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N.Y. Society Library Centennial Address

Thomas Ward (1872)

The Charter of our Corporation, vouchsafed to us by His Most Gracious Majesty—our then constitutional ruler—George the Third, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, and so forth, is the interesting document that furnishes the motive of this friendly gathering, the theme of our present discourse, the text of what I hope may prove no tedious nor unprofitable sermon; for it was the planting of the goodly tree of knowledge that was destined to bear such precious fruit to after generations.

Thus, an hundred years ago to-day, was given "a local habitation and a name" to the small collection of books that had been gradually gathering for many years previous to its taking form and baptism. It is pleasant to remember that, amid "the shock and hum" of commerce, the bluster of politics, and the general struggle of man with man for the tempting prizes of fame or fortune that always characterize a growing town, a few far-reaching men were foundregardful alike of those who went before and those who were to come after—to accumulate our little store of knowledge, and hand it down, a timely heritage, to their grateful successors.

We are met to-night at this interesting period, this baiting-place of our corporate existence, to acknowledge the receipt of this trust, to "notch our century" in the rock of time, to shake hands with the past, to introduce it favorably to the present, and to appeal with cheerful confidence to the consideration of the future; in the full belief that it will guard well our intellectual capital, and hand it down with constantly increasing interest from age to age.

Let us first examine the nature of the important charge we have undertaken. What are books? Books are the granaries wherein the mental harvests of past generations are safely garnered; the caskets where the golden treasures of knowledge and the sparkling gems of wit and poesy are held secure for the elevation and enrichment of all coming time. Over the front of an Egyptian library of the time of Rameses III. were graven these expressive words:

"The nourishment of the soul."

Books may be called ancient bottles, where in skins of the goat, the calf, and the sheep are stored the rarest wines, expressed and fermented, of the teeming human brain. Books hold, ever ready for our daily use, the wisdom of sages, the learning of scholars, the fancy of story-tellers, and the song of poets; the best thoughts of the best thinkers; the very essence of the highest mental powers in their happiest moments of inspiration.

Books are, moreover, the best of companions; they are the steadiest of friends; we know where to find them in our time of need.

Whether our mood be grave or buoyant, we can make our selection accordingly, and be certain to find the same unvarying expression of welcome. "In the dead," says Macaulay, "there is no change. Plato is never sullen. Cervantes is never petulant. Demosthenes never comes unseasonably. Dante never stays too long." Their association, therefore, has some advantages over the living companionship of the very men, however mighty, that produced them. For poor humanity, with all its weaknesses of soul and body, its testy humors, its sinkings of heart, enhanced as they must be by the irritability special to their kind, arising from a more highly refined nervous organization, must have furnished an association less free from alloy, and consequently less enjoyable than that of their finished works; where we find the pure grain of wisdom winnowed of the chaff of mortal infirmity, the flowers of song shorn of the thorns of human fretfulness, and the perfect thought, no longer shapeless "in its infant dew," but crystallized into forms of imperishable beauty. No longer held exclusively under lock or clasp by the learned few, these boundless resources are now in everybody's hands. There is not a nook nor hamlet in the land, however remote, in which some trace of books may not be found.

Thank God! the truest enjoyments of life are always the most widely diffused. The pure air, the running streams, the bountiful earth, the genial sky, at once our greatest needs and our greatest luxuries, are freely open to all. So likewise the treasures of hoarded thought are within easy reach of the humblest seeker in the land.

To the true lover of books it is surprising how little suffices beyond the bare requirements of life. How poor to him seem all the prizes of the world that are a passion to the average mind! He needs no long rentroll; no heavy balance at his banker's; no foppery of dress or equipage; no bang-tailed steeds to bear him to the races; no pasteboard tokens of fashionable acknowledgment. He looks down upon the giddy crowd with wonder and complacency. He knows them not. They are not of his set. He cultivates only the very best society: That of the wisest, the purest, the loftiest, the sweetest of their kind: not creatures of a day, the spawn of sudden sunshine, but the flower of ancient heraldry: The very blue blood of genius: The genuine aristocracy of the human race.

