We have a right to be proud of our Revolutionary ancestors, for in the year 1776, with its varied fortunes, they were ever true to the great idea of American liberty. During that eventful year the Congress of the Patriots of North Carolina met twice at Halifax for the purpose of considering the condition of the country, once on the 4th of April, and again on the 12th of November. But very different were the auspices under which the Assembly held its different sessions.

In April North Carolina's great heart, always full of patriotism, was stirred to enthusiasm by the glad news which had recently been received from the Cape Fear section, that a few short weeks before (in February) Lillington and Caswell had defeated, at Widow Moore's bridge, the most formidable army of the Tories which had ever been collected on her soil, and had taken prisoner General McDonald, their leader. Animated by this glorious victory, and feeling that liberty was within their grasp, with exultation and enthusiasm they passed the resolution directing the delegates from North Carolina in the Continental Congress to concur with the delegates from the other Colonies in declaring Independence.

But under what different auspices did they assemble on the 12th of November of that same year! General Washington had been so beset on Long Island that only by good fortune, which seemed almost like the interposition of Divine Providence, had he been able to reach the main-land, and, like a wounded lion, slowly retired before his too powerful enemy.

The great city of the Continent, to which we had looked for ammunition, stores and reinforcements, New York, had surrendered to the enemy, and the cause of liberty seemed nearly hopeless.

Did these fathers of ours give way to despondency? Far otherwise. With their keen vision they pierced the dark clouds which seemed to encircle them, and after expressing confidence in the result of the conflict, they showed their faith by providing in the Constitution of the State that, when the war was over and independence secured, “A school or schools shall be established by the Legislature, and all useful learning shall be encouraged and promoted in one or more Universities.” The greatness of these men cannot be overrated.

During the continuance of the war this mandate of the Constitution lay dormant, but when the war was over, its consideration again received their attention, and after the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, on the 21st of November, 1789, the Legislature, on the 11th of December, 1789, chartered this University by an act in which it was declared that it was “the indispensable duty of every Legislature to consult the happiness of a rising generation, and endeavor to fit them for an honorable discharge of the social duties of life,” and that “a University, supported by permanent funds, and well endowed, will have the most direct tendency to answer the above purpose.” Thus was its constitutional obligation discharged, and the result of its action is before us to-day.

The wisdom of our fathers has been illustrated by a long line of distinguished divines, professors, farmers, scientists, lawyers, physicians, soldiers and statesmen who have gone out from these walls.

The legal, technical founders of the University of North Carolina were the early General Assemblies of the State, acting under the mandate of the Constitution. I am grieved to say that I cannot praise the majorities of those bodies for their beneficence. There were great men in the minorities, as Governor Fowle has so eloquently shown, but their efforts for the infant institution were resisted by a dense mass of ignorance and prejudice, thundering “No!” on all questions of appropriations. Ten thousand dollars as a loan for building our first structure, the Old East, afterwards through assiduous importunities converted into a gift, was all the money ever granted from our State Treasury for the first seventy-five years of the University's life.

The State had, however, a claim to escheated land warrants, belonging to soldiers of the Revolution who had died without heirs. They were located in the western regions of Tennessee — the home of bears and panthers and wild Indians. These land warrants, worthless to the State, were donated to the University. Tennessee claimed them by her right of sovereignty, and the University was only able by the skillful engineering of Judge Murphy to obtain one-third on the surrender of two-thirds. These lands, sold in 1835, were the foundation of the endowment of the University, coming to her aid when in direst stress, lifting her head above the water and causing nearly five hundred students from the Potomac to the Rio Grande to flock to her halls.

It is of pathetic interest to know that those unknown heroes who won our independence and made possible the most glorious republic of all the ages, who in direst poverty, in hunger and thirst and cold and nakedness did their great work, were unintentionally laying the foundations of our institution, by whose influences have been reared up so many pillars of the government for which they fought. They built better than they knew—those “unnamed demi-gods of history.”

Although the common soldiers were thus unintentionally the chief benefactors of our institution, the next to them were officers of the same noble army. There was Governor Smith, who donated 20,000 acres of Obion county lands, which, after being shaken up into lakes and hills by the most terrific earthquake which in historic times has ever visited America, realized a considerable sum. Poor old Governor Smith, Washington's aide-de-camp, wealthy and honored Governor of this great State, impulsive and too trustful of evil friends, spending his last days in querulous want! Quick in quarrel, when his body was moved from the grave-yard at Old Town, the bullet from Maurice Moore's pistol, shot in a duel, was found among his bones.

