86 lite!rary cVlture. . 



very rare and always precious. I am always happy to meet persons who 

 perceive the transcendent superiority of Shakespeare over all other writers. 

 I like people m ho like Plato. Because this love does not consist with self- 

 conceit. 



Let me say here, that culture cannot begin too early. In talking with 

 scholars, I observe that they lost on ruder companions those years of boy- 

 hood which alone could give imaginative literature a religious and infinite 

 quality in their esteem. 1 find, too, that the chance for appreciation is 

 much increased by being the son of an appreciator, and that these boys 

 who now grow up are caught not only years too late, but two or three birlh:^; 

 too late, to make the best scholars of And I think it a presumable mo- 

 tive to a scholar, that, as, in an old community, a well-born proprietor .is 

 usually found, after the first heats of youth, to be a careful husband, and to 

 feel a habitual desire that the estate shall suff'er no harm by his administra- 

 tion, but shall be delivered down to the next heir in as good condition as 

 he received it; — so, a considerate man will reckon himself a subject of that 

 secular melioration by which mankind is mollified, cured, and refined, 

 and will shun every expenditure of his forces on pleasure or gain, which 

 will jeopardize this social and secular accumulation. 



The fossil strata show us that Nature began with rudin^.cnt:.! forms, and 

 rose to the more complex, as fast as the earth was fit for t .eir dwelling 

 place; and that the lower perish, as the higher appear. \'ery few of our 

 race can be said to be, yet finished men. We still carr} sticking to us, 

 some remains of the preceding inferior quadruped organization. We call 

 these millions men; but they are not yet men. Half engaged in the soil. 

 pawing to get free, man needs all the music that can be brought to disen- 

 gage him. If Love, red Love, with tears and joy; it Want with his scourge; 

 if War with his cannonade; if Christianity with its charity; if Trade with its 

 money; if Art with its portfolios; if Science with her telegraphs through the 

 deeps of space and time; can set his dull nerves throbbing, and by loud 

 taps on the tough chrysalis, can break its walls, and let the new creature 

 emerge erect and free, — make way, and sing paean ! The age of the quad- 

 ruped is to get out,— the age of the brain and the heart is to come in. 



The time will come when the evil forms we have known can no more 

 be organized. Man's culture can spare nothing, wants all the material. 

 He is to convert all impediments into instruments, all enemies into power. 

 The formidable mischief will only make the more useful slave. And if 

 one shall read the future of the race hinted in the organic effort of Nature 

 to mount and meliorate, and the corresponding impulse to the Better, in 

 the human being, we shall dare affirm that there is nothing he will not 

 overcome and convert, until at last culture shall absorb the chaos and 

 gehenna. He will convert the Furies into Muses, and the hells into 

 benefit. 



[It is but proper to state that Ex-Judge Reid's address was made ex- 

 tempore, after ten o'clock at night, and with great rapidit}^ Having 

 taken but few notes, the foregoing may be termed the intended rather than 

 the real address — although it embodies most of the topics discussed by the 

 speaker. — Ed. J 



