s being yet
able to stay the arm of the destroyer.

But if there is so much left for age, how beautiful, how inspiring is
the hope of youth! I see among those whom I count as listeners one by
whose side I have sat as a fellow-teacher, and by whose instructions
I have felt myself not too old to profit. As we borrowed him from
your city, I must take this opportunity of telling you that his zeal,
intelligence, and admirable faculty as an instructor were heartily and
universally recognized among us. We return him, as we trust, uninjured,
to the fellow-citizens who have the privilege of claiming him as their
own.

And now, gentlemen of the graduating class, nothing remains but for
me to bid you, in the name of those for whom I am commissioned and
privileged to speak, farewell as students, and welcome as practitioners.
I pronounce the two benedictions in the same breath, as the late king's
demise and the new king's accession are proclaimed by the same voice at
the same moment. You would hardly excuse me if I stooped to any meaner
dialect than the classical and familiar language of your prescriptions,
the same in which your title to the name of physician is, if, like
our own institution, you follow the ancient usage, engraved upon your
diplomas.

Valete, JUVENES, artis medicae studiosi; valete, discipuli, valete,
filii!

Salvete, VIRI, artis medicae magister; Salvete amici; salvete fratres!

MEDICAL LIBRARIES.

[Dedicatory Address at the opening of the Medical Library in Boston,
December 3, 1878.]

It is my appointed task, my honorable privilege, this evening, to speak
of what has been done by others. No one can bring his tribute of words
into the presence of great deeds, or try with them to embellish the
memory of any inspiring achievement, without feeling and leaving
with others a sense of their insufficiency. So felt Alexander when he
compared even his adored Homer with the hero the poet had sung. So felt
Webster when he contrasted the phrases of rhetoric with the eloquence
of patriotism and of self-devotion. So felt Lincoln when on the field of
Gettysburg he spoke those immortal words which Pericles could not have
bettered, which Aristotle could not have criticised. So felt he who
wrote the epitaph of the builder of the dome which looks down on the
crosses and weathercocks that glitter over London.

We are not met upon a battle-field, except so far as every laborious
achievement means a victory over opposi