The young Delany, not forgetting his mother’s persecutions, his father’s humiliations in Virginia, and the wrongs of his race generally, caught the spirit of truth, and was fired with a high and holy purpose. With the scene of Nat Turner’s defeat and execution before him, he consecrated himself to freedom; and, like another Hannibal, registered his vow against the enemies of his race. To prepare for everything that promised success, to undergo every privation and suffering, if necessary to accomplish this object, was now the resolve of the young neophyte. He began, in the right direction, to prepare himself for whatever position he should be called upon to fill, by a renewed earnestness in his studies. To ethics and metaphysics he devoted his attention; and, while a student, so proficient was he in the essential principles of natural philosophy, as to compete successfully with a teacher in a college of respectability. His progress and attainments, under circumstances to which no people save his own race have ever been subjected, are evidences of the ambition and workings of a mind untamed by impediments which opposed it. Then, no college or academy of note in the United States received within its walls a black student, no matter how deserving, save under obligations hereafter to be mentioned, not excepting Dartmouth, ostensibly established for Indians, nor the great, independent Harvard, of ancient pride. “At this time,” said Martin Delany, “or shortly after, the _now_ learned J. W. C. Pennington, D. D., who received the degree of Doctor of Divinity at the University of Heidelberg, under Prince Leopold, president, was standing either behind the door of Yale College, or perhaps on its threshold, listening to instructions given in the various branches by the professors, and considering it a privilege, as it was the closest proximity allowed him towards entering its _sacred_ precincts as a student.” Such was the limited opportunity for a thorough education among the colored people, and so great was the prejudice against them while Martin Delany was endeavoring to acquire his, that it is safe to infer that no colored person, _recognized as colored_, previous to the establishment of institutions of learning under the anti-slavery agitation, ever completed a collegiate course. True it is, that a few were educated under the auspices of colonization societies, with no design of benefiting the colored people in this country, but on the condition of their leaving it for Africa.