PROPOSED APPLICATIONS OF SMITUSON'S BEQUEST. 877 



men lot awaits us all — that there is a due proportion of hap- 

 piness and misery poured into the cup of each individual, 

 whether it be the camel-driver on the plains of Bagdad or 

 the Queen of the British Empire; not recollecting the lesson 

 taught us by one of old, that there is no difference between 

 the Jew and the Greek; but there is One who sees us all, 

 and whose kind hand supports us all — who maketh his sun 

 to shine on the good and the evil — who sendeth his rain on 

 the just, and on the unjust. 



It is feelings like these, arising from confined views, that 

 have influenced our system of public education. In the 

 course of life it has happened to me to see the result. How 

 many of our educated young men, who have passed the 

 routine of college, and received college honors — how many 

 have you known, who had learned so much as the name of 

 Temujin — a man, who hardly half a dozen centuries ago, 

 propagated at the point of the sword one of the leading 

 doctrines of the French Revolution — who ruled over an 

 empire of greater extent, and of vaster riches, than the 

 Roman in its palmiest days — who put to death one-fortieth 

 part of the whole human family- — before whose greatness, 

 as human greatness is measured, the fame of Pompey and 

 Csesar fades away? How many have you known who could 

 repeat the history of Timur, whose empire was bounded 

 on one side by the seas of China, and on the other extended 

 into the heart of Europe? They have been told that there 

 was no battle like Pharsalia — no monarch like Augustus — 

 no city like Rome. They have never known that whilst the 

 contemptible kings of Europe could not even write their 

 names, there were monarchs in Asia, ruling over millions 

 of men, skilled in the most difficult parts of human knowl- 

 edge, and accomplishing conquests as much by their science 

 as their arms; that whilst Europe was plunged in the most 

 benighted ignorance, Hulack, the roj-al grandson of Tamer- 

 lane, thought it more honorable to be accounted the first 

 astronomer of his age than the emperor of all Asia. 



From the Romans — a race distinguished from the Etrus- 

 cans, the former inhabitants of Italy, by their neglect of 

 the fine arts — by their conquests of violence — by one single 

 glimmering of literature, and by an inordinate ignorance — 

 we turn to the inhabitants of Greece with far more pleasure. 

 There we see a race characterized by that same love of free- 

 dom which we admire so much in our own aboriginal 

 natives — that cool courage, which having counted the cost, 

 is prepared to barter life for liberty ; but a race more effem- 

 inate than the red men, for those ivere capable of enslave- 



