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ing public will; have stooped to subserviency to gain applause. They have "thrown pearls before swine." Intellectual worth, even now, is becoming to a certain degree a drawback from political eminence. The people are wanting silent members in Congress. Ignorance is beoming a boast. There is a mistaking of character in individuals. Freedom of thought begets libertinism in every walk of life; freedom from the restraint of superior learning, begets freedom from the dictates of personal acquirement. Individuals loudly vaunting political equality, merge it in equality of every thing that adorns human nature. The mechanic, suspicious of the dignity of manual labor, and with a notion of the more ennobling character of mental toil, leaves his shop, and throws discredit perhaps upon the sacred altar by the weakness of an uncultured judgment. The Medical art is encumbered with empirics of a day's apprenticeship; and Law is made a study by those taught in no high principles of equity, but only engrossed with "pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees."* Peter Stuyvesant's wrath spoke wisdom to the political cobbler of New Amsterdam : "Hence with thee to thy leather and stone, and follow the vocation for which Heaven has fitted thee !"+

These views in relation to our future stand in life are not extravagant. The soundest philosophical influence from the character of our institutions, and the esteem in which learning is held by the bulk of the American people, fully justify me in asserting, that unless the current of opinion is turned by the lofty independence of educated mind, and the full, hearty exercise of its functions as the guardian of truth, there will, not half a century hence, ensue such a system of freebooting upon political, natural, and ethical Science, as attended the Jacobinism of France; and the wreck of social

*John Milton.

+ Irving's New York.

order prove as inevitable as that which followed hard on the death-scene of Louis XVI. But Learning has a power which properly guided no arm can wrest from her-a giant power; and intellectual cultivation, directed by independence and consistency, and upheld by faith, will walk the waters of this stormy sea! And, oh, it is a glorious—thrice glorious privilege of Learning—to breast the sweeping tide of ignorance; by the force of intellectual energy to roll back the waves of licentiousness, and to speak peace to the warring elements ! Such a privilege may be ours; may we act worthy this Patroness of letters-worthy the Dignity of Learning! Though it may be Pharisaical now, yet I quote boldly the wisdom of Jurusalem, "He cannot get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad; that driveth oxen; and is occupied in their labors; he cannot declare justice or judgment."*

But the Dignity of Learning has a high place in the principles of national advancement. America presents not only the spectacle of a country new in its civil administration, but new in the rapidity and character of its growth. The old nations of the East, feeling their way to manhood through darkness, lived a long youth. Succeeding nations survived long, or quickly expired, as they severally possessed or employed the opportunities of reading the experience of those gone before. Under the night of the eleventh and twelfth centuries were gathering and concentering the germs of the modern nations of Europe; and they came forth panoplied for battle. For they had seen Valentinian dragging down to the grave with himself the hopes of the West, and Constantine fall fighting over the tomb of the royal empire in the East. The Saxon pirate, from his wanderings acquainted with empire, brought civil usages from the banks of the Medi

* Ecclesiasticus, Apocrypha.

*

terranean. But America, with all the discoveries of at least twenty centuries at command, sprung, like Pallas, into mature existence. Under new lights of science she has gone her way, and been thrust on by forces to which the lever of Archimedes would have been subsidiary. Milton and Hampden gave the first draft of her constitution; Jones and Wren modeled her rising architecture; Bolingbroke and Chatham taught her English eloquence, and under such teachers Henry became the man he was, though the subject of his nocturna diurnâ manu was but the iron upon his forge. And in the operation of the learning of centuries, the experience of hundreds of extinct nations, the opening revelations of science, the exemplary prosperity of national industry-in all these our country found its impetus; and in the bare knowledge of them our statesmen found the "artium omnium laudatarum procreatricem quandam, quam philosophiam Græci vocant." Science gave a stride to national advancement that o'erstepped the continuous footfalls of preceding nations; and now from off our Western plains are read the deep-toned mysteries of the Heavens, though no Syriac shepherd has there tended his flocks, and no Chaldee astrologer has there trode his spiral stairway to the skies! Need I say in view of these facts, that learning, as comprehending the experience of the past, upon which our institutions are founded, is peculiarly the arbiter of our national destiny? Every means of our advancement as a nation, in empire, internal improvement, moral and civil economy, national defense, commercial relations, being based not on the instinctive foresight of our rulers, but upon the trials of every age, the deep thought of every great mind for a thousand years, the revelation of every new science, and the possession of every invention-what a pilot have we in that learning which has made all these its study? It will be its noble privilege in our day, to guide

* Dr. Samuel Johnson.

t Cic. de Oratore.

aright those principles of human improvement which the greatest minds of the earth have labored to develop; to superintend the operation of those grand results in civil, moral, and natural Science, which it alone has learned to master. And will not learning have in this conduct a task which even its patrons have little appreciated? Does it as the champion of so important truths maintain its independence with sufficient pertinacity? Has not the indolence or passivity of educated men-neglect of their own privileges, left national growth to its own rank verdure ? Has not learning slept while its penetrating eye should be reading through the pictures of the past, approaching danger? Is not this great scheme of Republicanism, projected by every aid in science, art and letters, already trembling with the shock of a too rapid career? Yes; science is prosecuting its labors under an apprentice hand; practical mastery subjugates the abstrusest theory; strange hands are conducting the grand developments of scientific investigation; strange eyes are watching the glitter of the mineral bed; the iron courser is throwing off his foam-wreaths under a strange master; the pioneer who now treads down the forests that fringe the Pacific is but the ghost of the Pilgrim, and the aisles of the wood echo. not a prayer. Washington rides on after, but ah, the hand that guided the charger is palsied now, and the war-steed neighs over the bleeding corse of the red man. Edwards follows on in the great campaign, but his eye is sightless, and his shroud is floating to the four winds of heaven! Fulton rolls down the Monarch of waters; but, alas! his deathdress is round him, and he can no longer control the Leviathan of the deep!

In view of this abuse of the Creator's bounty, may we not inquire with some anxiety, when shall Science ride upon her own car? when shall Learning teach in her own halls? when shall Eloquence lift up her voice in her own courts? And

what can Educated mind accomplish in view of such ends? Nothing while it is the handmaid and not the mistress of opinion; nothing while it is content, as it contends with wealth and fashion, the only other eligible roads to dignity in America, to relinquish its firmness, and to debase, if need require, its moral principle-to toil hand in hand with Mammon to the dazzling height of 'popular favor. In the extravagant spread of our nation and privileges, under the boast of republican omnipotence, learning is the only instrument that can correct abuse and restrain error. This it can do only by unwavering independence, consistency and moral firmness. There are strong temptations for it to yield to popular clamor. But there is a nobler dignity than the acclaim of the multitude can give. Truth awards it-awards it to her faithful ministers. That dignity claimed, and it would be recognized; science direct the administration of her own laws; letters give a stimulus to education; industry send up a more glad voice; contentment crown every sphere of life; and religion wipe off her national stains. Learning is too noble to be debased. Its voice is in the stars. Its eye opens in the flower. Its whisper murmurs on the white wave-top. Its fountain is in the Godhead!

Turning from this topic, I direct your attention briefly to that which will especially pertain to you as literary men—the formation of a body of Letters. I am aware that many would have proposed this as the first end to be compassed by American learning; but in my estimation it holds a much humbler place among those objects, in pursuit of which American learning should magnify itself, and maintain its proper dignity. Literature, as the type of a nation's thought, and the expression of national principle and action, I would indeed name as the grand pursuit of educated mind. But the elegancies of literature are to our country hardly worth the striving for. We are a nation lately come into existence,

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