CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE ACADEMY. 21 



President Porter, of Yale College, was the next speaker. He said : — 



The duties prescribed to me by the Chair are very simple, and they can be discharged by a veiy 

 short speecli. I have simply to express the good will I feel toward this and similar institutions of this 

 country. In behalf of my associates and of myself, I certainly can very heartily express this "ood will. 

 I have been interested more than I anticipated in the exercises of to-day. They have vividly brought 

 to my mind the fact of which I have often thought, but of which, as it seems to me, many are too little 

 mindful ; namely, that a century ago Philadelphia and Boston were the literary and scientific lights 

 of this country. It was then that Dr. Franklin, as you, Mr. Chairman, have so happily shown, was a 

 sort of circulating medium between the two, going to and fro, like a weaver's shuttle, and bindinrr 

 them together by manifold threads of scientific knowledge and good-fellowship. And how did he 

 go from Boston to Philadelphia ? Why, on horseback, on that dusty and gravelly road, which, if 

 any man has ever tried, he will never care to try again, along the northern shore of Long Island 

 Sound. In making this journey he uniformly spent the night at a town now called Clinton, in 

 Connecticut. It was formerly called Killingworth, but was originally Kenilworth, after the Kenil- 

 worth of Warwickshire, from which so many of our ancestors came. And as he came near the Kenil- 

 worth or Clinton green his horse was always sure to turn a very square and abrupt corner, making 

 for the house of a Eev. Jared Eliot, who was the pastor of this town of Kenilworth. This Piev. 

 Jared Eliot I speak of as representing a great many country clergymen all over New England, who 

 had the true scientific spirit, and who nurtured that spirit in their OM'n hearts, and diffused it in the 

 communities in which tliey lived. And I will remind you that all over New England there was an 

 active scientific spirit ready to receive new truths of every kind ; that of electricity for instance. 

 And let me mention, for Dr. Holmes's special edification, that in Litchfield County, Conn., a very 

 eminent clergyman, living on one of the highest hills in the county, took it into his head, very early 

 in the history of the lightning-rod, to have one attached to his own house. Upon this one of his 

 parishioners said, and the parishioners were generally pretty keen, as well as the clergymen : " If 

 I believed in your doctrines I should just as lief have one of those things tied to my back as not." 

 Difficult as it may be for some of us to believe it, religion and science, Calvinism and liberality, 

 beautifully mingled together in those good old days a hundred years ago. I think we sliould give 

 more credit than we do to the early scientific spirit of the New England people, represented as they 

 were by the New England clergy. We ought to do more honor than we are apt to do to that 

 universal spirit which, from these New England States, spread itself tln-ongh tlie country ; which 

 sent their sons into the field of thought, which inspired them to found colleges, and to support 

 institutions of learning, and prepared them to receive new truth, from whatever source it came. 

 This true scientific spirit created New England, and M'ill sustain New England in the future. When 

 I was in Prussia, a good many years ago, I was particularly impressed with hearing Old Fritz and 

 Leibnitz spoken of as the two greatest men of the kingdom. Old Fritz made Prussia a kingdom by 

 fighting it into position and power, and Leibnitz founded the Berlin Academy ; and the Prussians 

 themselves were intelligent enough to know that in Old Fritz and the Berlin Academy are the 

 strength and glory, not only of old Prussia, but also of new Prussia. The whole world knows 



