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Jared Sparks
Anno Ætatis XL.
MEMOIR
OF
JARED SPARKS, LL.D.
By BRANTZ MAYER.
President of the Maryland Historical Society:
PREPARED AT THE REQUEST OF THE SOCIETY,
And read before its Annual Meeting,
On Thursday Evening, February 7, 1867.
Printed for the Maryland Historical Society,
By JOHN MURPHY.
Baltimore, 1867.
MEMOIR.
IT has been a sad but not entirelyunpleasant duty to prepare, at therequest of the Maryland HistoricalSociety, a brief memoir of one ofour earliest and most distinguishedHonorary Members, the late JaredSparks, LL.D. The duty, thoughsad, is not without a pleasant recompense,for the eulogium which a long-continuedfriendship and intercourse demand can bebestowed with cordial truth.
Mr. Sparks was what we call, in America, a self-mademan. Although his life is a fair illustration ofwhat an industrious person of talent and commonsense may compass by decision of character and ahigh aim, my object in these observations is not todraw from his biography what has been aptly called"ostentatious precepts and impertinent lessons."By a self-made man I do not mean to class Mr.Sparks with that large and influential body of citizenswhose portraits adorn the illustrated newspapers,and whose memoirs disclose the opinion[Pg 4]that the making of a great deal of money is themaking of a very exemplary man. When I speakof Mr. Sparks as a self-made man I use the phrasein a sense of intellectual progress and success,founded on self-relying discipline,—of mental cultureand mental fruit, bringing him up to honorablefame from low obscurity,—making him alasting power in our nation, nay, throughout theworld, in our best society, in our literature, in ourinstitutions of learning; and, finally, bestowing onhim the just pecuniary rewards always