Then there was Thomas Person, who aided the construction of our Old Chapel, Person Hall, whose love of liberty placed him among the Regulators of 1771, as well as the Revolutionists of 1776. There was Charles Gerrard, who loved his blood-bought lands so well that he requested the University never to sell them, which request the University found it impossible to grant, but honored his memory by giving his name to this hall, “Gerrard,” not the spelling of the Philadelphia millionaire's name.

We should not forget the donors of the site of the University, nor the donors of smaller amounts in money and material and books and apparatus. Among the foremost of old days I find Richard Bennehan, grandfather of a benefactor of recent years, our venerable friend, Paul C. Cameron, who has given and lent, not only money, but months of valuable time, and a whole brain full of wise superintendence in the construction and repairs of our buildings, and in the beautiful trees of the avenue which we have named in his honor. Under these trees young men and maidens will delightedly stroll as long as sweet words shall be whispered into maidens' ears.

The ladies, too, made timely gifts. Among the archives of the University are the original autographs of fair ladies of Raleigh and New Berne, donating mathematical instruments, with the declaration that women, whether mothers or daughters, have peculiar interest in the education and refinement of young men. Their spirits have long ago flown to the spirit land. Their graceful forms are no more seen among us. But they are not dead; they live in their beneficent work. Their noble qualities are found in their descendants by the laws of heredity, the true transmigration of souls. To this list must be added in recent years the ladies of Raleigh and Hillsboro and Louisburg, and especially the name of Mary Ruffin Smith, whose generosity and forgetfulness of self are proved by the bequest of a valuable fund, to be known, at her request, not by her own, but her brother's name.

Among the benefactors of recent years are conspicuous the great constitutional lawyer, Bartholomew F. Moore, Rev. John Calvin McNair, my classmate, and that eloquent divine and philanthropist, Dr. Charles F. Deems, whose fund, enlarged by Mr. W. H. Vanderbilt, has already aided to higher education over one hundred and twenty young men struggling upwards under financial difficulties.

There are numerous benefactors of small amounts in the old days for erecting our buildings, and in 1875, when we repaired them, after long years of neglect, but my time does not permit me to call the list.

The monuments of all donors to universities are more lasting than brass and granite. Centuries will come and go, families will grow great and be extinguished, fortunes will be made and fortunes lost, office will be struggled for and ambitions realized, but the names of the victors will vanish as if written on the sea-shore sands. Reputations, blazing in pulpit or forum or legislative halls, will fade as rapidly as the meteors vanishing in the air. But the names of Smith and Person and Gerrard, of Moore and Deems and — (who will be the next?) — will live forever. In all the ages to come their works will go on. The successive swarms of young men who will have their mental panoply supplied from the University armory for life's varied conflicts will keep their memories in perennial freshness. As long as the University shall last their names shall be honored, and the University shall last forever.

The General Assembly of 1789 gave to the University its being and rendered possible its history and its glories; but the University, as if impressed ab initio with the truth, has certainly exemplified in its career the principle of “Quisque suœ fortunæ faber.”

Nevertheless, let us “render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's.”

I certainly feel highly complimented by the action of the Alumni Association in selecting me to respond to the toast just announced, but they greatly overestimate my powers in supposing that I could condense such an interesting and suggestive theme into a five minutes' speech.

I will not attempt to accomplish an impossibility. I would as soon undertake to compress the Black Mountains into a range of hills.

I can take only a general view of the subject, and speak of those noble men as I would speak of the great mountains when seen through the dimness of the distance in the beauty and grandeur of their sublime repose.

There have been many periods in the past when groups of great men exerted their combined influences in illuminating their magnificent age and in giving impetus to human progress. I will briefly refer to a few familiar historic periods made illustrious by deeds of heroism, patriotism and exalted genius. I will refer to the century ushered in by the reign of Pericles in Athens; to the Augustan age; to the Renaissance in Modern Europe; to the Elizabethan era; to the Protestant Reformation; to the Long Parliament, the Revolution of 1688, and the times of “Good Queen Anne”; to those days when Chatham, Burke, Fox, Pitt and their worthy associates exhibited the splendid resources of the English tongue, and the noble thoughts and emotions of the English mind and heart, and last I will refer to the greatest period of them all — a period which we now celebrate with centennial rejoicing — when the heroes, patriots and statesmen, sages of America, struggled for and established the principles of constitutional freedom and founded our great Republic.

