Our class, which graduated in 1841, contained several members who have since made a deep mark in church and commonwealth.  Professor Archibald Alexander Hodge was one of us.  He inherited the name and much of the power of his distinguished father.  Also General Francis P. Blair, who rendered heroic service on the battle-field.  John T. Nixon brought to the bench of the United States Court, and Edward W. Scudder brought to the Supreme Court Bench of New Jersey, legal learning and Christian consciences.  Richard W. Walker became a distinguished man in the Southern Confederacy.  Our class sent four men to professor’s chairs in Princeton.  My best beloved classmate was John T. Duffield, who, after a half century of service as professor of mathematics in the University, closed his noble and beneficent career on the 10th of April, 1901.  I delivered the memorial tribute to him soon afterward in the Second Presbyterian Church in the presence of the authorities of the University.  Another intimate friend was the Hon. Amzi Dodd, ex-chancellor of New Jersey and the ex-president of the New Jersey Life Insurance Company.  He is still a resident of that State.  During the past three-score years it has been my privilege to deliver between sixty and seventy sermons or addresses in Princeton, either to the students of the University or of the Theological Seminary, or to the residents of the town.  The place has become inexpressibly dear to me as a magnificent stronghold of Christian culture and orthodox faith, on the walls of whose institutions the smile of God gleams like the light of the morning.  O Princeton, Princeton! in the name of the thousands of thy loyal sons, let me gratefully say, “If we forget thee, may our right hands forget their cunning, and our tongues cleave to the roofs of our mouths!”

CHAPTER II

GREAT BRITAIN SIXTY YEARS AGO

Wordsworth—­Dickens—­The Land of Burns, etc.

The year after leaving college I made a visit to Europe, which, in those days, was a notable event.  As the stormy Atlantic had not yet been carpeted by six-day steamers, I crossed in a fine new packet-ship, the “Patrick Henry,” of the Grinnell & Minturn Line.  Captain Joseph C. Delano was a gentleman of high intelligence and culture who, after he had abandoned salt water, became an active member of the American Association of Science.  After twenty-one days under canvas and the instructions of the captain, I learned more of nautical affairs and of the ocean and its ways than in a dozen subsequent passages in the steamships.

On the second morning after our arrival in Liverpool I breakfasted with that eminent clergyman, Dr. Raffles, who boasted the possession of one of the finest collections of autographs in England.  He showed me the signature of John Bunyan; the original manuscript of one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels; the original of Burns’ poem addressed to the parasite on a lady’s bonnet, which contained the famous lines: