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ROBERT C. WINTHROP.-D. D. BARNARD.

149

a common devotion to the union of these states, and a common determination to sacrifice every thing but principle to its preservation. Our responsibilities are indeed great. This vast republic, stretching from sea to sea, and rapidly outgrowing every thing but our affections, looks anxiously to us, this day, to take care that it receives no detriment. Nor is it too much to say, that the eyes and the hearts of the friends of constitutional freedom throughout the world are at this moment turned eagerly here— more eagerly than ever before-to behold an example of successful republican institutions, and to see them come out safely and triumphantly from the fiery trial to which they are now subjected.

I have the firmest faith that these eyes and these hearts will not be disappointed. I have the strongest belief that the visions and phantoms of disunion which now appall us, will soon be remembered only like the clouds of some April morning, or "the dissolving views" of some evening spectacle. I have the fullest conviction that this glorious republic is destined to outlast all, all at either end of the Union, who may be plotting against its peace, or predicting its downfall.

"Fond, impious man! think'st thou yon sanguine cloud,
Raised by thy breath, can quench the orb of day?

To-morrow, it repairs its golden flood,

And warms the nations with redoubled ray!"

Let us proceed in the settlement of the unfortunate controversies in which we find ourselves involved, in a spirit of mutual conciliation and concession: let us invoke fervently upon our efforts the blessings of that Almighty Being who is "the author of peace and the lover of concord." And we shall still find order springing out of confusion, harmony evoked from discord, and peace, union, and liberty, once more reassured to our land! ROBERT C. WINTHROP.*

118. IGNORANCE AND SUPERSTITION.

WE are not to make pilgrimages, my friends, in search of ignorance. It lives in our lives, and dwells in our dwellings. Who can tell how many there are, even in our own enlightened and country, who can still discover the movements of em

age

* U. S. Representative from Massachusetts.

battled and bloody hosts in the harmless coruscations of the northern aurora? How many are still the dupes of the absurd pretensions and impositions of judicial astrology? How many miserable lunatics, pretending to be rational, still see, in an eclipse of the moon, nothing but the sickening effect of some enchanter's influence? How many who are still firm believers in unlucky days? How many who still draw disastrous omens from the commonest events in nature; who can pick letters out of the wick of a burning candle; brew a quarrel by spilling a little salt at the table; sever love and friendship by the present of a pair of scissors; and hear the death-warrant of a friend in the ticking of an insect, or the flapping of a dove's wing at the window? How many who still believe that the earthly interests of a new-born infant absolutely require that it should first be carried up stairs, before it is brought down? How many grown-up children are still cowards in the dark? How many who still people an imaginary world of their own creation, with hosts of spectres, hobgoblins, and brownies? Nor let the educated flatter themselves that all the current ignorance of the period is confined to the circle of the uninstructed. For who can tell how many of the Augustuses of our day confidently expect ill-luck, if a stocking be put on with the wrong side out, or the left shoe be put on to the right foot? how many of our Luthers see the hand of the devil in every meteoric phenomenon? how many of our Johnsons are believers in, or are themselves gifted with, the "second sight ?"

But, my friends, ignorance does not do the whole or the worst of her work, by shackling with idle fear and superstitious belief the free mind of man. She does more than this. When the mind is occupied with error, truth cannot enter; and when the heart is filled with superstition, it becomes the habitation of cruelty. Faith is the foundation on which conduct builds; and her banner, be it pure or be it bloody, is sure to float over every conquest made in her name. Under the lead of ignorance, persecution takes the field, and destroys with fire and with the sword. The earth is filled with violence, and the powers of universal nature are moved in elemental war, to satisfy the wrath of man.

D. D. BARNARD.*

* U. S. Representative from New York.

D. D. BARNARD. -HORACE MANN.

151

119. THE LIGHT OF KNOWLEDGE.

We know the enemy we have to contend with--which is ignorance; and we know where to find him, though he hath his habitation in darkness. We are acquainted with his haunts and his associations; and the weapon of his certain destruction is in our hands. That weapon is LIGHT-the light of genuine learning added to the light of a genuine faith-a light which heretofore has not been permitted to burn with brightness and purity, chiefly because it was not originally kindled at the right fountain; a light which has often gone out, in the keeping of unfaithful vestals; which has often been hid, when it should have been made manifest; which has always been, more or less, fed from sources which could not supply or support it; which, at best, has been kept as a lamp to the feet of the few, when it should have been made to illumine the pathway of the many; which, for the most part, having only glimmered faintly from a few sequestered and solitary places, has served but to deepen the shadows of the general gloom around them. This is that light which is now beginning to be fed from better and purer sources; which has its fountain in nature; which is to be supplied from her fulness, by the aid of the educated; which ought to be made, and may be made to increase, spreading wide and mounting high, and passing rapidly from heart to heart, and from dwelling to dwelling, till all the valleys shall answer to all the mountain-tops in one universal and healthful glow of brightness and illumination.

