to such a character as an illustrious example of true
and manly culture.

"Shall I say that such a culture as I have endeavored to sketch, it
is, and will be, the aim of Dartmouth College to stimulate? I cannot,
at the close of this discourse, compare in detail its methods with the
end in view, and show their fitness. The original and central college
is surrounded by its several departments, partly or wholly
professional, each having its own specialty and excellence. The
central college seeks to give that rounded education commonly called
Liberal, and to give it in its very best estate. It will aim to
engraft on the stock that is approved by the collective wisdom of the
past, all such scions of modern origin as mark a real progress. By
variety of themes and methods it would stimulate the mental activity,
and by the breadth of its range it would encourage fullness of
material, both physical and metaphysical, scientific and historic. It
initiates into the chief languages of Europe. By the close, protracted
concentration of the mathematics, by the intuitions, careful
distinctions, and fundamental investigations of intellectual and
ethical science, and by the broad principles of political economy,
constitutional and international law, as well as by a round of
original discussions on themes of varied character, it aims to induce
precision and mastery. And all along this line runs and mingles
harmoniously and felicitously that great branch of study for which,
though often severely assailed because unwisely defended or
inadequately pursued, the revised and deliberate judgment of the
ablest and wisest men can find no fair substitute,--the study of the
classic tongues. Grant that it may be, and often is, mechanically or
pedantically pursued. Yet, when rightly prosecuted, its benefits are
wide, deep, and continuous, more than can be easily set forth--and
they range through the whole scale, rising with the gradual expansion
of the mind. It comprises subtle distinctions, close analysis, broad
generalization, and that balancing of evidence which is the basis of
all moral reasoning; it tracks the countless shadings of human
thought, and their incarnation in the growths of speech, and seizes,
in Comparative Philology, the universal affinities of the race: it
passes in incessant review the stores of the mother tongue; it
furnishes the constant clew to the meaning of the vernacular, a basis
for the easy study of modern European languag