quisitions have been treasured up amidst toil and poverty, |“Yes, sir,” said he, "I now have the key to that and in those intervals which are usually devoted to repose library, (showing it as if it were the most precious or recreation? If any of our readers should be incredulous jewel, the real key to knowledge,) and there I go in this matter, we need only refer them to the address of Governor Everett, and also to the personal testimony and every day and study eight hours. I work eight observation of Dr. Nelson, of whom it may be said that no hours, and the other eight I am obliged to devote declaration of ours is necessary to entitle his statements to to animal comforts and repose." the fullest confidence.-Ed. Mess.]

To the Editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. With a few friends, who have seen the following communication, I entirely concur in the opinion that it ought to be given to the public. It is a brilliant, an unsurpassed example of what may be achieved by persevering application to study. To all persons, especially to the young mechanics of our country, it may prove a beacon of light to guide them to higher destinies, by a diligent improvement of their "little fragments of time."

The stage drove up and I most reluctantly left him, exacting however a promise that he would write me some account of himself-of his past and present studies.

The following is the first, but not the only letter which he has done me the favor to write. I have assurance that Mr. Burritt would not be so false to his professions as to object to its publicity. But I am equally well assured that it will give him more pain than pleasure. TH: NELSON.

Richmond, Feb. 4th, 1840.

Of the verity of the statement made by the writer there cannot be a doubt. In the summer of 1838, GoWORCESTER, Dec. 16th, 1839. vernor Everett of Massachusetts, in an address to Dear Sir:-I sit down to write to you under a an association of mechanics in Boston, took occa- lively apprehension that you will accept of no aposion to mention that a blacksmith of that State had logy that I can make for my long silence. But by his unaided industry made himself acquainted before you impute to me indifference or neglect, I with fifty languages. In July of the following beg you, my dear sir, to consider the peculiar nayear, I was passing through Worcester, the place ture of my occupations,—to reflect that my time is of his present residence, and gratified my curiosity not at my disposal, and that my leisure moments by calling to see him. Like any other son of Vul- are such as I can steal away from the hours which can, Mr. Burritt was at his anvil. I introduced my arduous manual labors would incline me to almyself to him, observing that I had read with great low to repose. I deferred writing some time, thinkpleasure, and with unfeigned astonishment, an ac-ing to address you a letter on your return from the count of him by the Governor of his State, which springs; but the nature of my business became such had induced me to take the liberty of paying him a in the fall, that I was compelled to labor both night visit. He very modestly replied that the Governor and day up to the present time, which is the first had done him more than justice. It was true, he leisure hour that I have had for several months. I said, that he could read about fifty languages, but cannot but be gratefully affected by the benevolent he had not studied them all critically. Yankee interest which you manifested in my pursuits, both curiosity had induced him to look at the Latin in our interview in Worcester, and in the letter for grammar; he became interested in it, persevered, which I am indebted to your courtesy and kind conand finally acquired a thorough knowledge of that sideration. I thank you most cordially for those language. He then studied the Greek with equal expressions of good will. They are peculiarly care. A perfect acquaintance with these languages gratifying, coming as they do from one whose had enabled him to read with facility the Italian, personal acquaintance I have not long had the the French, the Spanish and Portuguese. The means and pleasure of enjoying; a fact which Russian, to which he was then devoting his "odd proves, I fear, that I have been thrust before the moments," he said was the most difficult of any he world very immaturely. An accidental allusion to had undertaken. my history and pursuits, which I made unthink

ance.

I expressed my surprise at his youthful appear-ingly in a letter to a friend, was, to my unspeakable He informed me he was but twenty-seven surprise, brought before the public as a rather osyears of age; (to which statement I gave ready tentatious debut on my part to the world and I credence)—that he had been constantly engaged at find myself involved in a species of notoriety not his trade from boyhood to that hour, and that his at all in consonance with my feelings. Those education previous to his apprenticeship had been who have been acquainted with my character from very slender. my youth up will give me credit for sincerity, when I say, that it never entered my heart to blazon forth any acquisition of my own. I had, until the unfortunate denouement which I have mentioned, pursued the even tenor of my way unnoticed, even among my brethren and kindred. None of them ever

Mr. Burritt removed from a village near Hartford, in Connecticut, where he was born and where he learned his trade, to Worcester, to enjoy the benefit of an antiquarian library stored with rare books, to which the trustees gave him daily access.

thought that I had any particular genius, as it is called; I never thought so myself. All that I have accomplished, or expect or hope to accomplish, has been and will be by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the antheap,-particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact. And if I ever was actuated by ambition, its highest and farthest aspiration reached no farther than the hope to set before the young men of my country an example in employing those invaluable fragments of time called "odd moments."

