872 PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITHSON'S BEQUEST. 



letter ii. 



Mr. Th. W. White. 



My Dear Sir: I received yours of the 6th inst. duly, and 

 though much pressed with business, hasten to comply with 

 your request. 



It would have given me pleasure to have seen this subject 

 treated of by others, whose opinions on the course of educa- 

 tion agree better with those current than mine. Such as 

 they are, I do not shrink from avowing them. You will 

 receive them, as the deliberate conviction of a man who has 

 seen life not alone in the closet but also in the world; who 

 has passed through seasons of adversity as well as times of 

 prosperity, conditions which are incident to us all; who, 

 having been brought up in the very system he here con- 

 demns, has had the opportunity of observing its results, not 

 only in the activity of cities, where they say reiinement pre- 

 vails, but also in the solitudes of the forest; a man who is 

 unskilful in the harmony of words, and speaks only of plain 

 facts ; whose lot has cast him where information on these 

 matters might have been obtained ; who has but few sym- 

 pathies for the cause of public education as it now exists, 

 and has learned to regard it as based upon an erroneous 

 view of the character and wants of mankind — producing a 

 forced state of society — and as an eminent obstacle to the 

 progress of the human intellect. 



It is not necessary to trace the history of the system of 

 education adopted on this continent, and in many parts of 

 Europe, to its remote origin. The dark ages we are accus- 

 tomed to regard, as a kind of relapse of the whole human 

 family from a state of enlightenment into one of deep ob- 

 scurity; but there is such a thing as the mind of the world, 

 which is not liable to these vicissitudes, and undergoes no 

 change except that of development. No part of Europe, 

 even in the Augustan age, was possessed of any store of 

 knowledge which was likely to be durable — for poetry and 

 letters generally, are not the property of the whole human 

 race, but simply that of individual nations, and hence are 

 liable to be affected by the rise and fall of empires. Those 

 faint and uncertain indications of light which we trace in 

 the history of Greece, were but the radiations of a brighter 

 day which was shining in the East; for the sun of knowl- 

 edge never rose on Europe until the beginning of the thir- 

 teenth century — the pale crescent of the Saracens was his 

 harbinger. Europe could never lapse from a state to which 

 she had never attained. I know that you will not partici- 



