during my preparations for another ocean voyage. In 1859, I
was a fellow-passenger of his across the Atlantic, and, of course,
I enjoyed not a little of his charming society and conversation.
We sailed from Boston on the loth of June, and for several days
we were enveloped in a dense fog. On the sixth day out, June
20th, the fog continued till nearly 7 o clock in the evening, when
it suddenly vanished, and we had the full glory of a setting sun
at sea. Meanwhile, however, the lifting mist had unveiled two
enormous icebergs, one on our larboard and the other on our
starboard, ten or twelve miles distant from the ship, near
enough to be exquisitely beautiful, but, happily, not near enough
to be immediately dangerous. Yet we might easily have run
on one of them, had not the cloudy curtain been seasonably
withdrawn, as it was, by an unseen Hand. Agassiz had never
before encountered an iceberg, and I shall not soon forget his
exclamations of delight. " O Captain," he cried out, " if I
could only have a boat to go and examine one of those icy
masses ! I could find out all about it, and tell you exactly
where it came from." "But one of these days," he added, "I
will go out in a Coast Survey steamer, and make a special ex
amination of an iceberg for myself." We passed safely through
the crystal gateway, leaving both its columns astern, before bed
time ; but hardty had I reached my state-room when Agassiz was
calling out to me to come up again and see the wonderful phos-
phoresence of our wake. We were passing through a field of
Medusae, and they seemed to have put on an unwonted sparkle
and splendor, as their great observer and investigator stood
watching them over the taffrail.
It was during this voyage, too, that, knowing I was about to
visit Switzerland for the first time, he was eager to tell me ex
actly how to get a first view of the Alps to the best advantage.
318 AGASSIZ.
" Enter Switzerland," said he, " by Dijon, Besanc,on, and Pon-
tarlier, taking a private carriage through the pass of the Jura
to a height called La Tourne, and so by Val Travers to Neuf-
chatel." " The view which bursts upon you at La Tourne," said
he, "is the finest view in all Switzerland."
I have carefully preserved a little map of the route, which he
made with his own pencil at the moment, for fear I should
forget his instructions, and which I followed implicitly at the
time.
But there was one other brief conversation of his, which was
worth all the rest. Humboldt had recently died, and I had
called his attention to the fact that some European Naturalist,
whose name I will not attempt to recall, had said of Humboldt,
by way of distinction and eulogy, that he had fairly ruled God
out of the universe. " Yes," said Agassiz, with all his charac
teristic energy and emphasis, " and I have just written to a
friend, to tell that man that he has uttered an infamous slander
on Humboldt."
Humboldt, you may all remember, was one of our early Hon
orary Members, elected when our Society embraced Natural, as
well as Civil, History in its designs. Had we not abandoned
that field of research to other Associations more expressly adap
ted for its culture, I need not say how proudly we should have
included Agassiz on our roll. And I am sure that it will give us
all pleasure to have found an occasion, this evening, for remem
bering, as a Society, one whom so many of us will never forget
as the most charming and cherished of friends ; whom Massachu
setts and our whole country will ever count among the grandest
and noblest of our adopted sons ; and whom Science through
out the world has long ago enrolled among its most illustrious
votaries.
CAMBRIDGE IN OLD ENGLAND, AND CAM
BRIDGE IN NEW ENGLAND.
SPEECH AT THE VICE-CHANCELLOR S BANQUET, IN THE HALL OF
ST. PETER S COLLEGE, ON THE EVENING BEFORE COMMENCEMENT,
JUNE 15, 1874.
I AM most deeply sensible, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, 1 to the honor
of being numbered among the distinguished guests at your table
this evening, and still more of being specially named in the toast
to the visitors which you have just given. I thank you too, sir,
for joining my name with that of the eminent astronomer, M.
Leverrier. He is by no means a stranger to me, though I may
be one to him. I had the pleasure of shaking hands with him
twenty-seven years ago, at the little palace of Neuilly, not long
before it was so sadly destroyed, in presence of a Sovereign who
is always remembered with respect on both sides of the Channel
and on both sides of the Atlantic. M. Leverrier had then just
won his earliest celebrity. I am most glad to renew my ac
quaintance with him in the full maturity of his scientific
fame.