If I was requested to designate the greatest period of North Carolina's moral and intellectual greatness, I would select the period from 1840 to 1860. In those days there were many men of exalted intellects, refined culture, ardent patriotism, broad sympathies and noble virtues, whose achievements contributed greatly to our State progress and renown. I will not enumerate them, as their names are familiar to this audience, and most of them were Trustees of this University.

In referring to President Swain and the Faculty of his administration, I will not claim that they were more accomplished scholars and teachers than the present Faculty. My affectionate partiality for my old teachers will not induce me to do manifest injustice or misrepresent well-recognized facts.

In the last fifty years civilization has made more progress in moral and intellectual culture and development than in the five preceding centuries. The present Faculty have had all the advantages of this rapidly-advancing progress. They have kept in the van-guard, and they are — and they ought to be — more learned and skilful teachers and scholars than their predecessors of my college days.

But I will, now and ever, insist that my old teachers were grand Christian sages and philosophers, and were eminent among the teachers of moral and intellectual progress in their day; and that in moral qualities and in nobility of nature and purpose, they are deservedly ranked with the highest types of mankind, and can never be surpassed in any succeeding age.

As the name of President Swain has been mentioned in the toast, I will briefly refer to him as a representative man of his associate Faculty and Trustees. Forgive me for calling him “Old Bunk,” for that uncouth nickname touches the tenderest chords of my heart and awakens their sweetest melodies. It calls up memories of the “long-ago” — hallowed memories which I have fondly cherished through many eventful years — magical memories, which come so vividly now that my old heart thrills with the pure, generous and joyous emotions of my young life.

President Swain was a truly great man. He was highly intellectual, learned, faithful to duty, and noble-hearted. He was an eloquent lecturer. He had none of the graces of manner and little of the elegance of classic diction, but he had the eloquence of profound thought and rich learning, expressed in the strong, earnest language of sincere conviction and noble purpose. He was warmly attached to the constitutional Union of the States. His love and devotion to North Carolina and this University was an ever-glowing enthusiasm. He had paternal affection for his boys — even the bad boys were objects of his tender solicitude and forbearing care.

I wish the “boys” of his administration had been included in the toast. The old University array would then have been complete. I ask leave to make the amendment now. I can never forget my dear college comrades, for their images are photographed upon my heart forever. Time has cast no misty veil over their memories. Some of them are gray-haired now, and many are in the grave, but I remember with tender affection the genial, generous and warm-hearted friends of those far-off sunny days, and those rejuvenating memories and associations often make me wish that “I were a boy again.”

The last time that I met President Swain was in Washington City, in May, 1865. Our old State had been overrun and devastated by conquering armies, and our distressed people were apprehensive of other and more direful disasters. Notwithstanding the inconveniences and dangers of travel in those disordered and lawless times, he went to Washington to plead for generosity and justice to his afflicted fellow-citizens. He had never contributed to the bitterness of feeling engendered by partisan strife. He had not stood in the battle-line, where so many patriotic and gallant sons of North Carolina had fought and fallen, but he willingly placed himself in what he regarded a dreadful breach in the ramparts of constitutional government, and bravely breasted the inrolling billows of sectional prejudice and hatred, and heroically strove to stay the tides of civil injustice and wrong.

Brother Alumni, I have exhausted the time limit allowed me by your committee of invitation and arrangements; I have spoken of President Swain as a representative man of the University and I have alluded in general terms to his associate Faculty, but I feel that my duty of affection will be very incompletely performed on this occasion unless I refer with more particularity to my recollections and impressions of my old teachers, to whom I owe such a large debt of gratitude.

I claim your kind forbearance while I dwell for a few minutes more upon the pleasing memories of my college days.

I will forget for a moment the reverence due the memory of Professor Mitchell, and speak of him as “Old Mike.” With the students this was not a name of derision, but was generally used in kindness and affection — and it was not displeasing to him. In his social intercourse with the students he was cheerful and companionable, and generally manifested paternal kindness. In the class-room he would sometimes tell illustrative anecdotes, and often indulge in playful witticism, and was never offended at good-natured repartee on the part of the boys.

