-Samuel Appleton,

is a noble chapel, where the voices of prayer and praise, we trust, will be heard by our children and our children's children through a hundred generations, and which we all might well desire should be consecrated exclusively to the sacred uses for which it was designed; - into which no sounds of mirth and levity, no cheers and crowdings and scrapings and stampings and jests and flirtations, should ever be suffered to enter; but which should stand as a Sanctuary of Faith, a Temple of Devotion, a memorial of things unseen and eternal, symbolizing to the eye of youth and of age the legend of our College seal Christo et Ecclesiæ. for ever. But how is this to be accomplished, unless from some source or other shall be speedily forthcoming the means for building up an ample and commodious hall for the secular services and festivals of the University?

I cannot help hoping, brethren, that this idea—not originating with myself alone-may, before all others, commend itself to acceptance and adoption somewhere. I envy the individual name which shall be inscribed on such a building, erected with such a view. But I have sometimes ventured to cherish the hope that the Alumni, as an Association, might be willing and able to undertake the work, and that even before another Triennial Festival shall come round, a stately and commodious hall, like the Senate House at Old Cambridge, or the Theatre at Oxford, might be seen standing on some appropriate spot of the college grounds, bearing on its front-"The Alumni of Harvard to their Alma Mater" where the exhibitions and Class days and Commencements of the University might find worthy accomodations; where the living Alumni might hold their Anniversary Festivals, and their annual or occasional meetings; and where, perhaps, the memorials of the distinguished dead, now crowded upon these narrow walls, might find a fit gallery for their display.*

I need not tell you, brethren, that Alumni Associations and

* A day or two after this first public suggestion of "a Hall of the Alumni," I received a note from the late Charles Sanders, Esq., offering five thousand dollars towards the object. By his Will, he has given ten times that amount; and the generous contributions of the Alumni and the public, with a view to doing honor to the memory of the noble sons of Harvard who fell in the cause of the Union, have left no doubt that the Building will soon be erected.

Harvard Clubs are worth but little, if their only aim and their only accomplishment is painfully to keep themselves alive. We need the cementing and the quickening influence of common effort and of common achievement for the welfare of this common object of our gratitude and love, in order to bind us together and impel us onward, until the Alumni of Harvard shall become a power in the college, if not a power in the community.

Pardon me, my friends, for any thing so practical at a dinner table. Pardon me for thus venturing to sow a little seed by the wayside, which, after all, may never be destined to bear fruit. And unite with me, without further delay, in the sentiment with which I hasten to conclude:

OUR ALMA MATER - May she be ever more and more the honored instrument in dispensing a sound, classical Scholarship and a true Christian education, and may she want no good thing which it is in the power of grateful children to bestow upon her! "Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy palaces! For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee!"

CENTRAL CHARITY BUREAU.

A MEMORIAL ADDRESSED TO THE CITY COUNCIL OF BOSTON, OCTOBER 8, 1857.*

TO THE HONORABLE CITY COUNCIL OF BOSTON,- The undersigned, Officers of the BOSTON PROVIDENT ASSOCIATION, by order and in behalf of the managers of that Association, respectfully invite the early and favorable attention of the City Government to the following suggestions, and to the petition growing out of them:

The Boston Provident Association has now been in active and successful operation during six successive years. Organized for the twofold purpose of visiting and relieving the deserving poor, and of detecting and exposing the vagabond impostors who throng the streets of every large city, this Association has supplied a deficiency in our system of public charity, which had long been perceived and deplored. Its operations may be estimated by the following figures, which are as nearly exact as the nature of such returns may allow :

The returns for the year just closing are not yet wholly made up; but the operations and expenditures of the Association have been materially larger than during any previous year of its existence.

* As this paper contains the original proposal and plan of an Institution which is at length about to be erected under the sanction of the City Government, it has been thought not unworthy of a place in this volume.

If to the results exhibited by these figures be added the great number of cases in which undeserving and unprincipled beggars and idlers have been ferreted out, and prevented from preying on the sympathies of those whom they had deceived, an aggregate of service to the community will have been indicated, which can hardly fail to commend the Association, by which it has been rendered, to the most favorable consideration of the City Authorities.

In the performance of this service, the officers and managers of the Association have been constantly impressed with the importance of a greater concentration of the charities of the city, and of more consolidation and union among the institutions by which those charities are administered. There are, as is well known, a large number of independent sources to which the poor of Boston may now look for relief. There are the Overseers of the Poor, administering an amount from the City Treasury hardly less than fifty thousand dollars per annum. There is the Howard Benevolent Society, nobly illustrating, according to its means, the spirit of the great philanthropist by whose name it has long been called. There is the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, diligently and most successfully devoted to securing the opportunities of useful and profitable labor to all who are able and willing to work. There is the Young Men's Benevolent Society, worthily carrying out a mission most fitly undertaken by those just entering on the responsibilities of manhood. Other institutions might also be named, of a less general character, which do an important part in the care of the poor, and which unite with that represented by the undersigned in making up the great organized machinery of benevolence and beneficence in our community. The undersigned desire to do full justice to the course of their sister associations, and to claim nothing for themselves which they are not willing to concede to others.

But the experience of the last few years has convinced them, that so many separate and independent organizations cannot conduct the extensive and responsible work which they have undertaken, with the desired economy or success, without larger opportunities and conveniences for mutual understanding and co-operation than have heretofore existed. Could the greater

number of these associations, if not all of them, be merged in a common organization, embracing the system and principles of each, and especially not omitting those particular features of systematic visitation and investigation which the Boston Provident Association first introduced into the general charities of our city, the undersigned are confident that better care would be taken of the deserving poor, a more certain and complete detection await the undeserving and profligate beggar, and a far greater satisfaction be afforded to the generous contributors of the funds by which the work is accomplished. A consummation and consolidation of this sort, it is earnestly hoped by the undersigned, may at no very distant day, in whole or in part, be accomplished.

In the mean time, however, a plan has presented itself to your petitioners, which will secure immediately many of the advan- . tages of a complete consolidation of our charitable societies, and will, in their judgment, greatly conduce to the economical and successful administration of the labor of love which these societies have undertaken to perform.

This plan is, simply, the bringing together into close contiguity, and, if possible, beneath a common roof, in convenient apartments and in some central part of the city, of the offices of all the principal authorities and associations which are recognized as prominently connected with our system of general charity.

The results of such a collocation would, in the opinion of the undersigned, be in the highest degree beneficial to the honest and deserving poor; while it would afford great facilities to all who are in any way interested in their relief.

In the first place, there would be a common and known locality to which all applicants for charity would find their way, or be directed; where they would come within the reach and observation of all the various managers of the different institutions of benevolence; and where they could readily be pointed to the office of the particular association within whose province their case might fall. This common place of resort of the poor for relief might, under the direction of proper officers of police, be kept open in the night, as well as in the daytime; and thus the frequent and painful embarrassment which is experienced from.