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Surgeon  General's Office      <i







                               I
-—i------------------------------------- 
 
 
MEDICAL POLICY.
VALEDICTORY CHARGE
TO THE
GRADUATES IN MEDICINE
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO
FEBRUARY 21, 1855.
BY SANFORD B. AtJNT, M. D,
    PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY.
^t>fc<W
            -V
       BUFFALO:
THOMAS & LATHEOPS, PRINTERS.
         1855. 
w
lo55 
CORRESPONDENCE.
Professor S. B. Hunt, M. D.:
      Dear  Sir,
  At a meeting of the Graduating Class, held in the committee room of Townsend
Hall, after the Commencement exercises, Wednesday evening, Feb. 21, 1855, O. R.
Flower, Chairman, J. IS". Brown, Secretary, the undersigned were appointed a Com-
mittee to solicit a copy of yonr able Address for publication.  In conveying to you
the sentiments of the class we have the honor to assure you of their highest esteem.
                                                   W. Wynn,
                                                   J. N. Brown,
                                                   M. Baker,
                                                   G. Rais du Foeburg,
                                                   W. Howell.
                                              University of Buffalo,
                                           Thursday, 22d February, 1855.
Drs. Webster Wynn,  Milan Baker, Wm. Howell, George Rais du Forbourg,
    and J. N. Brown.
      Gentlemen:
  Your kind note requesting a copy of my Charge to the Graduating Class which
you represent, for publication, is received.
  I am too much in the  habit of seeing  my thoughts, however crude or carelessly
thrown  together,  condemned to the publicity of print, to  feel much  delicacy in
acceding to your request.
  Be so good as  to convey to your associates the assurance of my friendly regards,
and believe me
                                Sincerely yours,                '
                                                       Sanford B. Hunt. 
I 
            VALEDICTORY   CHARGE

                           TO THE

GRADUATES  IN MEDICINE

                           OF THE

        UNIVERSITY  OF BUFFALO
FEBRUARY 21, 1855.
 Gentlemen Graduates,
   The period of preparation is completed.  You occupy now that honorable
 position for which you have given three years of toil.  During the passage
 of those years, the eager chase for gain, the fierce struggles of ambition, the
 noisy clashing.? of conflicting interests, have come to your ears  like the sounds
 of Ocean to him who sits in quiet contemplation on the shore.  But the time
 of your seclusion is over—you must pass from out the quiet haven  of stu-
 dent-life  to that rough sea, where the individual skill of  each must be his
 protection from the storm.  At your outset, I have been chosen by my col-
 leagues to say the word of parting, and to bid you a hearty Godspeed upon
 your voyage.
  Two subjects form the usual burden of addresses like the present: first,
 the deep  wound inflicted on the sensibilities by the melancholy parting be-
 tween teacher and pupil; and following  that, a Jeremiad on  the retrograde
 tendencies of the age, the lost honors of medicine, and the unhappy procliv-
ity of these latter days toward that medical bugbear, Quackery. 
                                  .6

  Do not imagine that I shall inaugurate a new era in valedictories  by de-
parting from these time-honored customs.   It is the favorite sin of the med-
ical mind to cling  affectionately to bygones.  But  the few brief minutes
allotted to me must prevent that full justice which I should  like to  render
to some  sacred subjects in valedictory lore, and  confine me entirely to the
two main points already announced.  Should I, then, omit to pay  due hom-
age to the memory of Hippocrates, it is  not that I willingly do so, but that
my Grecian mythology is forgotten.  Should I neglect  to recount the vast
debt owed by humanity to medicine, it  is  because  I fear it  may never be
collected.
  Our intercourse, gentlemen, has been  pleasant.   Nothing has occurred to
make it otherwise, and we trust that you leave your Alma Mater  with hon-
est feelings of interest in her prosperity, and a determination to do honor to
yourselves by honoring her.  But to  say that either you, or  we,  regret our
coming separation would be an excess of sentiment.   You have attained  a
long-sought honor—you are eager to go out  to  the world, and  assert the
strength  that you have husbanded.  We have  pleasantly closed a winter of
continuous labor and exertion for your interests.   Bear with you that reflec-
tion, gentlemen, and  it is  needless for me to grow lachrymose to-night.
