|
EARLY
LIFE
He placed me at the English school at five
years of age; and at the Latin at nine, where I continued until his
death. My teacher, Mr. Douglas, a clergyman from Scotland, with the
rudiments of the Latin and Greek languages, taught me the French;
and on the death of my father, I went to the Reverend Mr. Maury, a
correct classical scholar, with whom I continued two years; and
then, to wit, in the spring of 1760, went to William and Mary
college, where I continued two years. It was my great good fortune,
and what probably fixed the destinies of my life, that Dr. William
Small of Scotland, was then Professor of Mathematics, a man profound
in most of the useful branches of science, with a happy talent of
Communication, correct and gentlemanly manners, and an enlarged and
liberal mind. He, most happily for me, became soon attached to me,
and made me his daily companion when not engaged in the school; and
from his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of
science, and of the system of things in which we are placed.
Fortunately, the philosophical chair became vacant soon after my
arrival at college, and he was appointed to fill it per interim:
and he was the first who ever gave, in that college, regular
lectures in Ethics, Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. He returned to
Europe in 1762, having previously filled up the measure of his
goodness to me, by procuring for me, from his most intimate friend,
George Wythe, a reception as a student of law, under his direction,
and introduced me to the acquaintance and familiar table of Governor
Fauquier, the ablest man who had ever filled that office. With him,
and at his table, Dr. Small and Mr. Wythe, his amici omnium
horarum, and myself, formed a partie quarree, and to the
habitual conversations on these occasions I owed much instruction.
Mr. Wythe continued to be my faithful and beloved mentor in youth,
and my most affectionate friend through life. In 1767, he led me
into the practice of the law at the bar of the General court, at
which I continued until the Revolution shut up the courts of
justice. |
Notes
for an Autobiography
6 Jan 1821 |
EDUCATION
… Considering history as a moral exercise,
her lessons would be too infrequent if confined to real life. Of
those recorded by historians few incidents have been attended with
such circumstances as to excite in any high degree this sympathetic
emotion of virtue. We are, therefore, wisely framed to be as warmly
interested for a fictitious as for a real personage. The field of
imagination is thus laid open to our use and lessons may be formed
to illustrate and carry home to the heart every moral rule of life.
Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually
impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear,
than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were
written. This is my idea of well written Romance, of Tragedy, Comedy
and Epic poetry. If you are fond of speculation the books under the
head of Criticism will afford you much pleasure. Of Politics and
Trade I have given you a few only of the best books, as you would
probably choose to be not unacquainted with those commercial
principles which bring wealth into our country, and the
constitutional security we have for the enjoyment of that wealth. In
Law I mention a few systematical books, as a knowledge of the
minutiae of that science is not necessary for a private gentleman.
In Religion, History', Natural philosophy, I have followed the same
plan in general. .. |
Robert
Skipwith
3 Aug 1771 |
EDUCATION
/ AS A MEANS TO END PREJUDICE
…If all the sovereigns of Europe were to
set themselves to work, to emancipate the minds of their subjects
from their present ignorance and prejudices, and that, as zealously
as they now endeavor the contrary, a thousand years would not place
them on that high ground, on which our common people are now setting
out. Ours could not have been so fairly placed under the control of
the common sense of the people, had they not been separated from
their parent stock, and kept from contamination, either from them,
or the other people of the old world, by the intervention of so wide
an ocean. To know the worth of this, one must see the want of it
here. I think by far the most important bill in our whole code, is
that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure
foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and
happiness. If anybody thinks that kings, nobles, or priests are good
conservators of the public happiness, send him here. It is the best
school in the universe to cure him of that folly. He will see here,
with his own eyes, that these descriptions of men are an abandoned
confederacy against the happiness of the mass of the people. The
omnipotence of their effect cannot be better proved, than in this
country particularly, where, not-withstanding the finest soil upon
earth, the finest climate under heaven, and a people of the most
benevolent, the most gay and amiable character of which the human
form is susceptible; where such a people, I say, surrounded by so
many blessings from nature, are loaded with misery, by kings,
nobles, and priests, and by them alone. Preach, my dear Sir, a
crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for
educating the common people. Let our countrymen know, that the
people alone can protect us against these evils, and that the tax
which will be paid for this purpose, is not more than the thousandth
part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles, who will
rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance. The people of
England, I think, are less oppressed than here [France]. But it
needs but half an eye to see, when among them, that the foundation
is laid in their dispositions for the establishment of a despotism.
Nobility, wealth, and pomp are the objects of their admiration. They
are by no means the free-minded people we suppose them in America.
Their learned men, too, are few in number, and are less learned, and
infinitely less emancipated from prejudice, than those of this
country. |
George
Wythe
13 Aug 1786 |
EDUCATION
/ DISCIPLINED STUDY
Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, Natural
History, Anatomy, Chemistry, Botany, will become amusements for your
hours of relaxation, and auxiliaries to your principal studies.
Precious and delightful ones they will be. As soon as such a
foundation is laid in them, as you may build on as you please,
hereafter, I suppose you will proceed to your train objects,
Politics, Law, Rhetoric, and History. As to these, the place where
you study them is absolutely indifferent. I should except Rhetoric,
a very essential member of them, and which I suppose must be taught
to advantage where you are. You would do well, therefore, to attend
the public exercises in this branch also, and to do it with very
particular diligence. This being done, the question arises, where
you shall fix yourself for studying Politics, Law, and History? I
should not hesitate to decide in favor of France, because you will,
at the same time, be learning to speak the language of that country,
become absolutely essential under our present circumstances.
