Page:Modern Eloquence - Volume 1.djvu/51

4 been accepted as the foundation of religious belief. In the time of our apprenticeship we still read of the mystery of Africa in the pages of Herodotus, while the sources of the Nile were as unknown to our world as to the world of the Pharaohs; then one day a patient, long-suffering, solitary explorer emerged from the wilderness, and the secret was revealed. In our own time and before our purblind eyes, scarcely realizing what they saw or knowing enough to wonder, Livingstone eclipsed Columbus, and Darwin rewrote Genesis. The Paladin we had been told was a thing of the past; ours was the era of the commonplace; and, lo! Garibaldi burst like a rocket above the horizon, and the legends of Colchis and the crusader were eclipsed by the newspaper record of current events. The eloquent voice from Cheyne Row still echoed in our ears, lamenting the degeneracy of a time given over to idle talk and the worship of mammon—denied by charlatans and devoid of workers; and in answer, as it were, Cavour and Lincoln and Bismarck crossed the world's stage before us, and joined the immortals. We saw a dreaming adventurer, in the name of a legend, possess himself of France and of imperial power. A structure of tinsel was reared, and glittered in the midst of an age of actualities. Then all at once came the nineteenth century Nemesis, and, eclipsing the avenging deity of which we had read in our classics, drowned in blood and obliterated with iron the shams and the charlatans who, our teacher had told us, were the essence and characteristic of the age.

And the College,—the Alma Mater!—she who to-day has placed me above the rank of journeyman,—what changes has she witnessed during those years of probation?—rather what changes has she not witnessed! Of those—president, professors, instructors and officers—connected with it then, two only remain; but the young bachelor of arts who, degree in hand, came down the steps that I was then ascending, has for more than half those years presided over the destinies of the University, and, under the impulse of his strong will and receptive mind, we have seen the simple, traditional College of the first half of the century develop into the differentiated University of the latter half. In 1856, when I received from the University my first diploma, the college numbered in the aggregate of all its classes fewer students than are found