Excerpt from The Past and the Present: Semi-Centennial Address to the Alumni of Yale College, and Graduates of 1814, at Their Annual Meeting, July 27, 1864

I cannot but feel that a kindred emotion animates the time worn Class of 1814, that has to-day come home to these academic shades, to evoke, from the sleep of half a century, its own youthful image, to retrace and recover its early lineaments, to catch once more its lights and shadows, and fondly to repro duce and cluster around it some at least of the external acces series, which gave to that young life its form and features.

The stream of time, embraced within this interval, is surely long enough to have become historical. It includes more than a fo'rtieth part of the nineteen centuries of the Christian era;for it is now fifty years since our Class, then eighty-two in number, went forth from this honored seat of learning, to bear its part in the great drama of American life, to march onward and forward with the young Republic of the Western World. The wayfaring has been long and sometimes weary. Our path, at times, has been strewed with thorns, or darkened by sorrow. Nearly two-thirds of the youthful band have fallen by the way but, in God's kind Providence, a goodly remnant has been allowed cheerfully and hopefully to reach the present eminence, permitting a moment of repose in which to survey the wide spread and varied landscape it has left behind.

To the youngest of these survivors, the undue parti ality of loving friends has committed the task of sketch ing, however imperfectly, the leading outlines of this historic picture. If he do not wholly fail, it will be because the magni tude and the grandeur of the prominent objects within the field of view, imprint their profile too sharply on the sky to be mis taken.

The great historical landmarks within the eventful era in which our Class has been permitted to live, are manifest, indeed, not only to ourselves, but to the world around us. In the dark background of the picture is the French Revolution, with all its sufferings and all its conquests, closely followed by its natural and logical result, the great and overshadowing Empire of the first Napoleon. Side by side we see the American Union, just emerging from its cradle, but waging war, even in its earliest years, successively with France and England. The struggle closes in the very year in which our Class left the College.

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