AFTER GOD HAD carried us safe to New England, and we had built our houses,
provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's
worship, and led the civil government, one of the next things we longed
for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity;
dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present
ministers shall lie in the dust. And as we were thinking and consulting
how to effect this great work, it pleased God to stir up the heart of one
Mr. Harvard (a godly gentleman and a lover of learning, there living among
us) to give the one-half of his estate (it being in all about £700)
toward the ing of a college, and all his library. After him, another gave
£300; others after them cast in more; and the public hand of the
state added the rest. The college was, by common consent, appointed to
be at Cambridge (a place very pleasant and accommodate) and is called (according
to the name of the first founder) Harvard College. The edifice is very
fair and comely within and without, having in it a spacious hall where
they daily meet at commons, lectures, and exercises; and a large library
with some books to it, the gifts of diverse of our friends, their chambers
and studies also fitted for and possessed by the students, and all other
rooms of office necessary and convenient with all needful offices thereto
belonging. And by the side of the college, a fair grammar school, for the
training up of young scholars and fitting of them for academical learning,
that still as they are judged ripe they may be received into the college
of this school. Master Corlet is the master who has very well approved
himself for his abilities, dexterity, and painfulness in teaching and education
of the youths under him. Over the college is Master Dunster placed as president,
a learned, a conscionable, and industrious man, who has so trained up his
pupils in the tongues and arts, and so seasoned them with the principles
of divinity and Christianity, that we have to our great comfort (and in
truth) beyond our hopes, beheld their progress in learning and godliness
also. The former of these has appeared in their public declamations in
Latin and Greek, and disputations logic and philosophy which they have
been wonted (besides their ordinary exercises in the college hall) in the
audience of the magistrates, ministers, and other scholars for the probation
of their growth in learning, upon set days, constantly once every month
to make and uphold. The latter has been manifested in sundry of them by
the savory things of their spirits in their godly versation; insomuch that
we are confident, if these early blossoms may be cherished and warmed with
the influence of the friends of learning and lovers of this pious work,
they will, by the help of God, come to happy maturity in a short time.Over
the college are twelve overseers chosen by the General Court, six of them
are of the magistrates, the other six of the ministers, who are to promote
the best good of it and (having a power of influence into all persons in
it) are to see that every-
one be diligent and proficient in his proper place.