BARD.

A Butterfly, whose filmy wing
Could never back the dew-drop fling

That nestled in the flow'r;
Went roaming once the garden round,
Now flutt'ring on without a sound,
Now here, now there, now up, now down-
Companion of the hour!

And, sir, I should esteem it an honor of costlier THE BUTTERFLY, THE FLY-TRAP, AND THE water than the tiara encircling a monarch's brow, if my future activity and attainments should encourage American working-men to be proud and jealous of the credentials which God has given them to every eminence and immunity in the empire of mind. These are the views and sentiments with which I have sat down, night by night for years, with blistered hands and brightening hope, to studies which I hoped might be serviceable to that class of community to which I am proud to belong. This is my ambition. This is the goal of my aspirations. But, not only the prize, but the whole course lies before me, perhaps beyond my reach. "I count myself not yet to have attained" to any thing worthy of public notice or private mention: what I may do is for Providence to determine.

As you expressed a desire in your letter for some account of my past and present pursuits, I shall hope to gratify you on this point, and also rectify a misapprehension which you with many others may have entertained of my acquirements. With regard to my attention to the languages, (a study of which I am not so fond as of mathematics,) I have tried, by a kind of practical and philosophical process, to contract such a familiar acquaintance with the head of a family of languages as to introduce me to the other members of the same family. Thus, studying the Hebrew very critically, I became readily acquainted with its cognate languages, among the principal of which are the Syriac, Chaldaic, Arabic, Samaritan, Ethiopic, &c. The languages of Europe occupied my attention immediately after I had finished my classics; and I studied French, Spanish, Italian and German, under native teachers. Afterwards, I pursued the Portuguese, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Welsh, Gælic, Celtic. I then ventured on further east into the Russian empire; and the Sclavonic opened to me about a dozen of the languages spoken in that vast domain, between which the affinity is as marked as that between the Spanish and Portuguese. Besides these, I have attended to many different European dialects still in vogue. I am now trying to push on eastward as fast as my means will permit, hoping to discover still farther analogies among the oriental languages which will assist my progress. I must now close

His home was now upon the rose,
And now the clover vields her stores;
And then again far, far away,
He swept the air as if in play;
Ever going, returning still,

He lighted on a Daffodil,

Which to the air its beauties spread
Where close a Fly-Trap rear'd her head.
FLY-TRAP.

Why shunneth me the Butterfly?
BUTTERFLY.

Miss Trap, I do not wish to die.
FLY-TRAP.

Oh do not, do not think that 1
Would ever kill a Butterfly!
For Hornets, Wasps and busy Bees-
My leaflets crush but only these.
My sweets are all reserved for you
To taste--

BUTTERFLY.

Can I believe you true?
FLY-TRAP.

Believe me? Light you on my leaf,
And from my love you'll learn belief-
I'll rock you lightly in the sun,
And wedded joys, then but begun,
Shall only end when wintry weather
Blasts Fly and Fly-Trap both together.
The foolish Fly believed her true,
Then from his perch he quickly flew,
But found, too late, a smile deceives-
To death was crush'd within her leaves!

The Poet saw his death, and then
In haste he seized his ready pen
To all the world the deed to show,
And tack the follow'ng moral to:

SPARKS THAT MAY KINDLE.

The Spirit of true Scholarship.