His knowledge seemed to be almost universal, extending from the simplest affairs of every-day life to the sublimest moral truths and the most exalted theories and speculations of science.

I often heard the statement made that he was competent to fill, with credit, any professorship in the University.

His abundant stores of knowledge were a disadvantage to him as a popular preacher. He could never stick to his text. His inquisitive and discursive mind would go forth into the broad fields of learning and science, where he had diligently labored, and he would try to bring home to his hearers some of the golden sheaves of his former harvest.

His lectures and experiments in the laboratory were interesting and instructive to diligent and attentive students, but they made no lasting impression upon my mind. Such knowledge was too wonderful for me, and past finding out.

My most pleasant recollections of Professor Mitchell are those associated with the rambles which he sometimes made with the class through the woods and over the hills. He would often pluck a wild flower, or pull up a forest plant, or break a rock with his hammer and eagerly endeavor to show, to rather inattentive boys, the wonders and beauties which they displayed. In them he could see the skilful handiwork of Divine power, and he would often speak earnestly and eloquently of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. I sincerely regret that I could not share in his enthusiasm or comprehend the knowledge he tried to impart, for if I could have done so, I feel sure that I would have become a wiser and better man.

Professor Mitchell made extensive explorations for the purpose of acquiring knowledge of the geological formations and mineral resources of North Carolina. In these periodical investigations and researches he visited nearly every section of the State from the mountains to the sea.

Whenever I think of his many pedestrian journeys and his difficulties of travel, I am reminded of the old prophet Elisha in his frequent journeys from the valley of the Jordan over the blue mountains of Israel, among the green pastures and fruitful gardens of Carmel, and then up through the forest slopes to his solitary abode among the cliffs. Both of them were men of God and lovers of nature; both were fervid in their patriotism, and both labored continuously for the welfare of their fellow-men.

I am heartily glad that you have, thus early at our banquet, given place to our old friends. I delight to think of them. I should be happy to call each one of them by name — these faithful husbandmen in this vineyard of our Constitution. Not many of them will ever be present with us again. On the tenth of the last month, one of them, and an honored one, Rev. Charles Phillips, who wrought here through all the best years of his manhood, bade us good-by and soon passed forever from our longing eyes. And so, too, within a year past, have departed, in peace and honor, Professor Fetter and Dr. Hubbard, and earlier my honored instructor, Professor DeBerniere Hooper. Earlier still, from the circle of those whom many of us here present knew intimately, have gone in their green old age Dr. Wheat and Dr. James Phillips, and that other great teacher who, by the light of truth and science, reared his monument upon our noblest mountain—Elisha Mitchell.

You have called one of these by name among his co-laborers, the Honorable David L. Swain, who was their type and leader through the years from 1835, when he became the President of the University, until the hand of war closed its portals, and soon thereafter death closed his mortal vision, troubled by the ruin about him. It was my good fortune to be almost a member of his household through the four years here from 1854 to 1858. What happy years they were, when we assembled here, more than four hundred in number, from half the States of our Union, and returning to our homes carried with us the impress of those who shaped and guided this institution, and who taught us, with whatever else we learned, how to be true citizens—true to the State and true to our fellow-man!

I saw Governor Swain daily, not as President and teacher only, but—I speak it with emotions of gratitude—as my friend. I am sure I knew something of the motives, the sympathies that moved him. His eye of sympathy and his heart of tenderness went with us here and everywhere, and into every field of endeavor, rejoicing with us in our victories and sorrowing with us in our defeats. He never lost sight of a Chapel Hill boy! As his venerated form comes before me now, knowing him as I am sure I did, let me say to you, North Carolina had no child within her borders nearer to her heart than he, and none who felt with keener or more responsive sense her every throb of joy or of sorrow.

As I look back at these old friends, I am more and more persuaded that this broad sympathy of theirs, subjecting the drill and learning of the intellect to the behests of the State and the demands of social duty, drew the hearts of the people to this University and placed it, where it proudly stood, among the most cherished and influential literary institutions of our country. Not only was it the child of our Constitution, it was the very life and soul and genius of North Carolina, flying her colors always, followed by tender prayers and watched by eager, loving eyes, from all her shores, through the peaceful as well as the perilous seas of its voyage.