The best method of doing this, would be to fix yourself in some
family where there are women and children... The principal hours of
the day, you will attend to your studies, and in those of
relaxation, associate with the family. You will learn to speak
better from women and children in three months, than from men in a
year. Such a situation, too, will render more easy a due attention
to economy of time and money. …I have proposed to you, to carry
on the study of the law with that of politics and history. Every
political measure will, forever, have an intimate connection with
the laws of the land; and he, who knows nothing of these, will
always be perplexed, and often foiled by adversaries having the
advantage of that knowledge over him. Besides, it is a source of
infinite comfort to reflect, that under every chance of fortune, we
have a resource in ourselves from which we may be able to derive an
honorable subsistence. I would, therefore, propose not only the
study, but the practice of the law for some time, to possess
yourself of the habit of public speaking.
With respect to modern languages, French, as I have before
observed, is indispensable. Next to this, the Spanish is most
important to an American. Our connection with Spain is already
important, and will become daily more so. Besides this, the ancient
part of American history is written chiefly in Spanish. |
T.
M. Randolph, Jr.
6 Jul 1787 |
EDUCATION
/ EUROPEAN
But why send an American youth to Europe for
education? What are the objects of an useful American education?
Classical knowledge, modern languages, chiefly French, Spanish, and
Italian; Mathematics, Natural philosophy, Natural history, Civil
history, and Ethics. In Natural philosophy, I mean to include
Chemistry and Agriculture, and in Natural history, to include
Botany, as well as the other branches of those departments. It is
true that the habit of speaking the modern languages cannot be so
well acquired in America; but every other article can be as well
acquired at William and Mary college, as at any place in Europe.
When college education is done with, and a young man is to prepare
himself for public life, he must cast his eyes (for America) either
on Law or Physics. For the former, where can he apply so
advantageously as to Mr. Wythe? For the latter, he must come to
Europe: the medical class of students, therefore, is the only one
which need come to Europe.
Let us view the disadvantages of sending a youth td Europe. To
enumerate them all, would require a volume. I will select a few. If
he goes to England, he learns drinking, horse racing, and boxing.
These are the peculiarities of English education. The following
circumstances are common to education in that, and the other
countries of Europe. He acquires a fondness for European luxury and
dissipation, and a contempt for the simplicity of his own country;
he is fascinated with the privileges of the European aristocrats,
and sees, with abhorrence, the lovuiy equality which the poor enjoy
with the rich, in his own country; he contracts a partiality for
aristocracy or monarchy; he forms foreign friendships which will
never be useful to him, and loses the seasons of life for forming,
in his own country, those friendships which, of all others, are the
most faithful and permanent; he is led, by the strongest of all the
human passions, into a spirit for female intrigue, destructive of
his own and others' happiness, or a passion for whores, destructive
of his health, and, in both cases, learns to consider fidelity to
the marriage bed as an ungentlemanly practice, and inconsistent with
happiness; he recollects the voluptuary dress and arts of the
European women, and pities and despises the chaste affections and
simplicity of those of his own country; he retains, through life, a
fond recollection, and a hankering after those places, which were
the scenes of his first pleasures and of his first connections; he
returns to his own country, a foreigner, unacquainted with the
practices of domestic economy, necessary to preserve him from ruin,
speaking and writing his native tongue as a foreigner, and therefore
unqualified to obtain those distinctions, which eloquence of the pen
and tongue ensures in a free country; for I would observe to you,
that what is called style in writing or speaking is formed very
early in life, while the imagination is warm, and impressions are
permanent. I am of opinion, that there never was an instance of a
man's writing or speaking his native tongue with elegance, who
passed from fifteen to twenty years of age out of the country where
it was spoken. Thus, no instance exists of a person's writing two
languages perfectly. That will always appear to be his native
language, which was most familiar t6 him in his youth.
It appears to me, then, that an American, coming to Europe for
education, loses in his knowledge, in his morals, in his health, in
his habits, and in his happiness. I had entertained only doubts on
this head before I came to Europe: what I see and hear, since I came
here, proves more than I had even suspected. Cast your eye over
America: who are the men of most learning, of roost eloquence, most
beloved by their countrymen and most trusted and promoted by them?
They are those who have been educated among them, and whose manners,
morals, and habits, are perfectly homogeneous with those of the
country. |
J.
