We are assembled, my friends, on one of those occasions which all good men approve, and upon which they assume that God himself smiles with favour and encouragement. We are this day assembled, to plant the seedling of a tree whose fruits are to be gathered by posterity. Our children are to rejoice in its shadow; its odours shall refresh their senses; its fruitage is to bring solace to their souls. They will gladden in its growth; grow happy as it spreads in foliage; grow wise in virtue as they gather in its golden harvests. These are decreed to nourish their souls with thought and contemplation; to enrich their lives with goodness; to strengthen and endow their minds with the most precious of all mortal knowledge. The hands which shall plant this tree; the benevolence which hath conceived it, the bounty which shall water it, the loving care which shall foster and protect it; are all of a sort to claim kindred with that Divine Benevolence which hath graciously planted a whole world for the blessing and the benefit of man, and is, we believe, never better satisfied with its work, than when he is eager to reap and gather all that is good and grateful in its productions, during the progress of the successive seasons.

All labours of unselfish affection, and of unforced benevolence, my friends, carry with them a Divine sanction. They are all so many demonstrations of our fond, though inferior efforts, after a Divine example. He who plants a tree beneath whose boughs he himself can never expect to obtain shelter—of whose fruits he himself can not hope to partake—hath done a work over which the good angels clap their hands in approbation. By such performance, he hath shown himself superior to the obtrusive tendencies of self—he hath shown himself worthily superior to the vulgar necessities and appetites of earth. Nor shall he fail of his fruits also, though he may gather none directly from the little seedling which his benevolence hath hidden away in the ground for the benefit of other generations. He who plants for the future, plants for himself in the future, and shall live by the very fruits with which he fills the mouths of others. It is decreed that the good which lies in our performances, shall, in some way, enure to our own health, stature and happiness—shall, in some way, receive compensative blessings from the great benefactor of mankind. If our lips taste nothing of their Page 160 →mortal fruits, from the bounties which we set to grow in earth, our souls shall be fed, on a superior inheritance of fruits, in a world where the soul alone is decreed to seek for food. There shall be golden apples of eternal sweetness, for the hungering appetites of those who have shown themselves with souls full of a loving sympathy for posterity. There shall be fountains of immortality gushing forth always, in the cool shades and valleys of eternity, to cheer and succour, and sustain and nourish, the thirsting affections of him who hath shown love and good will to man on earth. And man himself will bless; and, long seasons after, when the mortal benefactor shall have disappeared from mortal eyes—when his presence shall no longer challenge mortal regard or gratitude—the voluntary tributes of a grateful future shall do homage to his memory. His name shall be a spell to waken loving senses to attention. His noble charities shall be followed by glowing eulogies from genial lips. His grave shall be crowned with the tribute of perpetual flowers from duteous hands. The aged will bring their young to the place where he sleeps, and shall tutor their infant souls with the sweet and saving lessons of a loving veneration. The widowed mother shall gently lead the only hope of her lonely years, to the spot, and train its young knees to bend in prayer and blessing beside the grave of her unknown benefactor. He, with an eye ranging far beyond the provinces of mortal time, has considered, long before its birth, the great wants, of soul, mind and affections, of that infant nurseling. A holy foresight hath possessed his thought, before the cloud veil of eternity had passed between his senses and the earth. He hath blessed the child with his bounty, even in the womb of its mother—in the womb of unborn generations.

He hath said, in his secret heart—“These children are so many heirs of God—are so many seedlings of immortality; and God, in crowning me with wealth, hath made me his almoner. Shall I not care for his children; for these seedlings of immortality?” They must be trained, duly and heedfully, for the eternal destiny which awaits them. They must be rendered worthy of that high communion with divine aspects, and blessing and beautiful intelligences, which throng to welcome them to the green pastures of the good shepherd.

Yet, ere they can hope for this, they are destined for perilous trials, and terrible temptations, and an ordeal under which the feeble, unsuccoured nature must always sink. They must be strengthened for the trial, for this fiery ordeal, that may consume where its purpose is to purify. There will throng about the footsteps of these dear children, day and night, a thousand hostile and cruel spirits, the sworn subjects of the Prince and Powers of the Air! They will fasten upon the young heart of the child, like so many wolves, raging, ravening, forever seeking to devour. They will insidiously awaken and pamper into authority all the instinct lusts and appetites in the bosom, until these, too, shall become ravening wolves, that demand forever the sacrifice of innocent victims to the passions. These hostile spirits will crowd about the soul, in the guise of innocent affections, tastes Page 161 →and sympathies, and lure it on, through a glozing pathway, seemingly all sweets and flowers, until they beguile it to the sudden brink of the horrid precipice, and hurl it down forever.

This is a terrible history. One of the few histories that we know to be true. You are all so many living witnesses of its truth. Your eyes have seen the actors in this fearful drama, moving on to this catastrophe, under this glozing and insidious guidance, as certainly as if chained to the car of fate, and borne to ruin without will or power of their own. Your ears have all heard the cry of some despairing soul, plunging down into the rayless abysses of gloom and terror—a single cry of a mortal agony from its quivering lips, as it goes from sight—a howl, rather than shriek or cry—giving forth but the one awful syllable of despair—“Lost! Lost! Lost!”—as it plunges down into that horrid abode of immortal agony—over the portals of which, Dante, in his fearful vision, read the inscription, in characters of living fire—“Lasciate ob ni speranza, voich’ entrate!”—“Leave hope behind, all ye who enter here!”

The benevolent man—he who would be the true benefactor of his species—broods over this terrible danger with the perpetual question, “How shall we save all these young souls from this fate—from these fearful and subtle spirits—these forever-haunting emissaries of the enemy of man—this awful power of evil—which is yet the necessary foil of good; in the triumphant wrestle with which alone can virtue realize her better destinies?”

There is but one answer:

We must furnish better spirits for their communion. We must pre-occupy the young soul with good tenants, who shall man and guard all its avenues, and keep out all assailants, with the shield of virtue and the spear of wisdom. The angels of love, and faith, and truth, virtue and intelligence, must be made to garrison the youthful heart, until its own wisdom shall become equal to its own defence. They must be made to seize upon the infant instincts, and regulate all their earliest impulses and cravings—to leash in the fiery passions, even as we halter the wild horse—until they shall learn to submit patiently to the curbs of discipline, and work only in obedience to the gospel law of righteousness.

These agents are to do yet more. They are not only to train and tutor the instincts, and to subdue the passions to docility—they are to train thought itself in the right direction, the only goal of which is truth. They are to give light and air and exercise to the infant germ of reason, so that it shall gradually develop, through the agency of fancy, curiosity, enthusiasm and a generous ambition, that seeks development only, into the glorious flower of a pure and powerful mind! And this duty involves the necessity of employing gratefully, and exercising duly, something more than that naked and cheerless faculty, which we improperly describe as reason. The taste, the fancies, the imagination, the sympathies and affections, these are the essential properties of a noble intellect, demanding much Page 162 →more care in cultivation than the one bald faculty to which they are the absolute wings and soul and spirit, without which the reason would be marrowless and purposeless, and a mere fraud upon humanity. They are especially to study and discover what is peculiar in the endowments of the individual—by which, indeed, he is an individual—his secret motor and use—so that they may address to each the particular influence, argument and practice which are best calculated fully to develop this individuality.

And this is the vital duty of education, in its highest sense, as the great agent for all moral purposes. For it is one of the most beautiful and wonderful of all the designs of God, in the creation of man, that he has invariably individualized his subject creatures, each with a nature peculiar to himself, which markedly separates him from his fellow. The infinite variety of nature, shown every where, in all her works and attributes—“which nothing seems to stale”—is no where more surprisingly displayed than in the infinite diversity of traits, in mind and body, which are exhibited among men. As there are no two trees alike in the same forest—no two leaves alike on the same tree—so no two children are wholly alike, whatever their general resemblance, though sprung from the same parents, and trained up under the same paternal authority. It is accordingly, in the training of these thousand exquisite diversities of temperament, character, susceptibility and force, that education becomes so equally difficult and essential—that we require so many good angels, each having different offices, to take possession of the hearts of our young, and assist us in protecting and strengthening them against those forces of evil which find young passions and appetites such ready auxiliaries in the overthrow of the very citadel they are appointed to sustain.

