198 HEREDITY. 



sionally ruin their health by study, or fail in life from 

 lack of versatility of gifts, I undertake to affirm that 

 the upper quarter of a college class usually furnishes 

 more men of eminence and high usefulness than 

 the lower three quarters taken together. The first 

 twenty have generally furnished more men of dis- 

 tinction than the lower eighty in any one hundred of 

 college graduates. I beg the pardon of every one 

 here who, on account of ill-health, or from any other 

 cause, may have dropped behind in the competi- 

 tions of a university course. There are illustrious 

 exceptions; and any who have fallen below the 

 first quarter, no doubt, were geniuses who cannot 

 be brilliant in every particular ! I believe that Mr. 

 Emerson and Mr. Hawthorne did not lead their 

 classes in scholarship, although Mr. Emerson was 

 class poet, and Hawthorne particularly requested 

 his faculty that he might not receive a part at com- 

 mencement. But of the graduates of Harvard 

 between 1800 and 1850, who have obtained renown, 

 how many ranked in the first quarter of the class to 

 which they belonged ? Four-fifths. Examining sta- 

 tistics which have recently been collected very pains- 

 takingly by Mr. Thwing, I find, that, among those 

 now eminent in America, President Woolsey in 1820 

 took the first honors of his year. President Eliot in 

 1853 was one of the first scholars of his class. Presi- 

 dent Porter in 1831 had the third rank. President 

 Seeley in 1853 had one of the very first places. 

 President Smith of Dartmouth took in 1830 the 

 third rank. President Barnard in 1828 had the sec- 



