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lation, by François Thurot, appeared at Paris in 1799. The first American edition was printed at Philadelphia in 1803. Such an extended circulation is the best recommendation which the volumes could receive. Mr. Roscoe had the most abundant materials for his work, and skill and taste to use them. His work is a noble example of the industry and literary ability of a Liverpool banker. EDITOR.

ARTICLE VI.

DEVELOPMENT OF CHARACTER IN EDUCATED MEN.

EVERY alumnus of a collegiate or professional institution knows that a triennial catalogue is a publication of deep interest. Especially is it so, if it be the catalogue of the institution in which he has received his own education. It may be, to many other men, the driest and dullest of all the productions of the press; but not so to him. He can spend an hour, two, perhaps three, over it, though he will not read it through from page to page, as other books, and he turns hither and thither among its leaves, as chance or inclination guides; yet he will probably prefer it, for the time being, to almost any book of straight-forward reading; perhaps prefer it to the latest news from Congress, or the latest quarterly; and certainly to the latest fiction, however popular or splendid.

In this peculiar description of reading, various things will interest an educated man; to see who are civilians; who, physicians; who, ministers; who has been made a college professor, president or fellow; who has found his way to the bench, or into Congress, or to the gubernatorial chair, or foreign embassy; whose name has begun to have appended to it, in long and imposing train, those literary initials, S. T. D., or D. D., L. L. D., S. H. S., A. A. S., etc. etc., and for the mysterious meaning of which, other men must draw upon the spelling-book learning of their youthful days. And last, not least, and with interest serious and tender, hist looks for the starred names, as those of men qui e vivis cesserunt ;" and which point him to the mortality of literary, as well as all other men; and to the end of literary and all

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other toils and honors. As he passes along from page to page, old and choice friends of college-days are brought to mind; and scenes and incidents, and perhaps some follies of college-life, are recollected. And a little of the romance and sentimentalism, associated with "days that are past," may mingle with all. Like the old soldier who loves to "fight his battles o'er again," so the alumnus loves to live over the days of college life; to recall the excitement and parade of commencement, and the valedictory hour; and the less formal, but more hearty personal valedictories and actual separation for life, which taught him and his classmates how well they loved one another.

Additional, however, to all these minor matters which may interest an educated man, in examining this periodical of his college, there is one other point of deeper and more important interest. He is occupied with the history of the men of education, with whom he was once associated in literary pursuits. Unwritten history it is; but furnished to his mind's eye from full and vivid tablets of his memory, and by the knowledge of them which he has acquired, while,—since the hour of graduation, he has followed them, with the interest of literary friendship, in their various directions in life. With the dry catalogue of names of men, living and dead, before him, and with the feelings of former friendship awakened, recollections vivid, and knowledge recent and fresh, he may read mentally and with the swiftness of thought, in a short hour, that which would swell the catalogue into a volume of history and biography united; and he will have followed men into lines of life, and scenes of professional, and perhaps public action and influence, and on paths of honor or dishonor, of evil report or good, and of happiness or sorrow; bringing before him as great a variety of matters of interest, as the mind could well conceive. For the history of literary men is checkered with as singular variety of light and shade, of the bright and the sombre, as of any class of men whatever. And he must have made but very indifferent use of the discipline, which his mind received in his collegiate course, and feel strangely unsusceptible of interest in his associates in study, who has not learned how to employ himself in those studies of literary character, for which opportunities are so amply afforded in a land of colleges, and of men of education.

Among the many points embraced in such a history, and which will interest an educated man, will be one, not surpassed in interest or importance by any others, the development of character in men of education. This point will be the subject of a few remarks in the present article.

Every man who has passed through a collegiate course, or one which is equivalent to it, in the amount of studies and of mental discipline accomplished, is to be, for life, a different man, in some very important particulars, from what he would have been with only a common education. His mind will have received elevation and expansion; his talents, of whatever class or grade, a discipline and strengthening, which he would have experienced in no other way. He is to be something, in consequence of his collegiate education, and through its means, which he would not otherwise have been. And it is a question of high interest for himself, his friends, and that portion of the community in which Providence may cast his lot and give him influence,-perhaps for the nation, what he shall be. Some development of the man is inevitable, ordinarily speaking. It will be one, in some general points, like that of other educated men; and yet there will, doubtless, be much which will be characteristic; and by which, to all observing men and careful estimators of character, he will be distinguishable from other men of education, as clearly as his own countenance is distinguishable from theirs, in its peculiar lineaments and expression. To mark out the man's probable course, would be a mere affair of conjecture. And so interminable is the variety of intellectual character, and so much is dependent upon the circumstances in which any man may be placed, that it would be impossible to predict what he is to be. We are more especially interested to know what are some of the instrumentalities, which have been, in times past, and doubtless will continue to be, concerned in developing the characters of men of education. If we are successful in fixing our attention upon some of the most important of these, we shall probably attain our best instructions on this subject.

