Book Description

Excerpt from Harvard College by an Oxonian How many Presidents of the United States - Presidents, at least, in their confident ambition - were passing by me! How vast was the change since those far-distant days when the fair and comely edifice of freshly - cut timber in which the infant University was lodged, on a narrow strip Of land bordering a pleasant river, was thought by some to be too gorgeous for a wilderness, and yet too mean, in others' appro hensions, for a college!1 Oxford, not many years earlier, had seen rise amid the meadows outside her city walls, that graceful pile in which the Gothic college and the ancient Jacobean mansion are SO happily blended. The fair monu ment which Nicholas Wadham raised to himself is durable, for it is built in stone. NO less durable is the monument which John Harvard helped to raise, built though it was with unseasoned wood. This home Of learning was destined to prove an abiding city; for its foundations rested, not on the piety of any one man, but on the zeal and the affection of a high-minded community. A man Of great nobility of charac ter presided over the General Court Of the Colony which passed the first vote of money towards a school or college. It was Henry Vane Milton's Vane, young in years, but in sage counsels Old. He links Harvard to Oxford, for it was in Magdalen, most beautiful of colleges, that he had studied. His statue might well stand beside the Puritan minister's, under the shadow of the noble hall which commemorates the brave men who, two hundred years later, fell in the defence of that liberty for which Harvard crossed the sea, and for which Vane gave his life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.