respect and kindness towards themselves; and, on the other hand, sorrow, for your sloth and idleness, your mean and dishonourable shifts and evasions of your evident duties, and your harsh, selfish, careless, or ungrateful conduct towards themselves, are the strongest of all earthly feelings with which it has pleased God to elevate or depress the human mind. Yes! honour, whilst you may, your father and your mother, whilst still, by your obedience and goodness, you may cause their hearts to sing for joy, that you may hereafter be spared the intolerable anguish of vain regret, that you have requited love with disobedience, and affection with unkindness; and have neglected to pay what would have ensured your own happiness no less than theirs, the easy and cheerful tribute of duty, gratitude, and respect.

It has been my frequent thought, what a great responsibility we undertake, in separating you as we do from your homes, which should always be, and which, we trust, with most of you have been, the nurseries of every virtue:-in removing you from the daily and hourly blessing of the society of those who were wont perhaps, though their care might have been unnoticed by yourselves, to watch over the gradual growth and developement of your minds, your good and bad passions, your

virtuous and your vicious inclinations, and to study how they might best cherish and promote the one, and most readily check and uproot the other; in thus withdrawing you from the wholesome moral atmosphere of home, to the dangers and temptations of an impurer air; whilst little beyond mere intellectual instruction is usually offered you in return for the moral culture which it might have been your happy lot to have received at home. But whilst we deeply feel the responsibility, and must endeavour to discharge our souls of it conscientiously before God, yet we must not exaggerate the contrast, nor conceal the advantages of your position here. Your trials of all sorts here are indeed many of them new, and most, if not all, of them are greater than they could have been at home; your temptations are more numerous and of a much more dangerous character; and your responsibility and influence over others are increased a hundredfold: nor have you the ready aid of a parent at hand to guide and support you under all. But much of this must necessarily be, as you grow up in years, and gradually assume the dignity and responsibility of self-control. This is your early stage of trial; the type of, as it is also the preparation for, the greater trial of future life. Nor must we fondly deem that the trial might be

avoided sooner or later it would come upon you everywhere: God's purpose is clearly to test and prove us by what our conduct here below may be under the circumstances in which he has placed us, whether we shall be fit hereafter for the immortality which he has revealed to us: and right happy should you be that your first portion of that trial should commence when and where so many hearts are interested in your safe passage through it, and so many hands are ready to help and relieve you when the cry of danger is raised. That virtue is but an unsubstantial shadow whose only safety consists in encountering no danger; and victory must be gained, not by avoiding the battle, but by meeting it boldly and well-armed. In your necessary struggle with evil, thrice happy are you in the vantage-ground which most of you have gained for the fight. Your periods of trial here, such as it is, are but short, and you return from home, we trust, like the fabled giant of old from the touch of his mother, refreshed and strengthened for the contest: nor is it a little thing, that, besides the influence for good which we hope surrounds you even here, unborrowed from the stronger ties of home, my power of addressing you at this moment, and within these walls, attesting at least the wish to exert it, there is also added, by your very absence from home, no

inconsiderable strength to its influence. For all real affection is only confirmed by temporary absence; and whilst daily advice and hourly control, even from your parents, might have become irksome, and even failed of their purpose, the thought of home at a distance, and of those who constitute home to you, when vividly brought before you by circumstances, cannot but touch you with a gentle feeling, which no other source can supply, cannot but either check you, as it may be, with higher authority, or comfort and support you with nobler energy.

I would not silently pass over the many trials and many temptations which, no doubt, beset you here, and especially at first. Some of you, perhaps, have but lately left the affectionate circle of home, where nothing rough or harsh in treatment, nothing violent in language, was ever permitted to disturb you; where you were led along the path of virtue by the hand of gentleness, and every influence was for good. Here you are suddenly thrown into harsh collision with rude spirits, who, making a mock at gentleness or goodness, endeavour to laugh you out of your better feelings, or to force you, by ill usage, into sharing their idle pursuits or vicious habits. Nay, mere wanton illtreatment, unwarranted and unprovoked, without other object or aim than merely to gratify the

whim or caprice of the moment, will fall upon you sometimes, just as it will upon others as innocent as yourselves: and, at times, your minds will look back with feelings of the deepest regret to the affectionate circle you have left, and tears will start, unbidden, at the thought of the miserable contrast. But we trust that this is rare, and describes rather what once was, than what now is: for though, while man's nature remains what it is, we cannot expect that boys will be wholly guiltless of what their evil nature so strongly leads them to, - tyranny and oppression; yet we trust that each day a better and better feeling possesses you, that all would be likely to feel the oppression of each, and would rise up to prevent and oppose it, and that, brought together as you are here, living almost under the same roof, enjoying the same recreations, members of the same ancient and noble institution, deriving instruction from the same sources, and worshipping God together under the same roof, you will act and feel as brothers should, each towards the other, full of long-suffering, gentleness, and peace. To incite you to this, let the thought of your parents be frequently before you :-honour your father and your mother: you, if there be any who suffer as I have described, honour them by proving how well you have profited by their care and instruc