Can we ever forget these old friends? Their calm, heroic, generous spirit moving the life of our people has written some of the most beautiful and some of the most glorious chapters in the history of our country. The spirit — the life they gave to us — has made possible this re-union, ever to be remembered by us whose forms and faces, fast fading from each other into the cold twilight of years, touched by its warm light, glow again with all the happy love of our brotherhood. That spirit, cherished as I know it is, assured by all that I have seen and felt here, will yet draw the hearts of our people to this seat of learning with that love and reverence we bear to those whom, Mr. President, you have named with honor and whom we delight to remember — Hon. David L. Swain and the Faculty and Trustees of his administration.

One whose foot-prints have hardly faded from the threshold of his Alma Mater, and who is still within the shadow of the great preceptors and exemplars who have moulded his thought and shaped his intellectual life, cannot clearly analyze their characters or estimate their worth — he equals such a task only after the lapse of years, when he views them in distant retrospection. I recall the thought of Chancellor Kent, who contemplated the works of the greatest master of the common law “with admiration and despair,” when I attempt a tribute to the life and labors of President Kemp P. Battle and the Faculty and Trustees of his administration. As stood Petrarch and his co-laborers and patrons to the Renaissance, so stand these men to the revival of learning in North Carolina. When these clustered edifices, which crown this far-famed Hill, had been nursed in the lap of war and left wrapped in dilapidation as bare and squalid as the woof and warp of ruin, who mantled them in new beauty and animated them to a life of more splendid usefulness than they had yet known? Who took up the traditions of a University, the antiquated methods and appliances of which had been abandoned by our generation, and with the foresight of genius readily adapted it to the wants of a new civilization and gave it a commanding influence in the South-east of our Republic? Who foresaw the ravages of time upon the sacred memories of our illustrious dead and perpetuated their mighty examples in a memorial building, which stands there the cynosure of all eyes, the pride of our State, an example to the world? Who grappled with the stubborn conservatism of successive Legislatures, foiled the thrust of jealousy aimed by imaginary rivalry between this and other institutions, and exploded the wide-spread superstition that an immoral spirit, begot by the riotous youth of ante bellum days, still lurks and hides in the hallowed retreats about Chapel Hill? Who, with the chisel and mallet of truth, carved a way through these barriers and veered the stream of patronage, which flowed strong and steady to other States, back to its ancient home? Who, but President Kemp P. Battle and his worthy compeers?

Ours is an era of centennials — occasions where popular acclaim greets the orators who laud the dead and criticise the living. I am not here to gainsay the wisdom or the justice of the people's voice in response to this sentiment at the National drama on the 30th of last April. But, on behalf of the Faculty and Trustees of the University of North Carolina, I invite both friend and foe to turn upon this administration the fiercest light, view it in the strong glare of criticism or the gentle glimmer of palliation, and I promise you a picture without a blot, an institution which represents a century's growth without a century's vices, — one whose morale calls not for a Potter's sermon to “ring out like a fire-bell in the night.”

Standing, as we do, on the golden threshold of a second century, filled with fond and tender memories of the past, with the sacred legends of liberty and the birth of famous institutions, it is easy for a people imbued with peculiar reverence for the wisdom of the past to forget that among the living may be found their greatest benefactors. As long as coming generations shall gather at this temple of learning, as long as time shall last, may the examples set up by Presidents Caldwell and Swain never be forgotten: the one struggling to keep alive the Christian religion, the other to keep ablaze the torch of learning; the one against the furious thraldom of infidelity, the other against the fearful odds of war; the one with success as glorious as the dawn, the other still holding in his hand the flickering light when his own illustrious life went down like the sun sinking behind a mountain, kindling upon every peak a blaze of glory and pouring a flood of golden light upon the clouds which hung their solemn drapery about his dying couch. Such deeds need but the pen of genius to live amongst the grandest spectacles of which history keeps the record.

It were irreverent to compare the living with the dead. But, to my mind, the man who forsook the highest possibilities known to a learned and an honored profession; who flooded the feeble stream of our University's life with the strong current of his own; who, with the courage of a patriot, the fortitude of a martyr, the learning of a master, and the love of a father, has for fourteen years presided over her destinies and wooed success when success fled before him as upon the wings of the morning — that man has builded for himself a monument over-shadowed only by his own great and useful life; but when years have passed away, and the twilight has spread its soft folds about him, and the shadows of the past have gathered around his memory, its “lineaments will stand forth like the outlines of some distant mountain whose greatness we can only grasp when we view it from afar.”