It is happy for us, my friends, that the simple need of this succour, once felt and urged with honest prayer and faith, is always sure to receive it; so that the benevolent man, when he endows the institution which is dedicated to the just training and development of infant humanity, does not simply bestow his wealth—does not simply erect a temple and decorate a shrine! He calls down, by the simple act of endowment, legions of bright angels from Heaven, to take possession of, and to protect it. Is this mere fancy and figure? Not so, if you believe that God takes the same interest in the affairs of earth that he did five thousand years ago—not if you believe that the well being and virtue, the blessing and the just performances of men, are as precious in the sight of the Creator as our scriptures teach us. To the cold and callous nature, feeding on clay, sworn to sensual delights only, all this seems mere dream and delusion. We see no angels thus busied in our ministry. We recognize no angelic harpings—hear no oracular voices. All of our associations are of the earth and earthy, and we regard the vulgar reason which devotes herself to our daily necessities—the mere scullion of the household—as the simple, sole authority, to whose counsels we should defer, and whose ministry alone we must acknowledge. And, with the eye of reason only, we Page 163 →behold none of these gracious and saving intelligences. But neither do we see the Prince and Powers of the Air, Lucifer and his subtle satellites, though they, too, are here, as every where, busy in sapping the foundations and scaling the battlements of our eternal Hope!

I have a more grateful, though you may call it a transcendental faith. I believe that even as these hostile spirits are busy in the subversion of all human structures, which contemplate the gradual elevation of the man to the heights of hope and promise which constitute our moral, social and intellectual ideals; from the very moment of the erection of the sacred fabric, even at that very moment, do the celestial champions of Heaven descend for its protection! More gather the angelic hosts of virtue, no less eager, ready, vigilant and powerful, than those malignant spirits that labor in the cause of evil. Michael stands in panoply of perfect mail at the portal, and confronts the bitter enemy with the spear of Ithuriel. He clothes the passions in the golden armour of Discipline, and times their march to action by the musical cadences of order and obedience. Gabriel arrays the host by means of veteran aids who have fought a thousand battles with the same ancient enemy—Virtue, Prudence, Zeal, Innocence, Truth and Reason—glorious cadets, whom no enemy has yet had the skill to circumvent; while Raphael, the soul succourer, sounding his golden trumpet, wings the glad spirit onward, with a divine enthusiasm, in its march upwards, to those glorious heights of equal sovereignty and security, where the man himself, his full powers all developed, becomes in turn an angel; and hosts, besides, each having different duties, all of which contemplate different natures and necessities in man, follow in the train of these, for the strength, the succour, the elevation and the blessing of that favorite race, for which the Deity has declared a destiny, the happy realization of which is the true aim of all human education.

These minister in turn to our tastes, our fancies, our sympathies, our passions, as needfully as to our sovereign reason. Some pass into and possess themselves of the heart, that lake of fire in which the passions and affections find their life and glow. Others make their way to the brain, which is the seat and throne of the intellect; while others again, to whom these are equally tributary, glide into the soul, which is the winged and ethereal element in our humanity. These are all tributaries, loving counsellors and assistants, in every work which contemplates the good of man. They are bound, by inevitable conditions of their office, to obey, in co-operation with the more lowly agents, whom man assigns to the same service; and we no sooner build the altar to Truth, Virtue, Education, or Religion, than hosts of pure and powerful spirits descend to bless and cherish it. They come to the succour of Priests and Teachers. Insensibly, perhaps, they help to render the young mind susceptible to its lessons. They unite with us in the consecration of the Temple. Their voices advocate our prayers. Their harpings help onward the feeble music of our chaunt to celestial senses; and on their lips, Page 164 →no less than ours, the name of such a man as Wofford becomes synonymous with Benefactor.

Do not suppose me extravagant in these fancies. Ordinarily, we take but a mean view of the necessities, objects and essentials of education. We do not, in the first place, contemplate properly its aim. Our highest uses regard only the mind’s exercise and activity. But, education properly considered, is the source of all religion. It is false and fraudulent if it does not contemplate the final destiny, the whole career, and the due exercise of all the faculties of man. It should have heed equally to his passions and affections, his sympathies and tastes, his moral and physical virtues, as well as to his brain and intellect. These, for the due exercise of either, require to be developed together. Nor must we lose sight of, or treat with indifference, a single faculty of the subject. It is not for us to bold slightly any of the powers or qualities in the individual man, though society may not recognize their proper uses. We are to take these for granted. The talents, few or many, high or humble, must be put to proper interest. We can ignore none of them with safety. When the scriptures report to you the parable of “the talents,” they really speak of the faculties. These constitute the peculiar moral capital with which each man enters the world.—These we are required to cultivate to the utmost stretch of our capacity; and we are not to ask in what degree they are estimated by society. Society may suppose that it has no use for Priest, Poet, Orator, or Statesman. We know that society too frequently treats their several missions with indifference, if not contempt. But God has use for them, and his endowment of each, with his peculiar faculty, implies a trust for proper exercise; and without this exercise of the individual faculty, the soul never finds development. Education, accordingly, is the thorough tillage of the soul, as well as the affections and the intellect. If we believe this, shall we wonder or doubt that God, whose ministers are made

“To speed

And post o’er land and ocean without rest,”

should vouchsafe us myriads of bright angels that lend their succor in aid of priest and professor, counsellor and teacher? If we keep in mind his supposed objects in our creation—the high destiny which he contemplates for us—the high rank among animals which we already hold—his own wisdom and benevolence—it will be easy to conceive the presence and continued succor of a host of glorious allies, guarding all the avenues of the heart, solicitous of all the powers of the mind, bringing wings to the soul, and watchful of every faculty, however insignificant in our eyes, with which the Deity has thought proper to endow the man.

It is of vast importance to the education of society at large, that this doctrine should be recognized in all its extent. We are but too much in the habit of Page 165 →treating with scorn those qualities of the mind which are exercised especially in behalf of the soul; to regard only those as necessary and useful which contemplate our mere social prosperity—which lead to affluence, social power, or merely individual ambition. And these standards we reconcile, after a strange fashion, with an avowal of religion—of the religion of Christ, who specially teaches that these very things are to be held in scorn! Honoring them, in his spite, we reject with scorn the more sacred endowments. How shall we insolently presume upon God’s favour, whatever our prayers, purifications, lustrations or ovations—our grand rites, or common daily services—if we yet neglect to put to use a single faculty, however humble, however little it may promise for profit or aggrandizement, which he has confided to us for exercise and just development? How say to him, “This faculty is surplusage. We better know our true wants than Him who made us!” Yet these faculties, thus ignored, had probably been the very ones which might have saved the great nation from overthrow and ruin.

And how vast and various are these faculties, many of which society leaves unused, or totally unvalued. How little does the farmer, after a thousand years of labor in the field, know of the art which he professes. How merely mechanical is the routine drudgery of his life. Even as a farmer, with all his experience, the higher faculties of thought, essential to his occupation, remain undeveloped; hence he makes no progress. And, consider—to indicate the higher social standpoint from which you are to survey the subject of education—consider for a moment, what comprehensive and general powers must unite in the formation of a great poet, philosopher, orator, statesman, or discoverer of any description.—Think of the training and exercise necessary for the development of the grand total of the endowments, in either of these great teachers of mankind. Imagination, reason, the habit of thought, the suggestive fancy, the curious and restless tendency to search, the free command of language, the faculty of keenest observation, the nice discriminating judgment, the large experience, the perpetual aim or purpose, fixed and definite; the knowledge of the universal humanity; every pulse, every passion of the human heart; every secret and motive of society. To teach these their due play and exercise—to train the tastes, to guide the study, coerce the industry to the desire for these acquisitions; to warm and stimulate the energies; to make them urgent and steady, and so regulate them as that thought shall become the habitual, not the eccentric exercise of the mind. These are all essential requisites of the great master in any of the departments—these make, of the great teacher, a philosopher—perhaps, the most grand and noble, as the most really useful, of all the benefactors in the world.

