xxxiv Centennial Anninrsary 



numbered fifty in all. It was the day of small things in Amer- 

 ican letters. 



Our first volume of memoirs was such a collection as might now 

 be made (but would not now be made) by the collaboration of a 

 dozen intelligent men of liberal education, none of whom had 

 made any department of human knowledge a special study, except 

 so far as it might afford him a means of professional livelihood. 

 I say would not now be made, for the world is quick to recognize 

 the worth of specialization in scholarship, and to demand that what 

 a learned academy shall publish be such as only learning and 

 original research can produce. 



The history of the Academy up to 1840 was sketched by Edward 

 C. Herrickin the American Quarterly Register for August of that 

 year. A later article in the Yale Book,* by Professor Loomis, 

 brought it down to 1877. Its first century is now auspiciouslv 

 closed, and its story is before you. 



It is a record j^erhaps of no great achievements. It may have 

 published no dazzling discoveries. Its influences have been often 

 indirect, and their source perhaps unknown. But in one way or 

 another, changing its course from time to time to meet the new 

 conditions it had to face, as best it could, it has kept steadily to 

 its work, with no break of activity, and hopes that it has done no 

 dishonor to its position as the third in age of the literary societies 

 of the United States. 



It has failed in the original aim, indicated by its name, of serv- 

 ing to promote and develop the cultivation of the arts and 

 sciences in the State of Connecticut in particular. Instead of 

 becoming a real State organization, it has assumed the character 

 of a local one. An association formed between men m t 1io live at 

 a distance from each other may be able to gather many of them 

 together at an annual meeting, or on some special occasion when 

 topics of interest are to be discussed by those whose opinions are 

 worth hearing. Such is the case with our State Medical and Bar 

 Associations, and those of the clergy of the various denominations. 

 But if meetings are to be held monthly, and always at the same 

 place, they will soon inevitably become meetings of those who 

 reside there, and the proceedings will take a local color. 



* I. 329. 



