He knew also the character of the people whom he was destined to serve; the blighting nature of the atmosphere he must inhale; the consequent privations and hardships he must endure; and was forewarned of his liability to fall a martyr to his work, from the fate of most of those who had preceded him in this labor of love.' Yet, in. full view of all these startling facts, he fearlessly threw himself into the gap, giving himself up a voluntary sacrifice to the cause of the African mission, magnanimously determining, if not permitted to survive amid the dangers which surrounded him, even to be baptized for the dead.' Will any man say of such a soul that it was either impelled on by a childish temerity, or quailed in the presence of dangers and difficulties from a sickly timidity? None in this assembly will pronounce such a judgment upon the Rev. Melville B. Cox, as by so doing he would falsify all those facts which have been adduced respecting the purity of his motives, the genuineness of his Christian experience, the ripeness of his judgment, and the uprightness of his deportment. And though he died before he witnessed the fulfilment of the promise respecting the redemption of any portion of Africa, through his immediate agency, yet from his ashes shall hereafter arise, phoenix-like, a numerous brood of emancipated children of that moral desert, who shall be sheltered under the wing of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the nations. The brightness of his example, the Christian heroism he displayed in his undertaking, the judicious plans, for the benefit of Africa, which he had adjusted, as well as his triumphant death in the midst of the brightening prospects which were before him, will all proclaim to those who shall follow him in this career of usefulness, that Africa is not forgotten by the Church of God, and that obstacles of the most formidable character cannot obstruct the progress of the Gospel messenger in that insalubrious climate.

Leave we then the dust of our beloved brother to rest beneath the clods of Liberia, until the trump of God shall call it into new life, while we notice some things to encourage you, my younger brethren, to persevere in this godlike enterprise. Though this first herald of our missionary society has fallen an early martyr to the cause destined to meliorate the sad condition of Afric's sons and daughters, it ought to be no motive to discouragement, nor does it afford any reason for us to relax in our exertions to pour the blessings of God's salvation into their sorrowful bosoms. Others, as our text assures us, 'died without receiving the promise.' In modern times a Coke fell a victim to death before he reached the destined scene of his labors; yet the projected mission to the Indies, of which he was the life and soul while he lived, went on and prospered. Most of the heroic pioneers in the settlement of the colony upon the coast of Africa, so auspiciously begun under the fostering care of the American Colonization So

ciety, among whom was that excellent and devoted servant of Jesus Christ, the Rev. Mr. Baeon, fell victims to a premature death. They only saw the promise respecting the future prosperity and glory of Liberia afar off. But the project-as philanthropic as it was daring and dangerous-was not abandoned. Confiding in the strength of Omnipotence, in the purity of their motives, and the goodness of their cause, they boldly met the opposition which all such benevolent undertakings have to encounter, and marched forward in the road which they saw leading to the civil and religious emancipation of Africa.

Nor has the missionary cause been less disastrous to the lives of its devoted servants. Out of the ten missionaries which have been sent recently by the Missionary Society of Balse, in Switzerland, nine have fallen victims to a premature death. A minister of the Baptist Church and his family have also gone the way of all the earth; and lastly, even our beloved Cox has fallen on the very threshold of his labors. But have these efforts and sacrifices been fruitless? By no

means.

Even at this present time there are at Liberia many faithful followers of Jesus Christ, among whom are several local colored preachers of our own denomination, regulating themselves as nearly as circumstances will permit, according to the discipline and usages of our Church. These call for our help. Shall we not answer this call? Yes, we must! And we bless the God of missions that others now stand waiting to go, notwithstanding the temporary gloom which is thrown over our prospects by the death of our missionary.

Shall we then give up Africa? You all say no! The voice of Cox says no! Hear some of the last words he uttered previously to his leaving his native shores for that ill-fated country. The following anecdote I have from unquestionable authority. When he was parting with a friend, a young preacher, at the Wesleyan University, he said to him, 'If I die, and am buried in Africa, you must come and write my epitaph.' 'I will,' said the youth; but what shall I write?" 'Write,' replied brother Cox, with peculiar emphasis, Let thousands fall before Africa be given up.' May this be inscribed as a motto upon every heart! And with such a sentiment before us, uttered under such circumstances, let us, my young brethren, march on to the conquest of Africa, and stop not until it is subdued to the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Amen.