But I have still other favors to acknowledge, as unexpected
as they are agreeable. Few things, certainly, could have taken
me more by surprise than the telegram which reached me at
Dublin not many days ago, soon after I had landed from
America at Queenstown, inviting me to be present at this
Commencement, and proposing for me an honor which, although
I had received it twenty years ago from the Cambridge of my
own country, I had not dreamed of receiving in England. I
may hardly be at liberty, sir, to offer my thanks to the Univer-
1 The Kev. Dr. Cookson.
[3191
320 CAMBRIDGE IN OLD ENGLAND,
sity for a Degree which still waits to be conferred by the hand
of your noble Chancellor, 1 a hand which, I may not forget,
will iii the meantime have won new " golden opinions " for itself,
from the friends of Science throughout the world, by the muni
ficent foundation of his Cavendish Laboratory. Nowhere will
that foundation be hailed with greater delight than at Cam
bridge in New England, where Science, in all its departments,
is holding no second place in the hearts both of students and
of professors.
But, indeed, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, the privileges and pleasures
of this evening are enough, and more than enough, for me to
acknowledge most gratefully, without anticipating the promise
of the morrow. To sit down at this sumptuous board, in this
splendid Hall of the very oldest College of your venerable
University, in company with so many of the most distinguished
scholars and eminent living men of Old England, and amid so
many memorials and so many memories of the illustrious dead,
who, generation after generation, centuiy after century, have
been associated with these classic walls, this alone is a priv
ilege which no stranger no American, certainly can enjoy
without emotion.
It would be but the barest and baldest commonplace, were I
to allude to the measureless indebtedness of the world at large
to the time-honored Universities of England not forgetting
those of Scotland and of Ireland, also for all they have done
for so many ages in the cause of Education and Learning. But
to us of New England there are peculiar associations, of the
most interesting character, with this particular University of
Cambridge, of which I must not fail to speak. For indeed, sir,
if it were vouchsafed to me at this moment, by some reversal of
the mental telescope, to catch even the faintest vision of your
ancient Halls and Colleges, as they stood here two centuries and
a half or three centuries ago, not far from the time when Sir
Walter Mildmay was founding Emmanuel, and so along to the
day when John Milton was planting his mulberry, and meditating
his odes on the Nativity or on the Passion, at Christ s, if, by
some magic wand, I could summon back to view the young men
i The Duke of Devonshire.
AND CAMBRIDGE IN NEW ENGLAND. 321
and the old men who were then occupying these chambers and
attending these chapels, and passing and repassing along these
hallowed walks and grounds, I could not fail to recognize,
among the hosts of Cambridge scholars who have left imperish
able memories in Old England, not a few, also, of those who
soon afterwards became most prominent in the earliest history
of New England, not a few, especially, who were most instru
mental in founding and fostering our own American University
of Cambridge.
From some quiet chamber of Emmanuel itself, I should be
sure to see, modestly coming out to his examinations or his
prayers, no less distinguished a person than John Harvard,
whose destiny it was, by a noble bequest, as early as 1638, to
give his name, not to a single College only, but to our whole
University. And if your kind allusion, Mr. Vice-Chancellor,
to my own ancestry, may be an apology for any thing so per
sonal, it might be, nay, it certainly would be, that among
the students, among the officers, and even among the benefac
tors of your Colleges at that day, I should descry more than
one of my own name and blood, and more than one of more or
less affinity to those who then wore that name and were veined
with that blood, Mildmays and Stills, and Downings and
Barnardistons, as well as Winthrops, whose titles are not yet
wholly obliterated from your old rolls and registers. Two
centuries and a half or three centuries, I know, make up a
long period to look back upon in our American history, and
indeed comprise almost the whole of it. But they include a
far briefer period in the history of Old England, and only an
infinitesimal moment in that Antiquity of Man, which, whether
we entirely credit it or not, has been so ably asserted and illus
trated by my venerable friend, Sir Charles Lyell, with whom I
take a peculiar pleasure in being associated in the honors of
this occasion.
