6 



WE cannot but recollect^ that once before we have been assem- 

 bled in this august place — when, from this desk', our respected 

 and beloved President, in strains of wisdom, urged us to the hon- 

 orable employment of contributing to the advantage of our coun- 

 try, by useful studies, and important literary researches. We 

 heard him with attention : We venerated him as our Patron : 

 We respected him as a Philosopher and a Man. But he is now 

 no more ! and it is in obedience to your commands, thai I have 

 this day undertaken, from the same place, the pleasing though 



■ 



melancholy task of pronouncing his Eulogy. 



r 



IT may be pertinent on this occasion to observe, that it has 



been usual for such 



oil the death of 



those members who have been distinguished for their talents and 

 their virtues, to direct some of their fellows to delineate their 

 characters j not in the strains of undeserved panegyric, nor in 

 the form of tumid declamation, but in the plainer garb of truth : 

 Such, I understand to be your expectations from me on this oc- 

 casion. I am not therefore at liberty to exercise the talents of 

 an orator, if I possess them, but am restrained by the more rigid 

 academic rules. Let me then rest on your candor, while I at- 

 tempt a sketch of the life of Mr. Bowdoin, and of those incid- 

 ents, which reflect honor on his memory. 



THE ancestors of our President were inhabitants of J^ochelie, 

 in Prance : They were of honorable descent, and possessed a flilr 

 inheritance there, and were of that body of Protestants, who for 

 a long time resisted the attempts of the tyrants of that country 

 to enslave them, and to compel them against their consciences to 



abandon 