Bannister
15 Oct 1785 |
EDUCATION
/ LIBRARIES
Your favor of March 19th came to hand but a few
days ago,. and informs me of the establishment of the Westward Mill
Library Society, of its general views and progress. I always hear
with pleasure of institutions for the promotion of knowledge among
my countrymen. The people of every country are the only safe
guardians of their own rights, and are the only instruments which
can be used for their destruction. And certainly they would never
consent to be so used were they not deceived. To avoid this, they
should be instructed to a certain degree. I have often thought that
nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the
establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to
consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the
country, under such regulations as would secure their safe return in
due time. These should be such as would give them a general view of
other history, and particular view of that of their own country, a
tolerable knowledge of Geography, the elements of Natural
Philosophy, of Agriculture and Mechanics. Should your example lead
to this, it will do great good. |
John
Wyche
19 May 1809 |
EDUCATION
/ NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
I am indebted to you . . . for your letter by
Mr. Correa, and the benefit it procured me of his acquaintance. He
was so kind as to pay me a visit at Monticello, which enabled me to
see for myself that he was still beyond all the eulogies with which
yourself and other friends had preconized him. I learned beyond any
one I had before met with, good, modest and of the simplest manners,
the idea of losing him again filled me with regret, and how much did
I lament that we could not place him at the head of that that
institution which I have so long nourished the hope of seeing
established in my country, and towards which you had so kindly
contributed your luminous views. But, my friend, that institution is
still in embryo as you left it, and from the complexion of our
popular legislature and the narrow and niggardly views of ignorance
courting the suffrage of ignorance to obtain a seat in it, I see
little prospect of such an establishment until the national
government shall be authorized to take it up and form it on the
comprehensive basis of all the useful sciences. |
Dupont
de Nemours
29 Nov 1813 |
EDUCATION
/ READING
A kind note at the foot of Mr. Adams' letter of
July 15 reminds me of the duty of saluting you with friendship and
respect, a duty long suspended by the unremitting labors of public
engagement and which ought to have been sooner revived, since I am
the proprietor of my own time. And yet so it is, that in no course
of life have I been ever more closely pressed by business than in
the present. Much of this proceeds from my own affairs, much from
the calls of others; leaving little time for indulgence in my
greatest of all amusements, reading. Dr. Franklin used to say that
when he was young and had time to read he had not books; and now
when he has become old and had books, he had no time. Perhaps it is
that when habit has strengthened our sense of duties, they leave us
no time for other things; but when young we neglect them and this
gives us time for anything.
However, I will now take time to ask you how you do, how you have
done? and to express the interest I take in whatever affects your
happiness.
I have compared notes with Mr. Adams on the score of progeny and
find I am ahead of him and think I am in a fair way to keep so. I
have ten and one-half grandchildren, and two and three-fourths
great-grandchildren, and these fractions will ere long become units.
I was glad to learn from Mr. Adams that you have a grandson far
enough advanced in age and acquirements to be reading Greek. These
young scions give us comfortable cares, when we cease to care about
ourselves. Under all circumstances of health or sickness, of
blessing or affliction, I tender you assurances of my sincere
affection and respect. |
Abigail
Adams
22 Aug 1813 |
EDUCATION
/ STATE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
We wish to establish in the upper country, and
more centrally for the State, an University on a plan so broad and
liberal and modern, as to be worth patronizing with the
public support, and be a temptation to the youth of other States to
come and drink of the cup of knowledge and fraternize with us. The
first step is to obtain a good plan; that is, a judicious selection
of the sciences, and a practicable grouping of some of them
together, and ramifying of others, so as to adopt the professorships
to our uses and our means. In an institution meant chiefly for use,
some branches of science, formerly esteemed, may be now omitted; so
may others now valued in Europe, but useless to us for ages to come.
As an example of the former, the Oriental learning, and of the
latter, almost the whole of the institution pro-posed to Congress by
the Secretary of War's report of the 5th instant. …
I will venture even to sketch the sciences which seem useful and
practicable for us, as they occur to me while holding my pen.
Botany, chemistry, zoology, anatomy, surgery, medicine, natural
philosophy, agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, geography,
politics, commerce, history, ethics, law, arts, fine arts. This list
is imperfect because I make it hastily, and because I am unequal to
the subject. It is evident that some of these articles are too much
for one professor and must therefore be ramified; others may be
ascribed in groups to a single professor. This is the difficult part
of the work, and requires a head perfectly knowing the extent of
each branch, and the limits within which it may be circumscribed, so
as to bring the whole within the powers of the fewest professors
possible, and consequently within the degree of expense practicable
for us. We should propose that the professors follow no other
calling, so that their whole time may be given to their academical
functions; and we should propose to draw from Europe the first
characters in science, by considerable temptations, which would not
need to be repeated after the first set should have prepared fit
successors and given reputation to the institution. From some
splendid characters I have received offers most perfectly reasonable
and practicable.
I do not propose to give you all this trouble merely of my own
head, that would be arrogance. It has been the subject of
consultation among the ablest and highest characters of our State,
who only wait for a plan to make a joint and I hope a successful
effort to get the thing carried into effect. |
Joseph
Priestley
18 Jan 1800 |
EDUCATION
/ STATE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
In my last letter of the 18th, I omitted to say
any thing of the languages as part of our proposed University. It
was not that I think, as some do, that they are useless. I am of a
very different opinion. I do not think them very essential to the
obtaining eminent degrees of science; but I think them very useful
towards it. I suppose there is a portion of life during which our
faculties are ripe enough for this, and for nothing more useful. I
think the Greeks and Romans have left us the present models which
exist of fine composition, whether we examine them as works of
reason, or of style and fancy; and to them we probably owe these
characteristics of modern composition. I know of no composition of
any other ancient people, which merits the least regard as a model
for its matter or style. To all this I add, that to read the Latin
and Greek authors in their original, is a sublime luxury; and I deem
luxury in science to be at least as justifiable as in architecture,
painting, gardening, or the other arts. I enjoy Homer in his own
language in-finitely beyond Pope's translation of him, and both
beyond the dull narrative of the same events by Dares Phrygius; and
it is an innocent enjoyment. I thank on my knees, Him who directed
my early education, for having put into my possession this rich
source of delight; and I would not exchange it for anything which I
could then have acquired, and have not since acquired. With this
regard for those languages, you will acquit. me of meaning to omit
them.