Since the Apostle to the Gentiles sat at the feet of Gamaliel, the great luminaries of learning have held a higher place in the esteem of men. Through the beneficence of their lives they have become more and more the benefactors of their race. But from that hoary past to the present none have shone more brightly or merited more commendation than those who have nurtured the new life of our own Alma Mater.

Her present honored President and his coadjutors assumed control at a time when despotism and ignorance had exhausted her already depleted treasury and dismantled her proud altars. She was a seat of learning but in name. The glory of her former prestige was hardly more than a memory, and it seemed as if her fountains of knowledge had forever run dry.

Under such inauspicious surroundings their noble work was begun. For fourteen years they have labored for her upbuilding and advancement. By their fostering care she has steadily grown stronger and better, until to-day, regenerated and redeemed, she stands forth once more as the pride of our State, and, arrayed in the panoply of her own merit, is fully equipped grandly to begin this her second century of usefulness to humanity and to God. All honor to such noble men! Let us sustain them and help them. But do our duty as they do theirs, and the effulgent light of knowledge, which streams from her re-kindled altars, will dissipate the last vestige of ignorance that beclouds our future, and hasten the dawning of that brighter day when the “Old North State,” hearkening to the drum-beat of knowledge, shall stand among the foremost of her sisters in the grand march of progress and education.

No eulogy that I could pronounce would increase our respect for the memory of those who died in defence of the “Lost Cause.”

No language at my command will excite us to a greater degree of appreciation of the character of the dutiful soldier. No words known to me can have the effect of kindling in our hearts a more ardent love for those whose response to authoritative call for service was so cheerfully and patriotically given. Men of the University constituted a conspicuous element in the grand army of the South—grand in the material composing it—grand in its achievements and reverses, and in all its history. They shared in the honors of victory and in the calamities of defeat. Some were commanders, while others yielded obedience—there were officers and privates among them; and all contributed to the renown which has been justly accorded to the “boys who wore the gray.”

In nearly every department of the Confederate Government there was a representative of this Institution. Under almost all the circumstances and conditions of the Confederate soldier, whether adverse or propitious, might be found one whose name is upon the roll of Chapel Hill students. I remember that after I was wounded and captured at Gettysburg and taken to Johnson Island, in Lake Erie, I suggested to a fellow-prisoner and class-mate (Maj. Robert Bingham) the propriety of sending to Governor Swain, then President of the University, the names of the prisoners of war at that place who had been students here; and he accordingly prepared a list which contained the names of thirty-five, and transmitted the same to Governor Swain. I was informed that this list was frequently read by him to the students, and commented on as an illustration of the fact that “Chapel Hill boys” could be found almost everywhere and taking a prominent part in the events of the day; that a number of them were then in Northern prisons, undergoing the privations incident thereto—overcome by the misfortunes of war—but all brought about in the discharge of duty and endured with heroic fortitude.

Two hunded and sixty of the Alumni were numbered among the Confederate dead at the close of the war, as shown by a list gotten up by Col. W. L. Saunders some years ago, and from which I have made the following classification: One Lieutenant General, four Brigadier Generals, eleven Colonels, eight Lieutenant Colonels, thirteen Majors, seventy-six Captains, fifty-six Lieutenants, fourteen Sergeants, three Corporals, sixty-eight Privates, two Color Sergeants, one Sergeant Major, one volunteer Aide-de-Camp, one Surgeon and one Assistant Surgeon.

Their names are recorded upon tablets in Memorial Hall, and among them may be found those of Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk and Brigadier Generals Branch, Pettigrew, Garrott and George B. Anderson; and also of representatives of classes covering a period of forty-three years—beginning with General Polk, of the class of 1821, and ending with Lieutenant William H. G. Webb of the class of 1864.

Most of them enlisted as private soldiers, and the record shows that a very large number were subsequently promoted. This may be accounted for by the fact that many of the Alumni who entered the army were regarded as possessing the necessary qualifications to command, and the result proved that this was true. But when we praise the officer for ability to direct and courage to execute, let us at the same time remember that his reputation is grounded, in large measure, upon the faithfulness and devotion of the private soldier; for it was he who bore the brunt of battle; it was he who suffered most. I have seen, and others here to-day have seen, upon the battle-field, exhibitions of some of the most daring acts of bravery, coupled with an exercise of judgment and sagacity, on the part of noncommissioned officers and privates, within the sphere of pending operations, as would have done credit to one skilled in the art of war and trained in the profession of arms — thus giving evidence that they were “men of war from their youth.” In after-years, when our thoughts recur to this occasion, and to the material which the University has contributed to the service of the country in its diversified requirements, let us not forget to do honor to the memory of the Confederate Dead, whose deeds, as native American soldiers, should stimulate every impulse of honor and patriotism.

