AN ORATION Pronounced at Cambridge, BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF PHI BETA KAPPA. AUGUST 27, 1894. PUBLISHED BY REQUEST, BY EDWARD EVERETT. NEW-YORK: PRINTED BY J. W. PALMER & CO. Corner of Wall and Broad-streets. 1824. TO MAJOR GENERAL LA FAYETTE, THIS Oration, delivered in his presence, is respect fully and affectionately dedicated by THE AUTHOR. ORATION. MR. PRESIDENT, and Gentlemen, IN discharging the honourable trust of being the public organ of your sentiments on this occasion, I have been anxious that the hour, which we here pass together, should be occupied by those reflections exclusively, which belong to us as scholars. Our association in this fraternity is academical; we engaged in it before our alma mater dismissed us from her venerable roof, to wander in the various paths of life; and we have now come together in the academical holidays, from every variety of pursuit, from almost every part of our country, to meet on common ground, as the brethren of one literary household. The professional cares of life, like the conflicting tribes of Greece, have proclaimed to us a short armistice, that we may come up in peace to our Olympia. But from the wide field of literary speculation, and the innumerable subjects of meditation which arise in it, a selection must be made. And it has seemed to me proper that we should direct our thoughts, not merely to a subject of interest to scholars, but to one, which may recommend itself as peculiarly appropriate to us. If that old man eloquent, whom the dishonest victory at Cheronæa killed with report,' could devote fifteen years to the composition of his Panegyric on Athens, I shall need no excuse to a society of American scholars, in choosing for the theme of an address on an occasion like this, the peculiar motives to intellectual exertion in America. In this subject that curiosity, which every scholar feels in tracing |