About twenty years ago, I drew a bill for our legislature, which
proposed to lay off every country into hundreds or townships of five
or six miles square, in the centre of each of them was to be a free
English school; the whole State was further laid off into ten
districts, in each of which was to be a college for teaching the
languages, geography, surveying, and other useful things of that
grade; and then a single University for the sciences. It was
received with enthusiasm; but as I had proposed that William and
Mary, under an improved form, should be the University, and that was
at that time pretty highly Episcopal, the dissenters after awhile
began to apprehend some secret design of a preference to that sect.
About three years ago they enacted that part of my bill which
related to English schools, except that instead of obliging, they
left it optional. in the court of every county to carry it into
execution or not. I think it probable the part of the plan for the
middle grade of education, may also he brought forward in due time.
In the meanwhile, we are not without a sufficient number of good
country schools, where the languages, geography, and the first
elements of mathematics, are taught. Having omitted this information
in my former letter, I thought it necessary now to supply it, that
you might know on what base your superstructure was to be reared. …The
Gothic idea that we are to look backwards instead of forwards for
the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of our
ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion and in
learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government, by
whom it has been recommended, and whose purposes it would answer.
But it is not an idea which this country will endure; and the moment
of their showing it is fast ripening; and the signs of it will be
their respect for you, and growing detestation of those who have
dishonored our country by endeavors to disturb our tranquility in
it. |
Joseph
Priestley (Doctor)
27 Jan 1800 |
EDUCATION
/ STATE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Dear sir, on the subject of the academy or
college proposed to be established in our neighborhood, I promised
the trustees that I would prepare for them a plan, adapted, in the
first instance, to our slender funds, but susceptible of being
enlarged, either by their own growth or by accession from other
quarters.
I have long entertained the hope that this, our native State, would
take up the subject of education, and make an establishment, either
with or without incorporation into that of William and Mary, where
every branch of science, deemed useful at this day, should be taught
in its highest degree. With this view, I have lost no occasion of
making myself acquainted with the organization of the best
seminaries in other countries, and with the opinions of the most
enlightened individuals, on the subject of the sciences worthy of a
place in such an institution. In order to prepare what I have
promised our trustees, I have lately revised these several plans
with attention; and I am struck with the diversity of arrangement
observable in them -- no two alike. Yet, I have no doubt that these
several arrangements have been the subject of mature reflection, by
wise and learned men, who, contemplating local circumstances, have
adopted them to the conditions of the section of society for which
they have been framed. I am strengthened in this conclusion by an
examination of each separately, and a conviction that no one of
them, if adopted without change, would be suited to the
circumstances and pursuit of our country. The example they set,
then, is authority for us to select from their different
institutions the materials which are good for us, and, with them, to
erect a structure, whose arrangement shall correspond with our own
social condition, and shall admit of enlargement in proportion to
the encouragement it may merit and receive. As I may not be able to
attend the meetings of the trustees, I will make you the depository
of my ideas on the subject, which may be corrected, as you proceed,
by the better view of others, and adapted, from time to time, to the
prospects which open upon us, and which cannot be specifically seen
and provided for.
In the first place, we must ascertain with precision the object of
our institution, by taking a survey of the general field of science,
and marking out the portion we mean to occupy at first, and the
ultimate extension of our views beyond that, should we be enabled to
render it, in the end, as comprehensive as we would wish. …
The learned class may still be subdivided into two Sections:
1, Those who are destined for learned professions, as means of
livelihood; and, 2, the wealthy, who, possessing independent
fortunes, may aspire to share in conducting the affairs of the
nation, or to live with usefulness and respect in the private ranks
of life. Both of these Sections will require instruction in all the
higher branches of science; the wealthy to qualify them for either
public or private life; the professional Section will need those
branches, especially, which are the basis of their future
profession, and a general knowledge of the others, as auxiliary to
that, and necessary to their standing and association with the
scientific class. All the branches, then, of useful science, ought
to be taught in the general schools, to a competent degree, in the
first instance. These sciences may be arranged into three
departments, not rigorously scientific, indeed, but sufficiently so
for our purposes. These are, I. language; II. mathematics; III.
philosophy. …
At the close of this course the students separate; the wealthy
retiring, with a sufficient stock of knowledge, to improve
themselves to any degree to which their views may lead them, and the
professional Section to the professional schools, constituting the
third grade of education, and teaching the particular sciences which
the individuals of this section mean to pursue with more minuteness
and detail than was within the scope of the general schools for the
second grade of instruction. In these professional schools each
science is to be taught in the highest degree it has yet attained. …
On this survey of the field of science, I recur to the question,
what portion of it we mark out for the occupation of our
institution? With the first grade of education we shall have nothing
to do. The sciences of the second grade are our first object; and,
to adapt them to our slender beginnings, we must separate them into
groups, comprehending many sciences each, and greatly more, in the
first instance, than ought to be imposed on, or can be competently
conducted by a single professor permanently. They must be subdivided
from time to time, as our means increase, until each professor shall
have no more under his care than he can attend to with advantage to
his pupils and ease to himself. For the present, we may group the
sciences into professorships, as follows, subject, however, to be
changed, according to the qualifications of the persons we may be
able to engage. …
|
Peter
Carr
7 Sep 1814 |
EDUCATION
/ STATE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
On a private subscription of about fifty or
sixty thousand dollars we began the establishment of what we called
the Central College, about a mile from the village of
Charlottesville and four miles from this place, and have made some
progress in the buildings. The legislature at their last session
took up the subject and passed an act establishing an University,
endowing it for the present with an annuity of fifteen thousand
dollars and directing commissioners to meet to recommend a site, a
plan of buildings, the professorships necessary for teaching all the
branches of science at this day deemed useful, etc.