There is hardly any thing, sir, more remarkable in the history
of American Colonization, I might rather call it English
Colonization, than the fact, that within six years only after
the Fathers of Massachusetts had taken their charter into their
own hands, and had established themselves permanently on the
21
322 CAMBRIDGE IN OLD ENGLAND,
soil of New England, they laid the foundations, not of a school
or an academy only, but of a College, as an institution of
the first necessity even there in the wilderness, amid physi
cal trials and deprivations, and dangers from wild beasts and
wilder men, which might well have diverted their attention from
all intellectual wants. And it is most interesting to remember,
here and on this occasion, that the name of the place where it
was established, having previously been Newtown, was forth
with changed to Cambridge ; and that there, from the year 1636,
a University has been gradually rising up, and going on from
strength to strength, I will not say in vain emulation of this
University, but under the undoubted influence and inspiration
of your example, and by the direct lead and original aid of
more than one of your ancient Alumni.
It is not less pleasant for us, certainly, on our side, to remem
ber that the ample fortune which had been hoarded up by one
of the nine first year s graduates of our Cambridge, one who,
with all his weaknesses and failings of character and of conduct,
was yet nothing less than a great English statesman and di
plomatist, 1 and whose name still designates the street and office
in London from which all British diplomacy emanates, and
from which my friend Lord Derby is at this moment dating his
daily despatches, was ultimately employed in the establish
ment and endowment of your own Downing College.
I may not dwell longer on these historical details. I have
recalled enough of them to show how immediate and how in
timate was the relationship between Old Cambridge and New
Cambridge, and how important was the influence of this ancient
University upon the settlement of Massachusetts. Let me only
confirm the idea by reminding you of the striking fact, that
when the Fathers of New England were at last coming to the
solemn decision to abandon their old homes and firesides and
native land, and to go over to the New World with their wives
and children, to plant what has proved to be a great and glorious
Nation, they assembled here, within the precincts of this very
University, for their final deliberations ; and that the Solemn
Agreement or Compact, upon which the whole fortunes arid
1 Sir George Downing, a graduate of Harvard University in 1642.
AND CAMBRIDGE IN NEW ENGLAND. 328
future of the Massachusetts Colony at that moment hinged and
pivoted, if I may so speak, was signed by the twelve leading
members of the Company, on the 26th of August, 1629, here
at Cambridge.
Would that some Cambridge antiquary could discover beneath
what ancient roof, in what Hall or Chamber, under what oak or
elm in yonder groves, or in what concealed covert, it may be,
that conference was held and that agreement signed! It
would be a sacred spot, for every American visitor, certainly,
and one which might well be marked by some simple Memorial
Tablet, containing, perhaps, a copy of that brief but ever mem
orable compact. We should approach it in something of the
same reverential spirit in which Runnymede is visited by all who
inherit a share in the great legacy of Magna Charta.
I pray the pardon of His Grace the Chancellor, and of your
self, sir, and of the whole table, for trespassing so long on your
indulgence. It was the more unpardonable after the signal
example of brevity given us by the Lord Chief Justice. Per
haps he will kindly credit me with a little of the time which he
might so much better have occupied himself. Let me only con
clude, as an Alumnus of the Cambridge of New England and a
Son of Massachusetts, by expressing the most earnest wishes for
the continued prosperity and welfare of this venerable Univer
sity ; and in hailing her, not merely as the mother of scholars
and patriots and heroes of Bacon and Newton and Dryden
and Milton, and a host of later worthies magnet parens, magna
viriim, but as, in a peculiar sense, the parent of a University
on the other side of the broad Atlantic, which was first in point
of time on our whole American Continent, and which has never
been second, and I trust never will be second, in any thing
which pertains to sound learning, to thorough scholarship, and
to a comprehensive Christian education.
Prosperity and perpetuity to both Cambridges !
WILLIAM A. GIIAHAM.
ADDRESS AT THE ANN.UAL MEETING OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE PEABODY
EDUCATION FUND, NEW YORK, OCTOBER 6, 1875.
GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE PEABODY
EDUCATION FUND :
I AM sincerely glad to be with you once more, and to find a
quorum assembled for business. It was with great regret that
I found myself detained in Europe much longer than I antici
pated when I left home, and that I was thus prevented from
attending the last Annual Meeting of this Board. I may add
without affectation that I willingly encountered the chances of
a stormy passage across the Atlantic, during the recent equi
noctial period, rather than arrive too late for the present
meeting.
