Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-11-11
THE ROBERTSON ASSOCIATION,
Opening Lecture by Rev. DE. No


The opening lecture of the Robertson
Association, by Rev. DR.. K. A. Young, was
decided success, and was attended by a
very large audience despite the inclemeney
Of the weather.
The musical programme was engaged in
by Mir. Steward, Mr.. John Corners, (who
sang eDat Leetle Sherman Pand," and
'sGOod Bye, Fritzey," in costume,) Miss
heartily applauded throughout, forming a
very pleasing feature Of the evenings en-
tertainment.
After the introduction DR.. Young said:
Hitherto, what is called '1pure literature
has been connected with pleasure, or profit,
or fame-the Robertson Association con-
meets literature with charity. When he
came from St. Louis in 1861, he felt the
want of lectures during the long winter
evenings. He had been accustomed TO
hear half dozen celebrities each winter
for seven years. slave You no lecture sea-
son in Nashville" he asked. A well known
citizen replied with great satisfaction: The
people Of Nashville have been everywhere
have seen every body-know every thing
indeed they know more than the public
lecturers"
The Doctor thought Middle Tennessee
to be the garden spot of the world. Proofs
of this were brought from Guyots Earth
and Man, from the most popular historian
of New England, and from DR.. Durbin's
Travels.
We are descended from the English-the
best blood in the world. The ancient Celts
were ardent and restless; the ancient RO-
mans were brave and law-making; the
Angles, SaxOns and Frisians were industri-
GUS, home-loving, wife-loving, child-lOving,
and the Norman French were cOntempla-
tive and polite These races make up the
indisputable Engllshman-the best blood
on tie planet.
Our ancestors settled at jamestown, Va,
in 1907. A colony that had piOus min
lister and the sacTaments from the begin
ming; a colony whose first building was a
church, in which they had morning prayers
before the labors of day began; colony
that baptized PocahOntaS and married her
to a Christian: a colony that had eleUeR
parishes and fire hard working clergymen
before the Puritans landed on Plymouth
Rock.
The school boy does not know all
this. He thinks the jamestown Colony
was made up of ''rakeS," 'libertines," and
"broken-dOwn gentlemen" Why? Be
cause he studies Peter Parley's histories,
written in Boston. He knows the rise of
Puritanism in England; their exodus to
Holland; the voyage of the Mayfower; the
landing at Plymouth Rock. He knows all
these facts ''by heart" but he does not
know Hunt, and Whitaker, and Lord Del
aware. As Southerner, he ought to read
the Ecclesiastical history of Virginia The
settlement at jamestown was made at the
right time-after the invention of printing,
after the Protestant Reformation. 1t was
made by the right blood-real Englishmen.
Here the lecturer gave an amusing history
of the origin of the ''FirSt" and the "Sec-
ond Families of Virginia"
We have the best language, for the ex-
preston Of thought in the world. 1t is the
most copous and flexible. Some old
words are Celtic-th0usands are coined |
from Latin roo.s-tens Of thousands are
from the Anglo-Saxon-a multitude from
the Norman French-to say nothing of our
scientific nomenclature. The doctor enter
tanned his audience with few specimens
from each.
Americans are famous for the rapidity of
their mOvementS-physical, benevolent, |
moral, intellectual, and religious. Wagons |
succeed caravans, and railroads succeed |
wagons. Keel-boats succeed fat bottoms,
and s.eamers succeed keels. Troy coaches |
succeed post-boys, and telegTaphs succeed |
stages. And all in life time.
But our religion-we have faith and feel
ing, we have orthodoxy and zeal; but |
religion is not sufficiently the habit !
of our lives. Our institutions of |
learning are too pretentious. Academies, |
colleges and universities, so called, are fire. |
quently nothing more than respectable |
high schools. (rhe Vanderbilt starts off |
right with complete division of literary |
labor.) Our young literary men are alike |
pretentious, especially those who long to |
be converted into small pipe-smoking |
Dutch philosophers, with ability to reason |
God out of His own universe. The lee |
turer closed with several amusing anec-
dotes, exposing the ignorance of some well |
known public men, among Others Sena- |
tor, who described the "hecatombs of cattle, |
a tioatin' down the Mississippi river"