Let us linger for a few moments in the survey of that province over which such a philosopher should have control, and for whose succour, in the proper government of which, as I contend, God vouchsafes heavenly auxiliaries, benign spirits, angelic visitants, that strive forever against the agencies of evil, for the Page 166 →full possession of that much beleagured empire, the heart, the brain, the soul of man, leaving none without divine support, in the great conflict of humanity for life! Could we lay these bare to examination, even as the anatomist lays bare the nerves, the bones, the arteries—could we see, in its secret recesses, the tangled thought, the wandering affections, the restless eagerness and discontent of this eager and longing soul—could we trace the purposes of the one, the weaknesses of the other, the yearnings of the last; hear their secret moans as well as their open merriment—their sighs as well as songs—their agonies of doubt, as well as the shouts of their impulsive rapture; watch the progress of that pioneer Imagination which guides them all—going before Thought and Purpose, even as the fiery column, alternating with pitchy darkness, led the way for the wandering Israelites through the wilderness; note the capricious play of that Fancy, which cheers the pathway, even as a bird that flits along beside us from thicket to thicket, singing as she goes; watch the first flights of that soul, which, through all passions and impediments, under this guidance, still longs to strive upwards ever and win the empyrean; could we behold all this progress, of what lives and struggles in the nature of living man, then, and then only, might we fully comprehend and appreciate the wide, the various uses, the singular difficulties, and the grand ennobling necessities of education. But thought fails in the pursuit, study falters in the search, and language limps in the vain effort to describe the curious and complex processes. We may only hope to conceive the fullness and variety of the subject through the means of metaphor and figure. Let us try to do so.

I have, my friends, just returned from a visit to your own glorious mountain region of the Apalachian; and this journey, by the way, must furnish my apology for the short comings of this oration—must plead to you for its imperfections—as it must certainly fail equally to meet your expectations and my own standards. It has been written almost along the roadside, in a few brief hours of interval snatched from a painful labor, and under constant interruption.

I have made the pilgrimage to the waters of the beautiful Keowee, whose grateful murmur, like a voice of love calling in the wilderness, has come to my ears with a sweet melancholy, reminding me touchingly of Martha Calhoun, that noble young creature, the model of womanly strength and grace, cut off in the middle of her day, under whose grateful auspices, in whose sweet companionship, I had once hoped to make this pilgrimage!—I have penetrated the beautiful valley of Jocassee—a spot worthy of its musical Indian name—a nestling place among the mountains for brooding hearts and warm romantic sympathies—scooped exquisitely out of the bosom of a rugged empire, as if to prepare for the reception of some gushing human fountain. I toiled up the kindred mountains over difficult pathways, obscurely traced out along the brink of great abysses. I lingered beside and beneath the rolling and rushing torrent of the White Water, and grew thoughtful as I watched the glorious play of the living sun-bow, arching Page 167 →its awful chasms with light and beauty. Through tangled thickets, massed valleys of laurel, we plunged forward till we passed into the delicious valley of the Cashiers, and toiled up the steep battlements of the mighty Whiteside mountain.

Thence I beheld billowy ranges of tower and cliff and crag, ridge over ridge, vale succeeding vale, green forests crowning their blue summits, far, far away, in the infinite distance—a realm spread out like the sea, vast as its circumference, irregular as its billows—a wonderful illusion of the ocean, without bound or limit save in the faculty of vision itself—all finally wrapped at last, in the grey mists and fleecy robes of the ethereal distance. And the wild gusts shook the lofty forest tops in the deep gorges: and rolled up in storm to the steadfast summits; and the storm cloud hurled its bolts of fire across the hollows; and the thunder roared against the heights, and a nameless Terror brooded along the impending cliffs, as if meditating the awful plunge below.

And, as I gazed, a mighty image arose before my soul’s vision—and I beheld the mysterious mother, Nature herself, throned in her tangled sovereignty of waste; wild torrents roaring around her; great winds swaying her solemn forests into music, the tumults of which, while they raised the choir of storm into sublimity, did not impair its awful symphonies. These were her voices—voices of moaning and complaint—for in all her grandeur there was gloom; and the desolation of her state rendered valueless all her profligate wilderness of wealth. Her voices of cataract and storm were calling upon art for succour and deliverance. She was imploring man—he to whom all her empire was decreed—to come to her assistance. He alone could open the pathways to her Empire and make it fruitful. She needed his pioneer to trace out the avenues to her grand abodes—to grade her summits; to span the gulfs with his arches; to render safe the march along the stupendous precipices. She needed his industry to lay bare the tangled wastes of valley beneath her heights, and to clothe their bosoms in yellow harvests, ripening in a generous sun for the scythe of autumn. She demanded of him the art which should strew her highway with flowers; which should make her crags blossom with the rose—which should crown her ledges with noble architecture—which should raise her statues of living marble out of the massed stolidity of her now cold and silent rocks. Melancholy in her glorious solitude; gloomy in all her grandeur; Nature was thus crying out everywhere for the succour and the help of man—for that culture of art, which should soothe, with the sweets of Beauty, her dark, and terrible, and sterile aspects.

And thus, in the same sterile, irregular, tangled condition—a wild sovereignty of gloom and thicket—the great soul of Humanity cries aloud to Education for her rescue. Education bears the same relation to Humanity that culture does to nature. Education is culture. In both cases the necessity is to remove the undergrowth, to clear the way for progress, to level obstructions; to crown with fruitfulness the great valleys which now lie waste; to open up the beauty, Page 168 →the nobleness, the symmetry and the grandeur of the prospect; so that all that is good and worthy, pure and sweet, elevated and symmetrical, shall have due development; so that all that is susceptible of growth and improvement, whether in the wild domain of nature, or in the tangled ignorance and profligate excess of humanity, shall be duly brought forth, and a full opportunity afforded, in either case, for making the subject, the pure and perfect creature, which it was decreed to be by Heaven.

In the nature of man, even as in the realm of nature, the pathways are to be laid open to otherwise inaccessible heights, through mazy and interminable wastes of thicket. The heart is to be weeded of all dangerous and poisonous growths of foliage; and plants of healing, and flowers of beauty, are to be set to grow in their places. Fields of production must succeed to the profitless undergrowth of weed and fungus; and thought, without impediment, must be taught to rise to the heights of vision, from whence the soul shall be able to behold all the glories and beauties of its world, the world around it, and the world above. In these progresses, Education unfolds to the individual his own pioneer faculties; his own secret resources, which conduct through discovery to art. He finds with what wondrous talents the Deity has endowed him, for the conquest of the universal nature; what wondrous faculties of conversion, as well as of conquest, are confided to his hands; how easy is it to subdue the wild, to cultivate the barren, to make the empire of beauty second to that of terror.

And, even as the wild beast lurks in the mazy realms of swamp and thicket; as the wolf howls beside the close of the squatter; as the panther screams from his mountain-top; and the rattlesnake and adder crawl and crouch, ready with deadly fang, beneath the bush, or the slivered boulder; so lurk the wolves of passion and hate, the fanged vipers of cunning, and falsehood, and suspicion, and fraud, in the secret places of the human heart. These too, their expulsion, their destruction, constitute the great duties of education, even as cultivation is needed in the domain of nature for opening her treasures to humanity, and shaping for utility and art the resources of her abundant empire.

