^ KEI^LY TO A RESOLlITiDN OK THE 1 READ ItEKORE THE SOCIETY AT ITS ANNIYEESARY MEETING, February 12th, 1866, Rt. Rev. STEPHEN EELIOTT, PRESIDENT OF THK SOCIETY PrBLlSlIED AT THE REQIEST OF THE SOCIETV PURSE AND SON, PRINTERS. 1866. A^ REI^LY TO A RKSOLUTION OF TllK KEAD 15EF0RE THK SOCIETY' AT ITS ANNIVERSAM MEETING, February 12th, 1866 ^: Rt. Rev. STEPHEN EELIOTT, PRESIDENT OF. THE SOCIETY. PUBLISHED AT THE REQl'EST OF THE SOCIETY. PURSE AND SON. PRINTERS. 18GG. Gr37 WWSltM© Savannah, Jan. Otli, 18CG. Bishop Elliott : — Dear Sir. At a meeting of the Georgia Historical Society held last evening, the following resolution was unanimously adopted, and the under- signed was instructed to present you a copy. Resolved, ''That the Society respectfully ask the President to present, as early as convenient, his views on the prospects of the Society and the best method of increasing and extending its useful- ness." It waa also suggested that the anniversary meeting would be a suitable occasion, if it would be convenient for you. I am very respectfully, EASTON YONGE, Recording Secretary. A.DDIIESS. Gentlemen of the Georgia Historical Society : In reply to a resolution of your honorable body, conveyed to me through your Secretary, inviting me to offer you, at this our anniversary meeting, my views upon the feasibility of rendering our society more use- ful to tlie community, of which it is the sole literary cor- poration, I offer you the following remarks. It is very painful to admit it, but it is nevertheless the truth, that the literary spirit, which once animated Savani.iali, luis almost entirely died out from lack of cultivation. Although I have lived in Savan- nah only twenty-five years, I remember its society for full forty years, having visited it very frequently dur- ing ray boyhood and early manhood. Upon these visits, I was brought into contact with its cleverest men and I found among them a very high standard of literary ex- cellence and of classical attainment. And while my own recollection does not include the whole period, of the palmiest days of that cultivated and refined society, I lived among those, who had been the compeers and friends of such as had passed away. When I first re- member Savannah it was illustrated by the culture of such' men as Richard Henry Wilde, Anthony Barclay, Charles Harris, Richard W. Habersham, Judge Berrien, Alfred Cuthbcrt, Dr. Lemuel Kollock, Dr. Waring, Dr. Marshall, Wm. B. Bulloch, and a host of younger men 6 just rising into notice, and by the social influence of William Gaston, of Thomas Young, of Petit De Vilers and as he -was universally called, of Jack Henry, who gathered around their hospitable boards all that was clever and refined, not only of her own citizens', but of strangers from every quarter. And these men could go back to earlier scholars, who had died out, to Cranstoun, the accomplished rector of Christ Church, to Dr. Henry Kollock, the eloquent minister of the Independent Church, who has left upon this communitv as deep an impress as any man of his time, to Noel and Woodruff who led the bar, and to Grimes, whose medical reputa- tion was of the highest mark. With these freely inter- mingled such visitors as Spalding, the most widely read man of his day. Win. Cumming whose conversational powers were of the most uncommon character, John Forsyth, Governor Troup and Wm. H. Crawford, whose reputations afterwards became national. And when you recall these men (some of whom you have known individually in their later days, and one or two of whom yet survive to teach us what the rest were) and" group them, you will at once acknowledge, without underat- ing the present times, that they were very superior to any circle that we could collect to day. And when I say this, I would cast no especial shame upon Savannah. The same deterioration has occurred every where. There could not be collected to-day in Richmond any such so- ciety as distinguished her sixty years ago, when Madi- son and Geo. Mason and Pendleton and Wickham and Randolph and Tazewell might have been found at one ta- ble. You could not assemble in Charleston now such men as came together even in mj early days, let alone those who preceded them, when John Rutlcdge and the two Pinckneys and Cheves and Julius Pringlc and Wm. Lowndes and Bond Ion, and men of that stamp, who had been horsed at Westminster and had read law in the tem- ple, made every dinner-table a scene of rich intellectual enjoyment. As late as forty-five or six years ago, when I first remember Charleston distinctly, the whole commmu- nity was daily aglow with the wit of the yonngmen about town, who threw off their fancies through the newspapers and fly sheets, sure of finding an appreciative audience, of such men as William Crafts, whose fugitive pieces are among the purest gems of Southern literature, as Ilenry Harby whose cleverness promised a higher posi- tion than he ever assumed, as Holland, whose wit found an early grave, as Tom Bee with the heavy university scholarship of his Omnium gatherum, and the young bloods with their Omnium botherum got up to make fun of the old scholar, as a hundred others who made up the literary coteries of the times. Alas no! it is not Savannah alone ; it is the whole country, Boston perhaps excepted, which has lost literary tone and taste. Democratic institutions and levelling principles have done their work, and save where some great liter- ary institution, with proper endowments to make it in- dependent of popular favor, has stayed the flood, every- thing, which deserves the name of literature, has been swept away before the all absorbing interest of politics of business and of practical life. Science has