Part 7

Learning, either superficial or profound, intoxicates with vanity, only when it is confined to a few. It is by seeing or fancying himself wiser than those around him, that the pedant is puffed up. But now, all the community, male and female, are proposed to be made partakers of knowledge; and cannot be vain, of what all equally possess. Besides--the sort of knowledge that naturally engenders conceit and leads to error, is the _partial_ knowledge of _details_; not a comprehensive acquaintance with _outlines_, and _general principles_. A quack can use the lancet, and knows it to have been successfully employed for severe contusions and excessive heat; but does not know the _general_ fact, that under extreme exhaustion, indicated by a suspended pulse, stimulants, and not depletives, are proper. Seeing a man just fallen from a scaffold, or exhausted with heat and fatigue in the harvest field--his pulse gone--the quack bleeds him, and the patient dies. Again--a lounger at judicial trials, having picked up a few legal doctrines and phrases--perhaps being master of a "Hening's Justice"--conceives himself a profound jurisprudent; and besides tiring the ears of all his acquaintance with technical pedantry, he persuades a credulous neighbor, or plunges himself, into a long, expensive, and ruinous law-suit. The worthy Mr. Saddletree, and Poor Peter Peebles,[13] are masterly pictures of such a personage: pictures, of which few experienced lawyers have not seen originals. The storm so lately (and perhaps even yet) impending from the north, and several other conspicuous ebullitions of fanaticism, are clearly traceable to the perversion of a text[14] in our Declaration of Independence and Bills of Rights, detached from its natural connexion with kindred and qualifying truths, by minds uninstructed in the _general principles_ of civil and political right. The mind which has been accustomed only to a microscopic observation of one subject, or one set of subjects, is necessarily contracted, fanatical, and intolerant: as the wrinkled crone, who, during a long life, has never passed the hills environing her cabin, or heard of any land besides her own province, believes her native hamlet the choicest abode of wisdom and goodness, and its humble church the grandest specimen of architectural magnificence, in the world; and hears with incredulity or horror, of distant countries, containing mountains, rivers, climates, and cities, such as her thoughts never conceived, and people with complexions, customs, language, and religion, different from all that she has ever known. But the intellect, that has surveyed the outlines and observed the relations of many various subjects (even though not thoroughly familiar with any,) resembles the man who by travelling, or even on a map, has traced the boundaries and marked the relative positions of different countries. Knowing that _they exist_, and _are peopled_, he readily forms distinct ideas of their surfaces, and their moral traits: their mountains, rivers, and cities, their arts, commerce, manners, institutions, and wars, rise before his imagination, or are grasped by his knowledge: and whatever he hears, he is prepared rationally to credit or reject, to approve or censure, as it comports well or ill with probability and with reason. Now, to counteract the one, and to promote the other, of these two conditions of mind, are precisely what is proposed by the advocates of popular instruction. They propose to teach _outlines_; and carefully to impress the fact, that _only outlines are taught_: so as to shew the learner, plainly, the precise extent of his knowledge, and (what is yet more important) of his _ignorance_. It is thus, that, being not "proud that he hath learned so much," but rather "humble that he knows no more," vanity and self-conceit will be most certainly prevented: {23} that a wise doubt of his own infallibility will make him tolerant of dissent from his opinions: that he will be prepared at all times to extend his acquisitions easily and judiciously, and to connect them well with previous acquisitions--proving how truly Blackstone has said, in paraphrase of Cicero,[15] "the sciences are _social_, and flourish best in the neighborhood of each other:" in short, that he will approach most nearly to that "healthful, well proportioned" expansion of intellect and liberality of character, which Locke[16] terms a _large, sound, roundabout sense_. In this point of view, it will be found that "a little learning is" _not_ "a dangerous thing."

[Footnote 13: In "The Heart of Mid Lothian," and "Redgauntlet."]

[Footnote 14: "All men are created equal," &c. This principle is, in substance, asserted in the Bill of Rights or Constitution of almost every State in the Union.]