The world has always, to a certain degree, been conscious of the primary necessity of education. Man, by nature, is a self-educating animal; his self-development being determined in its rapidity, by the circumstances, the pressure and the necessities of his situation. That he can rise to these necessities, and from his own resources of thought, provide for the encounter with external pressure, is in proof of his superior destiny. Education is, indeed, the first necessity of human society. Its convictions, on this head, is coeval with the first step of society to improvement. The moment that man felt the necessity for building himself a shelter, finding clothing against cold, shelter from heat, building walls for protection against a foe, he began to take lessons in art, which were all so many lessons for his own education. Education was coeval with the first advances of Page 169 →man to association. Without it there was no society. There could be none. Education implied law as well as art. Until these were secured, man was but a brute individual—a mere animal; and so he continued, until he began to exhibit his own cravings after knowledge, and to develop the secret forces of his own nature, by which he was to control, to subdue and to cultivate, the resources of the natural world. In progress as this was achieved, did his own mental and moral world develop also. It is, accordingly, a merely brutal condition of humanity, which finds a people wholly unexercised in the elevated and inspiring duties; which, exercising the race in the appointed tasks of conquest, and conversion, in respect to other races, and to the material world in which it lives, as naturally effects its own self-elevation, and the gradual conversion of humanity into a thing of soul and immortality. Where society fails in these duties, a natural deficiency of resource must be implied; where this deficiency of faculty exhibits itself for any length of time, it is in proof that the race is of simply pioneer character, like our redmen, having only a certain limited career of performance assigned them, and destined, in process of time, to disappear, and give place to superior races; or where, as in the case of the African, the intellect is too low and inert for self-performance and expansion, and is decreed to receive all its impulse to development, in that degree of which it is susceptible, from the coercive rule of a conqueror and master. With people destined for any progress whatsoever, education is the only and the grand agency, including schools which contemplate the equal necessities of the soul, the affections and the intellect.

But the plastic and highly susceptible nature of man, stimulated by curiosity, eager with impulse, with a thousand pathways opening before his footsteps on every hand, a thousand avenues leading to pleasures of taste and appetite, reminds us that education may develop mischievously one class of his faculties to the total subversion of another—may lift his inferior nature into authority, and overthrow the nobler endowments which have been accorded him. Perhaps, if we could rightly examine the curious minutiae of such a history, we should really discover that this was the very error lying at the bottom of all the mischiefs of the world.

The instincts of the world, as declared by its various efforts, discover the right direction in the matter, have shown that such was its misgiving. Accordingly, all the great nations of the earth, in degree as they have advanced in knowledge and power, have exhibited an earnest solicitude in behalf of the proper sort of education—the problem of most importance and difficulty, where the phases of simple truth are so mysterious and contradictory. With all our acquisitions of art, science, wisdom, learning and power, we may still give a wrong direction to the human heart and intellect, which shall impair the powers and diminish the resources of the individual, and possibly inflict the worst evils on society at large, wherever he may happen to attain authority among his people. We read this Page 170 →result of ill-education in all the histories of all the nations; but education is itself, a self-repairer, and they are all working onward to the true; and as evil is necessarily of temporary action and effect, so have we a sure guaranty for the gradual correction of error, and the steady, clear progress of man towards the truth. We are not to be discouraged if the progress is slow, and if defeat is frequent. Our instincts lead to perseverance. Education itself implies it. The world still strives, in spite of all its disappointments, resulting from, and in changed conditions, and the transfer of power from one region to another. The something gained by each generation, is usually retained for the benefit of a more fortunate posterity. The remarkable examples of Greece and Rome, in ancient periods; of France, Germany and Great Britain in modern, will suffice for reference. In all these, there has been a wonderful coincidence of method in the matter of education—without any concert of design, especially in the promotion of the grand essentials, for procuring discipline—always the first necessity; for tasking and exercising memory; for compelling the exercise of reflection; for grounding the mind in laws; for instilling the assured experiences of time; and for making thought, with all its tributary energies of curiosity, observation and memory, aided by its natural endowments of imagination, fancy, causality, comparison—a perpetual seeker after truth, wisdom, virtue and justice—the grand ends contemplated by education. In these labours we are familiar with the results which have been attained by these several nations. We behold them in their gradual rise to eminent power and majesty—in their spread of empire; in their acquisition of treasure; in the development of their glorious arts. We read them in the biographies of their remarkable men—the great shining lights of time, the models, the examples of virtue, philosophy, heroism; in their arts and sciences, to which we address the eyes of our young, and by which we fondly endeavor to guide their uncertain footsteps.

Amidst all their diversities of plan, involving, no doubt, many and serious mistakes, we are encouraged, as we see what have been the fruits of their several systems; as we trace the several grand progresses of human civilization. We see the working, to one benignant result, in the great names and achievements of our own people—in the wise foresight of our own great statesmen, achieving a social and patriotic organization, for which more famous nations have striven in vain; in the vigorous growth of our infant art and literature; in the spread of a superior and beautiful Christian morality, which acts as the great regulating agency of the intellectual performer. All of these progresses, in our case, are briefly the results of the accumulated experiences of humanity, in mental and moral training, of six thousand years of aggregated society. We have simply brought to bear, upon our peculiar exigencies, the wisdom of the past; and have, happily, adapted the lessons of older nations—lessons of defeat as well as triumph—to the conditions of a new empire. And we have done so, somewhat because of the fact that Page 171 →our empire was a new one, in which we were enabled to strip law and education of the conventional trappings and artifices of an old and corrupting social organization.

This was much, but we have more to do; more to learn; and, in addition, have not only to correct our own mistakes, and purge our own excesses, but to rise to the appreciation of higher standards than we now possess; higher aims—such as are still lacking to place us in equal eminence with some of the ancient nations. We are quite too tolerant of our teachers. The necessities of a new condition, such as ours, are naturally apt to be slavish and inferior. We are required to watch closely and work rigorously, lest it become more so. We narrow our province of education, too much, down to its merely mechanical, or, at best, social exactions. We have yet to learn that society itself, is too much, everywhere, a creature of slavish conditions; and that one of the most important purposes of individual education is, through him, the elevation of society, in accordance with the standards of the individual. The education of the individual has lifted him into the wondrous creature of strength, and soul, and aim, and aspiration, that here and there, in all lands, we find him, and his uses are in the gradual training of society to the just appreciation of his morale. We must not suffer our vanities to mislead us with the absurd idea that society has, anywhere, ever attained the rank which belongs to its real condition; and this is one of the true causes of the frequent defeat and overthrow of society. Man is still wanting, in a thousand essentials, to render him the creature which he is yet destined to become. Education, however, though still imperfect in system, needing to be pruned of many excrescences, to be improved by numerous additions, to be changed and modified, according to climate, physical and social need and advance, and the new necessities of altered political and local conditions, must still be admitted to have achieved wonders, in the elevation of the animal man, from the period when he roved a naked, a reckless and improvident savage, to his present noble, grand and imposing stature—the conqueror over all the tribes and empires of the earth.

Thus, educating man for conquest, conversion and supremacy, over all the provinces of nature, it is an improvement and advance of modern upon former times, which exhibits a similar concern for the education of woman. Regarding her as solely tributary to the more powerful sex, it has been too much the case to pass carelessly over the claims of her intellect to proper cultivation and education. Even in Greece, famous for the exquisite and beautiful symmetry of her educational philosophy, woman never rose into her proper rank, as a social ministrant; as a human counsellor; as a judicious friend; as a consoling and strengthening sympathiser. Her position was that rather of an attendant—a drudge—or the creature of mere sensual contemplation. Even her Aspasia, famous as the companion of so great a states-man as Pericles, famous for her intellectual vivacity, her arts and her accomplishments, was permitted to arrive at this distinction Page 172 →only by the forfeiture of some of her most ennobling and endearing qualities as a woman.

The case was still worse in Rome, though she boasts of the patriotic virtues of her Virginias and Cornelias. When we hear of her recognized woman—when she rises into rank in the pages of recorded history, it is rarely because of her merits as matron or virgin. She could only acquire distinction as she became unsexed and unfeminine—as she put on the hard nature, the bolder manners, with the more intense cravings and ambition of the man. It is a very great error to suppose, as is but too commonly the case, that the feudal period of modern history was more favorable to the culture and position of the sex. That period which we call the age of chivalry, threw an artificial halo about the sex in courtly places, such as the great centres of France, Provence, and, possibly, in portions of Great Britain; but even in these courtly centres, woman was, at best, the mere creature in a pageant—a tributary only to a false system which sought its meretricious aids in all quarters, and subsidized even religion, with as little scruple as it did the gentler sex. In brief, as Sismondi tells us, the age which we fondly designate as that of chivalry, and eulogize for its grace, purity and near approach to perfection, existed only in brilliant fictions. They were not real, not natural. It was illusion only! And how could it be otherwise? Periods which are essentially those of war—nations which have lived wholly by their perpetual strifes with one another—are never favorable to the elevation, the culture, or even the safety of woman. It is only during the reign of peace that the feminine virtues and graces demand and obtain full acknowledgment among men, and rise into a rank which compels respect, and ensures elevation and honorable recognition. The last forty years of peace in the civilized world, dating from the close of the career of the first Napoleon, has done more towards the recognition of woman, as a being of mind and soul, purity and excellence—as the ally and counsellor, the companion and consoler of man—than was done by the three hundred years preceding; and it is no small boast which our country can utter, with honesty and in triumph, that in no part of the world has she yet risen to the status which she this day enjoys in ours! Here, only, does she take her proper place—speaking of the country as a whole—here only does she enjoy her proper authority—regulating the manners of society—refining the intercourse between the sexes—restraining the encroachments of insolence—checking, without fear of defiance, the outbreaks of ferocity—and every where compelling the deference and sympathy of all classes, in all conditions of society.