Happy he whose taste inclines him to intercourse so refining! He has resources that can never fail. He may be a solitary stranger in the land, and yet with his chair, his corner, and his book, he will never lack for pleasant companionship. He may be poor, neglected, and desponding, yet with a finger can he turn the glowing page, and cheer the darkness of his soul with "The light that never was on sea or land:" and in the supreme rapture of his noon-tide glory he can say to the intruding rulers of the world that proffer him their patronizing aid, "Only stand out of my sunshine! Leave me but the light of knowledge, and I ask no more!"

We find no trace of the origin of written language. We only know that for centuries man could only communicate with his fellow by signs, and spoken words, and especially through the medium of song. Poetry has been called "the oldest of the Fine Arts, the highest species of refined literature, the first fixed form of language, and the earliest perpetuation of thought." The songs of Homer for many years were passed from mouth to mouth, until the necessity to preserve the thought "he would not willingly let die" drove man to put it into some durable and visible form of symbolic figure, letter, or hieroglyphic. The oldest mode of writing was on bricks, tiles, oyster-shells, ivory, stone, and metal. The works of Hesiod were written on plates of rolled lead. Later, wood, the bark of trees, and the skins of animals were used, and finally, in the thirteenth century, paper, from the Egyptian papyrus, came into use, and has superseded all other materials. Pliny speaks of table-books in slices of wood, that were afterwards waxed over and written on by a steel pencil, or stylus. In the Sloanian Library in England are six specimens of Kufic writing on boards two feet long and six inches deep; and manuscripts on parchment made of human skin still exist in Peru.

Late researches make it probable that the three great movers of modern civilization originally came from the East:—Gunpowder, The Magnetic Needle, and Printing.

The first book printed in Europe was "The Book of Psalms" by Faust, and his son-in-law Schoeffer, August 14, 1457. The first in England was "The Game and Play of Chesse" by Caxton, in 1474. The first hymns were printed on one side only of the leaf, and pasted back to back. The first newspaper was printed in Italy, and called Gazella. The oldest known in England is a copy now in the British Museum, dated 1588.

The word "Book" is derived from the Danish word "Boc," meaning the beech-tree, the bark of which was used for writing: as Library comes from the Latin word "liber," also the bark of a tree.

The first public library of which we have any account was founded at Athens by Pisistratus, about the year 544 before Christ. The second of any note was founded by Ptolemy Philadelphus, 284 years before Christ, of which 400,000 books and manuscripts were destroyed when Julius Caesar set fire to Alexandria, in the year 47 B.C. Another library, formed of the ruins of the first until it grew to 700,000 volumes, was destroyed by the Saracens in the year 642, who heated the water of their baths for six months by burning books instead of wood.

The principal libraries in modern times are, first: that of Paris, containing 2,000,000 volumes, and 100,000 manuscripts; the British Museum, nearly 1,000,000 volumes; that of Munich, 800,000; that of the Vatican, 300,000 and 40,000 Manuscripts; the Boston Public Library contains 192,000; that of Congress, 180,000; the Astor Library, 142,000; the Mercantile Library, 140,000, and the N.Y. Society Library 60,000 volumes: some of which are not elsewhere to be found.

"Truly, of the making of books there is no end." Du Fresnoy, a great reader, said he could only read 100 folio pages in a day, and 900 folio volumes in fifty years: and yet there are 30,000 volumes of history alone.

This brings us naturally to the consideration of the progress of our own institution, from its foundation to the present time. Our little corporation was launched upon the stormy waves of Revolution. Petition after petition against unjust taxation had been fruitlessly wasted. The Boston Tea-party came off in 1773. The Boston port-bill was passed March 25, 1774. The first Congress was held in September, 1775, and in 1776—but I hardly need dwell upon what took place in 1776, when our fathers in solemn council, wearied with waiting for the justice that never came, rose at length in their majesty to cast their load of wrong:

"And with an impulse of courageous will—
Mightier than Caesar's, when he leaped the line
Defying augury and Rome—they sign!"