[Footnote 15: ----"omnes artes, quae ad humanitatem pertinent, habent quoddam commune vinculum, et quasi cognatione quadam inter sese continentur." _Orat. pro Arch. Poet._]

[Footnote 16: Conduct of the Understanding.]

I am deeply sensible, that I have left untouched many topics, even more important and more pertinent to the main theme of my remarks, than some which I have discussed. Indeed, so wide and so varied is that main theme, that I have found myself greatly embarrassed in selecting from the numerous particulars which solicited my regard on every hand. I have not presumed to offer any fully rounded plan, of that legislative action which is so imperiously demanded by the public weal, and soon will be, I trust, by the public voice. A few hints, are all that seemed to become me, or indeed that could well be crowded into my brief share of this day's time. For a plan, both in outline and in detail, I point to our sister states and to the European countries, that have taken the lead of us: and to the virtues and wisdom, by which our statesmen will be able to supply the defects, avoid the errors, and even, I trust, surpass the excellences, of those states and countries. That the Legislature may be wrought up to act, individual influence, and the more powerful influence of associations for the purpose--of whom I deem you, gentlemen, the chief, because the first--must be exerted. You must draw the minds of the constituent body forcibly to the subject. It must be held up in every light; supported by every argument; until the people shall be persuaded but to _consider_ it. Then, half the work will have been done. And in its further progress towards consummation--when the illuminating process shall have fairly begun--still it will be for you, gentlemen, and for those whom your example shall call into this field of usefulness with and after you, to exert, with no slumbering energy, the endowments wherewith you and they, are entrusted. You, and they, must become authors, and the prompters of authors. Books, for use in the schools, and cheap, simplifying tracts as well as books for circulation among the people, must be composed, compiled, and selected. Lectures, plain and cheap, and suitably illustrated, must be delivered through town and country. After the example of the good Watts, and of our own many illustrious contemporaries in Britain and America, learned men must oblige Science to lay aside the starched dignity and grand attire, by which hitherto she has awed away the vulgar; and to render herself universally amiable, by being humbly useful: as the wisest[17] of heathens is said to have "brought Philosophy down from the skies, placed her in human haunts, and made her discourse on the daily concerns of human life."

[Footnote 17: Socrates. "Primus ille Philosophiam devocavit e coelo, et in urbibus collocavit, et in domus introduxit; et coegit de vita et moribus, rebusque bonis et malis quærere." _Cic. Tuscul. 5_.]

In this whole enterprise, its undertakers should resolve to be convinced by no sneers, daunted by no difficulties, arrested by no obstacles. Difficulties and obstacles enough, indeed, will present themselves to the timid or superficial glance; but they will vanish, before calm scrutiny and brave determination. Even where the means of solving or removing them may not occur before hand to the mind, what was lately said in a worse cause, will prove to be true: "Where there is a WILL, there is a WAY." In such a cause as ours, and in reference to the epithets of "visionary," "impracticable," "chimerical," "Quixotic," and all the other imaginary lions which will be discovered in our path, well may we say, with the generous confidence of Lord Chatham, that we "_trample upon impossibilities_."

Has not our success, indeed, been already demonstrated? Demonstrated, in the first place, by unnumbered instances of parallel, and more stupendous enterprises, accomplished under circumstances less favorable than those which attend our undertaking? Such enterprises as the Reformation of Luther--the settlement of America--her deliverance from a foreign yoke--the teaching of the blind and the dumb[18] to read and to write? Demonstrated, again, by actual _experiment_, that sovereign test of practicability--experiment, seven times repeated, with extensive, if not complete success--in New York, in Connecticut, in Massachusetts, in Austria, in Germany, in Prussia, in Scotland? Yes--it is no untried path we are called to tread: scarcely a step of the way, but has been explored and smoothed before us. All that we have to do, is to look around--see what others have done--correct our own procedure by what we perceive defective in theirs--and forthwith open the floodgates of light, and bid the torrent pour.