This is a great and noble triumph for our country, and it is one of those, of which we may boast without any rebuke for arrogance, or suspicion of hypocrisy. It is perhaps due to our gradual growth, as a people, from a condition of comparative isolation, into that of large and mixed communities of opulence Page 173 →and refinement. The sexes have grown equally together. In no country in the world is man a greater dependent upon the woman, than in ours. Here she fulfils conditions which, as they elevate her duties, raise her into authority and place. Here, perhaps, is she more certainly in the position which she should occupy, than in any other country. She is neither degraded by necessity to servility, nor raised by convention to an artificial rank, the pageantry of which is but too frequently inconsistent with her own claims and endowments, and calculated to make duty distasteful to her mind. We have scarcely yet reached, as a people, that artificial period, the result of very unequal distribution of wealth, false ordering of society, and inequality in the numbers of persons disposed to marry—when marriage, a natural law, becomes a hopeless quest to thousands of the dependent sex. With us, accordingly, marriage is not a consideration of so much doubt and uncertainty, as to render the woman the sacrifice of society. Such a fraud upon affection, no less than faith, as is but too commonly known in Europe, as the mariage de convenance—in other words, of cupidity—is rarely known with us. The consideration of marriage is as potent here with the male as with the female sex. The wants of the man are as urgent as the necessities of the woman. With us, accordingly, the heart is permitted to breathe freely, to declare itself freely, and a just appreciation of the claims of individual charm and character, are allowed to weigh, irrespective of the fortunes of the party. The tastes and fancies and sympathies, are allowed to grow, and to exercise the liberty of selection. Our homage to the sex is made to personal virtues, graces, beauties; our choice depends upon true and earnest sentiment, and honest passions, and not to the exactions of cupidity. And there is so little want, so little poverty, in our country, that no slavish necessity need compel the woman to make sacrifice in marriage, of a single sympathy. No heart here, need be laid on the altar of Mammon, ere it can find devotion, or win Love into willing worship. Hearts, with us, need not famish for that unbought, unbuyable affection, which is the only food upon which hearts are destined to feed and to be happy.

This one condition, of the equal relation of the two sexes, in so vital a respect, lifts the woman into a position of independence, which is no where quite so high or perfect as with us. In the ranks of wealth, in the old States of Europe, you will no doubt find a class of women occupying a degree of liberty, perhaps, which is very far beyond anything of which ours know. We have small circles in our great cities which strive for and emulate their privileges. But their liberty is but too apt to become license; and the license which is dangerous to the man, becomes death, nay, something worse than death, to the woman. These small circles do not really mingle with society; claim to be above it, do not in any way affect it, except with revulsion; and are, accordingly, indifferent to the opinions which might otherwise subdue their license under law. But I need not consider these Page 174 →anomalous and exceptional cases. Enough that I have truly described to you, in my portrait, the conditions and relations of the sexes, as they exist together in the rural districts of the South.

Raised here to the elevated rank in which I have shown the sex—regarded with this just and proper veneration—it naturally becomes the policy of society that woman should maintain herself in it, and justify her maintenance of it by her own developments. The only process for effecting this object is to make her education worthy of that of the man; to bring about the full development of her mind, so that it shall yield him that adequate companionship, without which there can be no permanent sympathies between the parties. She is decreed to succour and strengthen his affections—to cheer his despondency—to invigorate his energies—to console him in defeat,—to counsel him with that wisdom, the purest and perhaps the profoundest of all, which is born of a true heart, and the devotedness of a perfect love. As his education contemplates energy and execution, so hers must contemplate watch and ministry. Her faculties are necessarily peculiar to herself, as they regard his necessities rather than his powers. In the things which he needs to execute, which lie within the purpose of his endowments, he perhaps does not require her succour. But she is not less his ally, though she does not take the field in armour beside him—though she serves neither as pioneer nor conqueror. She is to exhibit the household virtues; there must be a household, and one must maintain it, while the other goes abroad, in toil, labor, peril and conflict. She must exercise the timely economy, the guardian watch, the regular method, the sobriety of love, which never can be diverted from its post; the gentleness which restrains excess; the affections whose mournfullest reproach is conveyed in a tearful and placid submission. And how profound must be the wisdom which shall teach all this; and how much more profound the wisdom, born of virtue, which is to learn all this; the patient, receiving wisdom, which is always the profoundest. She is to encourage the adventures of the man, watch lovingly his toils, and with sweet offices of affection, requite all his exertions. And this leads us to what is peculiar in the nature and constitution of woman, a subject, the examination of which, should necessarily precede any plan which contemplates her education.

Of late days it has become a frequent complaint with certain of the sex, that their rights, as women, are withheld them; that, presuming on his physical, rather than his intellectual powers, man has usurped something more than his share of authority—has denied them that share of power in social, if not political affairs, to which they may properly lay claim; and has thus degraded them to a rank of moral inferiority, inconsistent with the original decrees of nature.

The complaint is made in rather vague and general terms, and is urged with much more passion than argument. The complaining parties are not quite agreed among themselves as to the specific rights of which they have been robbed, and Page 175 →do not suggest the processes by which justice should be done them. I am afraid that, even were the charges admitted, the claims conceded, they would still find it a somewhat difficult thing to appropriate, or even to determine, what are the rights which they would exercise. Would they have the right of suffrage—enter the market place and scramble at the polls with brute violence, for the privilege of putting in their votes? Their husbands, brothers, sons, are their representatives, doing this very duty. Do they distrust the ability, the honesty of these, to do the duty wisely and faithfully? But they would themselves, perhaps, be the incumbents of office? It is not that they hold society to be ill-governed by man—not that they suppose themselves altogether capable of ruling something more wisely; but they have an ambition to figure also in the ranks of politicians, statesmen, governors. Now, the right, here, depends wholly upon the capacity. We have no rights inconsistent with our endowments. Even among men, there is not more than one in fifty of those who enter office, who have any just right to be there; and unless the woman really supposes that she can improve the government of man in human affairs, by her superior capacity for it, she can offer no sort of argument in behalf of the claim to supersede him. It is true, no doubt, that there are thousands of women superior to numbers of men whom we find in legislative assemblies; but this class of men are not legislators; they are the mere dead weights of power—used as the balance wheels and fixtures, the ropes, wires and pullies—a part of the machinery of government, but with no share in the motivepower. Would she rank with such as these, by simply taking her seat in the eyes of the people, and possibly helping to fill their ears with harangues of terrible commonplace, such as hourly afflicts us, ad nauseum, in all such assemblies now? This is the desire of a vulgar vanity, ridiculous enough where men are the actors, and doubly ridiculous should woman occupy the stage. Now, nature accords no rights to vanity! The capacity to be useful in one’s proper sphere is that alone which affords the only real right which we possess in this province. And, unless the sex can assert a superior faculty over the man, for the government of states and nations, there can be no good reason for altering the relations of the parties in political affairs.