flourished and advanced, because science is necessary to commerce, to navigation and to the production of wealth, but literature, which is only elegant and refining, has retired into pri- vate life, content to adorn the circles of home, but too sensitive to brave the contemptuous and sneering spirit of utilitarianism. Can the old literary spirit be revived ? I fear not to the extent to which it once existed or in which it continues to exist in our Fatherland. Literature must have a fitting audience to make it flourish and that an- dience will regulate its tone. We shall have in the United States an immense reading public; we have it ah'cady. But wliat is the literature in whfcli it delights? Sensation novels, pictorial newspapers, political sheets growing every day more vulgar and abusive, jest books like the travels of Ar- temns Ward or Phenixiana or Simon Suggs, and Magazines fall of false grammar, false taste and false- hood. This is the pabulum on which this great nation daily feeds, now when its joints and sinews are knitting together, when its habits of thought and feeling are be- ing formed, when its tone, which at last makes the true greatness of a nation, is assuming shape and character. Any heavier food than this turns its weak stomach. Boston lying under the shadow of a great university is really the only point which is producing any thing in true literature and that is so impregnated with fanati- cism and rationalism, that it is not pleasant for us nor safe for anybody to indulge much in it. New York is a great book mart, a great publishing centre, but she pro- duces now-a-da^'s no such writers as Washington Irving, Paulding, Yerplauck, Cooper or Bryant, all whose ra- ciest and most genuine writings are of the past. Phil- adelphia is a centre of science, but she has no literature other own, no art such as she once could boast of. Her artists and her novelists, AVest, Sully, Stuart, Brockden, Brown, have died out and left no successors. Every literary review of a high order, which lias been estab- lished in the United States, has expired after a very brief existence. The North American Review, if it ex- ists at all, is languishing and has no influence upon the country. Tiie American Quarterly, after a few years of most unutterable dulness, went out for want of brains. The Nsw York Eeview, of a much higher or- der of writing, could not withstand the inevitable law of 9 failure. The original Southern Keview, whose articles were, many of them, equal to the very best writ ing of the Edinburf^h, not excepting even Macaulay's, succumbed, from lack of patronage, at the end of its fourth year. Harper alone survives, because it is furnished with nu- merous engravings, and stoties by foreign writers and has a monthly drawer of poor jokes, newer perhaps, but not as good as Joe Miller. The fact is patent and cannot be de- nied. With the exception of a few historical works pro- duced in Boston and now and then a philological work by such a true scholar as Marsh, all our literature comis from abroad. Even our school books are plagiarized wholesale from Germany, England and Scotland. The taste of the nation is shockinnly low and must be grati- fied, and this decline in taste has been coincident with the passing away of tlie old English education, until now it is satisfied only with frivolity or what is worse, vulgarity and obscenity. The caricature which appear- ed lately in one of our satirical papers is only too true. Two young women are represented as applying at a cir- culating library for books, and the answer which they receive from the shopman is "I regret very much, ladies, that I have to-day no murder nor any adultery, but I am expecting at the end of the week two bigamies." It is possible however that a literary spirit may be in a measure revived and that sometliing may be done even in the midst of the confusion which sur- rounds us, by means of the institution of which we are the present administrators. The history of Geori/ia is very limited, because of the late period at which s!ie was settled, and is not sufficient to occupy the whole at- tention of a s< 'ciety like this. Its topics of interest have been already very much exhausted or are beyond our reach, and for these reasons it is that so little interest has, of late, been taken in our meetings. It is very 10 pleasant to come togetlior once a month and talk over such things as amuse us or interest us, but even then our time is very raucli taken up with the mere routine of society business or with the current news of the day, there being very little else upon our table to engage our attention. We need something more than this. We need a resort whicii shall be open to our members every day and all day; where they shall find the best literature of tb.e current time always at their command, and men and women of culture to talk with about it. We have a right to ask from a society like this, combining within itself the best citizens of the ])lace, that it shall furnish a plan, by which mind may be brought into contact with mind and the tone of conversation be raised above politics or business or gossip. We may go on as we are going now for a century and no young mind will be fired to efibrt or excited to a higher life by our proceed- ings. We may meet month after month and do as we are doing now and none of us will gain any thing from our meetings of eitlier knowledge or impulse. No new topics are introduced ; no new books lie upon our table; nothing comes before us which connects us with the world across the water, that great centre of all that is beautiful in art, or grand in science, or rich in literature. We are in a condition of isolation and