_At the final breaking up of the ---- School, in consequence of the ill
health of Mrs. ----, the Principal, after it had continued for eight
years._
Among the numerous analogies, my young friends, which have been traced
between the body and the mind, there is not one that requires more of
our attention than the necessity of constantly supplying each with its
appropriate food, if we would keep both in sound, vigorous health.
Although the nutriment of the first be altogether material, and that of
the second spiritual, yet the same want of daily supply is equally
obvious in regard to the improvement and preservation of mental as well
as bodily qualities. Without our daily bread we must all in some short
time sicken and die; without some daily intellectual repasts, the soul
must soon become diseased and perish. It is true that in each case the
food may be much and often beneficially diversified--although there are
some standard articles that cannot be dispensed with on any occasion
without inconvenience, if not actual injury. Such for example are bread
for the body and some moral aliment for the mind. Upon this principle
it is that I have always deemed it essential, every time I have
addressed you, to mingle some moral instruction with every thing I have
said, since it is _this_ which constitutes the true leaven of the bread
of life--and _this_ it is which will always prove an acceptable part of
their mental food, to all whose appetites and tastes have not been
depraved by mental condiments, which stimulate and gratify the passions
at the expense of the soul.
An irresistible inducement on the present occasion to pursue towards
you the course to which I have so long been prompted both by principle
and habit, is, that _this_ is certainly the last opportunity I shall
ever have of addressing you as pupils. The connexion of teachers and
scholars which has subsisted for so many years between yourselves and
my family, is about to be dissolved forever. But this circumstance has
greatly augmented my solicitude to render the last admonitions I shall
ever give you in my character of adviser, of some permanent service to
you. They will relate to such endowments of mind and qualities of heart
as you will most frequently have occasion to exercise in future life.
These are, self-control, gentleness and benevolence of disposition,
purity and rectitude of conduct, courtesy and politeness of manner.
The necessity for acquiring self-control arises, not only from the
impossibility of gratifying all, even of our lawful wishes--to say
nothing of those unhallowed ones which increase in a tenfold proportion
from every indulgence--but from the almost continual calls for its
exercise in all our intercourse with society. At home or abroad--in the
depths of solitude, or in the busiest haunts of men--in all our
domestic relations, as well as in those which place us in a more
extended sphere of action, this all important quality is in continual
demand. In governing ourselves it is indispensable; nor is it much less
necessary when duty requires us to govern, direct or persuade others.
Even when we are casually brought into the company of strangers, and
for a short time only, it often enables us to command respect and to
gain esteem, by manifesting the vast superiority of a well regulated
mind over one which yields to every impulse of passion that assails it.
This inestimable quality of self-control gives additional zest to all
our lawful pleasures, and enhances our highest enjoyments, by causing
us always to stop short of satiety; while it enables us by God's help,
resolutely and undisturbed, to meet all the crosses and trials to which
others may subject us. In a word, it arms us against the strongest
temptation of our own passions, and empowers us to disregard the worst
that can be attempted against us by the passions of other people. It is
in fact the _regulator_, (if I may so express myself,) which governs
all the machinery of our minds in such a manner as to prevent them from
going either too fast or too slow. How many mortifications and
disappointments--how much anger, resentment and grief does it not
prevent our suffering from the envy, hatred, malice and
uncharitableness of the world around us! How often does it save us from
the shame and degradation of sensual indulgence; from the turpitude of
sin; from the anguish of remorse. It is the effectual check to the
depravity of our nature, which a merciful God will enable us always to
apply, if we will only ask it of him as we ought--that is, by continual
prayer and supplication.