Yet

them. Nay, they strangle the most of us. he whom Nature hath made a worthy scholar, and to whom the right spirit has been given, be he sunken never so deep in these oppresive waters, by Your true scholar is a great rarity. Nature a native subtleness and upward pressure, emerges, laboreth long to produce such an one, and after and rises to his own pure element. The waves many ineffectual strivings and rude abortions, gives reach not him. Their roar is far below. He birth to one in an age--a world's wonder. Let us cares not to pamper the body. Like Erasmus, contemplate this strange genesis, and inquire, his first want is books; then if he has money left, whence, and of what temper and elements it is, he will buy clothes. Pulse and spring water, a and by what it is differenced from other men, and rude pallet and a maple dish are fare and furniture stands thus aloof. It is neither his arrogance nor enough for him, who has fellowship with heroes our servile fear that has placed him above the rest and sages, who provides no expensive entertainof us; but his native hugeness of stature over-ments for the living, but himself feeds on the shadows us, and we reverence. We are of the treasured wisdom of the dead. He does not need earth; we creep along its surface; our sight is a garnished house, and a costly retinue. He would obstructed by its hills and mists. He is a clear be himself a fit dwelling for the spirit of divine intelligence; he partakes of the heavenly; in him wisdom, and has in the power of his knowledge all reside swiftness and strength; he overtops the the principles of nature, as handmaids richly and mountains, and far above the cloud region breathes spontaneously ministering to his wants. He dethe pure ether. Yet we do not worship. He is sires not the commendation of the unthinking; for only our taller brother. The same spark is in us he is not of them. To the cheers or censures of We may one day take long strides like him. the multitude he gives no heed, for he is of that noble society, selected from the generous and the

too.

The Spirit of the True Scholar is a Self-denying just, the heroic and devoted, the pure and wise of

Spirit.

all ages, who have been martyrs for the right, and who have mused in silence, in obscurity, in scorn, on the beauty and excellence of truth, till the flame has been kindled in them, and burned on consuming and inextinguishable.

God hath not given to every man to possess and enjoy all things. Nature is never prodigal of her favors. He may be rich, if he will, or learned, or in honor, or indolent, but not all and at once. The The Power that made man, has subjected him to same sun that ripens the cotton plant, scorches the toil. "By the sweat of thy brow," is the perpetual grass. One tree bears oranges, another the bread decree. The treasures that we covet, lie not upon fruit; but no one both. Man may choose what he the surface. Gems are in mines. The pearl dwells will be, and then by a laborious paying of the price many fathoms down in the bosom of the sea. Truth which necessity exacts, he shall become that thing too has her secret veins, which the rustic treads on he has chosen. Would he be rich, then he shall daily and unwittingly. She lies in a deep well, to work with callous hands, rise with the lark, feed whose bottom only the stars look. He who searches scantily, save odds and ends, and suffer all the ills for her with idle curiosity or vacant stare will not of poverty. Or grasping at stocks, become the find her. She does not come in dreams. The associate and friend of the knave and outlaw, and scholar girds himself with a deliberate purpose. the worn hat and threadbare coat will be an emblem Whatever is needful he does, and shrinks from no of the leanness that is within. But the end is discipline. He plods, delves, watches; he walks, sure. He will be rich. He has chosen his part, which, as the laws of nature are certain," shall not be taken from him." Yet this man can not become wise, or honored, or beloved.

Such is our weakness that the visible excludes the ideal. Gold and silver take, in the judgments of men, the precedence of the riches that are in the intellect of men. The voice of applauding multitudes is louder and more persuasive than the low, quiet broodings of the affections. A place in a faction is more desirable than in the immortal brotherhood of the good and wise.

runs, waits. Thankfully he receives the sudden light of an inspiration, or patiently spells out the mystic characters in which nature's laws are written.

---

The Spirit of the True Scholar is a Sincere Spirit.

It has no sympathy with error, it disdains falsehood, it despises and defies deceit. Truth is its element, its life. It loves the light, and walks forth boldly in it, that itself may be seen, and that it may see all things.

The true scholar must be sincere not only in word and action, but in purpose and thought. Yet all these influences of sense, and custom, There must be no seeming in him; cant, hypocrisy and conventional judgment, which so temptingly and pretension are alien from his nature. He deallure all men, must the lover of true wisdom forego, sires that only which truly is. The false shows of and reject. They encumber and stifle him. Py- things, which dazzle and blind, have no charm for thons are they, which need a Hercules to strangle him. He aims at a real knowledge and substan

