"Vast happiness enjoy the gay allies! A youth of follies, an old age of cares, Young yet enervate, old yet never wise; Vice wastes their vigor and their mind impairs. Vain, idle, dissolute, in thoughtless ease, Reserving woes for age, their prime they spend; All wretched, hopeless to the evil days, With sorrow to the verge of life they tend; Grieved with the present, of the past ashamed; They live and are despised, they die, no more are named." If to every bounty of Providence there be annexed, as assuredly there is, some obligations as a condition for its enjoyment, on us, blest as we have been, and as we now are, with the choicest gifts of heaven here below--with freedom, peace, order, civilization and social virtue--there are unquestionably imposed weighty obligations. You whom I now address will, in a few years, be among the men of the succeeding age. In a country like ours, where the public will is wholly unfettered, and every man is a component part of that country, there is no individual so humble who has not duties of a public kind to discharge. His views and actions have an influence on those of others, and his opinions, with theirs, serve to make up that public will. More especially is this the case with those who, whatever may be their pursuits in life, have been raised by education to a comparative superiority in intellectual vigor and attainments. On you, and such as you, depends the fate of the most precious heritage ever won by the valor, preserved by the prudence, or consecrated by the virtue of an illustrious ancestry--illustrious, not because of factitious titles, but nature's nobles, wise, good, generous, and brave! To you, and such as you, will be confided in deposit the institutions of our renowned and beloved country. Receive them with awe, cherish them with loyalty, and transmit them whole, and, if possible, improved, to your children. Yours will, indeed, be no sinecure office. As the public will is the operative spring of all public action, it will be your duty to make and to keep the public will enlightened. There will always be some error to dispel, some prejudice to correct, some illusion to guard against, some imposition to detect and expose. In aid of these individual efforts, you must provide, by public institutions, for diffusing among the people that general information, without which, they cannot be protected from the machinations of deceivers. As your country grows in years, you must also cause it to grow in science, literature, arts, and refinement. It will be for you to develop and multiply its resources, to check the faults of manners as they rise, and to advance the cause of industry, temperance, moderation, justice, morals, and religion all around you. On you too, will devolve the duty which has been long neglected, but which cannot with impunity be neglected much longer, of providing for the mitigation, and (is it too much to hope for in