The other qualities, gentleness, benevolence, purity, rectitude,
courtesy and politeness, when accompanied by good sense and a well
cultivated mind, constitute the great charm of domestic and social
life. Indeed, they may well be called indispensable requisites, since
there can be no happiness and very little comfort without them. There
never was a greater, a more fatal mistake, than the too common one of
supposing that the chief use of such qualities is in society at large;
in other words, when we are acting a part before the world, in our
ridiculous struggles for distinction and power. Selfishness is the
mainspring of all such efforts, and it so sharpens our sagacity as to
convince us that our bad qualities _must_ be restrained in public, or
they will frequently subject us to punishment if we attempt to disturb
others by their indulgence. But in private life, and particularly in
the family circle, there are few so insignificant or destitute of means
to disturb others as not to possess the power of causing much
annoyance, if not actual unhappiness. A single individual of a waspish,
irritable, jealous, gossipping, envious and suspicious temper, in these
situations, may destroy the peace and poison the domestic enjoyments of
a large family. No incident is too trivial to excite some one or other
of their bad passions; no person too unoffending to provoke them; no
conduct so guarded as to escape malignant remark. Their approach, like
the sirocco of the desert, produces an irresistible depression of
spirits; constraint and embarrassment spread a gloom over every
countenance, and the voice of joy and gladness dies away in their
presence. On the other hand, the emanations of a gentle, benevolent
disposition, produce the same impression on our hearts, that the balmy
breezes and sweet smelling flowers of the vernal season do on our
senses. It is a something that we feel deeply in the inmost recesses of
our bosom, but cannot well describe. It is an atmosphere of delight in
which we would gladly breathe during our whole life.
By purity of thought and rectitude of conduct, in which are
comprehended the inestimable virtues of truth, candor and sincerity, we
secure for ourselves the unutterable enjoyment of an approving
conscience, at the same time that we obtain from others their esteem,
their admiration, and their love. We may manifest these qualities in
every part of our intercourse with others; for whether we speak or act,
occasions continually present themselves to prove that we possess them.
By conversation we show the purity of our sentiments; by conduct we
manifest the rectitude of our principles--so that in all we either say
or do, we supply others with the means of ascertaining what manner of
persons we are. True we may deceive some by playing the hypocrite; but
the persons whose good opinion is really worth gaining, are not so
easily gulled, and our loss, if the game is once seen through, is
irretrievable.
In regard to courtesy and politeness, they may justly be called the
offspring of benevolence, since their chief object is to promote the
ease, the comfort, the pleasure, and happiness of others. It must be
admitted there are counterfeit qualities which sometimes pass
undetected. But _they_ are the base born children of art and
selfishness, aiming solely to promote their own interests by deceiving
other people into a belief that _their_ gratification is the end of all
their efforts to please. To say nothing of the continual labor and
constraint necessary to enable these circulators of false coin to
escape discovery and exposure, the superior ease and safety of genuine
courtesy and politeness, should be a sufficient inducement with all
young persons to study most assiduously to acquire them, even on the
supposition that we had no better guide for all our actions in relation
to others. That honesty _in manner_, as well as _in conduct_, will ever
be found to be the best policy, amid all the varying forms, fashions
and practices of the world, is I believe, as certain as that truth is
better than falsehood--virtue preferable to vice. Another argument
greatly in favor of genuine courtesy and politeness is, that they are
the most current and easily procurable coin you can possibly use, being
equally well adapted (if I may keep up the metaphor,) to make either
large or small purchases. The articles procured too in exchange, always
greatly exceed in real intrinsic value, all that you ever give for
them. This is merely the manifestation of a sincere, an earnest desire
to please; while the precious return is almost always the cordial
expression of truly friendly feeling, the look of pleasurable emotion,
and the affectionate regards of a grateful heart, particularly where
the intercourse has been of sufficient duration to admit of some little
development of character. Let it not be said that a cause apparently so
slight is inadequate to produce such strong effects. There lives not a
human being who has ever felt the influence of genuine courtesy and
politeness, but can testify to the truth of what has been said in their
praise. Nor is it easy to imagine the possibility of any individual's
remaining insensible of their value, who like you my young friends,
have always been accustomed to the society of ladies and gentlemen.
