THE THIRD COMMENCEMENT. After the usual examinations at the close of the College year, came the Commencement-time. A change was made this year, and the Commencement was held in the large hall of the College School in the forenoon, and the Alumni Oration was delivered there in the afternoon, and the collation for the evening was spread as usual in the College chapel. The day was auspicious and beautiful; the attendance was large and cheering, the great hall being filled. Four young men were graduated, namely, Charles A. Garter, Lowell J. Hardy, William D. Harwood, and Clarence F. Townsend, all of whom took part in the exercises. Their addresses did them credit for ability, style, and delivery. The College oration was pronounced by Rev. Horatio Stebbins, D. D. It was brief, pertinent, philosophical, effectively delivered, and was warmly applauded. After the conferring of de rees on the graduating class, the honorary degree of Master of Arts was conferred on George W. Bunnell, E. D. Sawyer, H. P. Carlton, H. W. Cleveland, and Charles A. Tuttle. In the afternoon Judge Shafter delivered an address before the Associated Alumni. His theme was: "The relations of human progress to the reason, acting in right method." The discussion was able and the style scholarly and beautiful. He spoke to a crowded assembly, in which was an uncommonly large number of educated men. Rev. Mr. Buel's poem, which followed, surprised the audience with its humor, and often brought forth laughter and applause. These exercises over, the procession was formed and the march taken to the chapel, where the festivities of the even ing were to be observed. The attendance was larger than at either of the Alumni meetings that had gone before, and was one of great interest and enjoyment throughout. John W. Dwinelle, President of the Association, presided at the table, supported by Bishop Kip and General McDowell. Every chair was taken. The supper was pronounced excellent, and the fair ladies of Oakland replenished the board. Then came the speaking. The President opened by saying: "BROTHERS: Another year has completed its circle since we celebrated our last festival, and the Alumni of the Pacific Coast are once more together. . . Dear to the heart of an alumnus is his Alma Mater, the nursing mother who first taught his tender feet to tread the difficult paths of knowledge. Around her cluster his fondest memories, and in that distant land from which we came, it was among our most cherished hopes to return again and again to her feet on annually recurring seasons of reunion, there to meet our foster brothers, who made us boys again in the renewal of old intimacies and associations. But alas, our Alma Maters are far removed from us, and the high places to which we went up to worship during the summer solstice, sink far, far in the distance, thousands of miles beyond the most distant horizon. We all love California as the seat of our early homes, and the future field where our children are to reap the harvests of life. Here will we live, and here will we be buried. She was once to us the land of promise which we were not constrained to behold only from the distant mountain-top, and then die, but have been permitted to enter; and which has already become to most of us, in a blessed manner, the land of realized hope. We are bound to her by the strongest ties of attachment, and not less because she so much resembles, in her physical features and productions, that other promised land of Israel, that hers, also, is a land flowing with milk and honey; that the lion goes up to the mountains from the swelling of her mighty rivers; that her cedars are loftier and more ancient than those of Lebanon; that her stones are silver and her rocks are gold; land of the fig tree, the olive, the orange, and the vine, California, next to our mother in the affections of our hearts! But even while we bend before her in homage, and pay her the vows of our eternal fealty, as she sits enthroned beside the sunset sea; the crown of her young sovereignty glittering with jeweled light; her bosom filled with harvests, and her lap overflowing with gold, we cannot forget that other, Eastern land, the land of our birth and education, which, in our common speech, we still call by the tender name of home. And as we turn our wistful, longing eyes to the East, and, in imagination, behold the long processions of our fellow Alumni, winding up the sacred hills to the sites of our Alma Maters, we feel an irresistible impulse to send them messages of love and affection. . And we are fortunate in having present with us on this occasion one who in position, character, and attainment we are proud to claim as our representative; whose reputation as a writer and a scholar is wider than the domain of our republic; and who, lately, in foreign lands, and in the crisis of our country's destiny, in his own person, illustrated the type of the American gentleman and patriot. I request the Bishop of California to respond to this sentiment: "The Associated Alumni of the Pacific Coast, to the Alumni of the Eastern States, send greeting." Bishop Kip rising to respond, was greeted with long and hearty applause. When this had subsided he spoke as follows: "MR. CHAIRMAN AND BRETHREN OF THE ALUMNI: I have been honored by the request to reply to the sentiment which has just been read, a sentiment most appropriate to this your annual festival. It is one, too, to which I can most heartily respond. An occasion like this banishes all feelings of strangeness, and enables those who never before met face to face to realize that there is a golden chain which unites them, as disciples in a common cause. In the Republic of Letters there are no aliens, and in the brotherhood of scholars