from the beginning that a "university would be an expensive concern;" but he demonstrated that it was a concern which would pay— both intellectually and morally-both the rich and the poor-both the citizens of Nashville and the people of Tennessee-both them and their children. The visionaries were those who thought it would not pay, and that it was foolish to spend a few hundred thousand dollars, to build up a Cambridge or an Oxford, a Harvard or Yale, in the Far West.

In carrying forward so great a work, he had expected at one time to secure both the public aid of the state and the private co-operation and munificence of the citizens of Nashville. The result proved that he had to rely solely on the latter. In the address of 1832, after again unfolding his scheme of a university, he says: "This would be a species of internal improvement worthy of the republic, and which would elevate Tennessee to a rank never yet attained by any people. And the legislature, which shall boldly lay the corner-stone of such a magnificent temple of popular instruction, will deserve and will gain a glorious immortality, whatever may be the verdict of their constituents or of their cotemporaries. Their magnanimous and enlightened patriotism will be celebrated a thousand lustrums after the petty interests and conflicts of this selfish generation shall be forgotten."

But finding, after a few years' trial, that he could neither depend on state aid nor secure from individual munificence such an endowment as his scheme demanded, he then set to work manfully to make of his university as good an institution as the limited means at his disposal and the steadfast co-operation of his coadjutors at Nashville would admit of. In this spirit we find him, ever ready to modify his views to existing circumstances, and never for a moment despairing of ultimate success, giving utterance to the following words :--“In inaugurating the establishment of a university at Nashville, the honest purpose was fondly cherished from the beginning to render it in fact all that the name imports. Its friends desired to lay its foundations deep and broad. They felt that they were going to build for posterity as well as for the living. That kind of ephemeral popularity which is so cheaply purchased, and which is never worth the cheapest purchase, they neither sought nor coveted. They did not expect to see the gilded domes and lofty turrets of their university suddenly rising in splendor, and dazzling the eye of every beholder. They knew that they could, at best, achieve little more than the commencement of a work, which must be fostered, and enlarged, and matured, in the progress perhaps of ages to come."

These quiet words indicated the right spirit-the spirit of a true

and faithful worker, who had learned how "to labor and to wait "a spirit which every man must have who would succeed in instructing the young, or building up a literary institution. And although, for want of funds, Dr. Lindsley did not accomplish in his own life-time the precise thing which he first projected at Nashville, yet he did succeed, in despite of manifold drawbacks and discouragements, in building up an institution which, as it regards the standard of scholarship in its professors and the attainments and subsequent usefulness of its alumni, stood, as long as he was at the head of it, second to none in the Mississippi valley. Nor did he leave it until he felt that he could safely intrust it into the hands of one who, though young to receive such a father's mantle, was fully competent, both by education and endowment, to enter into all his plans and carry forward all his work. Qui facit per alios facit per se is as true of a good work as the reverse. An educator's work is never fully done, nor can his influence be fully measured, short of what his pupils and his children shall do. And hence there is no improbability that Dr. Lindsley may yet, by his perpetuated influence and labor, accomplish the realization of that splendid beau ideal of a great university which rose up before his imagination as he first surveyed the beautiful city of rocks and cedars on the banks of the Cumberland.

IV. HIS SPOKEN AND PUBLISHED ADDRESSES.

The published writings of Dr. Lindsley consist chiefly of his baccalaureate addresses and occasional sermons. His great theme, even in his sermons, was education and its kindred topics. In one of his ablest published discourses, delivered at the installation of Dr. Edgar, in Nashville, in 1833, he speaks of his preaching in the following terms, indicating a far humbler estimate of it, in his own mind, than the public were accustomed to take :-" My own particular sphere of ministerial duty has ever been extremely humble and limited, as it regards age and numbers, though not unimportant in reference to the ultimate welfare of the church and the public. My province too has always demanded a different kind and form of preaching from that which obtains in a popular assembly. A word in season-a little here and a little there-and something every day to one or a dozen, as occasion offered or suggested-without touching on points of theological or ecclesiastical controversy, and without the formal method of regular sermonizing-has been the fashion of my own very imperfect essays in the good work of the gospel ministry." And hence it was that, always regarding himself as an educator of the young, he was often, even in his public discourses on the Sabbath, found pleading the cause of education.

Dr. Sprague gives the following list of his publications:-"A Plea for

the Theological Seminary at Princeton, (several editions,) 1821;" "Early Piety Recommended in a sermon delivered in the college chapel, Princeton, 1821;" "The Duty of Observing the Sabbath explained and enforced in a sermon addressed more particularly to the young, 1821;" "Improvement of Time-two discourses delivered in the chapel of the College of New Jersey, 1822;" "A Farewell Sermon, delivered in the chapel of the College of New Jersey, 1824;" "An Address at his Inauguration as president of Cumberland College, 1825;" "The Cause of Education in Tennessee;" "A Baccalaureate Address, 1826; "A Baccalaureate Address, 1827;" "A Baccalaureate Address, 1829;" "A Baccalaureate Address, 1831;" reate Address, 1832;" "An Address on the Centennial Birthday of George Washington, 1832;" "A Discourse at the Installation of the Rev. John T. Edgar, Nashville, 1833;" "A Baccalaureate, entitled 'Speech in behalf of the University of Nashville,' 1837;" "A Lecture on Popular Education, 1837;" "A Baccalaureate Address, entitled Speech about Colleges,' 1848."*

