[Footnote 2: "The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these names, or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats--_Côté droite_ and _côté gauche_--Ultras and Radicals--Serviles and Liberals. The sickly, weakly, timid man, fears the people, and is a tory by nature. The healthy, strong, and bold, cherishes them, and is a whig by nature." _Jefferson_.] Immense is the chasm to be filled, immeasurable the space to be traversed, between the present condition of mental culture in Virginia, and that which can be safely relied upon, to save her from the dangers that hem round a democracy, unsupported by popular knowledge and virtue. Cyrus the Great, when a boy, among his play fellows, avoided contests with his inferiors in strength and swiftness; always challenging to the race or the wrestling match, those fleeter and stronger than himself: by which means, observes Xenophon, he soon excelled them. Imitating this wise magnanimity of Cyrus, let us, in looking around to find how we may attain an excellence, worthy of Virginia's early and long illustrious but now paling fame, compare ourselves not with States that have been as neglectful as we, of popular education, but with some which have outstript us in that march of true glory.[3] [Footnote 3: Montesquieu, mentioning the adoption, by the Romans, of an improved _buckler_ from a conquered nation, remarks, that the chief secret of Roman greatness was, _their renouncing any usage of their own, the moment they found a better one_. ("Ils ont toujours renoncé à leurs usages, sitot qu'ils en ont trouvé de meilleurs.") _Grandeur et Decadence des Romains_--_Chap._ 1.]