Of the instrumentalities in the development of character in educated men, we mention, first, poverty. While, doubtless, this has kept many a man of good, or even surpassing powers, from attaining what is called a liberal education, still, where, in despite of poverty, men have sought it, and

made their way through a collegiate and professional course, this same severe instrumentality has, not unfrequently, proved itself an inestimable blessing. Plenty of money has far oftener proved to be an incubus upon talent, and a clog to education, than poverty. To be compelled to struggle with its difficulties and embarrassments, has generally given a strength and resolution, first to the literary, and afterwards to the professional, character; preparing the way for higher eminence and usefulness than would ever have been reached, with a full purse, to place the student at his ease, and lead him into temptations adverse to mental progress. Some of the journals have recently given a catalogue of shoemakers, who rose from poverty in this world's goods, to most princely mental riches, and to honor and usefulness most enviable; and all under that pressure of poverty, in overcoming which, the man accumulates and concentrates energies, which are certain to carry him upward to most desirable literary eminence and usefulness. A catalogue of blacksmiths could, in our own country, be well begun, with a name now quite well known; and the catalogue could be lengthened, too, with a little research into the history of scholars, sufficiently to show that there is no natural repellancy between the anvil, the leather-apron, and the hammer, on the one hand; and the lexicon and the pen, and the habits of close and successful study on the other. These two illustrations, out of many others, are sufficient to rebuke that pride, which would claim the privileges and honors of education for aristocrats, or men with royal blood running in their veins; and to show that the true elements of intellectual greatness may be found in men who live in small houses and work in shops, as well as in men who inhabit splendid mansions, and ride in coaches; who wear silk stockings, and elegant shoes, and white gloves, sweetened with "the perfumes of Arabia." No disrespect is by any means intended to rich men, and their sons whom they send to college. We mean only to say, that wealth is far from being, in itself, an infallible instrumentality of intellectual greatness; that some men of eminence have had far more occasion to bless their poverty, than other men their wealth; and that it is very possible for one man to purchase that with the toil demanded by his own poverty, which another cannot purchase with the wealth of both the Indies. True, the prayer of a man who desires an education, may

very naturally be, "give me neither poverty nor riches;" but if he must have one or the other, there are some very potent reasons, why he should ask that he may be poor, rather than rich. A poor genius, with reasonable diligence, may do something; a wealthy blockhead certainly can make nothing.

A second instrumentality in the development of character in educated men, we know not how to call by a better name than temperament. A case will both explain what is meant by the term, and illustrate the importance of the thing itself. In one of our New-England colleges, several years since, a still, unpretending, and seemingly dull young man, one day, in the recitation-room, shook his head at a solution of a mathematical problem, either given or endorsed by the professor; and whispered to a fellow-student next him, that that could not be so. He did not venture on a contradiction of his professor before the class, but called at his room and modestly stated his difficulty. After a few days and nights, spent in working at the problem, he produced and offered a solution, which his professor, not by any means a tyro in his department, accepted as a correction of his own. One who personally knew this young man, said, "he had mathematical talent enough to have matched any man in New-England." Yet that same man has made only an ordinary one; good, useful in his parish,—for he is a minister,—but his correction of his professor's mistake on the occasion aforesaid, was the only important development of mathematical talent which he ever exhibited. What was the difficulty in this case? It was, doubtless, that this student's temperament was too easy and quiet for his talents; or, in plain English, it was too sluggish, to permit him to move far on, in the path of scientific enterprise, to put forth his real strength, and to do himself justice. A little of the effrontery of another, who recited by guess, when he could recite in no other way, and with great glee joined in the laugh of his class at his own blunders, would have brought this man out; and, associated with his real talent, would perhaps have made him to be, at this moment, a professor of mathematics in one of our colleges.

An interesting contrast to the case now stated might be given, in that of a man of powerful talents and high attainments for his years, whose early and untimely loss, on his way to England, several years since, to seek the advantages

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