Nor need I tell the all-known story of the seven long years of agonizing trial that ravaged the land, but only to leave it free: that bruised our people only to develop the fragrance of their virtues.

Previous to 1759 our collection had been known as the City Library; after which it took its present title.

The events of the war not only prevented any meeting of the trustees for fourteen years, but nearly destroyed the library.

An eye-witness—Mr. John Pintard—has affirmed that the British soldiers were in the habit of carrying away the books in their knapsacks, and bartering them for grog. 600 volumes were found, after the war, in a room in St. Paul's church; but no one could tell how they came there.

In December, 1788, a meeting of the proprietors was summoned, an election for trustees held, and the Society resumed its operations.

In 1789 an Act of the Legislature of the State of New York was passed confirming the Charter.

Until 1795 the library was deposited in the City Hall, then on the corner of Nassau and Wall streets: and as the early sessions of Congress were held there, the City Library formed at that time the Library of Congress.

The growing importance of the establishment now demanded greater accommodation. Accordingly additional subscribers were obtained, land was purchased in Nassau street, opposite to the Middle Dutch Church (now used as a post-office), and a building was erected expressly for the use of the library. This was one of the most conspicuous public edifices of that day, to which the library was removed in 1795; and there it continued until 1836, when the property was sold for forty-four thousand two hundred dollars, and the library was again removed to a new edifice on the corner of Broadway and Leonard street. In 1831 the New York Athenaeum was merged in our Society. After a few years the increasing demands of commerce induced the Trustees to dispose of the property, in 1853, for one hundred and ten thousand dollars, and purchase the present site on University Place, and put up the present building, in which the library, after a temporary sojourn at the Bible House, was finally deposited.

No record has been found of the number of volumes in the collection when it was dispersed by the Revolution. There is reason to believe it must have been several thousand. In 1793, the date of the first catalogue printed after the Revolution, it is stated to have been 5,000 volumes; in 1813 the number was 13,000; in 1825, 16,000; in 1838, 25,000; in 1850, 35,000; and the present number amounts to more than 60,000 volumes.

The first catalogue was printed in 1793, the next in 1813, followed by a supplement in 1825. In 1838 an improved one was published, containing both an alphabetical and an analytical arrangement of the titles. The present one was issued in 1850, on the complete plan of that of 1838.

Our Board of Trustees has generally been composed of prominent men of their time; the predecessors of families still represented among us; a portion of whose nameswhich I will now mentionwill certainly be familiar to many of those who hear me. James De Lancey, Robert R. Livingston, Peter Keteltas, Samuel Bard, John Jones, Peter Van Schaick, Robert Watts, Hugh Gaine, Baron Steüben, Walter Rutherfurd, James Kent, Samuel L. Mitchell, Peter A. Jay, J. H. Hobart, J. M. Wainwright, Washington Irving, and many others. Among these, especial mention should be made of our late President, Gulian C. Verplanck, a life-long friend of our Institution, holding many positions of trust, devoted to literary culture, and a writer distinguished for the classical elegance of his style. The number of our members in 1793 was nine hundred, and the present number is eleven hundred.

Our books have always been largely demanded for reference, even by the General Government; and down to 1820—that is, for one hundred and twenty years—this library stood alone to bear the brunt of all demands made by all classes of the community.

Many books have from time to time been presented to the library, but it has thus far received but one pecuniary donation, that of five thousand dollars, a bequest of Miss Jane Demilt, in 1849; a praiseworthy example, which is earnestly commended to all who hear me for imitation: For hers was a gift wisely bestowed, for an object not of temporary value only, but one which carries a blessing to the farthest posterity: The preservation of literature: The sustaining of an institution whose quiet halls are always open to afford solace to the weary, information to the inquiring, and a safe retreat for the youth of our metropolis from the manifold temptations of city-life.

The literature of a land often outlives its laws, its political importance, and sometimes even its history. The rulers, the statesmen, the professional men, that may have filled their several parts with credit during their "little hour upon the stage," too often perish with their time; while in their midst, obscure, neglected, perhaps the very humblest in influence, the sages, the writers, and, surest of all, the poets, are embalming the spirit of their age in the precious spice of imperishable language; and wordsafter all, the most durable of thingsare frequently the only relics of a people's greatness.