But they claim to be endowed for the professions? Are they? If so, what prevents them from entering the professions? Law, no doubt, is a very inviting profession to those who possess metaphysical powers—argument, logic, eloquence; and law, in all countries, and especially in ours, is the great secret and mean for the acquisition of political power. There is no law excluding women from the professions. Let those who complain, try them, if they will. If they can succeed in law, they will probably succeed in procuring office. But they will require to go through a like probation with the man. There is an apprenticeship of years, not only in making acquisition of the rudiments of the profession, but in establishing such a reputation in the community, for knowledge and business talents, as will Page 176 →secure patronage. Are they prepared for this probation? Can they exercise this weary, working, business faculty? In the meantime, they must forego the present interesting relations which exist between the sexes. All these must be changed! The moment they become politicians and professors in the science and arts, they rise into attitude, in society, as the rivals of men—keen competitors for power and its profits; no longer to be observed with love and admiration; no longer to receive attention from devoted worshippers; to turn only to meet with homage, and smiling, only to diffuse joy and radiance throughout the assembly. Their sex had privileges of a peculiar power, but only because of their recognition as a peculiar sex, having certain sacred and special functions, as a class; all of which were of so tender, so delicate, and so attractive a character, as tacitly to compel forbearance, and secure for them prompt and favoring acknowledgment from all classes of society. In setting up as the rival of man, she loses what is special in the rights of woman. The rights of woman she, in fact, possesses now; it is, in truth, the rights of man which some of these inconsiderate champions of the sex contend for. They hunger for double power and double privileges. They would unite in themselves the privileges of both sexes; and, possibly, with a very imperfect capacity for either. In becoming the rival of man, woman ceases to be his ally. What then? There is a contest between them for power—not for a share of power, mark ye, but for the whole. Woman in conflict with man—man with woman! What becomes of the world under these circumstances? What will posterity say? Will there be any posterity to say anything? Is this fulfilling the conditions on which both parties were created? Is not the whole pretension simply and mournfully farcical?

Without discussing farther these uncertain claims made by a singularly unfortunate few among the sex, it will, perhaps, be quite sufficient to regard, passingly, the vital differences between the two sexes—differences which really contribute the absolute sources of union between them, and the most grateful equality; and to indicate these differences as fully justifying the very status which the woman now enjoys in relation to the other sex.

It is needless to urge that, physically, at least, the power is with the man; as needless to insist that, where God has confided the power, He designs that its exercise should rest. For, as Milton happily puts the case—

“What is strength without a double share

Of wisdom? Vast, unwieldy, burdensome,

Proudly secure, yet liable to fall

By weakest subtleties—not made to rule,

But to subserve where wisdom bears command.”

If God has given to man the supremacy of strength, it would seem almost equally clear that He has not decreed that the sway should be with woman; and Page 177 →Holy Writ is sufficiently decided in affirming this position. If, in addition to this, we discern such moral differences between the two sexes as fully confirm the physical; if we find the man to be in possession of the stern, inflexible will, which accords with authority and makes it respected; the earnest, eager impulse, which forever prompts inquiry, adventure, and discovery; the intense and craving spirit which demands struggle and trial as the agencies for development; the determined execution; the bold energy; the sleepless thirst equally for sway and knowledge; the more daring purpose; the greater design; the more inventive faculties; and the more wide and comprehensive general capacity;—the inference seems inevitable. These are the properties and qualities which make nations and preserve them; which make laws and compel obedience to them; which provide resources for society; which open new provinces for the progress of society; which foster society by arts, and protect its possessions from assault by arms. These qualities and endowments, which declare themselves in the man, while he is yet a boy—independently of training and education—and for the due regulation and maturing of which, alone, do we employ education—seem fully to determine the rank which man should hold in relation to all other living creatures; the duties which he owes to them, to himself, and to the Creator; and indicate, with sufficient distinctness, the sort of education which is proper for the development of his faculties, and the proper conduct of his performances.

If, on the other hand, we find the faculties of woman to be, ordinarily, wholly different from these; if we find her nature to be more sensitive and timid; more dependent than determined; more anxious and solicitous than reckless and confident; less adventurous, less eager, bold and daring; less concentrative, intense and energetic; less inflexible of will; more fond of repose than of action; of grace and beauty, than of strength and power; preferring peace to strife; the sweets of home to the wild waters of adventure; if we find her better able to watch than to fight; better able to nurse and heal, than to hurt and wound; shrinking rather than audacious; trembling rather than brave; delicate rather than vigorous; easily diverted, rather than tenacious of purpose; loving rather than proud; with stronger inhibitiveness than man, and so less adventurous; with far superior philoprogenitiveness, and so, intuitively, fonder of children and better prepared to take care of them; more cautious; more reverent, more benevolent, and so, more capable of just, and fine, sweet and graceful, rather than powerful and passionate impulses; if we find all these differences between the two sexes, obvious from the first steps of childhood, independently of all human training; and if the characteristics of the woman be such, almost universally, in all nations, as I have described them to be; then what follows? Do we not see that she now occupies her natural sphere, and fills her proper position in the circle of humanity, even as it was assigned her at creation? And no struggle, no effort, however daring; no art, however subtle; no expectation, however high; no toils of the one sex, or concessions of the Page 178 →other; can materially change these relations. They follow original types, that are as immutable as any of the laws of God; they are among the first laws of God, and contemplate the essential harmonies of society, which, for preservation and perpetuation, demand these very inequalities. They render the tie between the sexes coercive—it is the great human and social necessity. The harmonies of love are born of these very differences, even as we owe the beauty of the landscape to its inequalities; the beauty of the stars to their differences of size, color, splendour; the delight of music to those transitions, modulating the extreme, in the tones which art is required to wed together, by happy conciliations, for the birth of harmony. Woman is a lesser light, perhaps, in the firmament of humanity, but not less beautiful, or necessary to the music of the moral spheres. Shall we deem it a wrong to her, that she should be denied to enter the chariot of the sun! Hers is not a borrowed light, like that of moon and stars, but one growing out of the affluence of her own nature, and commissioned with lustres suited to her own province. From the first choral song of creation, when the stars first sang together, her sphere was appointed, and the first voices of revelation, declared her rank among the other orbs. Can we doubt of this, when we know, that, in all nations, she has held the same relative position to man from the earliest periods of time. Can such coincidence be the result of a coincident injustice, ranging throughout the human world? And how shall we suppose that God, designing her for a superior destiny, has yet suffered this grievous wrong—this perversion of justice—of her powers and His purposes—to be perpetrated, perpetuated, for so many thousand years, and in nations, the special rule and government of which he had, for so many centuries, reserved to Himself exclusively, his own anointed priests, his own inspired prophets? To prove the wrong of which she is supposed to complain, the usurpation of her rights which has been asserted for her, we must accuse the Deity of blindness to his own purposes, and the violation of his own invariable laws.

The question need trouble us no further. Enough, that in our passing consideration of it, we have indicated the peculiar characteristics of the sex. Its peculiarities afford us clues and guides which are essential to our present objects and proper question. How shall we so educate her, as that full justice shall be done to her peculiar endowments; so that she may rightly serve in the general purposes of creation: so that she may wisely reign in that province, in which man gladly hails her as the sovereign?

We shall find the answer to this question, when we shall have answered another. What is her especial allotment? She is decreed to be the wife and mother. These are her rights. On this subject there can be no question. No usurpation can wrest these from her; no ambition contend with her in these relations. Here she is alone, without a rival. If, having these provinces to herself, she claims to share, also, in all those which man has reserved to himself, she is the usurper! And will Page 179 →not these provinces suffice any ambition? To those who will examine their wealth, value and authority, there can be none richer, none which more religiously involve the idea of power. They constitute noble relations with society, among the very noblest that man acknowledges. As a wife, she is his ally, the nearest to his heart, the keeper of his affections. She is to keep them young and healthy—to guard and freshen them with her own—closely to clip and cling around them, even as the fruitful vine twines about the sustaining oak; making beautiful to other eyes, with her flower and her foliage, the roughness of those lineaments in him, born of his very strength and majesty, which might otherwise too greatly awe and repel. She is to teach his affections, through her own, so that his power shall be subdued to meekness; so that his passions, even while they work to their mutual security and good, shall be shorn of their excess and violence. She is to lift his affections by refining them, so that they shall become virtues—noble and generous, like his strength and stature—so that he shall always feel the magnanimous joy of a great heart in the privilege of protecting and sheltering the feeble and confiding, and of loving the gentle and the good; and as, by these means, she compels his heart to assimilate with hers, so does it become a partaker in her grace and innocence. So does she borrow of his strength, and rise into a due sympathy with, and full appreciation of, the grandeur and greatness of his mission. All this can she achieve by ministries, little short of the angelic—by love, truth, fidelity, devotion, and the exercise of that sweet humility which has a more subduing and elevating virtue still, as the true foundation, not only of all proper human success, but of all religion.

