age, even a single school, where children my learn to read, to write, to worship God, to honor their parents, } and to love their country! "In the prolongation of this disgraceful torpor, of this mischievous apathy, several causes obviously concur. Some men have dared to assert, and pretend to believe, that knowledge is by no means an essential element of public virtue, public liberty, public happiness.-Others recognize, indeed, its friendly, its salutary influences; but, to whatever is suggested for its promotion, they oppose, as an insuperable obstacle, our want of national resources. -Others, again, desirous to elude the forcible appeal of the rising generation, point to the private establishments already in existence, and proclaim them fully adequate to our intellectual wants nor are those wanting, whom petty jealousies, and local interests, deter from engaging in so noble a cause. Finally, individuals are found among us, who, when driven to their last entrenchments, sneeringly enquire, What, then, are we to do? Where are those sublime conceptions, those regenerating plans, by which the resurrection of our moral character is to be accomplished?' "Oh! that my feeble voice might resound over the whole extent of Virginia! Its last accents would warn my countrymen against that miserable sophistry, that mischievous egotism, that low, creeping, inactive policy, which would contract, instead of enlarging our intellectuat sphere, and paralyze, instead of vivifying our physical resources! But that voice shall be heard even when my earthly remains are mouldering in the silence of the grave. The press imparts wings to useful thoughts, Stamps them with immortality; and like the sun, incessantly sheds torrents, of pure light and of genial heat, which must ultimately dispel the mists of error, and dissolve the icy ramparts, behind which ignorance and apathy intrench themselves. In this bureau, Lovetruth, thou wilt find a few essays written in my leisure hours, not with a view to literary fame, but from the nobler motive of diffusing beneficial truths. In one of these, I have endeavored to shew the intimate relations that link knowledge with the morals, the liberty, and the prosperity of nations. I there prove that, far from being deficient in pecuniary means, we possess resources more than adequate to the desirable appropriations which I recommend ; and that by the ostentatious votaries of fashion and luxury, nay, by those very economists, who affect so tender a respect for our purses, more money is lavished on frivolous, or culpable gratifications than would suffice to establish and main tain institutions of extensive and splendid usefulness. I, then, take a candid, an impartial view, of those schools which private exertions have raised, and which private patronage supports. I examine their defects, and demonstrate from the very nature of things, the utter impossibility of such establishments presenting to our youth a regular, systematic and sufficiently wide range of instruction. But even here I cheerfully pay a tribute of praise and gratitude to virtuous intentions and individual zeal. Truth holds, and candor guides the pencil; but philan throphy and benevolence soften its austere tints. The petty objections of local interests are, next, tested in the crucible of justice, patriotism and sound policy: Their aggregate vanishes into thin vapors, and leaves no residuum.-Lastly, I propose a plan, which, like that of the human system, establishes a central point of vitality whence invigorating streams are conveyed to the extremities, and, in their course, feed and animate the various parts of the national body, whilst other streams, flowing in a contrary direction, supply the common source of intellectual life, with new elements, upon which its beneficial agency is incessantly exerted. Thus is the metropolis connected, for the purposes of instruction, with the various districts and counties of the state. A board of education, under the control of the Legislature, and a national Press, for the diffusion of moral and physical knowledge, through all the classes of society, are primary objects in the plan alluded to. This Press, by discarding the useless pomp of typo graphical luxury, and by being devoted exclusively to works of general utility, would, without much expence to the state, disseminate among us the most valuable, the most prolific seeds of improvement and excellence. The departments of instruction, embraced by this plan, are founded upon the three principal ramifications of the human mind, pointed out by Lord Verulam, and the Encyclopedists, I mean, sentiment, reasoning and memory. Into the necessary details, I have fully entered.—Aware, however, that the progress even of salutary ideas is slow, and, indeed, imperceptible; that a considerable lapse of time, and a multiplied collision of opinions, must precede their triumph; desirous in the mean while-anxiously desirous, that something should be quickly done for the promotion of so noble a cause, I conclude by inviting our legislators to try, at least, those moral levers, the force of which was so well understood, and so successfully employed by the sages of antiquity. Woe, say I woe to those nations whose rulers think, that nothing grand, nothing transcendantly useful can be accomplished without gold! Whose chiefs do not know how to seize, how to vibrate the mysterious chords of the human heart! Were they founded upon gold; those civil and political institutions of Greece and of Rome, whose effects still astonish us?