The prime minister of the first Roman Emperor had the good taste, or good policy, to cultivate the friendship and reward the genius of the literary men of his day, in return for which favor their "winged words," like carrier-doves, have wafted down to us, over all the waste and ruin of succeeding years, the honored name of Mecænas.

Of "the blind old man of Scio's rocky isle," in epic fire still foremost of his order, the credit of whose birthplace is claimed by seven cities, but little is known. It is supposed that he wandered in poverty from place to place, making a scanty living by singingwith his harphis own immortal songs.

And what is now the situation, after the lapse of twenty-eight centuries? Those breathing words still live. We hear them with our ears; we hold them in our hands; we lock them in our memories; they are ours forever, part and parcel of our intellectual being. While of the places wherein he moved and dwelt, scarce one stone is left upon another; and of his fellow-men, more highly favored, who held the helm of state, or carried on successfully the general business of the time, all, with their works, fame, fortune and influence, are drowned in oblivion, or lie in undistinguishable wreck upon the shifting sands of time.

"Who were High Chancellors in Homer's day?
What lordling's chariot brushed him by the way?
What man of power that voice of ages hired
To while a dull hour when 'His Grace' was tired?
None answer, while the minstrel's song of fire
Comes to our ears, as from a seraph-choir,
As fresh, as living, as when poured on the tone
From the blind harper sitting on his stone."

It is proper, standing as we now do upon this vantage-ground of time, to take a broad view of the vast advancement of the world during the century of our corporate existence. It may safely be said that never before within the historic period has man taken such strides toward his general enlargement as in the present nineteenth century.

Let us first look at the wide spread of freedom of opinion in all matters relating to civil government. There can be no doubt that this great movement received its most forcible impulse from the success of our own determined resistance to oppression, which resulted in the establishment of our independence.

The breath of liberty from the West first lifted the waves that rolled over the civilized world, sweeping away the dykes and fences of feudal privilege. It "blew the coal" betwixt young France and tyranny in the terrible civil conflagration of 1789; and subsequently flaunted her victorious tricolor in the face of every despot in Europe, again and again rising to a storm, in 1830, 1848, and 1870; and it is the same breeze that carried us so successfully through the breakers of 1812 and 1862, and that now fills the sails of our commerce on every sea. The steady progress of reform in England; the emancipation of slavery in America, and of serfdom in Russia; the elevation of United Italy and Germany; and, more strikingly, the opening of the far East to the light of modern civilization, especially in Japan, where the Library of the late Tycoon, containing 100,000 volumes, has lately been opened to the public, and where a great civil revolution has been effected without bloodshed in the removal of feudal aristocracy in the case of the Daimios; all go to prove that all nations are on the wing toward equal rights and self-government, and that the whole world is rising up to welcome Liberty, "and call her blessed."

A vast advance in liberal sentiment is also manifest in the different professions. Divinity has freed itself in a great measure from the depressing influence of chilling dogmas, and the pulpit now breathes a gospel of peace, and seeks to move mankind rather by the persuasions of love than by the intimidations of fear.

The law has largely rid itself of the tediousness and complexity of its various modes and verbiage; wisely adapting itself to the exigencies of this moving age, that has no time to waste on superfluities.

Medicine has also been liberated from the rigid formalities of the schools, and is not too lofty to take a profitable hint from Nature, and to follow her indications in the general treatment of disease. Especial progress has been made in diagnosis, in surgery, and in the skilful abatement of human suffering.

A great change has also come over the literature of our language since the last century, when it was at a very low ebb.

