Medical Schools in the South [pp. 235-241]

236 Medical Schools in the South. [July,
wealthy, and our schools and colleges were thence to be
sought mostly within the States. More densely settled,
supposed to be more healthy, with their people engaged
in pursuits which more naturally conduced mental attrition, the Northern States were tacitly allowed to decupy
the relation to the South which had been formerly assigned to Oxford, Eton and Edinburgh; and the education
of the Southern student, having liberal means, was sought
for at Yale, llarvard, and other places, north of the Potomac. Virginia was the first of the Southern States to
found her own schools-a fact due quite as much to her
rank as a State, as to the position held by her great men.
Still, the poorer classes of the people at home were subject to denial, or to such shifts and shortcomings as to
render of small value the sort of learning which they
could acquire from ordinary home sources. The schools
of Virginia did not supersede, in the favour of the more
southerly regions, those of New-England, as, from natural ties and sympathies, they might be supposed likely to
do. Indeed, from th~ superior facilities afforded by the
greater commercial intercourse between the Northern
States and the South, it was more convenient to seek the
educational regions of the former, than the nearer places
of resort in Virginia; and, down to a comparatively recent period, the alma mater for the Southern youth was
still sought in New-England, and the mental nurture of
our young was thus derived from a region which necessarily mingled a large infusion of bitter, if not poison,
with the food which it bestowed. But the progress of
natural events, which might be, and indeed was, predicted, necessarily wrought a rescue for us from this pernicious habit, and led, or is leading, our people to better
sources of education, in a more thorough independence of
their foreign and frequently hostile teachers. The progress of the abolition sentiment at the North-which
grew into strength and power from the moment when the
slave trade was denied to the philanthropic people of that
section-naturally drove the Southern people from resorts
which threatened their securities; and it happened, fortunately, that, keeping due pace with the growth of their
necessity, the Southern towns had been growing rich and
populous, while hundreds of native minds, in all the
States of the South, had been exhibiting resources of