tial worth. He has to do with substance and heart. | right measure, it holds fast what it loves. TransForms have no value for him who would apprehend parent too is it, with that liquid clearness in which the "inwardness of all secrets." He who would the sunlight detects no floating mote or staining be initiated in the hidden doctrine and rites of Eleu- vapor. sis, must present himself, as with a cleansed body so with a sincere mind, without doubt or mistrust, The Sprit of the True Scholar is a Solitary Spirit. hoping and looking with single aim for the wisdom Doubtless he who looks aright for wisdom may that is to be revealed. So the student who would find it everywhere. Her lessons are written on all enter the temple of truth, and behold with his own material things, and are interwoven with the whole eyes the mysteries of nature, must pass on with fabric of society. The true scholar learns not less that sincerity of heart which alone can give a serene from nature, and from his own experience of life, purpose and a resolute step. The crackling salt, than from books, "which are the records of other offered with honest hands, shall be a more odorous men's lives." Men talk much of the beauties of offering than Sabæan spices. If the heartless lover nature, wherewith boys and maidens are often in who vows adoration to his mistress while he wor- raptures. Yet these beauties are of too fine esships only her gold, is justly spurned, and loses sence to be discerned by gross and vulgar spirits, both his mistress and his gold; much more he who and lie too deep hidden to be reached by the frivoseeks an unearthly and spiritual good with low lous and unthinking. Invested with this beauty, views and an earthly heart, shall find himself per- and veiled by it to the common eye, lie, still unpetually balked and diappointed. There is here no derneath, the laws and lessons of wisdom. Into room for paltering, and double dealing. Every this realm, only the true scholar may enter. The man gets what he deserves, not what he would harmony of the spheres is his familiar music. The seem to deserve. The lust of gold, however dis-power of elemental numbers, none else can underguised, cannot win wisdom, nor can the desire of stand. The secret workings of life are in some mere dignities, or that shameless passion which degree disclosed to him, and the mysterious affinity seeks only popular applause: nay, they are dull which makes man a brother to the clod. In the orbs, ever near and impenetrable, which stand for- loneliness of nature he is not alone. The trees, ever between the soul's eye and the sun of truth. winds, waters, all have a voice. "Airy tongues Is there one who loves truth, and seeks after wis- that syllable" are no longer a poetic fiction. The dom? to whom they are in themselves more pre- very shapes of what seems dead are emblems, and cious than gold and gems, priceless as light and the gift of insight is bestowed on him. the stars, more sustaining and comforting than the balsams of human affection and regard? Let him thank God, and take courage. That he desireth, he shall yet have. He has now the key that unlocks every ward. His vision is already purged, that, in due time, he may gaze on the transcendent brightness. As the tree by its subtle alchemy rejects all noxious and pestilent exhalations, and transmutes the impalpable air into veined leaves, and spreading branches, and a solid trunk, so does the sincere scholar, refusing error and deceit, breathe only the pure air of truth, and is quickened in every impulse and affection by its living energy.

Nor less does he gain from every hour of contact with social life. Every man he meets becomes his teacher, alike the wise man and the fool, the toll gatherer and the chance wayfarer. In the market place and the court room, the shop of the artisan and the hall of debate, the church, the funeral, the wedding, the christening, in every bargain and sale, in every theatre, caucus and mob, wherever man is and acts, there is his study. The kindling eye, the hasty word, the rude gesture, the clumsy attitude of the rustic, and the swagger of the bully, each tells him something. Every social assembly is a museum of choice specimens, labelled and ticketed, and offered to the inspection of all who think it worth their while to study them. The

The sincerity of the true scholar is no ordinary attainment. It must be unmingled and undefiled; not merely a single purpose, not one strain however ungrateful yielding to necessity, the struggle melodious-but the consent of all the harmonies of his being; nor yet a rainbow union, where each hue is diverse while all are blended, but that perfect intermingling in which every separate color is lost in the pure whiteness of their combination. To such an one science reveals itself as to a favorite son. That which others grope for is plain to him. He enters the labyrinth with a clue that shall never mislead.

against want, the conferring a favor, all the actions indeed of daily intercourse, teach us effectually lessons, which, when we read them in books, we always forget.

In the scenes of nature and the hurrying tide of society, the scholar is still solitary. The learning goes on in the depths of his own mind, and the bystander sees nothing of it. Inferences, analogies, causes, effects, are a portion of the brood that are This sincerity involves a judgment of the heart hourly begotten, and every sight multiplies itself. no less than of the head. It is a moral apprecia- into manifold new phenomena and relations. The tion. Simple in itself, it loves simplicity and pu- business of the throng around is no hindrance or rity. Understanding values, and, judging by a disturbance. Archimedes could continue his de