The Trojan hero, immortalized by the greatest of Roman poets, flying from the ruins of his own city and shipwrecked by the anger of the gods, wandered to the city of the beautiful but unfortunate Dido. Finding there pictures representing the heroic struggle of his people against the allied armies of Greece, he exclaimed:“Quis jam locus, * * *Quœ regio in terris, nostri non plena laboris?”

Thus speaks the University to-day. Gathering together those left of her children, who have been nurtured at her bosom for a century past, she exclaims: What state, what region of this our vast empire, has not tasted the fruit of my labors; has not shared in the rich harvest gathered from the seeds here planted!

In every field of labor, in every pursuit of life, in every department of science and learning, in every trade and profession, and in every clime, her children have lived lives and won honors of which she may well be proud. In no department is this more evident than in that to which your toast alludes. Passing by those who in other walks of life have won honor and deserved well of their fellow-men, and looking alone to those who have devoted themselves to the legal profession and worn out their lives as lawyers and judges, we are filled with astonishment and admiration at the long list of illustrious names to which the University may point with a pride greater even than that with which Cornelia pointed to her jewels. As citizens — unknown to fame, yet worthy of every honor — statesmen, patriots, even heroes neglected, though their memories may be possibly forgotten save by a few, yet to-day they are living, speaking, controlling by the lessons which they have taught, the works which they have accomplished, the institutions which they founded, the principles of personal liberty, of national independence and individual manhood which they planted and nurtured.

In America, as in England, the history of the legal profession has been the history of the struggle for freedom. In no contest — whether in the forum, in the halls of legislation, or on the field of battle when death-shots fell thick and fast — have they shirked the responsibility of true manhood, but with self-sacrifice and devotion to principle they have rushed where duty called, and proved their faith by their works. Trained by their studies in “the perfect law of liberty,” they have been the first to discover the approach of danger, and as faithful sentinels to sound the alarm. Every step in the slow but upward progress of human right is marked by a lawyer's sacrifice; not one stone in the Temple of Liberty, vast as that structure has grown, which is not hallowed by a lawyer's blood.

If time were not lacking, it would be a labor of love to call the roll of honor and to commune for a moment with those whose lives and thoughts have illustrated the ages in which they lived, and whose silent and unseen influence is felt in the institutions around us—monuments which, though they speak not, yet, in language more powerful than words, testify of the glorious past.

The records of the legal profession are not found in the rolls of the courts alone. Important as these duties have been, they are but a small part of the work which it has accomplished for the elevation of man.

When, four thousand years ago, the sunset of life gave mystical lore to the Hebrew patriarch, he uttered the prophetic promise, “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a law-giver from between his feet until Shiloh come.” In all the ages which have since passed, what man has approached the law-giver of Israel? Before the most enlightened nation of antiquity knew the use of letters, five centuries before Homer sang his songs in the streets of Grecian cities, a thousand years before the father of history was born, a thousand years before Confucius taught his rude superstitions to the people of China, he promulgated laws which have stood the test of over three thousand years of experience, have borne the blaze of light shed over them by near two thousand years of Christian civilization and progress, and still stand as the highest rule of conduct of which man is capable.

From these earliest ages, through all the mutations of time, the lawyer and the law-giver have been honored among men. Pioneers of thought, teachers in the highest schools of civilization, their progress has but marked the progress of humanity. Advancing first with slow and hesitating steps, appealing to the power of reason alone, each newly discovered principle became the stepping-stone to higher realms of thought. With an energy which never tired, a devotion which never faltered, they have labored and suffered until, at last, hope ending in fruition, law, the universal power and goddess of their worship, stands forth in all the beauty of perfect symmetry and order — the image and glory of the great Creator. Centuries may come and centuries may go; under the corroding touch of time dynasties have changed and dynasties will change; empires have sunk, and will sink, into decay; but time aims no dart at her. Exempt from mutability or decay, ages but add new beauty to her youth; the vast realms of creation her empire, her handmaidens Liberty, Justice and Truth; “her voice the harmony of the universe, her seat the bosom of God.”