""A Baccalau

Besides these he wrote various articles on education for the public prints, and contributed two learned and able papers to the “American Biblical Repository," on the Primitive State of Mankind, which excited much attention at the time both in this country and in Europe. Indeed he was one of the first, if not the very first, scholar of our times to take the ground, which has since become so common, and has recently been so ably argued in Kitto's "Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature," viz., that man's primeval condition was not that of a savage, but a civilized being. Says Dr. Kitto, (Art. Antediluvians,) "That a degree of cultivation was the primitive condition of man, from which savageism in particular quarters was a degeneracy, and that he has not, as too generally has been supposed, worked himself up from an original savage state to his present position, has been powerfully argued by Dr. Lindsley, and is strongly corroborated by the conclusions of modern ethnographical research." Indeed we find Dr. Lindsley "powerfully" defending this view, (for it was a favorite theme with him, which he held with all the tenacity of a discoverer,) not only in the "Biblical Repository," but as far back as 1825, in his inaugural address, in which he shows that the old infidel idea of a man's being

• These educational discourses, together with that of 1850 on the " Life and Character of Dr. Gerard Troost," his last baccalaureate, have just been issued, in elegant style, from the press of J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, forming an octavo of 588 pages. It is the first of a series of volumes, soon to follow, containing Dr. Lindsley's Complete Works and a Biography. This first of the series is itself a noble contribution to our literature, whether we regard it as a compendium of strong, original, and well-matured views on the great subject of education, or as the actual, connected history of a gifted mind in its efforts to enlighten the public. No educator can read it without having his spirit stirred to new zeal in his high calling.

at the start a sort of noble savage is contradicted alike by reason, revelation, and history.

But this point would lead us too far from our present purpose. Besides these publications, Dr. Lindsley left other valuable writings, in carefully-prepared manuscript, bearing on the same general topics discussed in those already mentioned. The writer heard many of these baccalaureate and other addresses, when they were delivered, and can bear witness to the powerful impression which they produced. It is questionable whether any man in our country has ever made more of the baccalaureate address, and done a more effective service with it, than Dr. Lindsley. They were always prepared with the utmost care, and charged with his maturest and weightiest thoughts. They were generally delivered to the largest audiences ever assembled in Nashville-consisting often of legislators, judges, professional gentlemen from all parts of the state, and the very élite of the city. He had made it a point in the start never to speak in public till he had something to say, and was fully prepared to say it. And such was his reputation, after a few efforts of this kind, that both in the college and the city, the baccalaureate was looked forward to as the great occasion of the year. He seemed never so much in his true element as on the commencement stage. And he came forth on these occasions, and delivered this heavy artillery of learning and eloquence with much of the power and success exhibited by our ablest statesmen in their set speeches in Congress. There was in fact scarcely any one instrumentality employed by Dr. Lindsley, during his whole career at Nashville, through which he seemed to exert a deeper, wider, and more wholesome influence on the public mind than these addresses. They were for the most part published in pamphlet form, and some of them passed through several editions. Thus heard and read by the leading men of Tennessee, and incorporated, as so much established truth, into the living thought of all his pupils, they were reproduced in a thousand different forms, and became part and parcel of the public sentiment in all the educated circles of the state.

And they were well deserving of the honor. We have just now had occasion to read most of them over again, after the lapse of many years. And we have been more than ever impressed with their wisdom and beauty. We know not where to find, in the same compass, within our whole range of reading, so much sound doctrine, wise counsel, and soul-stirring sentiment, on the subject of the education of the young. There are some persons who look with disparagement upon our pamphlet literature, and shrink, with a sort of dignified contempt, from the idea of a great man's burying himself in a pamphlet, as the common saying is. But no man can read the pam

phlet addresses of Dr. Lindsley-especially if he had ever had the good fortune to see and hear him in the delivery of one of them— without feeling that they were, in his hands, a powerful engine of doing good. If he had spent his life in writing large and learned books, he could doubtless have filled a wider sphere and gained a more extended fame; but we have no idea that he could ever thus have reached and indoctrinated the leading minds of Tennessee, as he did by these apparently ephemeral but really effective spoken and published addresses. We consider his example, in this respect, worthy of all praise and all imitation on the part of those who, called to the presidency of our struggling colleges, will find it necessary, not only to supply the demand for instruction within the college-walls, but continually to create a demand for that supply without, by inspiring the people with enthusiasm for learning, and indoctrinating them into large and liberal views of the subject.

By these annual tracts on education, containing the condensed results of his own reflection, reading, and experience, fraught with the living spirit of his own burning enthusiasm for knowledge, and sent forth with the high indorsement of his acknowledged scholarship, he gave a dignity to the teacher's office in Tennessee, and elevated the whole standard of popular instruction in the South West, to an extent which is none the less real and powerful because it was done so gradually that the public mind, even to this day, is scarcely conscious of the change, or to whom it is most indebted for the elevating influence. By this we do not mean to affirm that Dr. Lindsley did all the work alone; nor to detract aught from the valuable services of his coadjutors and predecessors. There were men before him at Nashville, preparing materials for the temple of learning, even in the wilderness as the well-known and honored names of Priestly and Hume can bear witness. And there were men with him at Nashville-men worthy of their high calling, and master-builders, each in his several department-who stood by him and nobly seconded all his efforts such men as Troost, and Hamilton, and Thomson, and Cross, whose names will long remain as a tower of strength in Tennessee. But what we mean to say is, that Dr. Lindsley, from the time he set foot in Nashville, was the mainspring of the movement-the masterspirit of the great work of liberal and popular education. The very fact that he gathered around him, and through all embarrassment and discouragement ever kept at his side, a corps of instructors fully equal to any in our country, is proof itself of the important part we have ascribed to him. The fact that literary and scientific men, and many eminent teachers, attracted by his influence, soon found their way to Tennessee-that rare and costly standard works, and book