all may claim kindred, however humble their efforts, if they are animated by the right spirit, and are laboring for the common welfare. In the name, then, of those who, like myself, derive their membership from the time-honored institutions of the East, brethren of the Associate Alumni, we would thank you for your greeting, for the right hand of fellowship you have held out, for the kindly welcome you have given. "Next indeed to the brotherhood of faith is that of letters. It is a wide brotherhood, including within its ranks all who are striving to diffuse sound literature, or to labor for the intellectual advancement of themselves or others. It is, too, an ancient brotherhood. We are no isolated laborers, but members of a mighty fellowship, whose origin is in far distant ages, and which is to go on long after we have run our brief career. In us the dead have labored, and we have entered in to enjoy the fruit of their patient toil. And solemn it is as we look to the past, to watch the progress and development of that knowledge which we have inherited; to see how, through passing centuries, the noblest intellects were laboring in the mine of thought, that we might stand upon a vantage-ground, and become the heirs of treasures which they purchased by the strivings of a life. It was a mighty struggle, with ever varying success. At times, as in the days of Grecian glory, or the Augustan age in Rome, the human mind advanced with a rapidity which all could mark, and lofty intel lects came forth, at the very mention of whose names we now rise up and bare the brow in reverence. And then, for a time, it seemed to suffer a defeat, and the cause went backward, when the journeyers, like the schoolmen of the Middle Ages, were wandering in a mighty desert, arid, trackless, and silent, with no gushing fountains to quench their thirst, and no manna to relieve their hungry souls. They had struggled to leave the land of Egyptian darkness, but poor humanity strove in vain to advance, and the promised Canaan of knowledge ever receded from them. But this was not so. These were not only as 'men beating the air.' Those long and laborious years were not wasted. These earnest thinkers, though they seemed to add nothing to the sum of human knowledge, did not live in vain. They were aiding in the education of the human mind, and though this discipline was gained in the desert, still it fitted them for the conquest yet before them. And when there came a law-giver like Bacon, who pointed out the path they were to tread, they found themselves prepared to 'go up and possess the land.' And so the cause went on through successive generations till it came to us. And now from the distant past, from the populous centuries which have gone, there is wafted to us a solemn and mysterious sound, which is the voice of these ancient laborers. The field in which we are to toil is filled with their memorials, and each moment of busy, eager, craving life, we are brought into contact with the records of the dead. This, then, is the tie which links us together in one mighty fellowship. "To recur, for an instant, to another illustration. Those who went before us laid the foundation of that vast edifice which, through ages, has been gradually rising into power and strength. And when they were called away from their toil, others of the common brotherhood who succeeded them, took up the implements of labor which they had dropped, and built on where they had been forced to leave off, until, at length, these too ceased from their work. And thus the work was bequeathed to us, that we might do our share for the world's welfare.. In returning the greetings of our younger brothers, may we not expect them, particularly those who to-day, for the first time, have put on the toga, to live in accordance with the dignity they have assumed? Here in this, the place where your youthful powers have been nurtured, in these classic shades where many a daydream has been indulged, which you trust the future will change into reality-determine to live worthy of the brotherhood to which you belong. Turn from that shallow philosophy which would reject the hoarded experience of ages and discard all that the world has ever reverenced. In humility and distrustfulness of self, learn to be Christian scholars. Then, laboring on with high and holy purpose, whether success crowns your efforts or not, your reward will be with you. In the words of a living poet, we may say to you: "Great duties are before you, and great works, But whether crowned or crownless when you fall, At the close of Bishop Kip's speech the President said: "Looking around us upon our associates who crowd this hall, we know who and what the Alumni of the Pacific Coast are. Cicero speaks of some of his younger friends as probable orators and as possible statesmen, but we know that the Alumni of the future are certain to succeed us. Their forms are already visible through the parting mists of the future, but their faces are veiled. I ask Professor Durant, of the College of California, to answer for The Alumni in esse, and Alumni in posse. Said Professor Durant: "The Alumni in esse, and Alumni in posse.' A phraseology, Mr. President, gotten up, one might suppose, on purpose to provoke the speech of some classical professor! Gotten up, I say, sir, for it never grew naturally from the classics, nor from any other source of language. It is what you may call a hybrid—an insolence to nature, and to all good usage as well. 'The Alumni!' an English article with a Latin noun! In esse and in posse!'-two Latin phrases connected by an English conjunction! In'-a preposition common to several languages, and made here to govern the infinitive mood!-a construction found in no language, probably, |