While we feel that the intercourse of college-life has begotten many gener-
ous friendships among us  all,  and many glowing  memories  to  cheer the
thoughtful hours of future life, we would not have you go out from us with
a puling  sentimentality, with sickly reflections on the past, and cowardly  fear
of what is yet to come; but rather would we have you start gaily out upon
a prosperous voyage, with a cheer upon your  lipn, an eye  steadily fixed on
the difficulties to be met, and a heart so brave  and sound that fear can have
no entrance.
   Undoubtedly this is a moment for serious reflection.  With the accession
of new honors  you  have also  assumed new responsibilities.   The halcyon
days are done.   Before you are duties, cares, disappointments, and successes.
All those hopes and failures which make up the  sum of existence, are as in-
evitable  to you as to other men — in the  spirit with which you meet them
lies the secret of your happiness.
   It is but a poor encouragement to such a spirit, to be told  that you are
entering upon a profession of unusual difficulty, an occupation once dignified
and cherished,  now tottering to decrepitude, its fteble existence harassed by
the hordes of quackery, and sustaining itself only  by the aid of the few  con-
servative prejudices, which  have come  down  to  this degenerate age from
those good old  times, when men were not human, and original depravity had 
1
not wrought its  perfect work.   This is  said to be  an age of humbug;  but
the veriest humbug begotten in  its womb is that disgraceful cant, which de-
forms our medical literature, and utters its ululations in our medical oratory,
declaring, with a vehemence worthy the magnitude of the lie, that legitimate
medicine is incapable of sustaining itself against this fabulous outside pressure
of the age.
   Gentlemen, if medicine is really in  opposition to the spirit of the age,  if it
foolishly clings to antiquated doctrines and the dogmata of scholiasts, to the
exclusion of a wholesome tendency to improvement, you have committed an
egregious blunder in  seeking an  entrance to its  ranks.  But lest we decide
this question too hastily, let us look at the real status of the profession at the
present time.
   No institution on earth presents such a catholic uniformity of sentiment,
or  is so widely scattered in  every land.  Medical  men  from  every town
where civilization exists, throughout the wide world, might meet in Congress
with common interests, a  common code of ethics, and a common  literature.
Such a Congress  would represent all the  various interests  of learning; for it
is a fact of glorious significance, that  natural science and the useful arts owe
half their vigor to the discursive researches of medical men.  A large pro-
portion, probably more  than  half the common stock of human learning is
found within the  pale of our profession.
   Is it possible that such an organization can be defeated by any pressure
 from without?   Never, gentlemen, so long as its present catholic tendencies
remain; but whenever we open our ranks to one-idea-ism, whenever we link
ourselves to any special  doctrines as represented  by homoeopathy, or what is
ridiculously called eclecticism, the aegis of our safety is destroyed!
   And this brings me to the assertion of what constitutes  the distinction be-
 tween legitimate  medicine and quackery.  Our science is not  made  up of
 doctiines—it is only a mass of facts arranged with careful accuracy, and he
 who best interprets them is the best physician.  A brief  history of the cur-
 riculum of study pursued  in this country, and in Europe, will  best express
 its fundamental principles.
   The tyro, on presenting himself as a student, is examined with reference
 to his proficiency in those ordinary branches of learning, without which it is
 as impossible to be a  physician, as to be a gentleman.  This proving satis-
 factory, he  begins a course of study.  Separate professorships are employed
in teaching him anatomy, physiology, pathology, materia  medica, and chem-
istry.   Thus these several branches  are taught by individuals whose  studies
have been directed to their special subjects. 
8
  Doctrine as such — the peculiarities of legitimate medicine—have here no
place.   The student simply acquires familiarity with the arrangements, func-
tions, and diseases of the different organs; with drugs, their properties and
actions;  with remedies as distinguished from drugs  in the forms of air,  sun-
shine, water, diet and  exercise;  and with the chemical reactions of the organs
upon the blood, which so nearly approach the solution  of the great problem
— Life.
  So far the student has learned only facts.  These are simply demonstra-
tive sciences.  All minds receive their facts alike, and accord to them but
one interpretation.  These collateral studies complete,  it is the province of
others to teach  their application  to the treatment of  disease, and to still fur-
ther apply them to those  maladies and  dangers  entailed by Mother  Eve
upon her sex.
  How, then, is practical medicine inculcated ?   Simply by a history of facts.
The student is  told the remedies which experience has sanctioned, the rule
0/ safety in their administration, and  especially the fallacy of trusting too
much to medication.