2*

INAUGURAL ADDRESS

Of D. D. Whedon, Professor of Ancient Languages, in the Wesleyan University.

BETWEEN the enunciated word upon the human lips and its correspondent idea in the human mind there is no natural and no necessary connection. Language, when viewed in the light of an invention, must be considered as the application of sound to the purposes of the conveyance of thought; and so viewed, appears the mightiest of all the achievements of combining intellect.

Considered, however, as a Divine endowment, most strikingly simple, indeed, is the providential arrangement. The intellect might be stored with treasures of inestimable knowledge; the imagination may be all gorgeous with vivid imagery; the bosom may throb with heaving emotions; yet, without this magic key to unlock their sources, they must be suffocated in agonized silence. Man would be a virtual idiot, though endowed with the loftiest capacity, and a real hermit, though surrounded with the densest society. Yet, mark how simple the apparatus which Providence has adjusted to the most exalted purposes.The whole process is performed, the whole object is gained, by sound-vox et preterea nihil. Within some prolific intellect awakes to new existence the eloquent thought, seizes the buoyant sound, and flits; a living messenger, a winged fancy, through liquid air, and descending upon the congenial organ, and melting into other minds, becomes a thrilling impulse to surrounding thousands. By an analogous process, the word becomes associated with the written character, and the mighty conception of one master spirit, speeds a more than lightning flight, through space and time, to far distant continents and far coming centuries.

Amidst the remains of antiquity, there are two pre-eminent languages, that stand in unrivalled solitude, the magnificent depositories of departed genius. Other nations have indeed existed, and they rise upon the imagination like shadows, vast and magnificent, indeed, yet shadows still. But our own ancestral traditions are scarce more familiar to our youthful ears, than the glorious recollection of Grecian arts and Roman arms. Who has not been often and eloquently told that they reared in noblest grace the architectral column, they drew the most thrilling melody from the silent shell, they gave the most speaking life to the sculptured marble? Their arts have been the amateur's raptured admiration, their eloquence the scholar's model, their heroism the patriot's inspiration. Philosophy first lectured in their lyceums, liberty thundered her undying echoes in their forums, and poetry peopled their sceneries with forms of living ideal beauty, until every forest, dale, and hill, became classic and consecrated, and 'not a mountain reared its head unsung.'

Objections are often, indeed, expressed against the study of the productions of ancient genius. We frequently hear it complained that they have a too little practical character, and too feebly avail the young champion upon the arena, and amid the bustle of life's arduous contest. Be it so. But might I suggest, that excitement is too much the characteristic of the age-that the youthful pulse beats but too early, and too

intensely for the maddening contest; that the vortex of the political whirl is but too absorbing, and fascinates too frequently the ardent eye of young ambition. May I ask, should there not exist at least a class, less practical, if you please, retired from the intoxication of the active aspirants, of gentler nerve and milder tone, who love the classic grove and the academic hall, and who there, in their sphere of quieter usefulness, might form an allaying element amid the ferment and the whirl ; who might temper the distempered pulsations of the young aspirant, rushing to the contest, and before he engages, form him to gentler tastes, and open to him, in his own mind, elements and traits which he would never discover amid the rush of the multitude; who might dispense precepts of integrity, stigmatized, indeed, as impracticable, by the hackneyed adept, yet so effective as to guard his steps in many a trying moment, and elevate his views in many a depressing hour; who might store his imagination with generous and lofty conceptions, pronounced, indeed, romantic, by the common place, yet so ennobling in effect as to exalt his nature, to render him the inspirer of lofty conceptions, illustrious purposes, and animated action in other minds; who might, in fine, create within his soul an entire department of intellectual resources, denounced as worthless, indeed, by the utilitarian, and totally beyond the reach of the arithmetician's figures and the economist's scales, which, though they may add not one farthing to his estate, nor one inch to his successful career of ambition, may constitute, in his own breast, a treasure which the Indies could not buy, a moral elevation to which the presidential chair could not exalt.

