456 Presidential Addresses 



the building which represented in its existence the 

 realization of the ideas of certain of those founders 

 of the Republic, and gained from our study of a 

 portion of this University an idea of the plan along 

 which the restoration of the White House was to 

 proceed. 



The University is not old in years as years are 

 counted in an older world, but there are very few 

 institutions of learning in Europe which, however 

 old, have such an honor roll of service to the State, 

 in the council chambers of the State, and of ser- 

 vice on the tented field, which have such an honor 

 roll of statesmen and soldiers, as the roll that can 

 be furnished by reading the list of the graduates 

 of this University of Virginia. The University has 

 been prolific of men who have gone into public life ; 

 but it is not only in public life that the record made 

 by the University is imperishable. The strangest, 

 in some ways the most brilliant name to be found 

 in American letters, the name of the man who con- 

 tributed something purely individual in poetry and 

 in prose, not merely to the literature of this country, 

 not merely to the literature of our tongue, but to 

 the literature of mankind the name of Edgar Al- 

 lan Poe, is to be found upon your rolls. It is a 

 pleasure to one who earnestly hopes to see the liter- 

 ary habit in American life kept up and who hopes 

 to see a keeping up of productive scholarship and 

 literature, to be able to number among his friends 

 one of those younger literary men of whom it can 

 be safely asserted that they have added something 