  He is, moreover, exhorted to bind himself to no  Procrustean  system, to
keep his mind open to suggestions of improvement, and, looking upon med-
icine as an imperfect art, to  devote his energies to its amendment.
  Thus by a somewhat tedious route we have reached the distinction which
separates us  from empiricism.  Our votaries are taught to seek their reme-
dies  wherever they may find them.  All  the treasures of  the earth, the air,
and  sea  are  ours.  The multitudinous forms  of vegetable life afford their
juices and their cunning extracts;  from the dark  caves of earth the chemist
robs the subtle  mineral, tortures it by fire, or melts it in his greedy acids, for
our use.   From the very grottoes of the mermaid the fish is captured, whose
oil  shall bring fatness  and health to  the wasted  consumptive; while from
that waif of ocean, the sea-weed, for centuries the very type of worthlessness,
the inutile alga of  Horace,  is brought  the precious  iodine.  Air, food, and
sunlight yield their tribute,  while the  universal water stills its babblings to
assist our art.  And over all presides the calm spirit of the physician,  whose
quiet prophecy  of help and hope aids in its own fulfillment.
  Contrast this with the narrow spirit of sectional medicine.   Bound down
by an immitigable creed, the homoeopath loses the  precious moment when
one heroic drug might change the trembling chances, and  bring the color to
the cheek again.  The slave of a prodigious over-estimate of the powers  of
water, the hydropath neglects  those simpler remedies  to whose  worth the
ages testify.   And the eclectic,  imprisoned in the narrow limits of vegetable 
9
 power, allows the mineral kingdom, the right arm of therapeutics, to lie in
 useless idleness.  With them is slavery to creeds—with  us is liberty, free-
 dom to select whatever remedy God places in our hands.
   It is this universality of legitimate medicine that begets the varied  forms
 of quackery.  To the weak or  ignorant mind a creed is a necessity: it leans
 upon it for protection from its own imbecility; or in the case of that form of
 intellect which loves the marvelous, and is given over to an excess of refine-
 ment, it seeks its analogue in medicine, and finds in the subtle nothingness
 of Hahnemahan, the twin-sister to its own spiritual tendencies.  It is a curi-
 ous feature in this phase of  mental philosophy, that innate differences of in-
 tellect, the comparative strength of the reasoning, perceptive, or imaginative
 faculties, govern  their  owner in the choice of a medical system.  It has been
 said that  seven-eighths of the followers of Swedenborg are also devotees of
 Hahnemahn, and all must have noticed a similar proclivity in the spiritualists
 of the present day.   It is, at  any rate, sufficiently evident that medicine ie
 not exempt from the influences which govern  systems of belief.   An impor-
 tant inference may be reached from this view of the question, viz: that legit-
 imate medicine is unsuited  to the peculiarities of certain minds, and  will
 never obtain their confidence.  A thorough education of the people would
 doubtless somewhat modify this result; but education only directs, does  not
 mould, the  mind.  At the first opportunity it  will slip off the shackles of the
 schools, and assert its original tendencies.
   Quackery, then, is immortal.  Changing its  forms to suit the special fan-
 tasy of the day, it will ever adapt itself to superstition, ignorance, or super-
 refinement.   As  these three  elements make up a large proportion of  living
 humanity, it is equally evident that they must  cause a considerable deduc-
 tion from the honors and profits of the regular profession.
   When  all churches shall  have merged in  one;  when the  imaginative
 Swedenborgian is satisfied with cool  Presbyterian logic; when the gross and
 sensual Mormon  can adopt the calm, undemonstrative religion of the Episco-
 palian ; when all varieties of dissent shall give up  that independence  for
 which so  many thousands have suffered exile, imprisonment, and death, to
 submit their consciences and  creeds to the keeping of the Papacy; when Ro-
 manism itself shall abandon its  altars to an elective clergy; then, gentlemen,
 and  not before, shall we have  the countenance  and confidence of the entire
 people.