She is to train his affections by these, through these, and by her feminine tastes and fancies, her arts and her accomplishments. She is to win and to subdue him with sentiment and music, and thus make her appeal to those powerful motors in his mind, Imagination and Sensibility. For these performances, her education must contemplate her manners, her own susceptibilities, the nice appreciation of the delicate, the genial, the true. The Fine Arts are within her province; poetry and painting, as well as music; the exercise equally of voice or hand; or, where the musical faculty is not present, or active in her mental endowments, then other arts and exercises which shall repair the deficiency; and it will be found that, by the liberal gifts of Providence, he or she who is found wanting in one faculty, is usually provided with others which are equivalent in value, and which, duly exercised, shall realize equally useful results in a proper course of training. Elocution, for example, may properly be made a study with the sex. Few persons read well, with just emphasis, with due economy of voice, with due moderation, or with a proper sense always of the sentiment which is to be conveyed.

Sculpture, the working of clay and marble, is not sufficiently honored with the regards of the sex. It is not more beyond their province than painting and music. A girl may shape vases in clay quite as easily as flowers in needle-work Page 180 →or tapestry. And why not? Some of the most beautiful specimens of ancient and modern art come to us in this form and of these rude materials. The art is an exquisite one, and should commend itself especially to the women of our country; all those, in particular, who languish for provinces in which their genius may be developed. The notion that working in clay or marble is unfitted for a female hand or genius, is pure absurdity. The labor is not drudgery—it is art, rather than labor, that is needed for it, and it is one of those arts which may give exercise to many others. The Vase, beautifully wrought, into a noble and classic form, may be covered with exquisite landscapes, to which the baking process will almost ensure, while the vessel remains unbroken, eternal duration. To encourage the timid ambition, we may mention that one of the European princesses of the present day, has acquired high distinction among living sculptors for her achievements in marble.

There are a thousand like fields in which the genius of the woman may exercise itself profitably, and gratify all its cravings for fame. Wherever the art or employment calls for fancy, taste, delicacy, discrimination, it appeals to her peculiar endowments. We need scarcely refer to the vast and various fields of polite literature—nay, the sciences, such as botany, astronomy—as regions in which she may find grateful employment. These fields have already been penetrated by the sex, and they have established in them the highest claims to honor, as teachers and discoverers. In these regions, woman may seek and find a thousand opportunities for the exercise of genius, talent and industry, which shall place her honorably beside the being whom she is unwilling to recognize as a superior, but whom it is still her natural solicitude to please. If this be the object of her mind, as it is the instinct of her heart, there need be no change in the relations of the sexes. There are fields of exercise for both, in which, though pursuing parallel lines, they shall yet work harmoniously together, in the common cause of humanity. And it must not be supposed that we subject her to a law which necessarily humiliates, when we suggest that most of her efforts and arts should be designed for the conciliation and delight, the happiness and comfort of the sterner sex. The solicitude of man, in like manner, seen under whatever guises or aspects, is equally great to win her favour. We work for each other, and if we work lovingly, without any miserable rivalry, we work for mutual comfort, security and happiness. The true ambition of the woman, in the development of her mind, is to raise it to the dignity of his; so that she may commune with him as an associate, whom he will delight always to encounter; counsel him as a friend in whom he finds it grateful to confide. She is the mistress of his domestic hours—of the most sweet and peaceful hours of his life. She must make home the temple of domestic peace. Her song and smile must sweeten his sadness, cheer his weariness, and weave the rainbow of felicity out of his very tears. Setting aside the trifles and the toys of girlhood, the petty vanities, the small ambition which made her eager Page 181 →for the admiration of merely roving eyes, she must so rise in strength, through love and duty, as to enter into the necessities of his life, with the warm, knowing interest of one who would gladly share them all. This is to put on the true dignity of woman—to fulfil all its noble conditions; to give security to the hopes of the infant generations. Happy and secure will be that household where the wife can prove herself thoughtful over the cares of her husband; can strengthen him bravely to endure and wisely to encounter them. If, at length, he falls, in a too unequal contest with a peculiar fortune—like the great oak, stricken by the bolt that strikes only to destroy—she is then to twine herself about his ruins, like the loving tendrils of the vine, and hallow with her fond embrace the noble column of greatness which her love hath failed to save.

But her relations to man and to society do not end here. She is to be the mother of his children. Not a man herself, she is to be the mother of a race of men—of heroes, statesmen, philosophers, priests, and poets—the most glorious orders of nobility which the world can anywhere behold. As the mother of men, and such men, she holds in her hands all the destinies of humanity through all surrounding ages. Can any trust more ennoble her than this? Can any tie afford better security for the affections and respect of husband and father? Can any human employments require more intellect, or prove more exalting in the eyes of those who think and feel? Would she exchange these affairs for those of the small politician, the poor statesman, the driveller at the professions, the scuffler at the ballot-box, seeking the petty privilege of voting for Tom, Dick, or Harry, of whom, after a single term in Legislature or Congress, we hear nothing again, and of whom nobody cares to hear? How feeble must be that intellect, how contemptible that vanity, which would exchange, for these employments, the glorious privilege of being a nursing mother for a race of men! In this capacity she moulds the moral of a thousand coming generations. Her watch, love, prudence, judicious direction and sleepless ministry, constitute, after all, the only securities of the young. Teacher, preacher, counsellor, friend—all fail—and must fail—if the mother fails;—if the home education hath not been solicitous of duty—hath not risen into the guardian authority and wisdom which shall shape the infant nature rightly, and give the first direction to its childish thought and its animal impulse! Her tender cares—the life and joy which she imparts from her own breast—establish such a power over the child that she can win him, by merely opening her bosom, from the very brink of the precipice; and, so long as he remains feeble, and until the energies of his expanding thought and will supervene to make him impatient of the small empire of home, she continues to maintain this almost exclusive sway over his mind and his affections.

In this province she has no rival. What, through this medium, must be her power for good or evil? She thus helps to shape the future—helps to shape the government of the future; and wo to her if she cannot open her eyes to the grand, Page 182 →but awful responsibilities, involved in the duties of a mother! Wo to us, and to the child, if her education be not made to contemplate, over all, this most beautiful, most endearing, most precious and sacred of all human relations; if she be not rendered capable, by her training, of taking charge of these infant germs of the successive generations—their minds, their hearts, their souls—their hopes, their health, their security—so that they shall walk alone, work prosperously, with none to make afraid—with brows erect in the sight of heaven and man—honoring father and mother, and becoming, in turn, the objects of loving and dutiful affections from their own progeny. As a mother, she is especially responsible for the future of their lives. She is their first teacher, and at that only period when their morals can receive the readiest impress in the formation of character. She holds, almost exclusively, the strings which guide their first feeble, tottering footsteps; and it cannot be otherwise. This is her inevitable duty as the mother. The cares of the father, abroad—his province necessarily leading him abroad—devolve this duty entirely upon her; devolve upon her the immediate formation of the child’s moral; and hence the vital importance of a nobly educated mother; not a vain, weak, pretending creature, aspiring after the denied and the impossible, but “a woman nobly planned,” pure and strong—one who, in acquiring all that the mind needs for development, suffers herself to forfeit nothing of the exquisite sensibility which makes the basis of her power—the delicate refinement, the beautiful tenderness, which make and keep her feminine.