I trust that I need not assure you that absence from the
country by no means diminished my interest in your proceed
ings ; and that, as one who had been intrusted by Mr. Peabody
with something of peculiar responsibility in the organization of
the Board and the management of the Trust, I watched the
course of your action at a distance, as eagerly and anxiously as
if I had been at home. My good friend, our indefatigable and
invaluable General Agent, Dr. Sears, will bear witness to the
earnest interest, indicated in my correspondence with him, in
all that was said or done here last year, and to the cordial con
currence which I expressed in the important declaration of
purposes and policy which was so seasonably and unanimously
adopted.
[824]
PEABODY EDUCATION FUND. 325
It was a special satisfaction to me that, with Dr. Sears s aid, I
had completed, before my departure, the preparation of the
permanent record of our Proceedings, for the first seven years
of our existence, in the noble volume which was laid on your
table during my absence. A considerable number of copies of
this volume were transmitted to me at my request, under the
authority given to the General Agent and myself ; and I took
occasion to present them to not a few of the Public Libraries
abroad, and to such individuals as seemed to me peculiarly
entitled to receive them. Copies were deposited in the British
Museum, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, in the library of
the University at Cambridge, in the libraries of the Royal
Society and of the London Society of Antiquaries, in the library
of the City of London at Guildhall, in the Bibliotheque Na-
tionale in Paris, and in the library of The Institute of France.
Copies were also presented to the Earl of Derby, and others of
the Trustees of Mr. Peabody s munificent and most successful
Endowment for improving the Dwellings of the Poor in London,
and to Dean Stanley, under whose authority the remains of our
illustrious Founder were the subject of such signal honors in
Westminster Abbey. I may add that, through the hands of
Dean Stanley, a copy was placed in the library of the Queen,
from whom Mr. Peabody, living and dying, had received such
kind and marked attention.
Nor did I fail to remember, while I was in Rome, the deep
interest in all Mr. Peabody s great benefactions expressed by
His Holiness the Pope, at an audience to which I had accom
panied Mr. Peabody seven years before ; and, through the hands
of the venerable Baron Visconti, a copy of the volume found
its way to the Vatican.
I shall file with our General Agent or Secretary a complete
list of the libraries in which this first volume of our Proceed
ings has been deposited, and of the individuals to whom it has
been presented, in order that any succeeding volume or volumes
may follow the first in future years. It is due to the memory
of our Founder, as well as to ourselves and those who have
been or may be associated with us, that the formal record of our
administration of so large and noble a Trust should be placed
326 PEABODY EDUCATION FUND.
within reach of all, on either side of the Atlantic, who may be
interested in examining it. In London, especially, where Mr.
Peabody s memory is so warmly cherished, and where Story s
noble statue keeps him ever in the eyes of all who congregate
on the Royal Exchange, the practical workings of the great
benefactions which justify his fame are watched with interest,
and the record of their progressive success should be always at
hand. In no other way can the great example of his munifi
cence be commended so effectively to the admiration and imita
tion of others ; and, however much he may have coveted
celebrity, it would have been worthless, even in his own estima
tion, unless that example should be productive of fruit and
following.
I am reminded afresh, Gentlemen, on resuming the chair to
day, of the losses which the Board had sustained, previously to
your last meeting, by the deaths of our esteemed associates,
Mr. Macalester, and Mr. Eaton, to whose memories I paid a
passing tribute in a letter to Dr. Sears, which was included in
the last record of our Proceedings. But it gives me peculiar
pleasure to recall at this moment the names of the distinguished
persons who were elected to fill the vacancies thus created. In
the venerable Bishop of Minnesota and the Chief Justice of the
United States, both of whom we all welcome to our meeting
to-day, you have selected associates who would add dignity
and strength to any organization, and whose participation in our
proceedings will afford renewed assurance that they will be con
ducted with a scrupulous regard to the terms and tenor of the
Trust under which we act.