   But this is not the only inference.   The larger mass  of community  are
sober-minded, and to some degree conservative.   The very qualities of em-
piricism which  attract erractic  minds, are sure to  repel the thoughtful and 
10
considerate.   Hence it is, that in the perpetual strife of medical opinions, the
regular profession has ever  stood as the  representative of medicine; recog-
nized as such alike  by the  tenor of our laws, and  an overwhelming public
sentiment.   The public  mind  acknowledges that true Eclecticism which is
the characteristic trait of legitimacy, and he who deserts his  profession for
the practice of quackery inevitably loses social position and caste.   We never
hear of reputations won in  quackery — always of the money made—and
yet, if we shut out of view  the few great fortunes made by inventors of om-
nipotent pills, we shall see that even this is most often an ignis fatuus, which
dazzles, to betray its  followers into the very mire of poverty.  The strong-
argument of money is in our favor.
   Such desertions are extremely uncommon, and never occur among men of
acknowledged excellence.  Homoeopathy, more than any other form of error,
has  detracted from our numbers, but  not  at  all from our  character.   The
cunning money-maker, or the disappointed and ill-employed, men who have
waded in doubt for years  together, mistaking their own incompetence for
the faults of a system, have  furnished the only proselytes.
   There is an eccentric force in our profession which, like the rapid revolu-
tions of a wheel, casts off the dirt which  clings to  its circumference.  There
is a rapidity  of progress, a  fierce and  grasping energy, a relentless  competi-
tion, which  should warn the feeble-minded to stand back.  None but the
keen, quick, appreciative mind is fit for us.   The constant accessions to med-
ical literature  and knowledge,  the varied accomplishments which year by
year are becoming  more and more necessary to the physician, bewilder and
distress the  slow and incompetent.   The effect of all this rush and vigor is
like that panic we  sometimes see in railroad depots, when some  good, quiet
 soul, startled from  his propriety by the scream of the whistle and  the noisy
 outcries of the crowd, falls in great distress of mind about his baggage, and
 finally rushes insanely off at fifty miles per hour—and that in the wrong train.
    "Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or suspension of the
 power to deal with unaccustomed  things, and  to keep up with the swiftness
 of the passing moment. It can merely be a suspended animation; for, were
 the power actually to perish, there would  be little use of immortality.   We
 are less than ghosts, for the time being, whenever this  calamity befalls us.*"
    It is then with a sense of infinite pity that we behold these occasional de-
 sertions.   It is not so  much  an error of the  heart, as a feeble  imbecilitv, a
 nerveless, forceless incapacity to maintain a position of equality.
* Hawthorne's " House of the Seven Gables." 
11
  B;it, gentlemen, do all of those who adhere  faithfully to our communion
live up to these  requirements of untiring  energy and labor?  Are they all
men of the  age,  men of vigor, strength,  and study?  Alas! all clergymen
are not divines, all lawyers are not jurists, all M. D.'s are not doctors.   It is
a rare  compound of tact and study, of knowledge both of books  and  men,
that makes the truly competent physician.  We cannot claim such excellen-
cies for all our brethren, and can only say, and that with sad and mournful
truth, that the public get all the medical talent they pay for!
   Our standard of excellence is not  established by any general average of
talent, but by the attainments of  those more  brilliant  minds who necessarily
form the minority, or rather the leaders of the profession.  It is barely pos-
sible that all men may have been created  equal; but if they were, they have
grown up with a marvelous  departure from  the original design.   It cannot
be expected  that men  of intellectual power, possessed  of the consciousness
that the thoughts of their brains have an actual cash value, will flock in any
numbers  to a profession which does  not  pay as well as the mechanic arts.
One is at a  loss, here, whether to assign the fault to the public or to ourselves.
   Useful talent is pretty sure to bring a fair price except in an overcrowded
market.   There would be some assumption in assuming that the market has
been overstocked with  available medical skill.  Any such claim would meet
with a very emphatic denial, and we can  only  assert  that the profession of
medicine performs so large an amount of gratuitous labor, as to shut out
from its practice a great number of intelligent and useful men, who believe
that charity begins at home, and  are not at all  disposed to accept of Irish
blessings  in exchange for learned opinions.
   Your speaker feels some hesitation in intruding so commonplace a matter
as dollars and cents  before an audience so eesthetic;  but however much we
 may admire the true and beautiful, however loftily the  soul may look  down
 upon the filthy  lucre, the hand is ever open for its reception.
   That  is  a very  generous and romantic  sentiment which makes a Lady
 Bountiful of the profession, and'exhorts its members to do everything in char-
ity for the love  of God; but its justice may be questioned.  Our state Code
 of Ethics quotes old Boerhaave, as saying that "The poor are  the best cus-
tomers, because God will be the paymaster."   From  now till doomsday is a
long credit, unless we take  the computation of our Second Advent friends.
