soners, or as beautiful and superb rhetoricians.... Talents, therefore, which are before the public, have nothing to dread, either from the jealous pride of power, or from the transient misrepresentations of party, spleen, or envy. In spite of opposition from any cause, their buoyant spirit will lift them to their proper grade....it would be unjust that it should lift them higher.

It is true, there always are, and always will be, in every society, individuals, who will fancy themselves examples of genius overlooked, under-rated, or invidiously oppressed. But the misfortune of such persons is imputable to their own vanity, and not to the public opinion, which has weighed and graduated them. We remember many of our school-mates, whose geniuses bloomed and died, within the walls of Alma Mater; but whose bodies still live, the moving monuments of departed splendor, the animated and affecting remembrancers of the extreme fragility of the human intellect. We remember others, who have entered on public life, with the most exulting promise; have flown from the earth, like rockets; and after a short and brilliant flight, have bursted with one or two explosions....to blaze no more. Others, by a few premature scintillations of thought, have led themselves and their partial friends to hope, that they were fast advancing to a dawn of soft and beauteous light, and a meridian of bright and gorgeous effulgence. But their day has never yet broken, and never will it break. They are doomed for ever to that dim, crepus cular light, which surrounds the frozen poles, when the sun has retreated to the opposite circle

of the Heavens. Their's is the eternal glimmer ing of the brain; and their most luminous displays, are the faint twinklings of the glow-worm. We have seen others, who, at their start, gain a casual projectility, which raises them above their proper grade; but, by the just operation of their specific gravity, they are made to subside again, and settle ultimately in the sphere to which they properly belong. All these characters, and many others who have had even slighter bases for their once sanguine, but now blasted hopes, form a querulous and melancholy band of moon-struck declaimers against the injustice of the world, the agency of envy, the force of destiny, &c. charging their misfortune on every thing but the true cause; their own want of intrinsic, sterling merit; their want of that copious, perennial spring of great and useful thought, without which a man may hope, in vain, for growing reputation. Nor are they always satisfied with wailing their own destiny, pouring out the bitterest imprecations of their souls, on the cruel stars which presided at their birth, and aspersing the justice of the public opinion which has scaled them: too often in the contortions and pangs of disappointed ambition, they cast a scowling eye over the world of man.... start back, and blanche, at the lustre of superios merit....and exert all the diabolical incantatio of their black art, to conjure up an impervi vapour, in order to shroud its glories from t world. But it is all in vain. In spite of ever thing, the public opinion, will finally do justice to us all. The man who comes fairly before the world, and who possesses the great and vigorous,

stamina which entitle him to a niche in the temple of glory, has no reason to dread the ultimate result; however slow his progress may be, he will, in the end, most indubitably receive that distinction. While the rest, "the swallows of science," the butterflies of genius, may flutter for their spring; but they will soon pass away and be remembered no more. No enterprising man, therefore, (and least of all, the truly great man) has reason to droop or repine at any efforts which he may suppose to be made with the view to depress him; since he may rely on the universal and unchanging truth, that talents, which are before the world, will most inevitably find their proper level; and this is, certainly, all that a just man should desire. Let, then, the tempest of envy or of malice howl around him. His genius will consecrate him and any attempt to extinguish that, will be as unavailing, as would a human effort" to quench the stars."

th.

I have been led farther into these reflections than I had anticipated. The train was started by casting my eyes over Virginia; observing the very few who have advanced on the theatre of public observation, and the very many who will remain, forever, behind the scenes. What freent instances of high, native genius have I seen frigging in the wildernesses of this country; gewhose blossoms, the light of science has necourted into expansion; genius, which is Somed to fall and die, far from the notice and the haunts of men! How often, as I have held my way through the western forests of this state, and reflected on the vigorous shoots of superior intel

a

lect, which were freezing and perishing there for the want of culture....how often have I recalled the moment, when our pathetic Gray, reclining under the mouldering elm of his country church yard, while the sigh of genial sympathy broke from his heart, and the tear of noble pity started in his eye, exclaimed,

"Perhaps, in this neglected spot is laid

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire, Hands that, the rod of empire, might have sway'd, Or wak'd to ecstacy, the living lyre.

But knowledge to their eyes, her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of their soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark, unfathom'd caves of ocean bear; Full many a flow'r is born to blush, unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desart air.

Some village Hampden, that, with dauntless breast,

The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute, inglorious Milton, here, may rest; Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,
Their lot forbad:"

The heart of a philanthropist, no matter to what country or what form of government he may belong, immediately enquires...." and is there no mode to prevent this melancholy waste of talents } Is there no mode by which the rays of science might be so diffused over the state, as to call forth each latent bud into life and luxuriance ?" There is such a mode; and what renders the legislature of this state still more inexcusable, the plan by which these important purposes might be effected, has been drawn out and has lain by them for nearly thirty years. The declaration of the independence of this commonwealth was made in the month of May, 1776. In the fall of that year, a statute, or as it is called here, an act of Assembly" was made, providing that a committee of five persons should be appointed to prepare a code of laws, adapted to the change of the state government. This code was to be submitted to the legislature of the country, and to be ratified or rejected by their suffrage. In the ensu ing November, by a resolution of the same legislature, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, George Mason, and Thomas Ludwell Lee, Esquires, were appointed a com

*This is a fact which the public journals of the state establish beyond controversy; although the legal process and other public acts of Virginia, modestly wave this precedence, and date the foundation of the commonwealth, on the 4th of July, 1776, the day on which the declaration of the independence of the United States was pro mulged.