Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 December 1889 — Official Enconragement of Talent. [ARTICLE]

Official Enconragement of Talent.

A fact noticed in the Belgian corrd*p mdence of one of the Parisian pa pers affords another illustration of th* inefficacy of the official encouragement of talent by the state. The King of the Belgians has regularly offered every year, for the last ten years, a prize of £I,OOO for the best work on some subject of general interest, the greatest latitude of choice being allowed the candidates, provided the work came within the sufficiently comprehensive category of “oeuvres d’intelligence." During the whole ten years the prize has only been awarded once. Year after year the jury appointed to decide on the merits of the different essaya aent in have had to make the mela» eholy return that not one of them came np to a decent standard. Macaulay (himself a writer of prize poems) haa somewhere said that prize sheep are only fit to make candles of, and prizi poems to light them with. Young Or* ford would probably object to the dietum; but in Belgium, if prize essays and prize poems may be placed on the same footing, it would seem to be is part true. —Full Mali Gazette,