D. D. BARNARD.*

120. IGNORANCE A CRIME, IN A REPUBLIC.

In all the dungeons of the Old World, where the strong champions of freedom are now pining in captivity beneath the remorseless power of the tyrant, the morning sun does not send a glimmering ray into their cells, nor does night draw a thicker veil of darkness between them and the world, but the lone prisoner lifts his iron-laden arms to heaven in prayer, that we, the depositaries of freedom, and of human hopes, may be faithful to our sacred trust;-while, on the other hand, the pensioned advocates of despotism stand, with listening ear, to

*U. S. Representative from New York.

catch the first sound of lawless violence that is wafted from our shores, to note the first breach of faith or act of perfidy amongst us, and to convert them into arguments against liberty and the rights of man.

The experience of the ages that are past, the hopes of the ages that are yet to come, unite their voices in an appeal to us;-they implore us to think more of the character of our people than of its numbers; to look upon our vast natural resources, not as tempters to ostentation and pride, but as a means to be converted, by the refining alchemy of education, into mental and spiritual treasures; they supplicate us to seek for whatever complacency or self-satisfaction we are disposed to indulge, not in the extent of our territory, or in the products of our soil, but in the expansion and perpetuation of the means of human happiness; they beseech us to exchange the luxuries of sense for the joys of charity, and thus give to the world the example of a nation whose wisdom increases with its prosperity, and whose virtues are equal to its power. For these ends they enjoin upon us a more earnest, a more universal, a more religious devotion to our exertions and resources, to the culture of the youthful mind and heart of the nation. Their gathered voices assert the eternal truth, that, in a republic, ignorance is a crime; and that private immorality is not less an opprobrium to the state than it is guilt in the perpetrator.

HORACE MANN.*

121. POPULAR EDUCATION THE CONCERN OF EVERY CITIZEN.

THERE are those who claim an exemption from a general contribution for the purpose of extending the blessings of knowledge to all, upon the ground that they have already provided for the education of their own children, or are both able and willing to do so, at their own proper cost and charges; and that it is for others to do the same, or to omit it altogether, as they may deem most expedient. Let us examine, for a moment, the strength and validity of this plea. My friend, you have a son, upon whose education no time, no pains, no expense has been spared. He, too, has been daintily brought up and vigilantly cared for. No child of poverty and degradation has been suffered to pollute the fair surface of his ingenuous and aristocratic

* U. S. Representative from Massachusetts.

8. S. RANDALL.

JOSEPH STORY.

153

mind. His companionship has been with the gentle and the well-born; his associations have been exclusively with the virtuous, the high-minded, and the pure. All that the most eminent and successful instructors and the most ample store of ancient and modern lore could give him, has been freely and liberally bestowed; and he goes forth into the scenes of active life with a proud brow, a fearless heart, and a cultivated mind. Surely it were the height of presumption to expect that a father could do more. What is it to him that the licensed vender of alcohol lurks in his neighborhood with his well-filled dens of infamy and darkness ? What is it to him that the gambler, the debauchee, the prostitute, the accomplished libertine, the unprincipled villain are abroad in the land, and that they, and such as they, are now the men who, a few short years since, as luckless and poor, but as yet innocent and unhardened boys, were passed haughtily by as unworthy of his notice or regard? A few brief years have rolled on, and that fair-haired boy, in an evil hour, has yielded to the allurements of passion! The tempter has prevailed; and his swollen and bloated cheeks, his trembling limbs, his pestiferous breath, haggard and bloodshot eyes, tell that for him the drunkard's dishonored grave is rapidly preparing! Alas! my friend, had you indeed no interest in the education of your neighbor's children?

S. S. RANDALL

122. CLASSICAL STUDIES.

THERE is not a single nation from the north to the south of Europe, from the bleak shores of the Baltic to the bright plains of immortal Italy, whose literature is not embedded in the very elements of classical learning. The literature of England is, in an emphatic sense, the production of her scholars; of men who have cultivated letters in her universities, and colleges, and grammar-schools; of men who thought any life too short, chiefly because it left some relic of antiquity unmastered, and any other fame humble, because it faded in the presence of Roman and Grecian genius. He who studies English literature without the lights of classical learning, loses half the charms of its sentiments and style, of its force and feelings, of its delicate touches, of its delightful allusions, of its illustrative associations. Who, that reads the poetry of Gray, does not feel that it is the refinement of classical taste which gives such inexpressible vividness and

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