AN

ADDRESS,

DELIVERED TO THE

CANDIDATES

FOR THE

BACCALAUREATE,

IN

Union College,

AT THE

ANNIVERSARY COMMENCEMENT

MAY 1st, 1805.

BY ELIPHALET NOTT,

PRESIDENT OF UNION COLLEGE.

ADDRESS.

YOUNG gentlemen, this day closes your collegiate life. You have continued the term, and completed the course of studies prescribed in this institution, You have received its honors, and are now to go forth adventurers, unsuspecting perhaps, and certainly inexperienced, into a fascinating but illusive world, where honor flaunts in fictitious trappingswhere wealth displays imposing charms, and pleasure spreads her impoisoned banquets. And that too, at a period when the passions are most ungovernable, when the fancy is most vivid, when the blood flows rapidly through the veins, and the pulse of life beats high. Already does the opening scene brighten as you approach it, and happiness, smiling but deceitful, passes before your eyes and beckons you to her embrace.

Called to address you, at this affecting crisis, and for the last time, had I, like the patriarch of the east, a blessing at my disposal, how gladly should I bestow it. But I have not: and can therefore only

add, to the solicitude which I feel, my counsel and

my prayers.

Permit me to advise you, then, young gentlemen, when you leave this seminary, and even after you shall have chosen a profession, and entered on the business of life, still to consider yourselves only learners. Your acquirements here, though reputable, are the first rudiments merely of an education which must be hereafter pursued and completed. In the acquisition of knowledge you are never to be stationary, but always progressive. Nature has no where said to man, pressing forward in the career of intellectual glory, "Hitherto shalt thou come but no further." Under God, therefore, it depends upon yourselves to say, how great-how wise-how useful you will be. Men of moderate talents, by a course of patient application, have often risen to the highest eminence, and standing far above where the momentary sallies of uncultivated genius ever reach, have plucked from the lofty cliff its deathless laurel. Indeed, to the stature of the mind, no boundary is set. Your bodies, originally from the earth, soon reach their greatest elevation, and bend downwards again towards that earth out of which they were taken. But the inner man, that sublime, that rational, that immortal inhabitant which pervades your bosoms, if sedulously fostered, will expand and elevate itself, till touching the earth, it can look above the clouds and reach beyond the stars.

Go, then, and emulous to excel in whatever is splendid, magnanimous and great; with New