“They who, on a tiny clearing pared from the edge of the woods, built here, most probably with the timber hewed from the trees they felled, our earliest hall, with the solitude of ocean behind them, the mystery of forest before them, and all about them a desolation, most surely (_si quis animis celestibus locus_) share our gladness and our gratitude at the splendid fulfilment of their vision. If we could have but preserved the humble roof which housed so great a future, Mr. Ruskin himself would almost have admitted that no castle or cathedral was ever richer in sacred associations, in pathos of the past, and in moral significance. They who reared it had the sublime prescience of that courage which fears only God, and could say confidently in the face of all discouragement and doubt, ‘He hath led me forth into a large place; because He delighted in me, He hath delivered me.’ We cannot honor them too much; we can repay them only by showing, as occasions rise, that we do not undervalue the worth of their example.” It was out of this natural consideration of the origin of the University that Lowell passed by an historical process to an analysis of the objects had in founding it and the spirit in which these objects had been pursued. He troubled himself not at all with the external affairs of the college and used no time in tracing its material development. He had found its chief office to be that of maintaining and handing down the traditions “of how excellent a thing Learning was,” and his main contention was that the chief office of the University still is to train in learning rather than in knowledge. It was in urging this that he made a plea for the broad and not the special interpretation of the term Learning. As the result of his own study and observation he contended earnestly for the Humanities as the paramount interest.