ious forms. Every large town should
have an efficient academy or high school; and men of wealth can do no
greater service to the public than by liberally encouraging, in their
various places of abode, the advanced instruction of the young. None can
estimate too highly the good which came to England from the endowment of
Lawrence Sheriff at Rugby, and of Queen Elizabeth's school at
Westminster, or the value to New England of the Phillips foundations in
Exeter and And over.
Every contribution made by others to this new University will enable the
Trustees to administer with greater liberality their present funds.
Special foundations may be affiliated with our trust, for the
encouragement of particular branches of knowledge, for the reward of
merit, for the construction of buildings; and each gift, like the new
recruits of an army, will be more efficient because of the place it
takes in an organized and efficient company. It is a great satisfaction
in this world of changes and pecuniary loss to remember what safe
investments have been made at Harvard and Yale, and other old colleges,
where dollar for dollar is still shown for every gift.
The atmosphere of Maryland seems favorable to such deeds of piety,
hospitality and "good-will to men." George Calvert, the first Lord
Baltimore, comes here, returns to England and draws up a charter which
becomes memorable in the annals of civil and religious liberty, for
which, "he deserves to be ranked," (as Bancroft says), "among the most
wise and benevolent lawgivers of all ages;" among the liberals of 1776
none was bolder than Charles Carroll of Carrollton; John Eager Howard,
the hero of Cowpens, is almost equally worthy of gratitude for the
liberality of his public gifts; John McDonogh, of Baltimore birth,
bestows his fortune upon two cities for the instruction of their youth;
George Peabody, resident here in early life, comes back in old age to
endow an Athenaeum, and begins that outpouring of munificence which
gives him a noble rank among modern philanthropists; Moses Sheppard
bequeaths more than half a million for the relief of mental disease;
Rinehart, the teamster boy, attains distinction as a sculptor, and
bequeaths his hard-won acquisitions for the encouragement of art in the
city of his residence; and a Baltimorean still living, provides for the
foundation of an astronomical observatory in Yale College; while Johns
Hopkins lays a foundation for learning and charity, which w
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