It has shaken off the conventional classic trammels, and now luxuriates in all the vagaries of unrestrained freedom. Poetry, mainly through the influence of the Lake school, has returned to more natural modes of expression, and a more general use of the simple yet vigorous words that characterize the Saxon portion of our language. "History," says Taine, "has been revolutionized in a hundred years by the study of Literature. You now study the document to know the man. A great poem, a fine novel, is more instructive than a whole heap of histories." "I would give," he says, "fifty volumes of charters, and a hundred volumes of state papers for the memoirs of Cellini, the epistles of St. Paul, the table-book of Luther, or the comedies of Aristophanes." In our childhood our own literature was for a long period mostly imitative of the standards of the mother-land. But in her years of adolescence the fair daughter has grown to her mother's stature, adorned with all the literary graces of history, belles-lettres, and poesy; until we come down to the latest of our literary aspirants, some of whom certainly cannot be charged with imitating anything, "either in the heavens above or in the earth beneath."

Our institutions of learning have widely increased and prospered. Our public schools have grown to become the true glory of our land. Yet while in this we may indulge our reasonable pride, it should be without boastfulness, for there are fewer persons in Prussia who cannot read and writestill fewer in Bavariathan in the United States.

Artpictorial and plastichas also caught the spirit of the age, and returned to a more faithful representation of nature, without losing its sway over the imagination; and while truthful in detail, is generally full of suggestiveness.

In Music there has been a notable development during the past century. Instrumentation, formerly so bald, and meagre, has become expanded, and enriched so as to be capable in itself of expressing every sentiment and passion. The dramatic and symphonic forms have advanced, culminated, andsome saydeclined to the "contortions" if not the "inspiration" of what is now dubbed "the Music of the Future:" the tendency of which is likely to be to diminish the natural desire of mankind for long life.

The Stagethat "Mirror of Nature"has been washed of many specks and impurities that dimmed its surface, and now shows a fair face to the world. The striking improvement in scenic effect, in fidelity of costume, and general appointments, has made it a better school of history than the old annals; which chiefly detailed the wars of nations, and the squabbles of governments; without showing how the people of the period described "lived, and moved, and had their being."

Architecture in our day has not risen "to the highest heaven of invention." The new Houses of Parliament in London, The Monuments of Paris, and the Art-buildings at Munich, with their unquestionable grandeur, are all more or less copies of older modes adapted to modern uses. A genuine novelty in style seems to be beyond the genius even of our most inventive age.

The new Gothic churches in our own city, rich and imposing as they are, lack one of the highest beauties: that of propriety. The enormous buttresses of the side-walls, without any proportionate burden to support, are shams; and are only suitable when used to sustain the great lateral thrust where the roofs are built of stone.

Perhaps the most satisfactory building we have after all, as to taste, is the old City Hall, with its superb staircase, erected in 1807; whose elevation seems to have been taken from that of the Capitol at Rome, designed by Michael Angelo. In domestic architecture we have reached a creditable success. Our dwellings combine more conveniences in a given space than any others.

The great engineering works of the age clearly indicate the direction of its genius.

The tubular bridges over the Menai Straits, and the St. Lawrence, the Suez Canal, the Pacific Railways, the Alps Tunnel and the great Iron Steamers are marvels of skill and power; surpassing all similar works of former days.

In the general enfranchisement of the human mind it has sometimes run riot, especially in the direction of speculative philosophy. We now have advocates of the theory of the descent of man from the lower animals, through "Natural Selection," and the "survival of the fittest," as far back as to the "monads, and infusoriæ" of the microscope, and even to "protoplasm" itself.

"The Great Stone Book," in which the history of the earth is written, has been opened, and partly read by the daring geologists of our day; and the date of man's existence upon it has thereby been thrown back many ages farther into the darkness of the past.

It is now asserted that the centripetal force of our system is preponderating over the centrifugal; and that the planets must hence eventually fall into the sun: Moreover, that the sun is now supplied with fuel by drawing into his voracious maw the asteroids, and myriad floating meteors in his neighborhood; and that Mercury had better be putting his house in order, as he will probably next be wanted. But as millions of years must elapse before our turn will come, it will hardly be wise to go into a panic about it during the present generation.

Science now shows us curiously that the heat lying dormant in all combustible substances was originally derived from the sun; and that the quantity given out by burning wood is equal to that absorbed by the leaves of the tree from the rays of the sun in its growth.