The commissioners by a vote of sixteen for the Central College, two
for a second place and three for a third adopted that for the site
of the University. They approved by an unanimous vote the plan of
building begun at that place, and agreed on such a distribution of
the sciences as it was thought might bring them all within the
competence of ten professors; and no doubt is entertained of a
confirmation by the legislature at their meeting in December. The
plan of building is not to erect one single magnificent building to
contain everybody, and everything, but to make of it an academical
village, in which every professor should have his separate house,
containing his lecturing room with two, three or four rooms for his
own accommodation according as he may have a family or no family,
with kitchen, garden, etc., distinct dormitories for the students,
not more than two in a room and separate boardinghouses for dieting
them by private housekeepers. We concluded to employ no professor
who is not of the first order of the science he professes, that when
we can find such in our own country we shall prefer them and when we
cannot we will procure them wherever else to be found. |
Nathaniel
Bowditch
26 Oct 1818 |
EDUCATION
/ STATE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Our University, four miles distant, gives me
frequent exercise, and the oftener, as I direct its architecture.
Its plan is unique, and it is becoming an object of curiosity for
the traveler. I have lately had an opportunity of reading a critique
on this institution in your North American Review of January last,
having been not without anxiety to see what that able work would say
of us; and I was relieved on finding in it much coincidence of
opinion, and even whether criticisms were indulged, I found they
would have been obviated had the developments of our plan been
fuller. |
John
Adams
15 Aug 1820 |
EDUCATION
/ STATE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Your welcome favor of the 12th came to hand two
days ago. I was just returned from Poplar Forest, which I have
visited four times this year. I have an excellent house there,
inferior only to Monticello, am comfortably fixed and attended, have
a few good neighbors, and pass my time there in a tranquillity and
retirement much adapted to my age and indolence. …I am very
little able to walk, but ride freely without fatigue. No better
proof than that on a late visit to the Natural Bridge I was six days
successively on horseback from breakfast to sunset. You enquire also
about our University. All its buildings except the Library will be
finished by the ensuing spring. It will be a splendid establishment,
would be thought so in Europe, and for the chastity of its
architecture and classical taste leaves everything in America far
behind it. But the Library, not yet begun, is essentially wanting to
give it unity and consolidation as a single object. It will have
cost in the whole but 250,000 dollars. The library is to he on the
principle of the Pantheon, a sphere within a cylinder of 70 feet
diameter, -- to wit, one-half only of the dimensions of the
Pantheon, and of a single order only. When this is done you must
come and see it. I do not admire your Canada speculation. I think,
with Mr. Rittenhouse, that it is altogether unaccountable how any
man can stay in a cold country who can find room in a warm one, and
should certainly prefer, to polar regions of ice and snow, lands as
fertile and cheap which may be covered with groves of olives and
oranges. I envy M. Chaumont nothing but his French cook and cuisine.
These are luxuries which can neither be forgotten nor possessed in
our country. |
Unknown
recipient
24 Nov 1821 |
EDUCATION
/ STATE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Our University goes on well. We have passed the
limit of 100 students some time since. As yet it has been a model of
order and good behavior, having never yet had occasion for the
exercise of a single act of authority. We studiously avoid too much
government. We treat them as men and gentlemen, under the guidance
mainly of their own discretion. They so consider themselves, and
make it their pride to acquire that character for their institution.
In short, we are as quiet on that head as the experience of six
months only can justify. Our professors, too, continue to be what we
wish them. Mr. Gilmer accepts the Law chair, and all is well.
|
Ellen
W. Coolidge
27 Aug 1825 |
EDUCATION
/ STUDYING THE CLASSICS
With respect to the Roman history, if you have
read Suetonius and Tacitus, Gibbon's will be sufficient to conduct
you down to the time when that empire broke to pieces and the modern
states of Europe arose out of them. As I do not suppose you can get
a copy of Gibbon you may leave him for the next winter when I shall
have mine in Virginia. In the meanwhile study well Blair, Mason,
Quintihan, and endeavor to catch the oratorical style of
Bolingbroke. |
John
Garland Jefferson
14 Apr 1793 |
EDUCATION
/ STUDYING THE CLASSICS
Our post-revolutionary youth are born under
happier stars than you and I were. They acquire all learning in
their mother's womb, and bring it into the world ready made. The
information of books is no longer necessary; and all knowledge which
is not innate, is in contempt, or neglect at least. Every folly must
run its round; and so, I suppose, must that of self-learning and
self-sufficiency; of rejecting the knowledge acquired in past ages,
and starting on the new ground of intuition. When sobered by
experience, I hope our successors will turn their attention to the
advantages of education. I mean of education on the broad scale, and
not that of the petty academies, as they call themselves,
which are starting up in every neighborhood, and where one or two
men, possessing Latin and sometimes Greek, a knowledge of the
globes, and the first six books of Euclid, imagine and communicate
this as the sum of science. They commit their pupils to the theatre
of the world, with just taste enough of learning to be alienated
from industrious pursuits, and not enough to do service in the ranks
of science. |
John
Adams
5 Jul 1814 |
EDUCATION
/ STUDYING THE CLASSICS
You ask my opinion on the extent to which
classical learning should be carried in our country. A sickly
condition permits me to think and a rheumatic hand to write too
briefly on this litigated question. The utilities we derive from the
remains of the Greek and Latin languages are, first, as models of
pure taste in writing. To these we are certainly indebted for the
national and chaste style of modern composition which so much
distinguishes the nations to whom these languages are familiar.
