In the supplemental laws, published since the last session of our board of visitors, you will find a detail of the studies requisite for the attainment of the degree of A.M. This is the highest honor in our institution which can be won by the student during his collegiate career. It will require generally two years additional study after obtaining the Bachelor’s degree; few of you, consequently, can be expected to aim at its attainment. Those however who shall have an opportunity, will find themselves amply rewarded by the advantages which may be derived from it. In this course, all the studies which are pursued in the first portion of your collegiate career, are extended and amplified. In the first portion of your studies, you master the great principles of science; in the latter, you enter more fully into your subjects, and begin the great work of applying your principles to facts. He who shall have the good fortune to obtain this degree, will have amassed a fund of knowledge which will enable him to grace and ornament any of the walks of life into which he may choose to enter. His mind will have been trained in the most important of all arts—that of acquiring knowledge and generalizing facts. He will almost necessarily have attained the great desideratum of literary men—love of study and the power of discrimination. So that in his case there will be afterwards no waste of labor and time, no useless expenditure of frivolous and unprofitable thought. To a mind thus trained, all nature furnishes lessons of instruction and philosophy, from her least to her greatest operations—from the falling of an apple, to the complex movements of worlds innumerable, all is harmony, concord and wisdom. Such a mind can draw the lesson of philosophy alike from the prattle of the innocent babe, or the deeply studied conversation of a Bacon or a Newton. I have thus, gentlemen, endeavored briefly to present an exposé of the several departments of study in our college.[3] I have given you the bill of fare, and we hope {763} that you may make your selections with judgment, and afterwards prosecute your studies with energy and perseverance. By the late arrangement of the visitors in regard to the Master’s degree, our scientific courses are as extensive as at any other institution in this country, and one of them, the moral and political, is believed to be more extensive than in any other institution known to us. And this will lead me to say a few words on the policy of our board of visitors in establishing so extensive a course. [Footnote 3: I have dwelt in this address very little on the subjects requisite for the degree of A.B. because of their well known character and importance.]