or the bluffs of Edwards’ Ferry.  When the war is ended, and the best guardian of our internal commerce is the loyalty of the returning citizens to their old allegiance, we shall do wisely to level the earthworks of Vicksburg and Port Hudson.  In the city where mob-violence is crushed under the force of armed law, no one cares to keep for a day the crumbling walls and the shattered barricade, though they may have witnessed heroism as splendid as Arcola or Wagram, for they witness also to a wickedness and a terror which all would gladly forget.  The only memorial that a wise and high-souled nation can erect after this war will be the single monument which shall commemorate the hour of peace restored.

But while we are debarred from thus recording upon tablets more lasting than brass the story of our mournful triumphs over erring brethren, we are doubly bound in gratitude to keep green the memory of the men who have deserved well of their country in the hour of utmost need.  We ought to do this also in that temper which shall look most singly to the noble end of forming heroic traditions for the youth of our future land.  I know no place where this can be more fitly carried out than in New-England’s foremost university.  Coeval with the commonwealth itself, the starry roll of its heroes links it with all the fortunes of our history.  Men who sat in the Long Parliament, and who may have seen the Battles of Worcester and Dunbar, took their early degrees upon Harvard’s first Commencement-stage.  Her sons fought against King Philip, were colonels and captains in the “old French War,” went forth in the days of Wolfe and Amherst, and exchanged the lexicon for the musket in the eight years’ struggle which gave to the Thirteen Colonies their independence.  Alumni still survive who did military duty in the second war with England.  The men of Harvard were with Taylor at Buena Vista, and helped Scott in his victorious march upon the Aztec capital.  Of these the only record is in the annual necrology and the quaint Latin of the “Triennial.”

For the young heroes who dropped the oar and took up the sword, who laid aside the gown for the sash and shoulder-strap, who, first in the bloodless triumphs of the regatta and in “capital training” for the great race of life where literary and professional fame are the prizes, went forth to venture all for honor and country, the Alma Mater surely should have a special commemoration.  For her own sake, because of her high responsibility in the education of “ingenuous youth,” she can do no less.  I will venture to say that not a Harvard man, among all the loyal thousands of her surviving Alumni, but feels his heart beat quicker as he reads the story of her children amid their “baptism of fire.”  There is a notable peculiarity about this the most purely New-England of our colleges,—­the continual recurrence of familiar patronymics.  I take up the last semi-annual catalogue, and there among the five hundred names I can almost make out my own classmates