All this generous sentiment, so lavishly used in recounting the duties of the
physician to the poor, will bear in the light of Justice but one interpretation:
that a humane  profession,  thrown daily  into contact with the sufferings  of
poverty, will find a thousand opportunities for unobtrusive charity, which the 
12
instinctive sympathies of a common humanity will dictate and employ;, but
it dees not, cannot, mean that we of  all the world  should neglect the law of
self-preservation;  it cannot be intended that  the  sacred  duty of charity, so
imperative upon  the rich, should be entirely foisted off to the  care of  the
penniless physician.
  The most enthusiastic student can be startled from the  charm of books by
the rough entrance of a dun,  and many a glorious spirit has found his eager
ambition for distinction and usefulness  drowned in the bitter waters of pov-
erty.   Could the private history, the secret thoughts, the gnawing care which
eats out the heart, chokes the ambition, and benumbs the spirit of the young
physician, as  he struggles through those  long years of waiting  of his early
professional life, hoping, toiling, praying, cursing,  the apples of  Hesperides
hung just beyond his outstretched arm, the waters of hope bubbling up to
his very lip, but still untasted, conscious of strength, but bound by the green
withes of a hated youthfulness—could all this history of aching hearts be
known, there would be less  admiration of that fatal sentimentalism which
has made a great charity of the medical profession, and thrust upon the
feeble shoulders of its youthful members  the whole support of  the sickness
of the poor.
  This is no extravagant statement; its verity is  testified, not  only by the
general voice  of the profession, but by the letter of our poor-laws.  All over
our land are great hospitals endowed by the  state, the tax on the property
of the physician contributing to their support.   In the management of these
hospitals every man, from the turtle-fed Governor down  to the most forlorn
of orderlies, is compensated for his services with the single exception of the
physician.  He alone, for some fancied advantage  in reputation or experi-
ence, is  condemned,  unpaid,  to a  service  always  revolting,  and often
dangerous.
  And so in every department of our public  charities.   All our  prisons and
almshouses are  served by medical men at a price, which has grown  so dis-
gracefully small that the constituted medical authorities have declared it dis-
honorable to accept such appointments, and have boldly  placed the question
in such, a shape that only the chiffoniers  of the profession can  serve under
public pay.
  Look to the field of private practice.  During the past year—one of pes-
tilence among the poor—the medical  men of  this city have given  at least
$50,000 in gratuitous services  to the needy.   This is too  low  an estimate,
but if we compare even it with  the actual income of the profession here, we
shall find that it has lent  to the Lord not one-tenth, but rather  one-third of 
13
 the fruits of the year.  There is a manifest  injustice in this which needs no
 comment, but it has other bearings and influences which  interest the  public
 rather than  ourselves.   The tendency of this system  is to discourage  and
 dishearten the entrance of talent to the profession, and thus,  by securing an
 inferior order of medical men, to react disastrously upon the public.  I have
 spoken thus freely of this evil, because I  believe it to  be an insurmountable
 barrier to medical reform; and further, because  the conduct of any scheme
 for its removal must  rest upon the young men of the profession.
   But  do not mistake the principles which  should govern it.  Charity has
 ever been the brightest of medical virtues, and the devotion of the  physician
 to the poor has given him his strongest hold upon the  sympathies and affec-
 tion of the public.  To refuse  relief to  the  cry of God's image in distress,
 would involve an  injustice deeper than your  own.   The individual  pauper is
 a fellow-man, suffering from social laws for which  he is not responsible.  Do
 not add to the sense of wrong, forever dimly burning in his heart, by with-
 holding your aid in the hour of sickness.   But the public pauper is a ward
 of the great body-politic—let his guardians protect him!
   No hour, gentlemen, in the history of American medicine  has presented
 such auspicious omens as mark  your commencing career.   The profession is
 strong.   In spite  of the loss of our civil privileges, and of the thousand  ad-
 verse surroundings incident to professional progress in a new and shifting
 country, that esprit du corps which has never left us, has secured a glorious
 fruitage of added  learning and means  of usefulness.  The best man of fifty
 years ago was hardly a match for the tyro of to-day.   Our literature is rich
 and thrifty beyond all comparison, and has  made  a philosophical science of
 that which was once an uncertain art.   A new want, an unheard-of necessity,
 threatens the people; the want of medical men, not only men of genius and
 study, but men, such as can be got, good, bad, or indifferent, to fill the  grow-
 ing hiatus in the  ranks of the profession.   For the last five years every sea-
 son has witnessed a falling off in the number of aspirants for medical honors.