Madame Campan, in reply to a question of Napoleon touching the education of the young, seems to have felt all the importance of the woman in relation to society. “Sire,” said she,” let us have a school for the education of mothers.” Napoleon’s quick instincts readily conceived the vast volume of this answer, and said, characteristically—“Let it be so. That is exactly what we want!” Volumes could have said no more. Would you have the proof of the significance in this summary? Read history—read biography. You will everywhere see that most great men trace their own most noble developments, and all their successes, to nobly-nursing mothers. As little may we doubt that many a foolish mother has destroyed the dearest child of her affections—has perverted, in her doting ignorance, the true nature and the proper powers of the boy—has robbed him of his own natural virtues—has defrauded him of the use of his natural endowments—has made him a rebel to herself, to society, to God—made him the victim of constant mistake and constant defeat, and, in thousands of cases, as if she had been a Fate designed for his destruction, has conducted him, with her own hands, to the awful retributions of the justly offended laws.

That there should be women to despise this office, only proves their vanities to be superior equally to their sensibilities and wisdom. There can be none nobler—none half so noble—none which will more completely need and exercise the highest powers of male and female intellect. The wisdom to comprehend Page 183 →the child, the intellect to guide, the strength and art to govern; these will task every art which we may acquire, every faculty which we may possess from nature. And, if we train the faculties of the young to their full uses, we govern the world and society as directly, and as effectively, as if we ourselves sat in the high places of law and authority, and shaped, with our own words and deeds the decrees of the nations. Who but a blockhead—vain, weak, presumptuous and ridiculous—can conceive of anything humiliating from such an employment? Is it a wife and mother who indulges in such a notion? Let her go with me to yonder stony summit of Apalachia, and there meditate the examples which we shall there behold. Go with me to that mighty pile of rock, six thousand feet above the sea, mass beetling over mass, black, wild, savage; great cliffs hanging loose in air; great caverns yawning between them; the sheer precipice, prominent above the chasm, which blackly stretches a thousand feet below—without stay, or step, or ledge, in the interval, upon which the mountain deer might stand with safety, or without terror and trembling! A stern, dark, awful peak, around which the storm raves unfelt, and the lightning strikes only to pare and sliver the edges of the defying granite. Here, in this crag—eyrie of the eagle—according to the traditions of the red man—

“The Eagle nest,

The Magic Mountain of the Blest,

Where the Wahcondah’s form, at first,

In glory o’er the forests burst;

And rent the giant rocks in twain,

And spread below the sunny plain;

And piled on high each mighty tier,

Of hill and boulder, layer on layer,

Until they rose to mortal eyes,

Meet realm for sovereign of the skies;

Torn by his thunders, by his ire,

Scathed, till each summit blazed with fire,

And made secure, in height and storm,

From bold approach of mortal form.”

But not without inhabitants. In the highest peak, on the side most precipitous, overhanging the dismal chasm of a thousand feet, the eagle has made his home, in a slippery cavern, a great crevice, opened by the bolts of heaven. There dwell a pair of these mighty birds, in whose grandeur, daring, solitary might and magnanimity, great men have always been pleased to find their noblest models. There they breed and train their young to their own bold and powerful employments. You see, even as the sun rushes up into the heavens, that the male bird darts out to bathe in his beams, and to drink vigor from his ascending fires. Page 184 →His eye challenges that of the sun, and his great metallic wings grow golden as he rolls among the burning vapors. He sails free; hangs suspended on his own centre, and, at an incomputable distance he beholds his prey, the deer, the sheep, browsing upon the hillside, thousands of feet below. Swifter than any flight of arrow—a rush like that of the bolt—a hurtling tumult of wings, that rattle like plate armour as he goes—he descends upon his victim, which he bears up in his steely talons—each stroke of which is death—to the overhanging precipice where his mate and young ones keep. He is the purveyor, the warrior, the hunter—the conqueror! He performs the masculine office.

But his mate, is she degraded in hers? Is hers one to mortify her nature—to revolt her instincts—to humble her pride. She tears the food for her young—she watches their nest—she trains their little wings in flight. Hardly less powerful than the male, she can, in degree, execute his trusts, should the bolt of the hunter strike him down in flight. But she has her own. See her as she watches, calm, immovable as the rock itself, while the stealthy viper crawls upward from the gorges to her summits. In a moment, he is writhing in her beak! and, as the wolf and panther tread along the precipice, she dashes out upon them, with fierce bill, and bloody talon, every stroke of which is a terror, while her sharp, triumphant shrieks attest to her returning consort, the flight of the assailant. And, when no foes invade her home, see her as she trains her young to the edges of the precipice, and flings them off into the gulph and the abyss. Then, as they flutter—falling—she darts below them; bears them up—upon her back; flings them up again, into space, and beats the drowsy atmosphere beneath them, giving the buoyancy of the winds to their efforts, and showing them how to lift and fan their little winglets, in that exercise which shall enable them to use and sway, in future flight and conflict, the very winds which generate the storm!

Do we see no meet examples in this history of a mother’s care and duties—the sources of her pride and satisfaction? Is there anything ignoble in these exercises? Do they degrade the female bird, in relation to her mate? would they degrade the human mother? She is thus to feed, and nurture and cherish her young; to teach their infant wings to fly; to sustain their infant efforts; to watch over and protect their slumbers from the enemy. She must watch that the vipers of cunning and treachery, and deceit and envy, do not crawl to their nest—to her bosom, or to theirs—commissioned to destroy; that the wild beasts of passion, hate, malice, lust and wrath, do not openly invade, even as the wolf, the tiger and the panther, where they slumber, upon the very verge of the moral precipice! Oh! surely, my friends, there are no virtues more honored among men than those which belong to the duties of wife and mother. Every instinct, every sentiment, every thought, every feeling, of the good and wise, unite to do them honor. Let them beware of the wretched and ill-grounded discontent, which makes them heedless of the powers which they do possess, in a vain struggle after those which would only Page 185 →enthrall and fetter, which would really degrade them could they attain; but which revelation and reason equally deny that they ever should attain! It would be the most fatal boon to the woman, which would convert her, from the ally, into the rival of the man! a boon which, forfeiting all her present distinctions and securities, would leave her wrecked and desolate, no longer an object of beauty and desire, but wasted, and a dishonored mockery, in society and life!

Endeared as she is to her mate, in spite of all his supposed tyrannies and usurpations—distinguished thus by her sweet relations of wife and mother—dear and precious because of her natural innocence, purity, beauty, and dependence—woman naturally claims the highest and most singular regards of man. And she receives them. He wisely decrees, day by day, as the world rises in civilization, that her intellect, not less perfect if less powerful than his own, should have select and appropriate teachers. All her capacities must be duly evolved for action in the serious drama of our mortal life. Her moral prudence, her exquisite tastes, her solicitous affections, her genius for art and for society—all these require that we should provide tutors worthy of her endowments, if we would have her the nobly-nursing wife and mother which constitute her great mission upon earth.

With this noble object are we now assembled—to consecrate by the offices of religion—by the sympathies of society—by the exhibition of a becoming zeal and interest, the collegiate endowment which shall this day begin its operations. Let your prayers unite with ours in behalf of this institution—so useful to woman—so necessary to mankind—so honorable to its liberal founders. Blest as we hold its purposes to be by Heaven, it only needs to be duly tended and cultivated by man, to crown with grace, virtue, beauty and knowledge, the future hopes and fortunes of society. And, long after our probation is over—when, one by one, we shall have passed from this busy scene of life—it may be that we shall rejoice to behold, from loftier spheres, the growth and the beauty, the shelter and the fruits, blessing other generations, of the little seedling which we this day plant for posterity. These hills shall bear evidence, in goodly edifices,—these valleys shout aloud in the joy of productive harvests—all giving proof of the fruitful virtues, springing, with its growth, into life and promise. There shall be songs from a thousand cottages, filled with youth and beauty, in honor of the grateful plant. Art shall cover your high places with appropriate temples—Genius shall triumph at their altars—Love and Innocence, Truth and Wisdom, shall decorate their shrines with flowers; and, in lifting woman into her position, of the loving wife and ally, the fondly nursing and the wisely guiding mother, we shall secure the dwellings of man in strength—his institutions in perpetuity and virtue; his heart, and its affections, in hope, in happiness and religion.