There are some who preach "the positive philosophy," others "the correlation of forces," and others still who declare their faith in "spontaneous generation."

The marvellous discoveries in the natural sciences and the mechanical arts would seem to justify the boldest conjectures in regard to the future. What would our founders now say could they be permitted to revisit the earth? What would they have then said if the half of what was to be had been foretold them?

Wonderful the change since the time when it took a week to go from New York to Albany by sloop: now done in four hours: and when the stage-coach "The Flying Dispatch" was rushed through from Powles Hook to Philadelphia in the incredibly short period of two days: now done in three hours. Nothing more startling than this can be found in the Arabian Tales. No magical carpet could convey us more promptly. It is amusing to speculate that if one of our worthy shareholders at that period could have been asked by his good genius "What can I do to better your condition?" he would probably have repliedlooking at the wretched roads of the day"Give me some better mode of locomotion!" and received the railway train at forty miles the hour; or, not fancying the uncertainty of sail-boat navigation, he might have asked for the rather unreasonable privilege of moving against wind and tide, and received the steamboat. He might have begged for more thorough modes of heating than open fire-places for dwellings, and foot-stoves for churches, and been soothed with a general summer temperature throughout all buildings in the coldest winters: or considering the tediousness of mail-delivery, he might have asked for more rapid means of communication with friends, and received that wonder of wonders the magnetic telegraph.

Or, looking at the slowness of portrait and landscape painting, he might have begged for a prompter result, and received the instantaneous photograph. Or, sympathizing with the common suffering of mankind in the agony of wounds, and the terror of surgical operations, he might have prayed for some balm to allay the dreadful sensibility of nerve, and been presented with the precious boon of anæsthetics. Or, noting the fatal march of pulmonary or cardiac disease, he might have cried out with old Celsus, "O that man had a window in his chest, that we might mark the ravages of disease!" and received the stethoscope, which effectually gives him that power.

His little child, who addressed a star with the exclamation "How I wonder what you are!" might now have the question answered: for the spectroscope has found out the secret; and revealed to us the component parts of the fixed stars, although so distant that it would take thousands of years for their light to reach the earth.

He might have demanded better light than the smoky lamp and candle, and been given the gas-for a more plentiful supply of water, and received a rushing river through his streets and houses. He might have complained of the great proportion of our too short life that is required in the production of our necessaries, and luxuries; and been presented with a whole "exposition" of labor-saving improvements; machines for planting, reaping, threshing, winnowing, grinding; machines for cooking, washing, spinning, sewing, weaving, dyeing, printing, down to pen-making, and apple-paring; naymost surprising of alleven machines for logarithmic calculation.

What satisfaction would he have found in the minor comforts of our day! such as canned fruits, and meats, and vegetables: in artificial teeth: in steel pens: in lucifer matches, or in the infinite uses of India-rubber.

But in the onward flow of the great stream of modern movement, some stately growths that added dignity, some wayside flowers that gave a grace, to human manners and institutions, have been swept away, or overlaid by the waste and debris of the rushing current.

That graceful deference to the gentler sexa precious legacy of the knights of old; the very burnish of their mail; the polish "that proves the temper of their steel"is growing painfully dimmer, like their shining coats, under the accumulating rust and dust of time. Is this advancement?

The reverence and homage of children for parents, of pupils for teachers, of inferiors for superiors, which, in the olden time, was a consideration so dignified, so tenderly becoming, so truly honorable to all concerned, is fast giving way to the pressure of what has been called "the enfranchisement of the individual."

Indeed it has been slyly rumored that Young America is already contemplating the establishment of an asylum for the reformation of disobedient and refractory parents. Are we the stronger for this loosening of the fasces of the family tie? Is this advancement?

