LETTER X.

TO THE REV. THOMAS GILLESPIE, D.D., PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS.

INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL GREATNESS COMPARED AND ILLUSTRATED FROM HUME, BYRON, THE ANCIENT CLASSICS, AND THE LATE JOHN WILLIAMS.

MY DEAR SIR, -Your high and sympathetic genius, combined with your generosity and humanity, have induced me to address you in the present letter. Independently of this, however, there are other weighty considerations which might have prompted me to do so. My personal obligations to that ancient and famous seat of learning, the University of St. Andrews, in which you hold so important and influential a station ;—to its Literary and Philosophical Society, with which also you are associated;-to that first of European scholars, your illustrious relative and predecessor, the late Dr. Hunter;-and last, not least, to yourself;-these are circumstances, any one of which would have dictated the propriety and duty of such a dedication. In this volume, however, personal considerations have, in all cases, been excluded; and the individuals to whom the Letters are inscribed have been chosen solely on

say,

the ground of congruity between their characters and the subjects on which they have been respectively addressed. Your love of literature, of liberty, of peace, and of mankind, insure an abundant sympathy with the sentiments about to be avowed. With CICERO, in his preface to Atticus, prefixed to his CATO MAJOR, I can "Novi enim moderationem animi tui et æquitatem: teque non cognomen solùm Athenis deportâsse, sed humanitatem et prudentiam intelligo. Et tamen te suspicor iisdem rebus, quibus meipsum interdum graviùs commoveri : quarum consolatio et major est, et in aliud tempus differenda. Nunc autem mihi visum est de senectute aliquid ad te conscribere. Hoc enim onere, quod mihi commune tecum est, aut jam urgentis, aut certè adventantis senectutis, et te et meipsum levari volo. Etsi te quidem id modicè ac sapienter, sicut omnia, et ferre, et laturum esse certè scio. Sed mihi, cum de

senectute aliquid vellem scribere, tu occurrebas dignus eo munere, quo uterque nostrum communiter uteretur." With the modification necessarily implied, and easily understood, these words of the great Roman express my sentiments and object. I now proceed to lay before you my views of one of the greatest subjects that can occupy the mind of man-a subject the more interesting to you, perhaps, from its extreme importance in relation to your literary functions.

You know full well, Sir, that Intellect is the great Idol, and its culture the chief business, of the juvenile myriads who resort to our universities. Moral greatness is by them but slightly heeded: it is, indeed, seldom mentioned, little desired, and less pursued. I now look back, with views much altered, to the course of study pursued both at St. Andrews and at Glasgow, during

the period of my attendance at those seats of learning. I can now perceive that immense improvements might be introduced into all the classes, but especially into those of Latin, Greek, Logic, and Ethics. The manner in which these classes used to be conducted, rendered them fearfully perilous to the piety of spiritually-minded young men. Their tendency was, and that most decidedly, anti-Christian. The man who prosecuted his studies in the light of eternity, and contemplated the bearing of all his academic pursuits upon the service of Christ, the glory of God, and the good of mankind, as the true end of life, had much to grieve and discourage him. The air of academic groves was not, to such a man, the air of heaven. The genius which there presided was the genius of heathenism. The whole system required a thorough reformation. There was nothing done to infuse right views either of study or of life,nothing to purify and regulate the fires of literary and philosophic ambition, which burned and blazed so fiercely, and with such a lurid flame, in a multitude of bosoms. The consequence was often lamentable. I speak from close observation, as well as from bitter experience. In the four classes which I have mentioned, frequent and most seasonable opportunities occur for passing remarks from the Professor's chair, which would have more weight with the confiding and admiring auditors than a hundred languid homilies from the pulpits of the college chapels. It will be a happy day for these nations when all professors of colleges shall awake to the ineffable importance of the question of true greatPublic opinion must be corrected; and the work. should begin at the fountains of light. Let the ministers of the Word, professors of law and medicine, men

ness.

of letters, teachers of youth, conductors of the press, patriots, rulers, and statesman,-let all these classes be thoroughly enlightened on this point, and it will be a sure pledge that the regeneration of our world is at hand. It is above all things to be desired that our Academic Senates should be deeply moved to consider the question of true moral greatness, of the importance of missions, and of the evils of war. They are training the future intellectual sovereigns of the empire. Theirs is the high and awful responsibility of forming the principles and characters of this important portion of the rising race. College opinions are, for the most part, the opinions of future life: they are seldom exchanged for better. May every chair of every college be soon filled by men like-minded with yourself and your liberal colleagues!

The best interests of the British empire, and of all nations, are deeply, vitally, involved in this subject. Ought not our colleges to guide the intellectual movements of the earth? This is their province; it should be their pride. If the guides are blind, who shall conduct the millions? Light has begun to break forth. A Scottish student, who found an early grave, Robert Pollok, the immortal author of "THE COURSE OF TIME," has set a high example to his academic brethren, in thus laying down the doctrine of the relative excellence of Mental and of Moral Greatness. boldly asserts,

"That not in mental, but in moral worth,

God excellence placed; and only to the good,

To virtue, granted happiness alone.

"Admire the goodness of Almighty God!

He

He riches gave, He intellectual strength,
To few, and therefore none commands to be
Or rich, or learned; nor promises reward
Of peace to these. On all He moral worth
Bestowed, and moral tribute asked from all.
And who that could not pay? Who born so poor,
Of intellect so mean, as not to know

What seemed the best; and, knowing, might not do?
As not to know what God and conscience bade,
And what they bade not able to obey?

And he who acted thus fulfilled the law
Eternal, and its promise reaped of peace;

Found peace this way alone: who sought it else,
Sought mellow grapes beneath the icy pole,
Sought blooming roses on the cheek of death,
Sought substance in a world of fleeting shades."*

The poet not only thus lays down correctly the great principles of the subject, but likewise illustrates them by three appropriate characters. The first is that of a

person whose intellect stood at the very lowest point of rationality, and runs thus:

“One man there was, and many such you might
Have met, who never had a dozen thoughts
In all his life, and never changed their course,
But told them o'er, each in its customed place,
From morn till night, from youth till hoary age.
Little above the ox which grazed the field
His reason rose; so weak his memory,
The name his mother called him by, he scarce
Remembered; and his judgment so untaught,
That what at evening played along the swamp,
Fantastic, clad in robe of fiery hue,

He thought the devil in disguise, and fled
With quivering heart and winged footsteps home.
The word philosophy he never heard,

* Course of Time, book iv.