your own respectability and usefulness; you will secure the esteem of men, and the friendship of God.

As it is your lot to come forward into life at a most interesting period, let your conduct be marked with the most disinterested love of your country. Avoid the contagion of party spirit. Exercise a noble and independent liberality towards those who differ from you in sentiment. Cultivate peace with all men, and support the laws and constitution of your country. I trust and believe that you go from this college with a deep sense of the value of civil and religious freedom. To behold you exerting your talents in support of these, will afford the highest pleasure to those who have conducted your education.

The prompt obedience which you have rendered to the authority of this college; the diligence with which you have pursued your studies; the civility and decency which have characterised your deportment; have greatly contributed to the good order and regular discipline of this college; and have set an example, which I hope will long be remembered and followed. Though many individuals among your predecessors have held a high rank in literary distinction; yet when I consider the number and talents of the present class, I must pronounce you the lights of this Institution. Permit me to express on this occasion the high satisfaction which I experience in crowning you with the laurels of this college. May they grow and flourish for ever! Departing from this institution, you carry with you my most ardent desires for your happiness. I now give you my final adieu, and recommend you to the blessing of God.

THE progress of man from barbarous to civilized life, is distinguished by no circumstances more important than the invention and improvement of useful arts. These, however, in the present improved state of society, have become so common, and their advantages so familiar, that, like the uninterrupted succession of divine favors, they are commonly passed by unnoticed. The recitals of battles, victories and triumphs, which engross so great a part of history, dazzle the imagination, excite the passions, and by perverting the judgment, force a tribute of applause to those heroes whose actions dispassionate reason detests. Let us for a moment suppress the emotions excited by efforts of valor; let us look at the great family of men, and ask them who are their benefactors. Are they heroes? Are these the authors of all their civilization and all their useful conveniences in life? No-they have desolated our fields, they have butchered our ancestors, they have buried our plains in blood. They multiplied the miseries of their cotemporaries; they left to their posterity examples of brutal ferocity and insatiable ambition. But the inventors and improvers of arts meliorated the condition of society; they converted the materials and subjected the elements of nature to its uses; they established it on a permanent foundation, and left behind them laborious researches, whose progressive improvements and beneficent effects