Knowing this as I do, I should consider it somewhat like a work of
supererogation to press upon you the absolute necessity of your
constantly cultivating these invaluable qualities, if I were not
thoroughly satisfied from painful experience, that almost all young
persons require at least occasional admonition on this subject. In vain
do some parents solicit, persuade--nay, beseech their daughters, never
for a moment to forget what is due to the character of a lady, both in
manners and deportment; in vain do they implore them with aching hearts
to make a better return for all a mother's care and affection; to no
purpose do they pray for that purity of heart and rectitude of
principle in their offspring, which is the only true source of good
manners: their unfortunate, wayward children continue to act, as if the
chief purpose of their existence was to prove to the world how little
influence their parents have over them. They seem utterly reckless of
the parental tie--regardless of all the disparaging inferences which
may be drawn from their own conduct in relation to the characters of
their connexions--and continue hardened alike against advice or
reproof, in whatever language or manner it may be offered to them. God
forbid that such should be the moral portrait of any of my present
auditors; but you have all sufficient experience to know that it is not
a fancy picture, nor one wherein the features are so exaggerated and
caricatured, as to be unlike any person who has ever lived. If none of
your schoolmates have ever resembled it, you have either seen or heard
of some others in the world whom it would fit. Should your own
consciences acquit you, as I sincerely trust they do, of all liability
to pursue so reckless a course, both in regard to parental and other
admonition--let me beseech you, my young friends, not to tax your
imaginations with laboring to conjecture whether I aim at any
particular individuals, for I do not; but strive most assiduously to
examine your own hearts thoroughly as to all these points, and study so
to act on all occasions and towards every person with whom you may have
any thing to do, that the praise not only of courtesy and politeness
may ever be yours, but likewise the far more exalted merit of right
minds and pure hearts.
When I look back on the years that have passed away since this school
commenced; when I reflect on the many anxious hours which your teachers
have spent in meditating on the most effectual means to render their
instructions and admonitions conducive to your eternal as well as
temporal welfare; and when I recollect the several instances wherein I
am persuaded they had good cause to believe that an all bounteous
Providence had favored their humble labors, my heart is filled with
gratitude for the past; and I cherish the fond hope that _you too_, my
young friends, will be added to the number of those, who by the
exemplary character of your future lives, will cause your instructers
to rejoice that _you_ likewise have once been their pupils. Three or
four of you have been so from the first to the last, and the rest have
been long enough members of our family to be thoroughly acquainted with
the whole course of our instruction. You cannot therefore be ignorant
either of the chief objects at which you have always been taught to
aim, or of the means recommended to be invariably pursued for their
attainment. If you have failed to profit by them the fault must rest
somewhere; the awful responsibility attaches to one or both parties;
and let us all earnestly pray to God, that the purity and rectitude of
our future lives, should it please him to spare us, may avert the
punishment justly due to such offences. That none may plead
forgetfulness, let me briefly recapitulate once more, and for the last
time, what our course has been. The primary objects always most
earnestly pressed upon your attention have been, first and above all,
to prepare yourselves for another and a better world, by a life of
usefulness in the present; by the love and fear of God; by cheerful
obedience to his will; and by continually doing good to your fellow
creatures whenever you had the means and the opportunity. Your
secondary objects have been the study of sciences and languages,
physical and intellectual improvement, with a view, not to foster pride
and vanity, but solely to increase your power of being useful. Lastly,
you have been taught to acquire certain arts usually ranked under the