Without these models we should probably have continued the inflated
style of our northern ancestors, or the hyperbolical and vague one
of the east. Second, among the values of classical learning, I
estimate the luxury of reading the Greek and Roman authors in all
the beauties of their originals. And why should not this innocent
and elegant luxury take its preeminent stand ahead of all those
addressed merely to the senses? I think myself more indebted to my
father for this than for all the other luxuries his cares and
affections have placed within my reach; and more now than when
younger, and more susceptible of delights from other sources. When
the decays of age have enfeebled the useful energies of the mind,
the classic pages fill up the vacuum of ennui, and become
sweet composers to that rest of the grave into which we are all
sooner or later to descend. A third value is in the stores of real
science deposited and transmitted us in these languages, to-wit: in
history, ethics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and natural
history.
But to whom are these things useful? Certainly not to all men.
There are conditions of life to which they must be forever
estranged, and there are epochs of life too, after which the
endeavor to attain them would be a great misemployment of time.
Their acquisition should be the occupation of our early years only,
when the memory is susceptible of deep and lasting impressions, and
reason and judgment not yet strong enough for abstract speculations.
To the moralist they are valuable, because they furnish ethical
writings highly and justly esteemed: although in my own opinion, the
moderns are far advanced beyond them in this line of science, the
divine finds in the Greek language a translation of his primary
code, of more importance to him than the original because better
understood; and, in the same language, the newer code, with the
doctrines of the earliest fathers, who lived and wrote before the
simple precepts of the founder of this most benign and pure of all
systems of morality became frittered into subtleties and mysteries,
and hidden under jargons incomprehensible to the human mind. To
these original sources he must now, therefore, return, to recover
the virgin purity of his religion. The lawyer finds in the Latin
language the system of civil law most conformable with the
principles of justice of any which has ever yet been established
among men, and from which much has been incorporated into our own.
The physician as good a code of his art as has been given us to this
day. Theories and systems of medicine, indeed, have been in
perpetual change from the days of the good Hippocrates to the days
of the good Rush, but which of them is the true one? The present, to
be sure, as long as it is the present, but to yield its place in
turn to the next novelty, which is then to become the true system,
and is to mark the vast advance of medicine since the days of
Hippocrates. Our situation is certainly benefited by the discovery
of some new and very valuable medicines; and substituting those for
some of his with the treasure of facts, and of sound observations
recorded by him (mixed to be sure with anilities of his day) and we
shall have nearly the present sum of the healing art. The statesman
will find in these languages history, politics, mathematics, ethics,
eloquence, love of country, to which he must add the sciences of his
own day, for which of them should be unknown to him? And all the
sciences must recur to the classical languages for the etymon, and
sound understanding of their fundamental terms. For the merchant I
should not say that the languages are a necessary. Ethics,
mathematics, geography, political economy, history, seem to
constitute the immediate foundations of his calling. The
agriculturist needs ethics, mathematics, chemistry and natural
philosophy. The mechanic the same. To them the languages are but
ornament and comfort. I know it is often said there have been
shining examples of men of great abilities in all the businesses of
life, without any other science than what they had gathered from
conversations and intercourse with the world. But who can say what
these men would not have been had they started in the science on the
shoulders of a Demosthenes or Cicero, of a Locke or Bacon, or a
Newton? To sum the whole, therefore, it may truly be said that the
classical languages are a solid basis for most, and an ornament to
all the sciences. |
John
Brazer
24 Aug 1819 |
EDUCATION
/ VALUE TO SOCIETY
The greatest evils of populous society have
ever appeared to me to spring from the vicious distribution of its
members among the occupations called for. I have no doubt that those
nations are essentially right, which leave this to individual
choice, as a better guide to an advantageous distribution than any
other which could be devised. But when, by a blind concourse,
particular occupations are ruinously overcharged, and others left in
want of hands, the national authorities can do much towards
restoring the equilibrium. On the revival of letters, learning
became the universal favorite. And with reason, because there was
not enough of it existing to manage the affairs of a nation to the
best advantage, nor to advance its individuals to the happiness of
which they were susceptible, by improvements in their minds, their
morals, their health, and in those conveniences which contribute to
the comfort and embellishment of life. All the efforts of the
society, therefore, were directed to the increase of learning, and
the inducements of respect, ease, and profit were held up for its
encouragement. Even the charities of the nation forgot that misery
was their object, and spent themselves in founding schools to
transfer to science the hardy sons of the plough. To these
incitements were added the powerful fascinations of great cities.
These circumstances have long since produced an overcharge in the
class of competitors for learned occupation, and great distress
among the supernumerary candidates; and the more, as their habits of
life have disqualified them for re-entering into the laborious
class. The evil cannot be suddenly, nor perhaps ever entirely cured:
nor should I presume to say by what means it may be cured. Doubtless
there are many engines which the nation might bring to bear on this
object. Public opinion, and public encouragement are among these.