There are places and times in which it is emphatically the rage for people to be practical;-and practical they are with a vengeance.This feeling is sometimes extended into an affectation of barbarism. There is abroad a spirit of literary fanaticism, that under the pretence of ultra-utilitarianism would, we might think, with one flourish of the torch of Omer, send the whole world of classic literature to join the ashes of the Alexandrian library. Making the five senses supreme umpire, it estimates the value of any object by its transmutability into consumable material. I, too, would claim to be an advocate of utility; but not of such a utility as they would propose. True utility would prompt us ever to store the youthful character with generous sentiments, refined taste, and varied acquisitions. In so doing, we should communicate many a fact, and many a principle, which the scholar might subsequently have, in fact, no actual occasion to use; which some would, therefore, pronounce useless; but of which any liberally educated gentleman would blush to be ignorant. A lawyer, or a minister, may never, in the course of his professional life, have occasion to mention the fact that Jupiter was the supreme deity of Grecian mythology; and yet who would not smile in contempt, if such a man, on such a subject, should expose his ignorance. A countless multitude of facts, whole departments of knowledge, may exist in the mind, which the possessor is never called to apply in practice, but the acquirement of which has communicated a discipline to the powers, and the possession of which presents a richness and a range of thought that constitute alone the completely accomplished character. True utility would dictate that to such a model should be formed the educated gentleman of our land,—a character where every nerve of the mind

has received its full training, every department of the intellect has been so stored, and every weight of the character so equipoised, as to present that object, on earth most supremely beautiful to the mental eye, the finished model of complete intellectual symmetry.

It has been sometimes complained that the youthful mind should so long be employed upon mere language-simply words-words-words. But how much are mankind governed by these same words! The philosopher, who said that words were things, pronounced an apothegm of far more wisdom than pretence. Things they are, and powerful things too. To obtain the mastery energies of language, to acquire the art by which the marshalled array of sentences outrivals in gigantic effect the marshalled array of bayonets, to possess the magic mystery of binding in the fascination of uttered syllables, and ruling with more than imperial sway the wilderness of free minds-these are objects for which ambition believes that years of toil are a cheap requisition. But what method better than classic study for the acquirement of such a mastery of language? Not only does the student, by a knowledge of etymology, acquire new perceptions of the force of a large part of his own language, but, from the comparison with a far different structure than any which any modern language affords, he acquires new ideas of the mechanism of language, and new powers of collocation and arrangement. He is obliged to pass from the circle of his own little vocabulary, and range and ransack through the whole extent of lexicography, to equip the idea which his author obliges him to clothe in words. Hence every language lesson is, in effect, an effort at composition, in which a given idea is propounded, for which the scholar is to supply the phraseology. The whole mass of English lies funded in his lexicon, and upon this he is obliged successively to draw, until the whole language has passed repeatedly through his use. During this process he is obliged to examine, reject and select, to weigh well the force of term by term, to catch the lightest shades of difference, and to discriminate with critical accuracy the least palpable niceties of idea. It is difficult indeed to imagine what process can more effectively discipline the mind to a copious command of language, or that any mind could pass through such a process without feeling, within itself, the new acquirement of such a mastery.

Frequent reference is made to those, who, without such training, have become eminent authors, in disproof of its use and necessity. A Franklin, perhaps, or a Shakspeare, found no such training necessary, while hundreds have passed through this process without its bestowing upon them any superior power of eloquence. And do these extraordinary instances of less educated greatness disprove the necessity of education? Dulness may exist, which no polishing can brighten; while on the other hand, brilliancy may shine, which no deficiency of refining can obscure. If an untaught Hogarth could snatch up his pencil and, laughing at all rule and defying the whole combined academy, with every touch of fearless genius could bid living nature stand forth upon the canvass, did he demonstrate that all rules were restraints upon genius and all academicians pedants? If he could dispense with the lessons afforded by the experience of other masters, must we forget the numbers whose tastes have been nurtured and whose hand guided, until every conception seemed to soften into