THE APRIL MEETING, 1844. 457 



I 



less of it. It is too deep every where. The subject, divested of all exaggeration 

 and rhetoric against us, leaves enough in its naked truth to fill ub with wo, and 

 ought to rouse us to our duty. 



At such a juncture, when we are viewed with a quicker eye than ever for the 

 discovery of fault — when the friends of popular government every where are weep- 

 ing over what has happened here, to lay ourselves open, even by a suspicious tardi- 

 ness, to the imputation of not keeping faith vifith the great moral interests depen- 

 dent upon this will, seems most especially unwise. It would be repudiation under 

 a new form, reserved for our once glorious Republic to set the example of — the Re- 

 public that Washington founded. In this connection, who can think but in sorrow 

 on the fact that two persons, of birth foreign to our shores — Smithson and Girard — 

 should have selected, the one our whole Union, the other a leading member of it, 

 as their instruments in faithfully using funds left for the increase and diffusion of 

 knowledge in the world, and for the education, upon a vast scale, of orphans ; and 

 that twelve years should have elapsed in one case, and nearly six in the other, 

 without witnessing the slightest fruits from their munificent endowments. All is 

 still barrenness or blight to both benefactions. Not an orphan has been educated — 

 so have perished the Frenchman's hopes. Not a step has been taken under 

 the Englishman's injunction — so, thus far, has he mistaken his people. If dia- 

 logues of the dead could take place between these two generous-minded philan. 

 thropists, it would be easier to conceive what might be said than grateful to an 

 American pen to recount it. 



During the periods in question, have we been careless in other fields ? Have we 

 been inert in things material? Have we been slumbering over the main chance? 

 Quite the reverse. Imagination can hardly group the sum of our achievements. 

 It starts back at the wonders that have been going on ; at the bustle, the enterprise, 

 the duplication, the multiplication, in our physical resources. What mountains have 

 not been removed ? What caverns not excavated ? What waters not turned into 

 new channels ? But all will be in vain, if we are seeking a high name among na- 

 tions; in vain the strides which agriculture, and manufactures, and commerce, 

 and stupendous highways to develope and diffuse each, are making amongst us ; or 

 that our ships go to all seas, or that wildernesses disappear before our conquering 

 industry; in vain our increase in population and in all the elements of power; in 

 vain, for the highest fame, all these and the high-sounding boasts that follow. 

 They attest energy, and the freedom which gives it room to act ; but in a country 

 where Heaven has showered down its richest natural gifts, these may co-exist with 

 mediocrity and commonness of character, and in part are the results of a physical 

 necessity. In vain, therefore, the whole, unless accompanied by those intellectual 

 distinctions which alone confer, throughout all time, the most genuine and lofty 

 renown. Truly and beautifully has a living writer remarked, that " whatever the 

 power and prosperity of a State, whatever the accumulations of her wealth, or her 

 boasted achievements and possessions, to hor intellectual attainments must she look 

 for her highest estimation ; on her literature, her science, her arts, her pre-eminence 

 in mind — on her solidity and effulgence in those must she depend for living dignity 

 and deathless fame." 



Ennobling the thought, that even nations cannot escape from the conditions by 

 which individual man raises himself to immortality of fame ; and if we, as a nation, 

 would reach tlio moral heights commensurate with what is to be our destiny in 

 political power, it can only bo through compliance with these indispensable and 



