XXV. An Address delivered before the literary societies of Am- herst College, on the 25th of August, 1835. XXVI. THE CIRCUMSTANCES FAVORABLE TO THE PROGRESS OF LITERATURE IN AMERICA. MR PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN: IN discharging the honorable trust which you have assigned to me on this occasion, I am anxious that the hour which we pass together should be exclusively occupied with those reflections which belong to us as scholars. Our association in this fraternity is academical;, we entered it before our Alma Mater dismissed us from her venerable roof; and we have now come together, in the holidays, from every variety of pursuit, and every part of the country, to meet on common ground, as the brethren of one literary household. The duties and cares of life, like. the Grecian states, in time of war, have proclaimed to us a short armistice, that we may come up, in peace, to our Olympia. 11. On this occasion, it has seemed proper to me that we should turn our thoughts, not merely to some topic of literary interest, but to one which concerns us as American scholars. I have accordingly selected, as the subject of our inquiry, the circumstances favorable to the progress of literature in the United States of America. In the discussion of this subject, that curiosity, which every scholar naturally feels, in tracing and comparing the character of the higher civilization of different countries, is at once dignified and rendered An oration, pronounced at Cambridge, before the Society of Phi Beta Kappa, 26th August, 1824. |