FAMOUS HARVARD MEN. -1.

The question is frequently asked today, especially in America : "Does college training pay ? Do men of natural force and ability really benefit by the outlay of time and money required for a university education ?" The so-called "self-made men" point with a just pride to Abraham Lincoln and to Peter Cooper and ask . "What better men than these, do the colleges turn out ?" It is not my purpose to discuss how many college men may be but pedants and dreamers, nor to attempt to prove that "self-made men" may be woefully lacking in all real worth, but my object is simply to show by taking representatives from Harvard alone, how many of the foremost men in America for the last two hundred and fifty years have received a college training, -men who owe to this fact much of their greatness. The record speaks for itself. Although I intend to select only graduates of Harvard, yet I cannot pass by without noticing the founder of our university, John Harvard, of whom Edward Everett, in an oration delivered in 1826 upon the erection of a monument in his honor, spoke as follows :

"It was first given to the venerated man whom we commemorate this day, first to strike the key note in the character of this people ; first to perceive with a prophet's foresight and to promote with a princely liberality, considering his means, that connection between private munificence and public education, which, well understood and pursued by others, has given to New England no small portion of her name and praise." Previous to 1765 America can hardly be said to have had either a national life or a national literature ; therefore she has neither great statesmen, theologians nor scholars. But among such men of eminence as these were, Harvard had a full representation, as will be seen from a summary of honors attained by the first class ever graduated, that of 1642. Out of the nine graduates, six were distinguished as follows : "One was sent both by Cromwell and Charles II., as minister to the states General of Holland. One became a follow of a college at Oxford ; two received degrees in medicine at Leyden and Padua ; one received a degree of divinity at Oxford, then as now, the greatest academically distinction to which an English theologian can attain."

Among the greatest of the early colonial writers are Increase and Cotton Mather, father and son. They were able and so far beyond the learned men of New England of the day that Prof. Coit Tyler devotes a chapter to "The Dynasty of the Mathers." To be a scholar was part of the family inheritance." Of Increase Mather, the first native American who was president of Harvard College, Prof. Tyler says :-"By the great force of his learning, his logic, his sense, his eloquence, his sagacity and audacity in partilsan command, he became, during the first thirty years of that time, the most powerful man in all that part of the world."

His celebrated son, Cotton, graduated in 1678 at the age of fifteen. His "Magnolia Christi Americana" was the most famous book produced in America during the colonial time. Turning now to men of science we find John Winthrop, [class of 1732,] "was probably the foremost American of his day." His "writings are models of scientific exposition, thorough, simple, terse, lucid, graceful, having an occasional stroke of poetic beauty in epithet ; often rising into effortless and serene eloquence." But in poetry Harvard at this early day furnished the foremost as writers. She since has furnished Lowell and Emerson. Mlchael Wigglesworth, class of 1651 was in contemporaneous renown far above all other verse writers." He had "the genius of a true poet, his imagination had an epic strength, it was piercing, creative." Two other poets, worse rhymers, though greater men than Wigglesworth were John Rogers and Uriah Oakes ; both of the class of 1649. Both later became presidents of the college.

Rogers, besides being college president and poet, was a preacher, physician, linguist and scientist ; a fair representative of the versatility required of college presidents in "ye olden time."

R.