'Who enters here, leaves DOUBT behind.'"


If you, happily, have been well taught yourself, and are superior
to its advantages, so much the more should you make one in sympathy
with those who are below you. Beneath this roof we breed the men
who, in the time to come, must be found working for good or evil,
in every quarter of society. If mutual respect and forbearance
among various classes be not found here, where so many men are
trained up in so many grades, to enter on so many roads of life,
dating their entry from one common starting-point, as they are all
approaching, by various paths, one common end, where else can that
great lesson be imbibed? Differences of wealth, of rank, of
intellect, we know there must be, and we respect them; but we would
give to all the means of taking out one patent of nobility, and we
define it, in the words of a great living poet, who is one of us,
and who uses his great gifts, as he holds them in trust, for the
general welfare -


"Howe'er it be, it seems to me
'Tis only noble to be good:
True hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood." {6}



SPEECH: BIRMINGHAM, FEBRUARY 28, 1844.