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iiave supposed that the intervals of the diatonic scale in music were capable 

 ^f exact appreciation, and their relations of precise ascertainment, by nu- 

 merical quantities? Who would have expected that pure mathematics 

 would have been appealed to to decide between the rival claims of th'e cor- 

 puscular and the undulatory theories of light; or to ascertain the proportions 

 and relations of elementary bodies not appreciable by any of the senses, in 

 chemical combinations; or^as my accomplished friend from South Carolina 

 <(Mr. Holmes) suggests, that the authenticity of a disputed text in the 

 ^Scriptures would be determined by an algebraical theorem ? What do not 

 astronomy, navigation, civil engineering, practical mechanics, and all the 

 -experimental sciences, owe to this one science, which in its investigations 

 appeals to no empiricism, calls in the aid of none of the senses, none of the 

 machinery of art or of nature? 



But, independent of this particular point, the aid which the physical sci- 

 ences may expect to derive from mere speculative knowledge, I should 

 hope that at this time, and in this place, one might safely venture a plea in 

 behalf of all that higher knowledge which serves to humanize, to refine, to 

 elevate, to make men more deeply wise, better, less thoughtful of material 

 interests, and more regardful of eternal truths. And let it not be said that 

 our own brief history proves that great libraries are superfluous, because 

 without them we have produced statesmen, civilians, orators, and jurispru- 

 ^ients, no wise inferior to the ablest of their European contemporaries. With- 

 out dwelling upon the stimulus of popular institutions, and the stirring ex- 

 *citement of our revolutionary and later history, which have tended to en- 

 courage the development of this species of talent, the objection is sufficiently 

 answered by saying that, in the case of most of the American statesmen of 

 the Revolution, as well as of many of later date, private wealth has sup- 

 plied the place of public provisions for the attainment of knowledge. In. 

 ihe period of our colonial history, the sons of wealthy families were often, 

 educated in the best schools of Europe, and the framers of our Constitution 

 were chiefly men of high education and elegant attainments. Jefferson, 

 whose writings are canonical with the Democracy, had the best private li- 

 brary in America, and was a man of multifarious, if not of profound learn- 

 ing. The State papers of that remarkable era are, with few exceptions, 

 obviously productions of men not merely of inspired genius or of patient 

 thought, but of laborious acquisition ; and they are full, not of that cheap 

 learning which is proved by pedantic quotation, but of that sound discipline 

 which is the unequivocal result of extensive reading and diligent research. 

 Who have been the men, in all ages, that have exercised the wisest and 

 most permanent influence both on the moral and physical well-being of 

 man ? The spirit of the crusades was roused by the preaching of a thought- 

 ful solitary ; Columbus was a learned scholar, and Luther but a studious 

 .monk. Watt, the great improver of the steam engine, was a man of cu- 

 rious and recondite learning. Bonaparte was carefully educated at the 

 ;school of Brienne, and was through life a liberal patron of learning and 

 the arts. The glorious rebellion of 1649 was the work of men of the 

 closet; and Milton, who to our shame is less known among us by his prose 

 than by his poetry, was its apostle. Our own independence was declared 

 and maintained by scholars, and all men know that the French revolution had 

 its germ in the writings of the Encyclopaedists. All men , in fact, who have 

 ^cted upon opinion, who have contributed to establish principles that have 

 left their impress for ages, have spent some part of their lives in scholastio- 



