KNOWLEDGE AS A POWER.

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stone - recorded the sacred traditions of Judæa, the eloquence of Greece, and the annals of Rome! Honor to those honest workmen of the valley of the Rhine, who multiplied, by forms of wood and metal, all the literature of the ancient world, and gave to mankind a mass of knowledge that can never die, which no Arab chief can burn, and which no accident can in future destroy! How important to read the books which preserve the undying words of Newton, and those illustrious men who have bequeathed to us the legacy of their highest thoughts, treasured up and put out to the noblest uses, for the common good of all mankind!

It behoves every man, whatever his rank in life, to take advantage of opportunities such as these, and especially it concerns the laboring man. We are, or ought to be, all laboring men. I do not think there is one individual, among the respectable company now assembled around me, who does not wish to rank himself as a working man. Some labor by the hand, and others by the head; but no one must be idle. Nor should we insist too much on the distinction between one class of labor and another; nor admit, for a moment, the great error, that labor is a curse. The necessity for labor, imposed by Providence, we cannot avoid; but it depends only upon the mind to fulfill the purpose of Providence, and convert that labor into enjoyment.

Members of this Institute! by constantly attending to the means of instruction which it provides, you will win others to follow your example; the public favor will follow you; every thing will be prosperous before you, and it will be in your power to perpetuate and make more flourishing the institution to which you are attached. You have in hand a noble cause; you have powerful assistance; you have a great work to perform; and I will conclude by advising you TO GO AND DO IT.

PROF. JOHN PHILLIPS.

III. KNOWLEDGE AS A POWER.

LET no man rest the support which he gives to any educational institution upon a notion of the advantages that he is peculiarly to derive from it. Let us build upon a nobler basis than this; for in vain have we founded this Institute, if, now that it is established, we trust for its support to any other than the broad and true principle, that "for the soul of man to be ignorant it is not good. Not because institutions such as this may be made to augment our individual influence in society; not because by the instruction which is here obtained will its possessor be raised in wealth; not because, in popular language, "knowledge is

power," but, because with enlargement of knowledge comes improvement of individual character, and exaltation of social and national happiness. For this reason, let us adhere to the principle that " knowledge is good," because it is a source of blessing to mankind, and therefore deserves the cultivation of every reasonable man.

Knowledge is power."- Yes! Power! power to do what? Power to employ the senses and faculties which God has given us in examining the works which he has made; and thus to acknowledge in all creation, "These are thy glorious works! Power to penetrate the mysteries of nature, to learn the laws of matter and motion, and from all that we can gather from the contemplation of nature to draw one encouraging conclusion that nothing happens in the universe, which is not carefully planned and strictly attended to. Power to discover the forces which it has pleased the Almighty to put in action among particles of matter, and to turn these forces to the advantage of mankind; bounded no longer by the sea, limited no longer to human strength, served by more than Titanic agents, whereby man may even fly across that gulf which, for thousands of years, separated the two divisions of the world. Power to guide, to govern, and to bless mankind; and, most important of all, power to know and to control ourselves; power to take right views of our allotted place and destiny in and beyond this world; to rise beyond the influence of daily necessity and immediate gratification, into the contemplations suited to immortal spirits, rays of a diviner essence. For these reasons we will honor knowledge as a Power!

IB.

IV. DOMESTIC USES OF BOOKS.

"ALL our faults," says an author who knew the human heart well,"spring from the inability to be alone." Every day's experience must convince you of the truth of La Bruyère's* remark. Thence comes the desertion of domestic life, the neglect of its duties, the careless parent, the disobedient family, and that wretched craving after external excitement which converts the paradise of home itself into an ǎr'id wilderness. But can that man ever be alone, can he ever dread solitude, who can converse alternately with Virgil and Cicero, with Tasso and Ariosto, with Racine and Corneille, with Scott and Shakspeare? To such a man is really true, what Cicero said of Scipio Africanus, "Never less alone than when alone; never less at rest than when at rest." This is the real exclusive society- this is the magic circle, which,

*Pronounced Lah-broo-e-air's.

ADDRESS TO LADIES.

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indeed, dignifies humanity; for it interests without corrupting. and elevates the feeling without hardening the heart. But no haughty pride guards its approach-no zealous spirit forbids its entrance; the portals are open to all, but they are to be passed only on the wings of perseverance.

In vain does an utilitarian age ask what is the use of literary pursuits?— what benefit is thence to arise to society?—in what respect is the sum of human happiness to be increased by this extension? What, I would ask, in reply, is the use of the poetry of Milton, the music of Handel, the paintings of Raffaelle? Why are the roses more prized than all the harvests of the fields, though they are beautiful alone? To what does everything great or elevating in nature tend, if not to the soul itself to that soul which is eternal and invisible, and never ceases to yearn after the eternal and invisible, how far soever it may be removed from whatever affects only present existence, and which, in that very yearning, at once reveals its ultimate destiny, and points to the means by which alone that destiny is to be attained?