We have heard with unfeigned pleasure how the Alumni of the University have distinguished themselves, and honored their Alma Mater, in many lines of successful activity. An alumnus of this University has sat in the chair of the Presidency of the United States. Our Alumni have been Cabinet officers. They have been Senators from many States. They have been Governors of many States. They have occupied the highest judicial positions in many States. They have been the most distinguished lawyers, the most distinguished orators, the most distinguished preachers in many States. And when war came, the sons of the University were the first to draw their sword and the last to sheath it. Indeed, the University seems to have endued her sons with some peculiar power, and to have given them some special inspiration, which enabled them to seize and to hold the leadership of political and forensic thought and action. But this very inspiration, being essentially political in its nature and results, disinclined them to the quiet and thoughtful life of the scholar and to the laborious and unremunerative life of the teacher. The history of the Alumni who have taught is, in most instances, short and pathetic. It is that of a noble army of martyrs, who have done much for others, but little for themselves. They have been comparatively unknown men. They worked hard, they lived hard, they died poor; and while their light was clear and steady, and a blessing to the few on whom it shone, the life of these faithful men was too obscure, their work too hard and their pay too small, to attract into teaching boys in the private schools, those whose whole training tended chiefly to make them leaders of men in the field and on the forum; and so I can count on the fingers of my two hands all the Alumni of the University, who, as teachers of private schools, have achieved a reputation which, by reaching into other States, can be considered in any sense national. Among these modesty forbids me to do more than mention the names of my own father and brother, and truth and justice forbid me to do less. But the alumnus is with us to-day, who is the Nestor of the private school work in the State. He is a brilliant man in intellect, he is a kingly man in person, he is the most striking and effective teacher that I have ever seen in a class-room. It is he, of all others, who should respond to this toast, and you will not do justice to the man, to the private schools or to yourselves, if you do not on this auspicious day hear words of wisdom from James H. Horner of Oxford.

I am much embarrassed by the high compliment of my friend. With due preparation, I should be unequal to the task of making a suitable response to the toast. I am not in the habit of making extempore speeches, as is my friend, and I am taken too much by surprise.

I can only respond as a former pupil, the son of a distinguished gentleman now present, once responded to my associate in the school at Oxford, the late Mr. R. H. Graves.

The young gentleman, for some failure in his school duties, had been ordered by Mr. Graves, as a penalty, to come to his room on the following Saturday to make up his failure. The young gentleman did not obey the order. On the Sunday morning after, he was passing along the street in front of Mr. Graves' room. Mr. Graves happened to be at the gate on the street and accosted the young gentleman, by saying to him that he did not attend at his room on Saturday, as he had been required to do. “No,” said the young gentleman, bowing politely, “that, sir, was not in my line of business,” and walked on. He was, of course, notified on Monday morning that, for this conduct, he was excluded from the school. The young gentleman has since, I am glad to say, become quite distinguished as a scholar, and has made for himself a high reputation in his field of labor, and is now heartily sorry for his boyish misconduct.

We have honored, or shall honor, on this memorial occasion, those who, here nurtured and made strong, counted it a glory and a gladness to give up their lives for their country; those who have illustrated civic virtue in high places, or have held, with poised hand, the scales of justice; those who have alleviated human suffering, and from the pulpit, the bar, the press and the counting-house contributed to the sum of human happiness, and given impetus to the beauty and movement of our civilization. All honor has been accorded to the great Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, in State and nation, because, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for independence, he had the sagacity and foresight to embody in a merely revolutionary document an universal and sentimental truth, applicable to all men and to all ages, “All men are created free and equal,” there to remain embalmed forever a rebuke and a stumbling-block to tyranny and oppression; and because he declared that the earliest and latest concern of his life was the education of the people.

I would have equal honor paid here to-day, and paid forever, to the sons of this State and this institution, who, at a time when much was heard of governing classes and classes generally; when at public expense the sons of nobles made Latin verses at Eton and Winchester, and charity boys ran bare-headed and blue-coated through the streets of London, grasped, took to heart and taught these ideas: the people are made to rule and not to be ruled. They must be made fit for this sovereignty through training. The State, whose sore ne