stagnation, and the waters must be stirred. We may not be able by our efl:brts to do all we might desire, but we can do something. We may not create a literiiture, but we may at least place what literature there is within the reach of tho"se around us. We can say to our young men "we ofter you the richest treasures of the old world and of the nevr, and if you do not choose to elevate yourselves, the fault will be at y^nr own doors.'' We can say to our young women "liere are art and literature and elegance and refinement spread out for your enter- 11 tainment, but if you prefer Wilkie Collins j Miss Brad- den and Mrs. AYood, you will have nobody to blame but yourselves, when the time of responsibility comes and children are lookin;,^ up to you for instruction and guidance." We can say to our wdiole city, old and young, "we desire you to rise once again to the level of 3^our ancestors, and we now prepare for you the means which liave been for a long time out of your reach, un- less provided at your own expense, and at an unattainable cost." When we shall have done this, we shall have done our duty, and may tlien, if success is denied us, feel no remorse, that we have left without any effort on our part, our young people to the wretched influences which are gathering around them. The mind must be fed ; it craves nourishment and excitement as much as the body, and if good food is not furnished it, it will prey upon garbage. In order to do our duty iu this matter, we should, I think, commence at once the accumulation of a librar}^ which shall be worthy of such a city as Savannah. She stands almost alone among cities of her population in being without a public library. And what is w^orse, having had one, she has permitted it to decay until the few broken sets of books which encumber our shelves are all that is left of it. How difleront it is with our neighboring city of Charleston. Her city library, only one out of several, consists of nearly twenty thousand vol- umes of well chosen books, and there was scarcely a topic, not strictly technical, wiiicli could not, when I remember it, have been thoroughly examined within its walls. To that library I owed as a boy, and still owe as a man, unutterable gratitude. It seduced mc from play and from idleness, and most of my spare time was spent curled up in its deep old window seats, among books and living men from whom I derived invaluable 12 stimulus. The remembrance of this makes me desire that such a lesort should be furnished to our boys and young men. Mintiling; with books in childhood makes us love them ; tin y become our friends for life; we associate with them our young existence of joy and in- noce:".ce, and we turn to them, in manhood and old age, in sickness and in sorrow, as to something which shall give us comfort and solace. A man loses much who i.oes not love books, for they are the only companions we can always have with us, the only friends who will certainly not leave us, when fortune frowns upon us or the days of darkness come. Let us endeavor to furnish these companions and friends for our children; com- panions and friends, which if! well chosen, will never cor- rupt nor degrade them. And it is quite within our reach. It is amazing how a library grows. A thoufiand or fif-. teen hundred dollars a year v/ell spent (and 1 see no reason why we should not have double tlie amount at our disposal) would very soon accumulate for us a very respectable library, especially as we should not begin with empty shelves. And the existence of such a li- brary would very soon become a matter of i)ride to the citizens of Savannah, and donations and legacies would flow in, which would give it a wider scope and n greater comprehensiveness. For such a library should not be confined merely to books, but its managers should aim to procure for it works of art, statues and busts and paintings and prints to educate the eye as well as the mind. Elegance should pervade it and make it attrac- tive. Woman should be enticed there to lend the charm of her society to its graver topics. Materials and pri- vacy should be furnished severer students, so that they might use to advantage such books as should never be permitted to leave the walls of a library. To attain this ideal, a beginning must be made and I know no 13 better time than this. We are entering upon a new era in the history of our State, and let us do all in our power to inaugurate it with refinement and culture, even though it should prove to be a halo hovering around decay and ruins. There is one thing moreover which seems to be essen- tial to our success in this plan, and that is a removal from our present narrow quarters and a placing of our- selves in some more central position. The property which we own, if properly handled, should procure for us such a site and such a building as M^e need. The ac- cessibility of a library is one of its chief attractions. It ouirht to stand in the centre of the gi-eat fashionable thoroughfare of the city, where men returning from their business can stroll in if only for a few minutes, and women may find it lying right across the pathway of their daily walk. I have in my eye at this moment a site fulfilling in ever}^ respect these requirements and offering us space enougli for all our purposes. It is that now imoccupied spot where the Savannah Volun- teer Guards once held their military meetings, giving us a fit opportunity of erecting a building in accordance with our own ideas. If these views should prove acceptable to the society, committees should be appointed to arrange the details and move at once in the work. 7 / LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 014 419 453 6 #