I cannot forget, however, that still another breach has more
recently been made in our little circle, and that we miss from
our meeting to-day for almost the first time since we received
our commission from Mr. Peabody the ever- welcome presence
of one whom we all held in the warmest personal regard. A
few weeks only before I embarked for America I heard, with
great sorrow, of the death of the Hon. WILLIAM A. GRAHAM,
of North Carolina. The event occurred somewhat suddenly, I
learn, on the llth of August, at Saratoga Springs, where he
had been passing a few days for the benefit of his health. He
GOVERNOR GRAHAM. 327
had held, as you all know, many distinguished offices in the
service of his State and country. As Governor of North
Carolina, as a Senator in Congress for several years, and as
Secretary of the Navy of the United States in the cabinet
of President Fillmore, from which post he retired on being
nominated by the Whig party as a candidate for the Vice-
Presidency, in all these relations he had won for himself a
wide-spread reputation and regard, which any man, North or
South, might have envied. I knew him intimately during this
period of his public career, and have always cherished his
friendship as one of the privileges of my Washington life.
During the seven or eight years of his association with us in
this Trust, we have all learned to appreciate his sterling quali
ties as a friend and a gentleman. One of the original members
of the Board, receiving his appointment from Mr. Peabody on
my own recommendation, he has fulfilled every promise I had
made for him. No one of us has been more punctual in his
attendance at our meetings, or has exhibited a more earnest and
intelligent interest in all our proceedings, while his dignified
and genial presence has given him a warm hold on all our
hearts.
I am sure, Gentlemen, that you will unite with me in desiring
that a committee may be appointed to prepare an appropriate
resolution expressive of our deep sense of the loss we have
sustained by his death ; so that our permanent records may bear
testimony to his faithful and valuable services.
Before this is done, however, I shall be pardoned for reading
to you a portion of a letter, received just as I was leaving Eng
land a few weeks ago, from our friend and associate Governor
Clifford, whom we all miss on this occasion, and who begged
me to express to you his sincere regret at being unable to return
from Europe in season for our meeting. Writing to me from
Florence on the 1st of September, he speaks of having just seen
an announcement of Governor Graham s death, and then pro
ceeds as follows : " Alas and alas ! He was not one of those
who, when we last met, I had any forebodings might be starred
on our fast-diminishing roll of Mr. Peabody s original appoint
ments before the Board assembled again. But it will not be
828 GOVERNOR GRAHAM.
long before that roll will bear more of these sad and impressive
signs of our common mortality. Already the little band of six
teen counts but one more among the living than it does of those
who have joined the venerated founder of the Trust in that
spirit-land to which we are all rapidly hastening ; and it is the
simple truth to say of this last departed of our associates, Gov
ernor Graham, that there was no one of us all, either of the
living or the dead, who more faithfully fulfilled the duties he
had assumed in accepting the trust with which Mr. Peabody
had honored him, or who more fully realized the value and im
portance of that Trust to that portion of the country with whose
interests his own were identified, and to whose honor and pros
perity he devoted himself with such conscientious zeal. As in
the earlier discussions and debates of the Board I was, perhaps,
more frequently brought into opposition to Governor Graham,
upon certain points of policy, than any other of his associates,
an opposition, however, always maintained on both sides with
entire courtesy and good feeling, and invariably terminating in
perfect concord, I hope, when you announce his death at the
next meeting, you will do me the favor to say, that, if I could
be present, I should not fail to bear my testimony to his thorough
fidelity, his manly frankness, and his amiable temper, which
had made him one of the most agreeable, as he was one of the
most useful, members of the Board ; and that I shall unite most
cordially with the members who may be present in any expres
sion which they may adopt of affectionate and sincere respect to
his memory."
RETURN TO THE DOWSE LIBRARY.
REMARKS AT A MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
OCTOBER 14, 1875.
IT gives me, Gentlemen, more pleasure than I know how to
express, to find myself once more in the Dowse Library, with
so many, around and before me, of those whom I have been
long accustomed to meet here. I went abroad with reluctance ;
I stayed abroad with greater reluctance ; and I eagerly returned
home as soon as the condition of others, whose health and wel
fare I was bound to consult, before any wishes of my own,
allowed me to return. I had many " compunctious visitings "