Capt. Blackwell, and others." In the Private Journal of Cotton
Mather, under the dates of 1708 and 1717, there are notices of the
Boston troops waiting on the Governor to Cambridge on Commencement
Day. During the presidency of Wadsworth, which continued from 1725
to 1737, "it was the custom," says Quincy, "on Commencement Day,
for the Governor of the Province to come from Boston through
Roxbury, often by the way of Watertown, attended by his body
guards, and to arrive at the College about ten or eleven o'clock
in the morning. A procession was then formed of the Corporation,
Overseers, magistrates, ministers, and invited gentlemen, and
immediately moved from Harvard Hall to the Congregational church."
After the exercises of the day were over, the students escorted
the Governor, Corporation, and Overseers, in procession, to the
President's house. This description would answer very well for the
present day, by adding the graduating class to the procession, and
substituting the Boston Lancers as an escort, instead of the "body
guards."

The exercises of the first Commencement are stated in New
England's First Fruits, above referred to, as follows:--"Latine
and Greeke Orations, and Declamations, and Hebrew Analysis,
Grammaticall, Logicall, and Rhetoricall of the Psalms: And their
answers and disputations in Logicall, Ethicall, Physicall, and
Metaphysicall questions." At Commencement in 1685, the exercises
were, besides Disputes, four Orations, one Latin, two Greek, and
one Hebrew In the presidency of Wadsworth, above referred to, "the
exercises of the day," says Quincy, "began with a short prayer by
the President; a salutatory oration in Latin, by one of the
graduating class, succeeded; then disputations on theses or
questions in Logic, Ethics, and Natural Philosophy commenced. When