Address delivered by The Right Hon. The Earl of Carlisle, at the ceremony of his installation as The Lord Rector of Marischal College and University, Aberdeen, on Wednesday, 31st March, 1853.

George Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle

Date:: 1853

Credit: Address delivered by The Right Hon. The Earl of Carlisle, at the ceremony of his installation as The Lord Rector of Marischal College and University, Aberdeen, on Wednesday, 31st March, 1853. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$dinated. I perceive that my accomplished pre¬ decessor, the Earl of Eglinton, in his inaugural address, quoted one of those old Homeric lines which stir us like a war-trumpet, and it will furnish me with just the distinction which I want to establish— AteV dpL(TTev€iv, Ka\ vneipoxov eppevai dWcov : Always excel, and tower above the rest.” In the first section of this line, dUv aptarTevetp, always excel,” the genius of Paganism and the genius of Christianity may take common ground, and impart a common lesson : Always excel.” To the soldier, when the storm sweeps down upon him—to the statesman, in the hottest strife of faction—to the ploughman, even on your granite hill-sides—to the physician or surgeon, by the couch of the sick or the maimed—to the clergyman, by the bed of the dying—duty has but one voice—“ Always excel.” But for the next half of the line, “ and tower above the rest,” there the genius of Paganism goes on, the genius of Christianity halts. To tower above the rest may be the result of your excellence, it cannot safely be its motive. Christianity here comes in with other motives, and with maxims which are at once imrneasureably more humble, inconceivably more lofty. “ Charity seeketh$