Another phase of the "enfranchisement of the individual" may be found in the effort of certain strong-minded members of her order to release woman from conventional bondage by placing her on an equality with man. But if she can neither bear arms nor fight, how can she be entitled to the "honors of war?" If she cannot undergo the heavy labor of life, how can she claim the wages of those who do? She has, to be sure, a fair, endowment of the faculty of speech, and might on that account be made eligible to Congress. Her disposition to "poach upon our manor" is constantly revealed. She steps along the pavé with a jaunty swing, her leathern girdle buckled round her waist, and depending there from, not a sword for attack, but a shield for defence against the fiery darts of Phoebus, or the rattling pellets of Jupiter Pluvius. She vaults into her saddle with the air of a cavalier; her upper form, made bold by manly apparel, falling off emasculated to a train of "questionable shape"

"If shape it may be called which shape has none."

Or else, according to her mood, she mounts the driving-box with easy confidence, and, lifting the ribbons with her gauntleted hands, off she dashes, spinning away, but not as her grandmother span in the good old time gone by. Instead of demanding greater privilege woman should remember how much has already been yielded to her since the early age, when wives were obtained by capture, and when a fair creature possessing "the fatal gift of beauty" was, when caught at last, generally found scarred with the wounds of lances, darts, or clubs, inflicted by former lovers in the ardor of ineffectual pursuit. Traces of which custom may be seen still surviving in the marriages of certain semi-barbarous tribes; where a sham-chase and struggle for possession of the bride form part of the wedding ceremony. No! if woman seeks an enlarged influence, she has already a mighty lever in her own hand. Her duty and her glory are to fashion man when in the pliable age, and through HIM to move the world. Here indeed may she always find her true advancement.

At times in the stream of progress may here and there be observed an eddy turning backward on itself, but quite too partial to affect unfavorably the general movement. Such as the revival of the architecture of the middle ages, often in a manner quite unsuited to our modern uses; also the return, by some enthusiasts, to the ultra-saintly, hardly human style of painting that prevailed before the golden age of art in the reign of Leo X.; and more recently the re-adoption of ancient and discarded modes in public worship, in costume, in chancel-decoration and in choral singing; which, not being matters of moment, might be left to the rectifying influence of time; but since they have startled conservatism from its propriety, one may venture to ask, "Is this a movement in the right direction?" Is going backward going forward? In a word, is this advancement?

Another phase of the backward undertow is the Mormon experiment of a return to patriarchal life, and the doubtful blessings of over-marriage. But can we allow a grasping sect like this to monopolize "Heaven's last best gift to Man?" Is this advancement?

The great periodical political battle of the Ins and the Outsthe bane of free government, that, rightly waged, might have become its blessingis growing yearly more intensified, more personal, more altogether unworthy the dignity of manhood. What monstrous anomalies characterize the strife! What is honorable in a private manto do justice to an opponentis considered a mark of folly in a public one. What is manly in private lifeto acknowledge an erroris looked upon as great weakness when done before the world. It is noble in a freeborn man, unterrified by scourge or chain, to speak his honest thought to all mankind. Not so in the partisan, who dares not open his mouth but at the beck of his masters. Call you this thing a man? Is it not rather a mean, pitiful abortion, "scarce half made up," a morally degenerate runt of humanity, "whom 'twere base flattery to call a coward?" Place should indeed be a paradise to compensate the seeker for such personal degradation. Beautiful indeed should be the garden that can only be entered by crawling ignobly under the fence through every sort of filth and abomination. Again I ring it in your cars, Is this advancement?

The haste and hurry to grow rich is another evil of the time, already widely spread among us. It draws the mind from worthier pursuits; it stimulates extravagance; it fosters folly; it tampers with truth; and eventually breaks down the time-honored barriers of integrity. We have had it before our very eyes that the guardians of others' moneyboth in the family and the Statehave so misused their trust and wasted the public treasure that honest men of all opinions have been constrained to leap to their feet, and crush the viperous fraud. Terrible defection from a lofty standard! How different from the simple ways and manly virtues of our founders, who spurned the allurements of folly, and "felt a stain like a wound!" Once more would I ask you, and in a tone of thunder, Is this advancement?

But these partial impediments, deplorable as they are, are not sufficient to stay the onward march of the world. "It still moves," and great are the results of the movement.

The average life of man is lengthened; the death-rate is diminished; vaccination, since its discovery in 1780, has saved a countless number of lives; the horrors of war have been greatly mitigated; the noble monuments of charity for the relief of every possible human infirmity, now rising up on all sides around us, prove plainly that "there is yet salt enough left in the world to preserve it."

