Addresses Delivered on Various Public Occasions

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1829 Excerpt: ... It will be unjustifiable to trust your success in the slightest degree to accident, because accident has occasionally given currency to men neither remarkable for education, talent, nor judgment. Accident has, at times, given a man of the highest merit an introduction to extensive business; but we must never forget that accident cannot sustain our reputation, nor minister to our continued success. Our greatest care must be to acquire reputation, by a diligent cultivation of our talents; though we should never neglect to improve any accidental success, in all honourable ways, to forward our professional views. If a character for skill and discernment be acquired suddenly, we must not attempt to increase it, by endeavouring to extend this reputation to the utmost stretch of possibility, but by displaying new instances of talent and intellectual strength, thus substantially augment our capital of fame. The fortuitous elevation of men destitute of true greatness of character, is almost universally followed by reverses as sudden and severe, as this elevation has been great. This is frequently exemplified in the fate of those who have a great air-built reputation, and much verbal fame; who, instead of modestly refusing a part of the honours, proffered them, and exerting themselves to prove that they are worthily praised, receive the whole as no more than their right, and leave their admirers in a short time to discover that their extraordinary pretensions are unfounded, and that their reputation is nothing better than the gratuitous offering of ill-judging and partial friends. Next to an acquaintance with the principles of the pro I would not be understood in what I have here said, or may have said elsewhere, to undervalue Experiment, whose importance and fessi...