[Footnote 18: Dr. Johnson, after having witnessed the surprising performances of the pupils in a College for the deaf and dumb at Edinburgh in 1773, concluded that such a triumph over an infirmity apparently irremediable, left nothing hopeless to human resolution. "After having seen the deaf taught arithmetic," says he, "who would be afraid to cultivate the Hebrides?" _Journey to the Western Islands_.]

Young gentlemen, foster-sons of the venerable institution near us! Some, if not all of you, are destined by your opportunities, and by bosoms glowing with honorable ambition, and beating high with the consciousness of talent, for a conspicuous part in the drama of life. Your eyes, doubtless, have already often glanced around, to see in what field you shall reap the harvest of wealth, respect, and fame, which hope represents as awaiting you. The buzz of notoriety, the palm of eloquence, the gorgeousness of office--those glittering bribes, which have lured onward their tens of thousands to mere splendid misery or to a shameful end after all--have, no doubt, displayed their attractions to you: but permit me to suggest, that if you will devote the powers with which nature and education have gifted you, to the patriot task of purifying and expanding the minds of your countrymen--besides enjoying in your latter days that sweetest of earthly thoughts, the thought of a life spent in usefulness--you may have gathered laurels of glory, compared with which, all the chaplets ever won in the tilt-yard of vulgar ambition are paltry weeds.

My wealthy fellow citizens! remember, that where {24} suffrage is nearly universal and the majority rules, if the great body of the people be ignorant or immoral, property is never secure from assaults, under the disguise of law: either agrarian schemes, or oppressive protecting systems, or advantages to certain classes, or some form of unequal taxation; all, the result of ill-informed minds, or of depraved dispositions. And if lawlessness assume not the garb of legislation, still it is always banded with ignorance in the firing of barns, the destruction of labor-saving machinery,[19] conspiracies to raise wages, and all the terrific outrages that spring from the fury of mobs. Thus, by a wise Providence, are you, who are the most _able_ to promote the education of the people, also by far the most _interested_ in doing so. If there can be a case, in which a judicious liberality is the truest economy, that case is now yours: and never may the _ill husbandry of niggardliness_ be more awfully exemplified, than by your grudging a small particle of your wealth, to place the remainder beyond the reach of this peril.

[Footnote 19: No one can have forgotten the ravages committed, a year or two since, by the ignorant poor of Kent, and some others of the southern and middle counties of England, chiefly under the delusive idea, that their sufferings were caused by labor-saving machinery.]

My fellow citizens (if any such are before me) who do not possess wealth, and who have scarcely tasted of the cup of knowledge! You surely need no exhortation to quaff freely of that cup, when it shall come within your grasp: but I do exhort you to employ your influence as men, and your constitutional power as voters, in persuading your fellow citizens, and in prompting your public agents, to adopt the requisite measures for dispelling, now and forever, the clouds and darkness in which republican freedom can never long live.

And if, at the remotest point of future time, to which we may look forward as witnessing the existence of human government any where, our democratic forms shall still retain, unimpaired, even their present purity, and present fertility of substantial freedom and happiness; much more, if they shall have waxed purer, and stronger, and more fruitful of good, with each revolving century,--defying the power or conciliating the love of foreign states--maintaining domestic harmony--oppressing none, protecting all--and so fully realizing the fondest hopes of the most sanguine statesman, that no "despair of the republic" can trouble the faintest heart:--all will be owing (under Providence,) to the hearkening of this generation and the succeeding ones, to that voice--not loud, but solemn and earnest--which, from the shrine of Reason and the tombs of buried commonwealths, reiterates and enforces the momentous precept--"ENLIGHTEN THE PEOPLE!"

THE WISSAHICCON.

Its bounding crystal frolicked in the ray, And gushed from cleft to crag with saltless spray. _Byron_.

