nise, in living characters, the history of those who now repose beneath their shelter; through the dark shadow of the night, that imparts a deeper blackness to the shattered heap, or roofless abbey, they can recognise the hero or the priest haunting the spots where his deeds of valour were performed, or his crown of martyrdom endured.
This, then, is the art which we are met together now, to foster and promote; we would simply desire that posterity may long admire those noble remnants of antiquity which yet survive, the monuments of those who have written a poem upon stone, without having inscribed their names. All these men of genius, however much, apparently, strangers to the traditions of antiquity, have no less preserved sacred the worship of art, and have thereby linked ancient to modern times. Like those mortals of whom the poet Lucretius speaks, who, running in a ring, pass one to the other the torch of life, so have these great artists passed from hand to hand (and that, too, often without being themselves aware, of it) the torch which was to illuminate age after age. By the rays which it yet projects we will contemplate their works. Studying the history of the past is no unprofitable way of occupying the present, and awaiting the future. And thus, while the voluntary toils of associated study shall nourish among us friendships, not like the slight alliances of idle pleasure, to vanish with the hour they gladdened, but to endure through life with the pursuit that fed them; while the peaceful pride of such an institution as ours shall illumine the most troubled rapid of busy life with those consecrating gleams, which shall disclose, in every small mirror of smooth water which its eddies may circle, a steady reflection of some fair and peaceful image, preserving, amidst the im-
