Whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, 'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter, CATO, Act v. And while this desire lingers in the human soul, as it always will, man cannot forget that he is immortal; it will be in vain to attempt to satisfy him that he wholly ceases to be when the body dies. He will not, he cannot believe it. He would not always sleep. He would not always be forgotten. He would live again:-live on in the memory of his fellow-man as long as the flowers can be made to bloom, or the marble to perpetuate his name; and then still live on when "seas shall waste, and skies in smoke decay." Nor is this the only design of implanting this desire of remembrance in the bosom of man. It is not merely to be an argument for, and a memento of our immortality; it is to be one of the means to excite us to virtue and to noble deeds. It is the operation of one of the beautiful laws of our nature, though, as we shall see, sadly perverted, designed to stimulate us to great and generous efforts. Men may call it selfish and so it may become. They may call it ambition-and so it often is. But who knows not that the worst passions are usually the perversion of that which is most generous and exalted? And who knows not that one of the objects of all the lessons of experience, philosophy, and religion is to call man back from the erratic course on which a wicked heart has thrown him, to the operation of s it ; it olly not - al the be and oke e of o be it is oble vs of Signmay all it t the ch is : one ophy, se on on of vice by the dread of disgrace; to prompt t thy to be remembered by the fear of being call forth the noble powers of the soul by a ton's, to achieve some work "that the world lingly let die." Point me to a man, young o bosom this desire is extinct, and you have des either abandoned to despair, or in whom vir Every law of our nature is of value, and tant place in the great purpose of promoting society. In the principles of human action value of a desire of reputation? What in it be allowed to have on a young man starti of public life? I have found in my own ex as far as my observation has extended, I hav world is favourably disposed towards young are no interests in society so valuable that th willing to commit them to their hands, when fied that they are qualified to defend them, a them to future times. All the blood-bough freedom; all the endowments of colleges a the offices in the state; and all the interests o benevolence, they are willing to entrust to soon as they have evidence that they will b hands, and then they who have toiled and things will lie calmly down and die. Judges are willing to vacate their seats, and conquer foe could subdue, are willing to resign their s ministers of religion, to whom the cause of t than life, are willing to vacate their pulpits to more, when those now young show that they the trust. But they ask evidence of this. that the young shall show that they are deser be endangered, before it is yielded. To secure this, there is in this community an eye of unslumbering vigilance on every young man, from which he cannot escape. The world watches his movements; learns his character; marks his defects; records and remembers his virtues; asks the question about the reputation with which he enters on public life, and all with reference to the great interests which are soon to be committed to the hands of the advancing generation. There is an unseen, but withering influence, from which he can never escape, that attends every young man who is idle, dissipated, or unprincipled, that will go with him, like an evil genius, to the most distant part of our own land or to distant climes; that will meet him even when he regards himself as among strangers; that will, unperceived, cross oceans with him, and start up to meet him in polar snows or on barren sands; that will meet him should he wander on the Alps or by the side of the Senegal or the Ganges; or should he seek to hide himself in the crowded foreign metropolis. That evil influence he cannot live down, nor can he flee away from it. Aaron Burr met such an influence at Paris-a wretched fugitive and an outcast, without a friend; and Benedict Arnold could have found no nook of earth where it would not have followed him. And in like manner, there is a happy influence, of more value than the fabled "Genius" of Socrates, that will go with every young man who, by an early life of virtue, has shown himself worthy of the confi dence of mankind, and that will attend him around the globe. In this land, perhaps more than in any other, every thing in life depends on a good name; a fair reputation. It is a principle of our constitution that office shall be conferred only on those who have evinced by their lives that it may ce on The marks s the pub which cing ence, oung ll go art of him that up to will de of hide il inom it. tched edict vould is a nius" y an confi the hing t is a rred may are called to it by previous tried fidelity. N birth or blood; no hereditary rank or nam an ancestor limits its bestowment, or confer facilities for reaching it. And in like mann an office in our colleges or schools; there is the land; there is not an honour which the fession of medicine has to bestow, to which hereditary claim, or to which the ascent is by slow and steady individual worth. Publ designed to be, and to an extent which few derstand, will be, graduated by the claim to which shall be established by a character ho ed in early life. Talent will not answer the good name; nor can gold or diamonds pur community will gladly confer on him who h which shows that he is entitled to its confide Such is the original principle with which m and such is its value in the world. Yet th valuable, and designed to accomplish so mu fare of man, I need not say has much more ed among men in a pure and healthful form perverted and ruinous. It is of importance, we examine some of the modifications wh sumed, and the parts which it has played in actions of mankind. The principle of our nature to which I a the desire of being known and esteemed by ing remembered when we are dead. Th principle, as it is implanted in the heart Creator, is the desire of an honoured remer count of virtue and true worth; that whi friend to drop a tear or plant a flower over t widest passion, as it is one of the earliest, that has swayed the heart of man. It is the desire of power, of glory, of fame "That last infirmity of noble minds." It is the wish for distinction, regardless of the rights and welfare of others, of the cause of justice or liberty, of the moral worth which, joined with talent, alone should entitle man to the grateful remembrance of his species. It is the wish to reign and rule; the wish to evince such talent as to command the applause of mankind; to play such a part on the theatre of human affairs, that however much men may wish to do it, they cannot forget the aspirant for fame. To record the deeds of such men has unhappily been the main province of history. The mind sickens when it contemplates the past: and when we would ask how man advanced from a state of barbarism through the various stages of society; how the arts flourished, and how science spread her triumphs; what regions the fleets for discovery or for commerce visited; and the successive steps by which man learned the arts of healing, or manufactures, or music, or poetry, we become almost disgusted with the records of the race, when we find the page of history occupied only with the names of heroes, and written with a pen dipped in blood, as though nothing were worth recording but prowess and skill in butchering men. It was not only in the darker regions of the world beneath us, that the feeling has been evinced which Milton has put into the mouth of the ArchApostate "The mind is its own place, and in itself |