19–25 April 1841

Would it not be well to write for the young men at Waterville a history of our present liter- ary and philosophical crisis, a portrait of the par- ties, and read the augury of the coming hours? In England, ethics and philosophy have died out. How solitary is Coleridge and how conspicuous, not so much from his force as from his solitude. In this country, a throng of eager persons read and hear every divine word. Yet for the most part there is great monotony in the history of our young men ofthe liberal or reforming class. They have only got as far as rejection, not as far as affirmation. They seem therefore angry and rail- ers: they have nothing new or memorable to offer; and that is the vice of their writings, — iM profuse declamation, but no new matter: after a very short time, this becomes to the reader in- sufferably wearisome, and the fine young men and women who looked but the other day in that direction, with eyes of hope like the first rays of morning, are turning away with a kind of bitter- ness from the saturation of talk, of promise, and of preaching. Silence, personal prowess, cheer- fulness, solid doing, seem to be the natural cures. We are a puny and fickle folk. Hesitation and following are our diseases. The rapid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest, the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the whole generation is discontented with the tardy rate of growth which contents every European community. America is . . . the coun- try of small adventures, of short plans, of dar- ing risks, not of patience, not of great combi- nations, not of long, persistent, close-woven schemes, demanding the utmost fortitude, tem- per, faith, and poverty. Our books are tents, not pyramids : our reformers are slight and wearisome talkers, not man-subduing, immu- table, all-attracting ; discharging their own task and so " charming the eye with dread," and per- suading without knowing that they do so. There are no Duke Wellingtons, no George Wash- ingtonSj no Miltons, Bentleys, or Hearns among our rapid and dashing race ; but abundance of Murats, of Rienzis, of Wallers, and that slight race who put their whole stake on the first die they cast.

Whenever the Church is restored, the culture of the Intellect will be enjoined in it, not, as now, with an apology and reservations, but con- scientiously and to the shame and repentance of our fat, sluggish, and trivial modes of living. And I think that the labor in a college should be as strenuous and rugged, I may say as auda- cious as any labor that is undertaken in agricul- ture or in war. And the student ought to feel a poignant shame if when he reads the marches of Hannibal or Napoleon across the Alps, or the hardships of Hudson and Parry in their polar voyages, or the patience of Columbus, these eminent pieces of endurance appear to him to indicate a greater manhood and resolution, a more incessant industry, or a ruder courage than that which he exercises in his silent library. Does he wish to be a placid smiler, a demure, inoffensive reader of such books as the news- papers applaud, to be helped over a fence when he walks with a main, as if he were a girl (like my dear Rev. Mr. A.), — I see not how he is better than a lacquey hired to read, instead of one hired to wait on table or to polish boots. His courage is ' not that of a soldier or a sailor, but that of a scholar, and as worthy of their admiration as theirs is worthy of his.

Do not cast about for reasons among their shop of reasons, but adduce yourself as the only reason. We forget daily our high call to be discoverers — we forget that we are embarked on a holy, unknown sea in whose blue recesses we have a secret warrant that we shall yet arrive at the Fortunate Isles hid from men ; and at each saucy wood-craft or revenue cutter or rum-boat that hails us, we are astonished, and put off from our purpose, and ready to return to the rotten towns we have left, and quit our seeking of the Virgin Shore.