-The Olympic Wreathe was a single laurel; the Civic Crown, a bough of verdant oak. What supernatural influence, then, rendered both so desirable, so productive of sublime emulation, of efforts scarcely to be credited? Legislators, if your coffers are empty, have you no similar rewards to bestow? Have you no smile for virtue and science? no frown for vice and brutality? Cannot one solitary day of each legislative session be devoted to the rising generation, to those youths, so precious to our common country? Ah! what germs of native genius and worth might be developed by your parental care! In you, resides the majesty of the people; but you would become the images of God himself, upon earth, by ascending to such a height of creative wisdom and benificence !" The above, good Cecil, is the part of my last conversation with the worthy Melmoth, which I have thought not entirely foreign to thy purpose. Adieu; may God preserve thee for thy friends and thy Country. Cordially thine, TIM LOVETRUTH. I have several polite and obliging communications to acknowledge; some of them merely complimentary and others intended by their writers for publication. Of the latter, several seem to be written by very young men, who after a little more age and experience will be well qualied, I doubt not, to amuse and instruct their readers. The objects of the Old Bacheler, however, are of great moment and require the vigor of maturer arms. I must beg my youthful correspondents to remember the admonition of Apollo to his son! Magna petis, Phaeton, et que non viribus istis Number XIII. Auream quisquis mediocritatem Hor. Lib. II. Car, X. The man within the golden mean Where sordid want and sorrow dwell, Francis. I thank Heaven for no earthly blessing more than for this; that I was born with an equal and contented mind. It is incalculable from how much disappointment and vexation and misery, this single trait of character has saved me. Neither plodding avarice, nor wounded pride, nor scheming ambition ever planted one thorn in my pillow, or troubled for an instant, that sweet and careless repose, that nightly sheds its poppies around my head. I thank Heaven too, that my native equanimity has been so happily exempted from disturbance by extraneous circumstances; that I have never experienced either that pang of poverty which, is, on all hands, admitted to be so dangerous to virtue, nor the equally dangerous impulse of redundant wealth. If I have been obscure, I have nevertheless been happy; at least, as much so as an Old Bachelor can be. Satisfied with the private station in which I was born, I have endeavored, to the utmost of my ability, to discharge the duties of it, and have never envied either Woolsey his dangerous honors, or Dives his damning gold. 1 take no credit to myself for these advantages; the orderly current of my blood and the happy mediocrity of my fortune are, alike, the free unmerited boon of Heaven. I dare say that many of my young readers, far from envying me either of these blessings, are ready, hereupon, to denounce me, as a poor-spirited fellow; a drone who never felt the sting of genius: and this, I grant, is true.But they cannot justly reproach me with having been so dull and stupid in my youth, so prone to the low and beaten track of my ancestors as never to have paused to look around me; and to examine and compare the various routes through life which opened themselves to my view and courted my choice. Nor can they say, that I was so 3 purblind, as not to see the temples of wealth and glory seated on alpine heights, which seemed to bound and overlook those bright careers, and beckon the young adventurer on. I saw them all and at a time of life, too, when neither intervening glaciers nor overhanging steeps, however arduous or perilous, would have deterred me from the enterprize. I saw them in my youth, when I was borne aloug by an enthusiasm of character before which the Alps and Pyreneans would have sunk into a plain, in any cause congenial with my soul. But that enthusiasm was never touched by the prospect either of wealth or of political honors; and had it not been to please one among the best and most beloved of mothers, I am very certain that, unless from literary curiosity, I should never have perused a page either of Bracton or Hippocrates. As to wealth; very early in my childhood, I was forcibly struck with a plate in one of the volumes of Pope's works which represented a miser. He was lying among his bags of money, pale, emaciated; with his countenance marked and furrowed with painful apprehension and pining want ;-while a horrid serpent encircled his body in several folds, and with fangs fastened in his breast seemed to be sucking from his system the last drop of the milk of human kindness, and supplying its place with his own poison. The plate was large, for the volume was a quarto; and the device so well executed, so true to the life, that I shuddered involuntarily and drew back as I opened it. I was too young to understand the design by reading the text, and, of course, had to ask its meaning, of my mother. It was then for the first time, and with feelings all awake that I heard the danger of riches described; and saw painted to the mind's eye and to the heart a picture of avarice so strong, so indelibly impressive, that all I have since heard and read upon the subject (Bourdaloue's sublime sermon not excepted) has seemed comparatively dull and flat. My mother knew well that the whole secret of producing great and lasting effects consisted in hitting the critical minute, when all the powers and feelings of the mind were violently excited and drawn to the enquiry; and no one knew better than she did how to seize and improve those occasions. She spoke with great spirit as well as sensibility, and she had an eye that spoke more impressively even than her lips. I shall never forget the lecture while my mind retains its faculties; for striking as it was in every other respect, she interwove with it several little stories which gave it all the dramatic interest that suited my years, and was most happily |