and fear no danger from his fellow mortals. That barbarian pride, which disclaims all external control, and sees no value except in individual importance; is the enemy of all domestic and public tranquility. It is the fruitful source of the most daring enormities; tends to prostrate every useful establishment; and if generally indulged, would convert the whole civilized world into a theatre of contention, of rapine and murder. Be careful therefore to cultivate a decent and proper respect for the opinions that will be formed concerning your conduct; and never allow yourselves, to believe that the established customs of society can be slighted with impunity, or subverted without destruction of every thing valuable.

I would recommend to you, never to treat with contempt and censure those who possess talents different from your own, or who profess different sentiments, provided those sentiments do not infringe the essential laws of morality, and discard the solemn injunctions of religion. There is a variety no less extensive and beautiful, in the intellectual and moral world, than in the natural. God has seen fit to bestow on different individuals, different kinds and degrees of mental and corporeal endowments. The sentiments and characters of men are originated, varied and formed, by innumerable circumstances, which appear to be merely accidental. From different associations, employments, and habits, which are all unavoidable in such a world as this, men necessarily derive some peculiarity in their

modes of thinking, reasoning and judging. Perhaps, if the differences, oppositions and inequalities in the intellectual system were destroyed, it would have no more beauty to an eye that could take it in at one view, than this earth would, if all those varieties which now render it so charming, were levelled down and blended in one common surface. The beneficent Creator has bestowed different kinds and degrees of talents on his creatures, that they might all feel their mutual connexion and dependence; that the intellectual universe might exhibit a complete whole, in nothing deficient, nor redundant, displaying an endless succession of harmonies, neither fatiguing the mind with too much uniformity, nor perplexing it with too much variety. You should, therefore strive to ascertain the rank allotted yourselves as well as others in the great and beautiful disposition of divine providence. You will then be disposed neither to censure others for not being like yourselves, nor to find fault for not being what you are. If you see many above you, it is probable, you will always see more below you. You ought neither to envy the former, nor to despise the latter, for a little reflection will convince you, that you have infinitely more reason to be grateful for being what you are; than to repine for not being allotted a more conspicuous station. After having ascertained the kind and degree of talents you possess, you will be able with much greater certainty, to cultivate them with success and to render them more useful to yourselves and others. The bestowments of divine providence have not made a greater difference in men, than the aids and embellishments of education. The man who possesses the greatest abilities unimproved by study and application, is a giant without skill and dexterity. A dwarf with a pebble, may level his cumbrous limbs in the dust. Whether your talents are great or small they will be of but little use without proper cultivation. No one can excel in things to which his talents are not adapted, nor is there scarcely one out of all the myriads of human nature, who cannot excel in something. The only art is, to find out what kind of capacity you possess, and to apply to such studies as are calculated to improve it. You cannot toil to advantage against nature; but if you add proper discipline to true genius, the result will be glorious.

On this subject, I must address you in the elegant language of Cicero ;-" Cum ad naturam eximiam atque illustrem, accesserit ratio quædam conformatioque doctrinæ; tum illud nescio quid præclarum ac singulare, solere existere." The same great and wonderful man ascribes all his abilities in eloquence to study and proper discipline. The different branches of learning bear an intimate relation not only to one another, but to the different faculties of the human mind. These different faculties in order to be cultivated must be employed in their proper provinces, and about their proper objects. Hence it is obvious that in order to excel, to be really eminent in any one branch of learning, it is necessary to be acquainted with all. But that you may render your abilities and acquirements, really useful; that you may acquire solid glory and permanent renown, it is essential that you keep in view the great ends of all arts and sciences. These are; to furnish the mind with information; to give its powers their highest perfection; to form the heart to rectitude and goodness; and thus to enable man to discharge the duties of life in that mode which will contribute most to the general advantage of society. You will do well, in all your studies and pursuits to keep these things in your minds.

In the systems of modern education more attention seems to have been paid, to enlighten the understanding, than to meliorate the heart. This is certainly a great defect; for eminent talents and extensive acquirements, unaccompanied with moral goodness, want that splendid attracting superiority which virtue alone can give. Neither the mind nor countenance, can be truly beautiful, unless suffused with that mild light, that ineffable resistless glory which beams from an uncorrupted heart. Man is not less elevated above other animals by his moral and religious capacity, than by his rational faculties and scientific acquirements. The moral sense with which he is endowed adds an incalculable value to his existence. Were he insensible to the beauty of virtue and the deformity of vice; were he not endowed with a consciousness that his knowledge of right and wrong inheres in an immortal principle; he could neither enjoy the transports of divine benediction, nor ascend to the sublime contemplation of the Supreme Being. Man's taste for moral ex