It is probable there are but few individuals residing in the vicinity of Philadelphia, who have not heard, during some interval of business engagements, of Wissahiccon creek, a beautiful and romantic stream that falls into the no less romantic Schuylkill, about five miles above the city. The stream is visited, statedly, by but a small number of persons, but as it is neither found on any map, nor marked in any gazetteer that I have ever examined, there may be some apology afforded for the indifference to magnificent scenery, manifested by hundreds and thousands of our citizens, who, though domiciled in its immediate vicinity, have never deemed it worthy of a visit. So true it is, that there is a proneness in human nature to undervalue the gifts of Providence which are placed within our reach, and to admire and covet those which are located at a distance. Were a fatiguing journey of several hundred miles necessary, in order to enjoy a ramble along the banks of the Wissahiccon, we should then, without doubt, view its placid waters, its sluggish, meandering course, its richly covered banks, and its imposing precipices, with the admiration and enthusiasm which scenes of this character never fail to inspire in the minds of those who passionately love the untouched works of the hand of nature. But the delightful little stream courses along within a few miles of our doors, and a ride to its most picturesque views, is but an hour's excursion; hence, except to a few, whose researches have discovered, and whose good taste enabled them to appreciate, the beauty, sublimity and majesty of this stream, it is almost unknown.

But there are persons who have not been thus negligent of nature's treasures in this vicinity, and to these a visit to the fascinating Wissahiccon, calls up remembrances and associations of the most delightful character. To those who enjoy Nature in her majesty--free, uncontrolled, undespoiled of her beauty by the effacing efforts of human skill--there is no spot, within a circle of many miles, so rich in imagery, so imposing in appearance, so fascinating in attraction, as the banks of the Wissahiccon. The stream takes its rise from several springs in the upper part of Montgomery county, and flows, for a short distance, through a limestone country, remarkable for fertility and a high state of cultivation. Thence it passes, south-westernly, "a sweet smiling stream sleeping on the green sward," into more undulating land, until it reaches the Chesnut ridge, from which it progresses, at times indolently, and at times with an impetuous current, through a narrow valley, hedged in on either side by high hills, steep and craggy cliffs and precipitous mountains, until it strikes the Schuylkill, about a mile above the falls. Along its whole course the scenery of the Wissahiccon is beautiful, but it is the portion lying within six or eight miles of its mouth, that is generally regarded as the most attractive, as it exhibits, in bolder relief than any other portion, the peculiar sublimity and grandeur of the stream, and the imposing and majestic ledge of rock work through which it passes. It is along this distance that I have been accustomed to ramble during leisure moments, for years, and it is under the shade of the forests of brilliant hue that line its banks, that I have often reclined, and enjoyed, undisturbed, the sweet melody of nature, issuing from the bursting green foliage around me. I love nature with enthusiasm, and whether standing on the bank of a running stream and listening to the sweet gushing sound of its waters, or seated on an eminence overlooking the waving fields of golden fruit that bless the labor of the husbandman; whether enchanted by the Siren song of nature's minstrels in the spring, or watching the many-colored leaves of the {25} forest, as they are borne through the air by the whistling winds of autumn--there is, in the scene before me, absorbing attraction, calling forth reflections which never fail to mellow down the selfish and unkind feelings of the heart, and to shed a peaceful, consoling, and happy influence--all-pervading and lasting in its impressions--over the heart.

The wild and majestic are, however, the scenes to which I am most strongly attached, and which invariably elicit, to a greater extent than those of a softer character, passionate emotions of wonder and admiration. I love to stand at the base of a mountain whose summit reaches the clouds, and to clamber among rocks and under precipices whose projecting cliffs threaten destruction to the hardy adventurer--I love to explore the dense forests of our bold and beautiful hills, and to bury myself in the hidden recesses of nature, where the foot of man has never trod, where the sound of civilization has never been heard--I love to stand at the foot of Niagara, and watch the mighty torrent of a mighty inland sea hurling its concentrated power into the gulph below, and to gaze deep, deep, into that awful abyss--unfathomable, destructive, appalling--I love to see the elements at war, to hear the rush of the tornado and whirlwind, laying prostrate in their furious course every impediment to their destructive progress, and to witness the fall of the powerful oak and the whirlings of its cleft branches in the sea of matter above, crushing and overwhelming the most formidable obstacles of art. These are scenes in which the spirit of the enthusiast revels, and they are scenes which strike the soul with awe, speaking trumpet-tongued of the presence of an Almighty power, of the omnipotence of his authority, of the insignificance of human effort, and the frailty of human life.

