grandeur of rugged mountain heights, or that of the wide, sweeping plain, or of the solemn ocean, has that style of beauty wherein the regular uniformity of the graceful breaks abruptly into the spirited diversity of the picturesque. It has the conditions well fitted to give both physical and mental health, elasticity, alertness, and all vigorous, free, manly virtues. The naturalist finds himself environed by a geology, paleontology, flora, and fauna remarkable for their diversity and multiplicity, furnishing a museum of nature's own providing, crowded with the very best material, inviting the student to study nature at first hand. The aesthetic. sentiments, likewise, are constantly appealed to and nurtured. The angel of beauty, with an eye to this, has sculptured these hills and valleys into picturesque forms, and sown over them broadcast trees, shrubs, flowers, in varied and rich profusion, and filled them with bird song. These fill the eye and ear, interfusing the tedium of routine toil with lessons in simple beauty, thereby enhancing the joys of life, making it purer, sweeter, nobler, more worth living. In these the art student finds unrivaled inducements to the direct study of the beautiful in nature.

"Glorious is the world without, but more glorious is the world within." While thus spontaneously going to the outward world and receiving unconscious tuition therefrom, or, with set purpose, studying nature, yet the student's chief study is within the realm of mind. Neither the one nor the other is complete of itself; neither is to extrude the other. Both are to be conjoined and commingled. This alone gives complete culture. Thereby the student dwells in the light of perpetual truth and beauty, in an atmosphere of constant inspiration to nobleness and goodness. Both from nature and from within his own spirit he hears a voice of "gentle stillness." He sees the glories of the divine robes, as they trail through the universe. From his books the august excellencies of the antique world and the inspiring excellencies of the modern world are ever shining about him. Through these the most splendidly gifted intellects of all time sit around his study table and hold converse with him. Thus the most vigorous, subtle, and lofty thinkers of all the ages gather about him and impart their own strong-pulsing life, enthrone in serene preeminence enlightened reason, connected with the tenderest sympathies and the profoundest reverence. He is thus heir of all the ages. The walls of his study expand till they inclose the universe.

Students are especially quickened by the living personalities with whom they mingle. As they meet in the varied, bright, beautiful, and inspiring relations of school life, with common purpose and aspirations, they enthuse to all that is strongest and best in each. These frequently

have a profounder effect upon the quality and compass of their education than do set lessons and appointed teachers. Not a few can trace their success or failure as students, not to their regular school work, but to their associates.

Thus environed by rural life, within eye and ear shot of the refining and elevating influences of nature, amid a community cultured, hightoned, and sympathetic, and lighted by the undying lamp of thought, passed on from age to age, with constantly increasing brilliancy and power, student life is rendered the most favorable possible for getting growth of intellect, strength of will, delicacy of sentiment, and all the fairer blossoms of the spirit. Such school life, blending the old and new, nature and life, makes the culture of each to-day the means whereby each to-morrow shall give a truer, nobler life. In such a community, with its strain of unworldly purity and beauty, kept fresh and dewy amid the dusty drudgery of the common, all are englobed in a society that is constantly perfecting itself through a free play of the best thoughts, the finest sentiments, and gentle amenities, thereby multiplying all those things that lend worth and dignity to life.

Above and beyond all else, a genuine religious life and culture should be dominant in a college community. As all systems have a unifying principle, as all beings rise in gradations to the highest, so all lower modes and ends spontaneously rise towards the religious. Piety, the blending of filial love and trust and loyal obedience, raises individuals and communities from the plane of the simply moral to the religious. This is the highest inspiration in all culture, the source of all spiritual graces, the basis of all lofty character. It should, therefore, guide, control, and inspire in all educational processes, as in all other activities. No education is any guaranty of nobleness until this higher light floods the soul, and there come a vision and a power that give victory over all the discords of life, and the transcendant realities of the unseen become dominant over the seen. Thus, all training, all preparation, is not simply for the good of the individual, not to enable one to live in the conscious struggle for personal well-being, not simply to work out one's individuality, but through the forgetting of these, in seeking larger good of all, to the end of making the will and kingdom of God prevail on the earth— this is the highest and the best. Loyalty to truth and law, inspired by reverence for the author of this truth and law, is the source and spring to all right living and noble work. In proportion as individuals, communities, peoples, embody truth, become enlightened, follow the lead of law in loyal and glad obedience, will they become strong and great in their work, get influence, power, leadership.

The mission of a college community is thus especially to develop all excellencies, and silently, yet surely, through those going out thence, infusing humanity with a finer and nobler spirit, becoming thereby evangels and teachers everywhere and at all times. Its mission is to empower and send forth workers of all kinds. The students of to-day are soon to become the leaders of society, the directors of affairs. Many of them are destined to occupy high and commanding positions of influence and usefulness. They will have more to do in shaping the great interests of humanity than any other equal number, and, perhaps, more than all that are not being thus educated. The activities and progress of the present require for these the broadest, highest, many-eyed, many-handed culture. They will have to meet errors far reaching and subtle, false theories, philosophies and traditions, both new and those grown gray in the respect of the multitude. They will likewise be expected to lead in all progressive movements, to be heralds of a fairer and brighter dawn, the inaugurators of new and better things. In order to fitly and successfully fill these fields of future usefulness, they must needs submit to stern and long-continued discipline, take to themselves the invigorating influences of all generous training, manifold and comprehensive.

The hope of the world being thus so largely centered in the youth being so educated, this community, in common with all other college communities, is a center for originating influences whose encircling, expanding waves beat out to all shores, whose fountains send streams down all the channels of time, with an ever-increasing force and volume. The importance of its work rivals, if not outrivals, all other enterprises, for it is a feeder to them all. The training of youth, in the light of these high ideals and for these great ends, is our special mission. To this have we been called and set apart, as indicated in the guidance and support of an approving providence.