 California, and  the mighty impulse  it gave  to  commercial   activity,  has
 opened  a thousand rapid avenues to wealth, and absorbed  the youthful en-
 ergy and vigor of the country.   The colleges and the public are the losers;
 the profession gains immensely.   Over-crowded beyond all endurance a little
 while ago, its ranks are now open, and vacancies seek  applicants, not  appli-
 cants vacancies.   The rural districts are already calling for more men, but
 the end is  not yet  The  present order of  things  must continue  for awhile,
and the profession will soon, gathering strength  from the very smallness of ita
numbers, stand like a  monopolist in the market, and make  its own conditions. 
14
  At such a moment, gentlemen, you leave us to try your strength in the
rough battle of the world.  In this  parting  address I have spoken of  your
duty to yourselves and to your profession.  I have  urged upon you a  firm,
unyielding policy, which looks rather to its own strength, than to the justice
of the world for its success.  Follow it out manfully, and you shall win ; but
forget not that you owe, also, duties  to the public.   Work!  There is no suc-
cess  in life without labor.   God has so formed us, that our cheerful compli-
ance with the Adamic curse deprives it  of  half its punishment.   Work in
this  sense  is a luxury; and  he  who sits with folded hands, watching the
busy life around, will one day find himself alone,  forgotten, uncared-for, the
slave of his own inactive Will.
  Let me again protect myself from misapprehension.   Fulfill  with  patience
those duties a false idea of charity imposes upon you;  but work like men to
place those duties where they belong.  Our history is full  of bright examples
of courageous charity which it will be your duty to  emulate.  It is but a
little while ago — the actors in the scene are still young—that twelve young
men entered, unpaid, as assistants in the hospital  at Bellevue.  At the end
of the year the sod was yet fresh upon the undistinguished  graves of seven
of that little banl, and  none but the families thus made desolate knew that
heroes had perished.   The mother's wail was as loud,  the father's  heart
wrung by as keen a grief as that which, at that very moment, a  nation offered
as the requiem of soldiers fallen on the battle-fields of Mexico, their faces to
the foe.  That calmer, deeper, and  more Godlike  bravery which faced the
pestilence at Bellevue,  found not even  a record in  the daily prints.   No
pageant, no banners  of  woe, no mausoleum,  witnessed their  interment; and
here, to-night, I cannot tell their names,  and know the facts only from their
casual mention by one of the five survivors, your teacher of Practice.
   In time of epidemics the physician assumes his real and noblest character.
No longer mindful of his  own dangers  or necessities, he is found wherever
the shadow of the wing of Azrael is darkest, wherever the wail  of his victim
is heard.   In  such  an hour, in  sleeplessness, fatigue and  danger, He who
loveth the poor gives him  strength and courage,  and his calm countenance,
lighted by hope and confidence, brings health and joy  to the  bedside deserted
by all others.
   Gentlemen, you are impatient.   No longer our scholars, but our equals,
you long  for the  last word of the  last  lecture, that  you may go fearlessly
forth to push  your way, trusting to clear heads, youthful energies, and firm
resolve.   They will  not fail  you.  I have  told you that the profession is
strong, strong to assert its rights,  strong to maintain them, strong against 
15
quackery, and strongest in its  hallowed  mission.   You are our offering for
its  sustenance.   There  is work  for all.  Give us  your strength to build and
perfect the  temple of our art.

                  " See  where aloft its hoary forehead rears,
                The towering pride of twice a thousand years !
                Far, far below the vast incumbent pile,
                Sleeps the broad rock f'om  Art's JEgean isle ;
                Its massive courses, circling as they rise,
                Swell from the waves, and  mingle with the skies ;
                There every quarry lends its marble spoil,
                And clustering ages blend their common toil;
                The Greek, the Roman, reared its mighty walls;
                The silent Arab  arched its mystic halls;
                In that  fair niche, by countless billows laved,
                Trace the deep lines that Sydenham engraved ;
                On yon broad front, that breasts the changing swell,
                Mark where the  ponderous sledge of Hunter fell;
                By that square buttress, look, where Louis  stands,
                The stone yet warm from his uplifted hands." 
 

T^'
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