The scenery near the mouth of the Wissahiccon is of a wild, romantic, and imposing character, beautiful in its ever-varying aspect, and interesting in its mystic associations. High hills, occasionally assuming the appearance of mountains, rise on either side, covered with a dense and beautifully-variegated foliage. The dogwood, with its beautiful flowers, the chesnut, the locust, the melancholy willow, the sumac, the gum, with its vermillion leaves, and the gloomy hemlock, flourish here in all their native grandeur; and the lofty oak, the father of the forest, stretches out his thickly-covered branches to afford shade and shelter to the weary pedestrian. Wild flowers, in great number and varieties, rivalling each other in loveliness, are found in the underwood, giving effect to the drapery of the verdant trees, by enlivening the dark hues of the thickly-growing and overshadowed forest. Some of these flowers and plants are of rare quality and surpassing beauty, and far eclipse in attraction many that are cultivated with care and pride in our gardens; but here they spring up, year after year, in silence and solitude, being literally

"------Born to blush unseen, And waste their fragrance on the desert air."

In the valley of the stream, along the eastern side of which, for a mile or two, a convenient road has been chisseled and scooped out of the sides of the stony hill, the vision is completely obstructed by the imposing banks, and hills rising above hills, on either shore; and but for the unpoetic noise of a laboring mill, and the span of a rude bridge which crosses to a small cavern or cleft in the rocky slope, there would be nothing to betray the presence of man, or to mark the contiguity of human enterprise. Alas! that not one spot--not even the glorious Wissahiccon--bearing the undoubted impress of the hand of the God of nature, can escape the desolating depredations and officious interference of the onward march of civilization.

The carriage road commencing at the mouth of the Wissahiccon, crosses the stream on a covered bridge, about a mile and a half above, winds up a hill of considerable elevation, and passes over to the ridge. From the covered bridge access along the creek is obtained by means of a foot path, on the western side, which is marked through the forest, over crags and cliffs, rugged rocks and rooted trees, until it reaches a beautiful green lawn, a little parlor in the wilderness, celebrated as the resort of occasional pic-nic parties of young ladies and gentlemen from the city, and where, on the grassy floor, youth and beauty have often mingled in the graceful dance, and joined in the merry song of innocence and gay hilarity. It is a sweet spot, and surrounded, as it is, by scenery of the wildest and most romantic character, may very appropriately be designated the "oasis of the Wissahiccon." Near this place, immediately on the water's edge, the ruins of an antiquated stone building are discovered, scattered over the ground, and as no trace of the original appearance of the edifice can be found, the imagination is permitted to enjoy free scope in dwelling upon the character and pursuits of its ancient founders. On the opposite side, the banks rise up, in many places almost perpendicularly, to the height of mountains, and but few have the temerity to attempt a passage along the course of the stream, as a single false step might hurl them among the dangerous rocks and jutting cliffs below. Here, as well as on the western side, several clefts and caverns in the granite rocks may be found, but it does not appear that they extend to any great depth under the massive structure; and here, upon the edge of a hill, may be seen the point at which it was sometime since proposed to throw a bridge over the stream, to carry across the rail road from Philadelphia to Norristown. The projectors of the scheme reached thus far in their onward progress, but in casting a glance over the precipice into the gulph below, were struck with dismay at the formidable obstacles which appeared, and prudently abandoned the hazardous and wildly-conceived undertaking.