Be not deterred, then, by the difficulties of the ascent, the toil requisite to reach the summit. Of such study may truly be said what has been so finely spoken of the moral uses of affliction: "It is like the black mountain of Bender, in India; the higher you advance, the steeper is the ascent, the darker and more desolate the objects with which you are surrounded; but when you are at the summit, the heaven is above your head, and at your feet the kingdom of Cashmere."

SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON.

V.-ADDRESS TO LADIES.

CONTINUATION OF THE FOREGOING.

I SEE with pleasure around me not merely an assembly of men, but a large proportion of the other sex. To the latter I would, in an especial manner, address myself ere we part, and that not in the spirit of chivalrous gallantry, but of serious moral duty. I will do so in the words of a man second to none that ever existed in intellectual power, and least of all liable to be swayed in matters of thought by the attractions of your society. "It is my decided opinion," said Napoleon, "that every thing in the future man depends upon his mother." If any thing was requisite to support so great an authority, I would add, that as far as my own observation has gone, I have never either heard or read of a remarkable man who had not a remarkable mother.

If, then, study is requisite for the men who are to rule the world, what must it be for you who are to form the men? whose blessed province it is to implant those early lessons of virtue, and inculcate those early feelings of religion and habits of perseverance, on which the whole future fate of life depends, and which, by the blessing of God, when once received, will never be forgotten? Thus it is that you will duly discharge your inestimable mission; thus it is that you will contribute your part to the great work of human advancement; and thus it is that you will regain in home the lost Paradise of Eden, and be enabled to say of it, in your last hours, "This it is which has softened the trials of Time; this has, indeed, been the gate of heaven."

IB.

COPERNICUS, after harboring in his bosom for long, long years that pernicious heresy, the solar system, died on the day of the appearance of his book from the press. The closing scene of his life, with a little help from the imagination, would furnish a noble subject for an artist. For thirty-five years he has revolved and matured in his mind his system of the heavens. natural mildness of disposition, bordering on timidity, a reluctance to encounter controversy, and a dread of persecution, have led him to withhold his work from the press, and to make known his system but to a few confidential friends and disciples.

A

At length he draws near his end; he is seventy-three years of age, and he yields his work on the "revolutions of the heavenly orbs" to his friends for publication. The day at last has come on which it is to be ushered into the world. It is the 24th of May, 1543. On that day, the effect, no doubt, of the intense excitement of his mind operating upon an exhausted frame, an effusion of blood brings him to the gates of the grave. His last hour is come; he lies stretched upon the couch from which he will never rise, in his apartment at the Canonry at Frauenberg, in East Prussia. The beams of the setting sun glance through the Gothic windows of his chamber; near his bedside is the armillary sphere, which he has contrived to represent his theory of the heavens; his picture painted by himself, the amusement of his earlier years, hangs before him; beneath it his astrolabe and other imperfect astronomical instruments; and around him are gathered his sorrowing disciples. The door of the apartment opens; the eye of the departing sage is turned to see who enters; it is a friend who brings him the first printed

OBLIGATIONS TO ENGLAND.

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copy of his immortal treatise. He knows that in that book he contradicts all that had ever been distinctly taught by former philosophers; he knows that he has rebelled against the sway of Ptolemy, which the scientific world had acknowledged for a thousand years; he knows that the popular mind will be shocked by his innovations; he knows that the attempt will be made to press even religion into the service against him; but he knows that his book is true.

He is dying, but he leaves a glorious truth, as his dying bequest, to the world. He bids the friend who has brought it place himself between the window and his bedside, that the sun's rays may fall upon the precious volume, and he may behold it once before his eye grows dim. He looks upon it, takes it in his hands, presses it to his breast, and expires. But no, he is not wholly gone. A smile lights up his dying countenance; a beam of returning intelligence kindles in his eye; his lips move; and the friend who leans over him can hear him faintly murmur the beautiful sentiments which the Christian lyrist of a later age has so finely expressed ʼn vere:

"Ye golden lamps of heaven, farewell, with all your feeble light! Farewell, thou ever-changing moon, pale empress of the night!

And thou, refulgent orb of day, in brighter flames arrayed,

My soul, which springs beyond thy sphere, no more demands thy aid.
Ye stars are but the shining dust of my divine abode,

The pavement of those heavenly courts, where I shall reign with God." So died the great Columbus of the heavens.

E. EVERETT.

SIR, in spite of all that has passed, we owe England much; and even on this occasion, standing in the midst of my generousminded countrymen, I may fearlessly, willingly, acknowledge the debt. We owe England much; - nothing for her martyrdoms; nothing for her proscriptions; nothing for the innocent blood with which she has stained the white robes of religion and liberty; these claims our fathers canceled, and her monarch rendered them and theirs a full acquittance forever. But, for the living treasures of her mind, garnered up and spread abroad for centuries by her great and gifted, who that has drunk at the sparkling streams of her poetry, who that has drawn from the deep fountains of her wisdom, who that speaks and reads and thinks her language, will be slow to own his obligation?

We may forgive the presumption which "declared " its right "to bind the American colonies," for it was wofully expiated by