LITERARY CULTURfi. 85 



while the cheapness ofbooks have added largely to their ownership, to the 

 credit of our people's morals, to their refined taste and literary culture, we 

 find but few copies of questionable books in . any part of our County. 

 French Novels and Poetry of the Byron and Swineburne schools are as 

 eifectually banished as if they were rire-brands arrows and death to all we 

 hold dear. Dime-novels and demoralizing journals find few patrons in our 

 County, and the best Reviews, the choicest Magazines, the most scholarly 

 edited journals, are as plentiful as leaves in Valambrosa. Our people 

 aim to enrich themselves with the spoils of all pure literature, knowing that 

 he who would make a favorite of a bad book, simply because it contams a 

 tew beautiful passages, might as well caress the hand of an assassin because 

 of the jewelry which sparkles on his fingers. Our people generally can 

 earnestly respond to the apostrophe of Doctor Channmg: No matter how 

 poor, I am; no matter though the prosperous of my own time will not 

 enter my obscure dwelling; if the sacred writers will enter and take up 

 their abode under my roof; if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me 

 of Paradise, and Shakespeare to open to me the worlds of imagination and 

 the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his 

 practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, 

 and 1 may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called 

 the best society in the place where I live. 



Having organized our County politically and developed in a marvel- 

 ous degree its material resources, we should make longer strides toward 

 literary culture and eminence. We must not ignore the progress already 

 made, nor fail to profit by it. The most celebrated historical models of 

 antiquity have been surpassed; Gibbon, Grote and Macauley, are decidedly 

 superior in general merit to Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus; and, 

 besides, our historians have opened up a wider field of study, and have 

 found new methods of ascertaining the truth. Historical criticism has 

 taught us how to separate the mystical from the historical in ancient story, 

 and linguistic ethnology and archaeological and philological research have 

 opened up vast realms of knowledge. We have learned to distinguish be- 

 tween the history of our race and that of a few individuals who happened to 

 hold olhce, and our historical composition is changing from a personal to 

 a philosophical character. Let us with the new light beaming upon us add 

 largely to that culture which has given us so prominent a place in the historv 

 of counties throughout the State. And to make my leaden discourse not 

 worthless by reason of the gold wedded to it, I cannot better conclude my 

 rambling remarks than by giving you a few pearls from the matchless 

 casket of Emerson. Culture is the suggestion fi-om certain best thoughts, 

 that a man has a range of afiinities, through which he can modulate the 

 violence of any master-tone that have a droning preponderance in his 

 scale, and succor him against himself Culture redresses his balance, puts 

 him among his equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympa- 

 thy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion. Books, as 

 containing the finest records of human wit, must always enter into our 

 notions of culture. The best heads that ever existed, Pericles, Plato, 

 Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, Goethe, Milton, were well-read, universally 

 educated men, and quite too wise to undervalue letters. Their opinion 

 has weight, because they had means of knowing the opposite opinion. We 

 look that a great man should be a good reader, or, in proportion to the 

 spontaneous power should be the assimilating power. Good criticism is 