It is impossible to stand, as we now do, upon this watch-tower of time, midway between two mighty centuries, to look backward upon the fulness of the past, to look forward to the awful mystery of the coming future, without being deeply impressed with the solemnity of the scene; and without seeking, from the intimations now before us, to divine the direction of human advancement in the coming time. The nineteenth century has been rushing on its victorious career at such a rate that there can be no lagging now nor hereafter. The world expects the twentieth century to do its duty, and complete the unfinished work of its "illustrious predecessor," and I call upon it to do it. Now, at this opening hour, as it swings its joy-bells so merrily at this happy return of our hundredth birthday, I ask of the coming age to "Ring out the false, ring in the true."

I ask it to ring the knell of human slavery at its fountain-head, in central Africa. I demand that travel, both on sea and land, shall reach the point of safety. I expect disease to diminish until in time there shall be no other outlet to human life than old age or accident. I expect that waterall-abundant watershall take the place of all other sources of heat, and light; being mainly composed of the most combustible of gases; and that the alarm of England about her coal-supply will cease when coal shall be superseded by water, as was sperm-oil by petroleum. The experiment has already been successfully made, chemically, but expensively. It will soon be done economically. Happy day! when water will make our fires, and, when they rise in rebellion against us, will extinguish them. Happy night! when in the splendor of the new illuminators there shall be no more darkness.

I require that the great gulf between sensation and consciousness, which has puzzled psychologists for so long a period, shall be bridged over, and in a manner comprehensible to the common mind.

I expect that flying will become a common mode of travel: The difficulties now in the way being only mechanical, and such as cannot long withstand the brainpower that wrought out the problems of the steam-engine, the Jacquard loom, and the calculating machine.

I expect that wars will be prevented by the settlement of national difficulties through arbitration, as was lately so successfully initiated at Geneva. It may require a long time, but what is time to great results? Consider Niagara!

"The loudest voice which Earth sends up to Heaven."

It has taken her 200,000 years to dig her trench from Lewiston to the horseshoe, on her way to Erie; and her sublime patience will one day assuredly be rewarded with triumphant success.

Inasmuch as our spiritual guides are accused of too much devotion to formalities, and too little to the cure of souls; and as our learned savans, in their eager search for the causes of phenomena, are charged with ignoring the Great First Cause, I therefore require the coming century to ask of Religion that she forget not man, and to demand of Science that she forget not God.

In short, I expect the glory of the coming time to surpass even that which has gone before, in a wider spread of knowledge, in greater scientific discoveries, in a well-ordered liberty, in the purity of the ermine, in the sanctity of the ballot, and in a canvass unfouled by personal vituperation.

I look to the century before us to fill the broad acres of our grand domainthen to extend from the eastern to the western ocean, from the tropics to the polar seawith an upright, energetic, indomitable population of 200,000,000: Risen to such excellence, through continued contributions of blood from every stock of every quarter of the globe, as to have become, in all eminent qualities, the foremost race of all the earth.

In conclusion, I appeal to my distinguished successor, who a hundred years hence shall stand in my place to deliver the bicentennial address before our Association, and who may possibly be the great-grandson of some one who now hears me. Methinks I see him nowin my mind's eyein the dim distance, clad in a garb of marvellous pattern, holding forth with earnest voice and animated gesture to a delighted auditory.

I say to him that I expect him to tell his hearers on that interesting occasion, when relating to them the subsequent history of our Institution, that after some further wanderings in a northerly direction it has finally been permanently established in some beautiful portion of our upper island, like Washington Heights; in an elegant and commodious edifice, with a spacious reading-room opening upon a charming parterre of flowers, enriched with fountains, and statuary; with a noble library of 200,000 volumes, with a list of 3,000 shareholders, and under the guidance of an administration of superior executive abilityif possibleto the present: all to be delivered before an audienceI was about to say that which never can bemore refined, more intelligent, and more indulgent than that which now honors us with its presence.