The class principally defective is that of agriculture. It is the
first in utility, and ought to be the first in respect. The same
artificial means which have been used to produce a competition in
learning, may be equally successful in restoring agriculture to its
primary dignity in the eyes of men. It is a science of the very
first order. It counts among its handmaids the most respectable
sciences, such as Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, Mechanics,
Mathematics generally, Natural History, Botany. In every College and
University, a professorship of agriculture, and the class of its
students, might be honored as the first. Young men closing their
academical education with this, as the crown of all other sciences,
fascinated with its solid charms, and at a time when they are to
choose an occupation, instead of crowding the other classes, would
return to the farms of their fathers, their own, or those of others,
and replenish and invigorate a calling, now languishing under
contempt and oppression. The charitable schools, instead of storing
their pupils with a lore which the present state of society does not
call for, converted into schools of agriculture, might restore them
to that branch qualified to enrich and honor themselves, and to
increase the productions of the nation instead of consuming them. A
gradual abolition of the useless offices, so much accumulated in all
governments, might close this drain also from the labors of the
field, and lessen the burdens imposed on them. By these, and the
better means which will occur to others, the surcharge of the
learned, might in time be drawn off to recruit the laboring class of
citizens, the sum of industry be increased, and that of misery
diminished.
Among the ancients, the redundance of population was sometimes
checked by exposing infants. To the moderns, America has offered a
more humane resource. Many, who cannot find employment in Europe,
accordingly come here. Those who can labor do well, for the most
part. Of the learned class of emigrants, a small portion find
employments analogous to their talents. But many fail, and return to
complete their course of misery in the scenes where it began. Even
here we find too strong a current from the country to the towns; and
instances beginning to appear of that species of misery; which you
are so humanely endeavoring to relieve with you. Although we have in
the old countries of Europe the lesson of their experience to warn
us, yet I am not satisfied we shall have the firmness and wisdom to
profit by it. The general desire of men to live by their heads
rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities
to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make them
here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery. |
David
Williams
14 Nov 1803 |
ENGLISH
PEOPLE
…I do Love this people with all my heart,
and think that with a better religion, a better form of Government,
and their present governors their condition and Country would be
most enviable. I pray you to observe that I have used the term people
and that this is a noun of the masculine as well as feminine gender.
|
Abigail
Adams
21 Jun 1785 |
EUROPE
/ REFLECTIONS ON THE 18TH CENTURY
I agree with you in . . . eulogies on the
eighteenth century. It certainly witnessed the sciences and arts,
manners and morals, advanced to a higher degree than the world had
ever before seen. …With some exceptions only, through the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, morality occupied an honorable
chapter in the political code of nations. …How then has it
happened that these nations, France especially and England, so
great, so dignified, so distinguished by science and the arts,
plunged all at once into all the depths of human enormity, threw off
suddenly and openly all the restraints of morality, all sensation to
character, and unblushingly avowed and acted on the principle that
power was right? I say France and not Bonaparte; for, although he
was the head and mouth, the nation furnished the hands which
executed his enormities. England, although in opposition, kept full
pace with France, not indeed by the many force of her own arms, but
by oppressing the weak and bribing the strong. At length the whole
choir joined and divided the weaker nations among them. Your
prophecies to Dr. Price proved truer than mine; and yet fell short
of the fact, for instead of a million, the destruction of eight or
ten millions of human beings has probably been the effect of these
convulsions. I did not, in '89, believe they would have lasted so
long, nor have cost so much blood. But although your prophecy has
proved true so far, I hope it does not preclude a better final
result. That same light from our west seems to have. spread and
illuminated the very engines employed to extinguish it. It has given
them a glimmering of their rights and their power. The idea of
representative government has taken root and growth. among them.
Their masters feel it, and are saving themselves by timely offers of
this modification of their powers. Belgium, Prussia, Poland,
Lombardy, etc., are now offered a representative organization;
illusive probably at first, but it will grow into power in the end.
Opinion is power, and that opinion will come. Even France will yet
attain representative government. …The idea then is rooted, and
will be established, although rivers of blood may yet flow between
them and their object. The allied armies now couching upon them are
first' to be destroyed, and destroyed they will surely be. A nation
united can never be conquered. We have seen what the ignorant,
bigoted and unarmed Spaniards could do against the disciplined
veterans of their invaders. What then may we not expect from the
power and character of the French nation? The oppressors may cut off
heads after heads, but like those of the Hydra they multiply at
every stroke. The recruits within a nation's own limits are prompt
and without number; while those of their invaders from a distance
are slow, limited, and must come to an end. I think, too, we
perceive that all these allies do not see the same interest in the
annihilation of the power of France. There are certainty some
symptoms of foresight in Alexander that France might produce a
salutary diversion of force were Austria and Prussia to become her
enemies. France, too, is the neutral ally of the Turk, as having no
interfering interests, and might be useful in neutralizing and
perhaps turning that power on Austria. That a re-acting jealousy,
too, exists with Austria and Prussia, I think their late strict
alliance indicates; and I should not wonder if Spain should discover
a sympathy with them. Italy is so divided as to be nothing. Here
then we see new coalitions in embryo, which, after France shall in
turn have suffered a just punishment for her crimes, will not only
raise her from the earth on which she is prostrate, but give her an
opportunity to establish a government of as much liberty as she can
bear enough to ensure her happiness and prosperity. When
insurrection begins, be it where it will, all the partitioned
countries will rush to arms, and Europe again become an arena of
gladiators. And what is the definite object they will propose? A
restoration certainly of the status quo prius, of the state
of possession of '89. I see no other principle on which Europe can
ever again settle down in lasting peace. |
John
Adams
11 Jan 1816 |
EUROPEAN
AFFAIRS
Behold me at length on the vaunted scene of
Europe! It is not necessary for your information, that I should
enter into details concerning it. But you are, perhaps, curious to
know how this new scene has struck a savage of the mountains of
America. Not advantageously, I assure you. I find the general fate
of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's
observation, offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be
either the hammer or the anvil. It is a true picture of that country
to which they say we shall pass hereafter, and where we are to see
God and his angels in splendor, and crowds of the damned trampled
under their feet. While the great mass of the people are thus
suffering under physical and moral oppression, I have endeavored to
examine more nearly the condition of the great, to appreciate the
true value of the circumstances in their situation, which dazzle the
bulk of spectators, and, especially, to compare it with that degree
of happiness which is enjoyed in America, by every class of people.
