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those men of distinction whom the university proposed to honour with a
degree. The floor, or pit, of the house was filled with the commencing
bachelors; the gallery was crowded with spectators, chiefly ladies.
After the ceremony we were invited to assist at the dinner given by
the students to the president, and a company among whom it was a
distinction for a stranger to sit. The ceremony of conferring degrees
was interesting to an Englishman and a member of the older Cambridge,
because it contained certain points of detail which had certainly been
brought over by Harvard himself, the founder, from the old to the new
Cambridge. The dinner, or luncheon, was interesting for the speeches,
for which it was the occasion and the excuse. The president, for his
part, reported the addition of $750,000 to the wealth of the college,
and called attention to the very remarkable feature of modern American
liberality in the lavish gifts and endowments going on all over the
States to colleges and places of learning. He said that it was
unprecedented in history. With submissions to the learned president,
not quite without precedent. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
witnessed a similar spirit in the foundation and endowment of colleges
and schools in England and Scotland. About half the colleges of Oxford
and Cambridge, and three out of the four Scottish universities, belong
to the period. Still, it is very remarkable to find this new largeness
of mind. Since one has received great fortune, let this wealth be
passed on, not to make a son into an idle man, but to endow, with the
best gifts of learning and science, generation after generation of men
born for work. We, who are ourselves so richly endowed, and have been
so richly endowed for four hundred years, have no need to envy Harvard
all her wealth, We may applaud the spirit which seeks not to enrich a
family but to advance the nation; all the more because we have many
instances of a similar spirit in our own country. It is not the
further endowment of Oxford and Cambridge that is continued by one
rich man, but the foundation of new colleges, art galleries, and
schools of art. Angerstein, Vernon, Alexander, Tate, are some of our
benefactors in art.

The endowments of Owens College, the Mason College, the Firth College,
University College, London, are gifts of private persons. Since we do
not produce rich men so freely as America, our endowments are neither
so many nor so great;