nd manner as John Newland
Maffit and the wonderful Summerfield.

Like all that is great and enduring, the Methodist Church had its
beginning among the humble and lowly. Rocked in the cradle of penury
and ignorance, it was firmly fixed in the foundations of society,
whence it rose from its own purity of doctrine and simplicity of
worship to command the respect, love, and adoption of the highest in
the land, and to wield an influence paramount in the destinies of the
people and the Government. Its ministers are now the educated and
eloquent of the Church militant. Its institutions of learning are the
first and most numerous all over the South, and it has done for female
education in the South more than every other sect of Christians,
excepting, perhaps, the Roman Catholic. In the cause of education its
zeal is enlisted, and its organization is such as to bring a wonderful
power to operate upon the community in every section of the South and
West. That this will accomplish much, we have only to look to the
antecedents of the Church to determine. Like the coral insect, they
never cease to labor: each comes with his mite and deposits it; and,
from the humblest beginning, this assiduity and contribution builds up
great islands in the sea of ignorance--rich in soil, salubrious in
climate, and, finally, triumphant in the conceptions of the chief
architect--completing for good the work so humbly begun.

CHAPTER IX.

PEDAGOGUES AND DEMAGOGUES.

EDUCATION--COLLEGES--SCHOOL-DAYS--WILLIAM AND MARY--A SUBSTITUTE--
BOARDING AROUND--ROUGH DIAMONDS--CASTE--GEORGE M. TROUP--A SCOTCH
INDIAN--ALEXANDER McGILVERY--THE McINTOSH FAMILY--BUTTON GWINNETT--
GENERAL TAYLOR--MATTHEW TALBOT--JESSE MERCER--AN EXCITING ELECTION.

The subject of education engaged the attention of the people of Georgia
at a very early day subsequent to the Revolution. Public schools were
not then thought of; probably because such a scheme would have been
impracticable. The population was sparse, and widely separated in all
the rural districts of the country; and to have supplied all with the
means of education, would have necessitated an expense beyond the power
of the State. A system was adopted, of establishing and endowing
academies in the different counties, at the county-seat, where young
men who intended to complete a collegiate education might be taught,
and the establishment and endowment of a college, where this education
might be finished, leavi