143

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edge we must become as Nineveh and Babylon. With-
out this and its associate, Virtue, Liberty will not, can
not, and ought not to live. The time now is when
thoughtful and philanthropic men must begin to devise
and evolve the means, the just means, by which our in-
stitutions, one and all, are to be purified for preserva-
tion by a profounder wisdom than now exists concern-
ing them--a wisdom whose whole and wide scope, is
the confirmation and advance of our civil and moral
condition. To aid in this, to aid in preserving your
property, your virtue, and your liberty, the broad, deep-
flowing rivers of past experience must be fathomed and
searched, the rich minds of philosophy must be ex-
plored, and keen science must be invoked to open up
her hidden ways; and, with all her tributes, excite, in-
form, expand the general mind. We may well take the
aphorism of Bacon, "Knowledge is to be limited only
by Religion, and always to be referred to our actions
and uses." To gain and diffuse such knowledge, and
for this and this alone, is this University set apart among
us. It is instituted in the name of God, by His minis-
ters, and for the propagation of that knowledge which
insures His blessing.

Underlying the very base of the entire fabric of our
political freedom--its primitive rock and centre--is the
equality of the citizen; and the keystone of the arch, on
which it rests and springs from the earth, is the next
great Americanism, the right of self-government. Now,
as absolute, irresistible, unavoidable deductions from
these, must come our necessity to raise the people to a
capacity to comprehend, and to the virtue to practice on
these principles. The order of Liberty we have assumed
cannot exist, cannot be attained, without this elevation,
and the consequent clear, unimpeded and continued ad-
vance in knowledge and virtue. Freedom comes of
feeling, thinking, reasoning, asking, acting, and thus, like
the fabled monster, Liberty begets Knowledge, and
Knowledge begets Liberty. It is the vital necessity of
Republican Liberty to expand its area. To its life, lim-
itation is suffocation. The crowded breath of man stifles
the Mountain Nymph. Her wings are ever spread, and
her breath must be the free, light air. Her worship-

57

pers do not crowd into narrow temples, but stand be-
neath the open canopy, and invoke her teachings as she
hovers over them. And her first stern mandate is,
"Teach my people." Light, light, light for the votaries
of true Liberty!!

In the first forty years of our national life, the seats
of learning were limited to the Atlantic slopes. Sturdy
men only had crossed the mountains. Their only ne-
cessities were to wield the axe and destroy the wild
beast. Youth had not yet come up, with its necessity
and craving to know. Since I have been called to par-
ticipate in these ceremonies, for the first time since
1828 I have revisited my "Alma Mater," one of the no-
blest seats of learning which adorns the land. The Uni-
versity of Virginia in 1825 was the westernmost Institu-
tion of Learning, of any dignity, and it, although
founded by the "Apostle of Liberty," and with a corps
of professors of unsurpassed scholarship, had a feeble
and barren life for many years, because it had rejected
for a time the embrace of that spirit which alone can
impregnate and fructify human learning. Afterwards
that spirit came, and brooding dove-like over that fa-
vored spot, made it pregnant with the richest fruitage
which the womb of knowledge has given to our South-
ern land. It was there that within thirty years, young
Learning began feebly, with tottering steps, to crawl up
the sides of the Alleghany mountains, and now here am
I, one of its first and least worthy pupils, before the first
decadence of my life has begun, called by ten Bishops
of the most enlightened Church on Earth, and by ten
sovereign States, to aid in inaugurating a University of
dignity equal to Oxford and Cambridge, Jena and Got-
tingen, Harvard and the University of Virginia; in
answer to the anxious cry, the absolute necessities of
the teeming millions of freemen who drink the waters
of the Rocky mountains. (Tremendous applause.)

Now, my countrymen, I ask you in the simplest con-
fidence, are not my assumptions proved? Does not your
religion, does not your socialism, does not your liberty,
demand that you should be here? Is it not well, Chris-
tians, freemen, for us to be here? O yes, it is well for
us to be here beneath the very oaks which sheltered our

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