The Rutland daily globe. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1873-1877, 1874-10-27
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JOINT III WDdt We Culi, anu WHAT IN some
aspects is modern progress, where these
I'D traditions and habits have to maintain
/ struggle for existence with opposinghab-
is and influences spreading out from our
titles and even reaching us from foreign
ands. 1t is already a question whether
he plain dignity and simple grandeur of
he typical Vermont character can hold its
,wn, or whether il is to be supplanted by
he smartness, the dapper gentiity which
false and heartless culture is producing
elsewhere. The problem, as said before,
IS not how TO keep at bay all new ideas and
modern improvements, but how to main
tain in their integrity the old principles
amid all changes Of manner. A man can
be industrious and yet find time for books
and society he can be frugal and vet
make his home the abode of taste; he can
be honest without being churlish. Or as
MIR. Morrill, put it in his Rutland address:
while a gentleman, so-called, does not
usually succeed as farmer, there is no
reason why farmer should not be a real
gentleman. Indeed do not know of any
thing which the world more wants to-day
than q generation OF cultivated farmers
men whose intelligence, thrift and taste
shall make farm life attractive and turn
the current now setting toward the excite
ment and frivolity of city life back to the
simpler and purer enjOyments of country
life. | think see that day coming in Yer
mont and rejoice over it. But il the day
ever comes when, in the general sentiment
of Vermont, il ceases to be respectable to
be industrious and frugal, and becomes re-
spectacle to live in elegant idleness and to
over-spend ones income in making dis
play; if ever that day comes when the
honest, hardworking young man and the
busy and thrifty young woman are looked
down upon, and the triller and spendthrift
admired and enved, from that day Vermont
ceases to raise men and women and hard
az is her soil aud cold her climate, she must
descend to the humber task of raising food
to support fools.
In the training of men it is hardly neces-
sary to say that good schools and good edu-
cational influences in general play most
important part. 1t is essential that the
lower schools give to the whole population
a careful training in the rudiments of
knowledge; it is equally essential that IL
good proportion of the community receive
higher training. The general intellectual
tone OF community depends greatly on
the number of highly educated men scat
tered throughout it. Tell me how many
men of superior intelligence there are in any
Vermont village, and you have told me
substantially what grade of intelligence
prevails throughout the entire community.
| could guess whether the people generally
read the New York Ledger or the Atlantic
Monthly whether the village supports one
of the public libraries of whose value the
governor has spoken so justly, or whether
the only books that circulated were the
dime novels that passed from boy to boy
whether a good high school was sustained
with the hearty support of the community,
or whether by general consent it was un-
derstood that reading, writing and cipher
ing was education enough. New England
started out into history conspicuous for an
educational system adapted to secure the
intelligence necessary for fIeemen. Why
had she this good fortune? Because very
large number of the founders of the New
England colonies and many of their leading
men for the first generation were educated
men, college men, trained in English and
continental universities. | suppose the
general tone of society has never since
been SO intellectual as in the early days,
because the proportion of high-bred schol-
ars has never been SO great. Look at Scot
land--most prolific of men of intellect of
any country in Europe, for 800 years-and
why? Because she has had so large pro-
portion of scholars from her UNIVERSE
ties distributed all through her
population in her pulpits and
parish schools in the professions
and arts-wherc they have kept up a re-
spect and ambition for learning among all
the people. The universal diffusion of linn
tied education tends to sciolism, to the
prevalence of shallow notions of things,
unless this tendency is corrected by the in
tluenee of men of profounder views and
more offensive knowledge. Every now
and then some plausible fallacy gets started
in community; overcoming and getting
possession of one and another incompetent
to master it, it gets more and more head
way, and begins to assume Il threatening
boldness, till, by and by, some grave man,
who has already encountered any fraud in
his studies of former times. or has gotten
the penetration to detect fallaces through
their DISCUSSES, comes to the front and
speaks the needed word of exposure and
eXorcism, and the thing skins away and
oies. So it was with Fourerism, for ex-
ample, and spirit-rappings, and let us hope
fully add an irredeemable currency. On
a smaller scale this process is going on, or
ought to be going on in almost every COM
munity. young man who has the pos
siblities of a iirst-class man in him, if he
has right leadings, is liable to be misled
and utterly spoilt by some specious lie,
which never could have become current in
his neighborhoos if there had. been in it
one man of large intelligence and well ma
tured opinions. ! doubt not we all know
men of whom we find ourselves repeatedly
saying, what a man that might have been
set right at an important juncture, when a
false opinion got hold of him and twisted
his moral nature all awry.
Vermont has not at the present day, a
sufficiently large number of these men of
trained and commanding intellectual power.
Let me put test question. For a year
past the newspapers have had q good deal
to say about the approaching transit of
Venus. How many Of you know of man
in your town from whom an inquiring read
er could get the very moderate amount of
scientific information which would enable
him to understand the nature of the prob
lem? In case of q question arising in the
Sunday School as to the meaning of an ex-
preston in the English version, from how
many men beside the minister, could you
get an account of the original? | doubt
whether Vermont has as many well edu-
Gated men in proportion to her population,
as she had forty years ago. IT she is 60
ing to maintain her position as educator of
men, she must increase the proportion. If
Vermont should reach the ratio of Scot
land, she would now have 400 young men
in course of collegiate training. Who can
give us any good reason why We should
have II smaller ratio than Scotland? In
agine that ratio kept up for generation,
and thirty years from now what change
there would be in the intellectual tone of
our State, in the intelligence displayed on
our farms, in our common schools, in the
arts and professions.
Again, in order TO raise men, we must
provide for the culture Of the patriotic spir-
it. Patriotism is one of the prime forces
of character. He who has no love of coun-
try is less than man. He in whose breast
love of country is glowing affection, ready
on occasion to fire up into a flaming pas
sion--he only--is a tue man. Through
the patriotic feeling come TO us some of
the most cnnobling influences to which our
nature is susceptible. Through it we as
socate with the heroes and sympathize
with the heroic in our national history we