The Albany Institute. 



47 



sight and mind, or leave it, all forgotten, to decay, and are to live 

 only in present action, where is the possibility of repentance and 

 amendment? If this dark saying have substance in it and be true, 

 where are the uses of history, sacred or profane ? 'The glory of the 

 present is best seen in the light of the past, and so the recollection of 

 the fitful struggle of light and darkness through cloudy dawn inten- 

 sifies the majesty ineffable of the conquering sun. I too am an 

 Albanian — an Albanian to the core- and can the young men among 

 you realize the advance of Albany as I do 1 I who have gone down to 

 New York in an Albany sloop — have swum from the dock across the 

 river long before the pier was thought of, and have strolled, time and 

 time again, through the Patroon's meadows, now covered and more 

 than covered by the Lumber District, when I went to bathe or to 

 botanize ? How can the academy boy of this day admire and enjoy 

 the charming park of the academy as I do — I who remember well 

 when that park was a bed of clay, as naked as your palm, with one or 

 two saw-pits in the southeast portion ? I cannot tell you how proud 

 I am of what you and your forbears have achieved in my long absence, 

 and how confident I am that Albany is at the mere beginning of a 

 long and glorious career. Progress is manifest in all directions 

 moral and physical, public and private — in the comfort and intelli- 

 gence of its people, in its buildings, public and private, in all or nearl) 

 all the institutions which favor high culture, true taste and the 

 amenities of life, or are demanded by patriotism and spring from 

 heavenly charity. The innocent pleasure of the living has been borne 

 in mind, and a fit depository of the sacred ashes of mortality has been 

 provided. The Washington park is a perfect jewel. It is diversified 

 and beautiful. It is dignified by its common enjoyment by all classes 

 of worthy people. It i« beautified by the happiness of children, by 

 health-giving sports, by freedom from carking care and the sense of 

 pleasures rightfully enjoyed. The Rural cemetery .is far beyond my 



artistic taste and skill of a rugged and wildly beautiful site to holy 

 uses. It is a fit station and resting place in the passage through death 

 to life eternal. In its solemn loveliness it gives assurance that the 

 dead are lying there in calm repose, awaiting the summons of the last 

 trump to rise and enter, through the judgment, their houses, not made 

 with hands, eternal in the heavens. 



Such are some of the good works of our people, and while their 

 charity has been exhibited so creditably in all public ways, I doubt not 

 that their unrecorded and unpublished charities have been worthy of 

 a generous and Christian people. 



