Page:Civilization and barbarism (1868).djvu/14

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
vi
Preface.

of the daily journals of the present period in South America, "his name surged spontaneously from the lips of his countrymen, and was shouted across the Cordilleras and the pampas from either border, from the eastern provinces intelligently, from the western as a cry of hope born of despair and terror, and from the interior where his beneficent labors have already borne fruit and given birth to unlimited hopes of the future." It is characteristic of that imaginative and poetical people to be powerfully swayed by a daring spirit, and a man must have self-reliance to kindle them. Colonel Sarmiento's self-reliance is founded in the nature of the principles he advocates; and his personal courage in opposing every form of tyranny and barbarism, united with a self-respect which has prevented him from ever asking for an office or a public favor, now commands an appreciation which perhaps his countrymen would be incapable of rendering under a less powerful intellectual stimulus than that given by their present danger.

The study of education also led him to the study of legislation at home and abroad, and in those two paths he has been of incalculable benefit to his country, not only convincing its most advanced men that public education is the only basis of a republic, but aiding them essentially in modeling their government upon that of the United States, which is their prototype, and