Intrigues of love occupy the younger, and those of ambition, the
elder part of the great. Conjugal love having no existence among
them, domestic happiness, of which that is the basis, is utterly
unknown. In lieu of this, are substituted pursuits which nourish and
invigorate all our bad passions, and which offer only moments of
ecstasy, amidst days and months of restlessness and torment. Much,
very much inferior, this, to the tranquil, permanent felicity with
which domestic society in America blesses most of its inhabitants;
leaving them to follow steadily those pursuits which health and
reason approve, and rendering truly delicious the intervals of those
pursuits.
In science, the mass of the people are two centuries behind ours;
their literati, half a dozen years before us. Books, really good,
acquire just reputation in that time, and so become known to us, and
communicate to us all their advances in knowledge. Is not this delay
compensated, by our being placed out of the reach of that swarm of
nonsensical publications which issues daily from a thousand presses,
and perishes almost in issuing? With respect to what are termed
polite manners, without sacrificing too much the sincerity of
language, I would wish my countrymen to adopt just so much of
European politeness, as to be ready to make all those little
sacrifices of self, which really render European manners amiable,
and relieve society from the disagreeable scenes to which rudeness
often subjects it. Here, it seems that a man might pass a life
without encountering a single rudeness. In the pleasures of the
table, they are far before us, because, with good taste they unite
temperance. They do not terminate the most sociable meals by
transforming themselves into brutes. I have never yet seen a man
drunk in France, even among the lowest of the people. Were I to
proceed to tell you how much I enjoy their architecture, sculpture,
painting, music, I should want words. It is in these arts they
shine. The last of them, particularly, is an enjoyment, the
deprivation of which with us, cannot be calculated. I am almost
ready to say it is the only thing which from my heart I envy them,
and which, in spite of all the authority of the Decalogue, I do
covet. |
Mr.
Bellini
30 Sep 1785 |
EUROPEAN
VIEWS OF THE UNITED STATES
I am well informed that the late proceedings in
America, have produced a wonderful sensation in England in our
favor. I mean the disposition which seems to be becoming general, to
invest Congress with the regulation of our commerce, and, in the
meantime, the measures taken to defeat the avidity of the British
government grasping at our carrying business. I can add with truth,
that it was not till these symptoms appeared in America that I have
been able to discover the smallest token of respect towards the
United States in any part of Europe. There was an enthusiasm towards
us all over Europe at the moment of the peace. The torrent of lies
published unremittingly in every day's London paper first made an
impression and produced a coolness. The republication of these lies
in most of the papers of Europe, (done probably by authority 9f the
governments to discourage emigrations,) carried them home to the
belief of every mind. They supposed everything in America was
anarchy, tumult, and civil war. The reception of the Marquis Fayette
gave a check to these ideas. The late proceedings seem to be
producing a decisive vibration in our favor. |
James
Madison
1 Sep 1785 |
EUROPEAN
WARS
To turn to the news of the day, it seems that
the cannibals of Europe are going to eating one another again. A war
between Russia and Turkey is like the battle of the kite and snake.
Whichever destroys the other, leaves a destroyer the less for the
world. This pugnacious humor of mankind seems to be the law of his
nature, one of the obstacles to too great multiplication provided in
the mechanism of the universe. The cocks of the henyard kill one
another. Bears, bulls, rams, do the same. And the horse, in his wild
state, kills all the young males, until worn down with age and war,
some vigorous youth kills him, and takes to himself the harem of
females. I hope we shall prove how much happier for man the Quaker
policy is, and tha the life of the feeder is better than that of the
fighter; and it is some consolation that the desolation by these
maniacs of one part of the earth is the means of improving it in
other parts. Let the latter be our office, and let us milk the cow,
while the Russian holds her by the horns, and the Turk by the tail.
|
John
Adams
1 Jun 1822 |
EXERCISE
A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the
species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate
exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and
independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of
that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on
the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion of your
walks. Never think of taking a book with you. The object of walking
is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even
to think while you walk; but divert yourself by the objects
surrounding you. Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate
yourself to walk very far. The Europeans value themselves on having
subdued the horse to the uses of man; but I doubt whether we have
not ~ost more than we have gained, by the use of this animal. No one
has occasioned so much the degeneracy of the human body. An Indian
goes on foot nearly as far in a day, for a long journey, as an
enfeebled white does on his horse; and he will tire the best horses.
There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far
without fatigue. I would advise you to take your exercise in the
afternoon: not because it is the best time for exercise, for
certainly it is not; but because it is the best time to spare from
your studies; and habit will soon reconcile it to health, and render
it nearly as useful as if you gave to that the more precious hours
of the day. A little walk of half an hour, in the morning, when you
first rise, is advisable also. It shakes off sleep, and produces
other good effects in the animal economy. Rise at a fixed and an
early hour, and go to bed at a fixed and early hour also. Sitting up
late at night is injurious to the health, and not useful to the
mind. Having ascribed proper hours to exercise, divide what remain
(I mean of your vacant hours) into three portions. Give the
principal to History, the other two, which should be shorter, to
Philosophy and Poetry. |
Peter
Carr
19 Aug 1785 |
|
