province of talent, to cultivate what is thus brought to light, and prepare it to be possessed by the public mind. The love of communicating knowledge, which has been already mentioned as one of Mr. Cushing's most striking characteristics, indicated, or at least happily coincided with, the line of {165} usefulness for which, according to this view of his mental constitution, nature had fitted him. And it may well be questioned whether any of those who have sounded the profoundest depths of science, and first brought into light great truths previously unknown, would, if placed in the same circumstances with himself, have effected so much, and discharged the manifold and peculiar duties devolving on him, with equal skill and success. As a disciplinarian, he was mild and lenient, even to an extent considered by some as approaching to laxity. But such persons do not seem sufficiently to have adverted to the difficulties of his situation. He was not the Rector of Christ Church, or of Trinity--not even the President of Harvard or of Yale, but the head of a feeble institution, struggling almost for existence, and dependent on public patronage for support. With him, forbearance was among the first and most essential duties. Moreover, it was well understood by his students that his mildness was the result of principle, not of feebleness of character, and that there was a point beyond which they could not with impunity transgress. Such zeal, tempered by such prudence, could not be fruitless. The result of his labors and his cares, of what he did, and what he forebore to do, was, that in a few years after his induction into the Presidency, Hampden Sidney might fairly be pronounced the most flourishing literary institution in the Commonwealth. Its tide of success, however, was soon checked, and its onward progress stayed, by the opening of the halls of the University to students, an event which, however auspicious to the literary interests of the community at large, could not fail to be unfavorable to another seminary of learning in the same region of country, and dependent in a great degree on the same population for its supply of pupils. Visible as this was in the thinned ranks of his students, it does not seem to have caused Mr. Cushing to "bate one jot of heart or hope," but rather to have stimulated him to renewed exertions. For it was soon after this that he undertook and effected the improvement of the College buildings and the acquisition of a permanent fund. Nor did he cease to urge on the Legislature the just claims of the College to some share of the public favor. But the bills introduced for that purpose, though generally zealously supported and sustained, on grounds which ought to have insured their success, were always gotten rid of--most usually by the parliamentary manœuvre of tacking to them other subjects more or less incongruous, until they broke down under their own weight.