head of "accomplishments," but you have been invariably and
perseveringly admonished to consider them merely as _recreations_,
innocent if indulged in only occasionally, but sinful when made, as
they too often are, the principal business of life. On all occasions
too, you have been persuaded never so far to confide in the maxim that
"youth is the season for enjoyment," as to forget that, like old age it
_may_, and too often _is_, the season of suffering also. A preparation
for such contingencies _must_ be made by all, or the hour of
misfortune, although every human being is destined to meet it, will
overwhelm those who are unprepared for it with a degree of misery which
admits of neither alleviation nor cure. Young as you all are, and
little as you have yet seen of human life, you have already felt, if
not in your own persons, at least in the case of others, something of
the effect produced by sudden and unexpected calamity, bursting like a
thunderclap on the heads of its devoted victims. But a few days have
passed away since you were witnesses to such an event in the case of
two of your school companions. The morning on which it happened shone
upon them cheerful and happy as any among you, unconscious of any
impending misfortune, undisturbed by any anticipations to mar their
peace. Yet, in a very few hours from that time, they were both plunged
into the deepest affliction; both by a single blow reduced perhaps to
poverty; both suddenly called by the most awful death of a parent of
one of them, to return to a wretched family bereft of its chief
support, and crushed to the earth in all the helplessness of
irremediable wo. Alas! my young friends, how few of you ever think of
drawing from such occurrences the many salutary lessons they are so
well calculated to impart! How many turn away from them as matters to
be banished as speedily as possible from your remembrance; as events
never likely to happen to yourselves! Yet every hour that we
live--every moment that we breathe--not one among us, no not one single
individual, can truly say, "_I_ am free--_I_ am exempt both from
present and contingent calamity." Far, very far am I indeed, from
wishing you to be so constantly absorbed in gloomy anticipations, as to
prevent you in the slightest degree from enjoying every innocent
gratification suitable to your respective ages and situations in life.
But I would have you all to know and to feel in your inmost heart, that
"sweet are the uses of adversity," and that none should think
themselves fit to live until they feel prepared to die the death of the
righteous before God and man. Hard as this requisition may seem,
thousands upon thousands, and of your age too, have complied with it to
the very letter. Thousands have furnished angelic examples, even to the
aged and hoary headed, that the fresh, the blooming, the joyous period
of youth may be dedicated to God, as well as that worn out remnant of
life when all power of earthly enjoyment is supposed to be dead within
us, and nothing remains to be offered to heaven but exhausted faculties
and fast decaying intellects. Has not our blessed Saviour himself
declared, when speaking of children, that "of such is the kingdom of
heaven;" and in illustration of this truth, are not all the images of
cherubim and seraphim presented to our senses, always represented with
juvenile countenances, glowing with all the innocence and loveliness of
youth? Shall the youth then of the present day--the youth of our own
country--but especially the female portion of them, ever adopt the
fatal delusion that _theirs_ is an age too immature for the acquisition
and exercise of the highest moral and religious attainments. Shall
_they_ fall into the ruinous error that it is yet time enough for them
to attend to spiritual matters, and that the prime and vigor of their
lives are to be wasted in merely temporal pursuits unworthy the
characters and disgraceful to the rational creatures formed for a state
of eternal happiness? Far better would it be that they never had been
born; or that the hand of misfortune--the saddest hours of unmitigated
suffering, should continue to press on them with all their weight,
until they could be brought to know their duty to God, to their fellow
beings, and to themselves. Heaven forbid, my young friends, that such
awful discipline should be necessary to bring _you also_ to a proper
sense of all you owe to the Divine Author of your existence, and to
that society of which you may become either the blessing or the curse.
