Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 August 1887 — Official Encouragement of Talent. [ARTICLE]

Official Encouragement of Talent.

A fact not'ced in the Belgian correspondence of one of the. Parisian pa pers affords another illustration of the inefficacy of the official encouragement of talent by the state. The King of the Belgis: bus regularly offer. <i every year, for the last ten years, a prize of £I,OOO for the best work on soma subject of c r PT . tho latitude of choice being allowed the candidates, -provided the v, k -ame within the sufficiently comprehensive catego*. o, ■ nvits ~ i... During the wh >'!e tn v -• fV prize has on.y been award .1 • - . Year after year the jury appointed to decide on the ments of the, d -at essays sent in have load to;.. : melancholy r- turn that not one u: them came up to a decent standard. Macaulay (himself a writer of prize poems; has somev her ,i i that prize sheep are only fi* »t make candles of, and pr’ze poems t ' them with. Young Oxford would probably object to the dictum ; but in Belgium, if rlze essays and pr poem' may be p; ve.i on tee same footing, it would 'seem to bo in part true. —Fall Mall Gazette.