EDUCATION.
The Easton, (Md.) Gazette, in treating of the importance of Education, and the advantages, under a republican government, of close application to study, concludes with the following characteristic allusions:
Who was Mr. Wirt, the present Attorney General of the U. States? A poor boy of our state; of the village of Bladensburgh.—What has given him one of the first stations in the country, with a handsome income? Good education, laborious study and application, and consequent knowledge.
Who was William Pinkney? A poor boy of Annapolis. What has learning made him? The first lawyer; the most celebrated advocate of our country.
Who was James Monroe? The son of a bricklayer in the town of Cambridge, in Dorset. Who is James Monroe? The President of these United States.
Education is the solid granite pedestal of the column of his fame, supporting a shaft of the most towering attitude, whose Corinthian capital is high above the clouds. How emphatically, in this instance, has wisdom, founded on good education, and matured by intense study and application, proved herself to be power, with station, and honours, and wealth, following in her train. Why then should not a son of one of our bricklayers, or hatters, or tailors, or cabinet makers, become a future President of the United States?—The same path is open to them: true, it winds up the sides of a steep and rugged mountain; and the elevated pinnacle is not to be gained without setting out aright, with the earliest and best discipline of good schools, and the severest and most immense mental labour—but the prize is well worth the boldest, the highest exertion.
Will it be said that Nature made these men of her best materials? no such thing. Providence was bountiful to them; but Nature left these diamonds as rough, as many of the pebbles now in the streets. Instruction turned them; and education gave the high polish and the point, which illumes and dazzles America, and throws their radiance far into other countries. And have we not at this moment, genius and talents in our Academy equal to Wirt's, and Pinkney's, and Monroe's? Yes, without doubt, and among the sons of our mechanics too—and would to Heaven I could fire their young bosoms with the noblest ambition, without which they can never reach what they aim at.