Heaven forbid that any of you should so far forget the high destinies
for which you were formed--the glorious purposes to which your lives
should be devoted--and the everlasting happiness promised in another
world to all who fulfil their duties in this, as to neglect for a
moment any of the means essential to improve your hearts and minds to
the utmost attainable degree. Nothing--no nothing within the range of
possibility can enable you to do this, but continual, earnest,
heartfelt prayer to God for the aid of his holy spirit in all your
undertakings; frequent and deep meditation on all the vicissitudes of
life; frequent and serious forethought in regard not only to what you
may probably enjoy in the present world, but to what you may possibly
be devoted to suffer. Gay and happy as you all now are in the joyous
anticipations so natural to youth and health, it _may_ be your fate
(but God forbid it ever should,) to see one by one of your nearest and
dearest connexions drop into the grave--some in the very blossom and
promise of juvenile years--others worn down by care, disease and old
age. It _may_ be your fate to be the very last of your race, reserved
to mourn over all who have gone before to another world. All this, my
children, and yet deeper affliction may possibly be _your_ lot--for it
_has been_ that of thousands, aye of millions before you. Can it be of
_no importance_ then; nay, is it not of _the last, the highest, the
most vital importance_, that you should make at least some small
preparation for such appalling contingencies, lest they befal you
utterly unawares? Will you ask me what is that preparation? It is
simply so to use all your good gifts as not to abuse them; so to
cherish all the powers both of your bodies and minds that they may last
as long as nature intended they should, and fulfil all the purposes for
which they were designed; so to divide your time between useful
occupation and necessary recreation, that none may be said to be wasted
or lost; in a word, _so to live_ that you may never be found
_unprepared to die_. The joys of heaven should ever be the beacon to
guide your course; and the road by which you should travel through the
present life to reach them, should be _that_ and _that only_ which your
heavenly Father, through his blessed Son, has commanded and besought
you to take. Thousands who have steadily pursued this course have
testified that it is "a way of pleasantness and a path of peace" to all
who have once attained the dispositions, feelings and principles
enjoined upon those who have made it their choice, in preference to all
other reputed roads to happiness; while not a solitary human being who
has ever tried these other roads, has ever yet been heard to bear
witness in their favor, after the experiment has been fully made. Woful
then must be your mistake, most fatal your error, in choosing "the way
in which you should go," should you rather be led by the sinful
allurements of illicit pleasure, than the universally concurring
testimony of the good, the wise, and the just throughout the world.
In a few fleeting hours more this school will cease to exist, and your
present monitor will have uttered the last words of admonition which he
will ever address to you as pupils. Anxiously, most anxiously do I
desire to fix them indelibly on your minds. But alas! I feel too
sensibly my own inability, as well as the evanescent nature of all
language in the form of advice, to hope for more than a temporary
impression. If I make even _that_, I shall in part at least have
attained the sole object of all that I ever said to you, which has been
your own intellectual improvement, your own happiness. Let me entreat
you, my dear young friends; let me implore you for the last time, never
to forget (whatever other things you may suffer to escape your
memories,) any of the various moral and religious instructions which
you have received under our care. I feel well assured that they will
not fail to come home to your bosoms--probably too with greatly
augmented force, should the withering blasts of misfortune ever spread
desolation and wo among you. But I pray for something more for you. I
would have you bear them continually in remembrance, even in your
happiest hours of prosperous fortune. I would have each of you
individually meditate on them "when thou sittest in thy house, and when
thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest
up." Then, but not until _then_, will you be fully prepared both for
adversity and prosperity; and then indeed may you confidently trust
that the God of all mercy and goodness will vouchsafe to impart to you
the true christian's last, best hope, both for time and eternity.
Separated from us all as you will soon be, perhaps forever, and about
to enjoy, as I earnestly desire, a happy meeting with the beloved
friends and relatives from whom you have been so long withdrawn, accept
for the last time our heartfelt assurances that our best wishes, our
anxious prayers for your happiness, will accompany you through all the
vicissitudes of life; that we shall always sympathise both in your joys
and your sorrows; and that our own enjoyments will ever be greatly
augmented by hearing that you are all leading exemplary and happy
lives. For power to do this, forget not--oh! never for a moment forget,
that your sole reliance must be on your heavenly Father and his holy
spirit, which hath been promised abundantly to all who ask it in truth
and sincerity.
"May the blessing of an all merciful God be ever on you and around you.
May his grace be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path. May
it guide, strengthen and support you in all the troubles and
adversities of this life, and bring you, through faith in our Redeemer,
to eternal blessedness in that which is to come."--AMEN.
For the Southern Literary Messenger.