Within a short distance of this city (Boston) stands an institution of learning, which was one of the earliest cares of the early forefathers of the country, the conscientious Puritans. Favored child of an age of trial and struggle, carefully nursed through a period of hardship and anxiety, endowed at that time by the oblations of men like Harvard, sustained from its first foundation by the paternal arm of the Commonwealth, by a constant succession of munificent bequests and by the prayers of all good men, the University of Cambridge now invites our homage as the most ancient, the most interesting, and the most important seat of learning in the land; possessing the oldest and most valuable library, one of the largest museums of mineralogy and natural history—a School of Law, which annually receives into its bosom more than one hundred and fifty sons from all parts of the Union, where they listen to instruction from professors whose names have become among the most valuable possessions of the land—a School of Divinity, the nurse of true learning and piety—one of the largest and most flourishing Schools of Medicine in the country—besides these, a general body of teachers, twenty-seven in number, many of whose names help to keep the name of the country respectable in every part of the globe, where science, learning, and taste are cherished—the whole presided over at this moment by a gentleman, early distinguished in public life by his unconquerable energies and his masculine eloquence, at a later period, by the unsurpassed ability with which he administered the affairs of our city, and now in a green old age, full of years and honor, preparing to lay down his present high trust.[8] Such is Harvard University; and as one of the humblest of her children, happy in the recollection of a youth nurtured in her classic retreats, I cannot allude to her without an expression of filial affection and respect. It appears from the last Report of the Treasurer, that the whole available property of the University, the various accumulations of more than two centuries of generosity, amounts to $703,175. Change the scene, and cast your eyes upon another object. There now swings idly at her moorings, in this harbor, a ship of the line, the Ohio, carrying ninety guns, finished as late as 1836 for $547,888; repaired only two years after, in 1838, for $223,012; with an armament which has cost $53,945; making an amount of $834,845,[9] as the actual cost at this moment of that single ship; more than $100,000 beyond all the available accumulations of the richest and most ancient seat of learning in the land! Choose ye, my fellow-citizens of a Christian state, between the two caskets—that wherein is the loveliness of knowledge and truth, or that which contains the carrion death.