Few of the men whom I have named had the advantage of a liberal education; they rose to eminence by the force of genius and a diligent application to their studies. The number of our literary men has been small, when compared with our population; but this is not a matter of surprise when we look to the condition of the State since the close of the Revolutionary war. When the war ended the people were in poverty, society in disorder, morals and manners almost prostrate. Order was to be restored to society and energy to the laws before industry could repair the fortunes of the people; schools were to be established for the education of youth and congregations formed for preaching the gospel before the public morals could be amended. Time was required to effect these objects; and the most important of them, the education of youth, was the longest neglected. Before this University went into operation, in 1795, there were not more than three schools in the State in which the rudiments of a classical education could be acquired. The most prominent and useful of these schools was kept by Dr. David Caldwell, of Guilford county. He instituted it shortly after the close of the war and continued it for more than thirty years. The usefulness of Dr. Caldwell to the literature of North Carolina will never be sufficiently appreciated; but the opportunities of instruction in his school were very limited. There was no library attached to it; his students were supplied with a few of the Greek and Latin classics, _Euclid's Elements of Mathematics_, and _Martin's Natural Philosophy_. Moral philosophy was taught from a syllabus of lectures delivered by Dr. Witherspoon at Princeton College. The students had no books on history or miscellaneous literature. There were indeed very few in the State, except in the libraries of lawyers who lived in the commercial towns. I well remember that after completing my course of studies under Dr. Caldwell, I spent nearly two years without finding any books to read except some old works on theological subjects. At length, I accidentally met with Voltaire's history of Charles XII. of Sweden, an odd volume of Smollett's _Roderick Random_, and an abridgment of _Don Quixote_. These books gave me a taste for reading, which I had no opportunity of gratifying until I became a student in this University in the year 1796. Few of Dr. Caldwell's students had better opportunities for getting books than myself; and with these slender opportunities of instruction, it is not surprising that so few became eminent in the liberal professions. At this day, when libraries are established in all our towns, when every professional man and every respectable gentleman has a collection of books, it is difficult to conceive the inconveniences under which young men labored thirty or forty years ago.