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the progress of letters in the United Sates than any single institution which has yet been planted. In such a national seminary, the whole circle of the arts, and sciences, and erudition, should be taught; the classics, both Greek and Latin, thoroughly, as the best basis of all liberal education; to which add the mathematics and natural philosophy, and regular courses of lectures on moral philosophy, political economy, belles-lettres and rhetoric, elocution, metaphysical science, municipal jurisprudence, and the law of nature and nations. It would be a patriotic duty for all classes of society, the people at large, the men of leisure, the men of business, the physicians, the lawyers, the statesmen, and the divines of America, to unite their powerful efforts to create and maintain such a national institution; another Athens in this western orb, which, under their guardian auspices, may long flourish, as the general repository of learning; and eventually render these United States at once the bulwark and ornament of literature within their own extensive dominions, and the permanent object of esteem and admiration to the whole surrounding world.

The following observations of Mr. Walsh, in relation to this subject, cannot be too often repeated, nor too widely circulated.

"Sovereigns and governments alone can raise up institutions for education, of the amplitude and mechanism required to give energy and efficacy to all the human faculties. Without such institutions we cannot, in the United States, expect to display that perfection of individual and social being which the European nations have nearly attained, and which we are, in other respects, beyond the rest of the world, privileged to reach. It is to the national government that we must look for the means of becoming the rivals of Europe in the pursuits which give most honour and happiness to our species. The state-governments have not the ability, and are not likely to have the inclination, to create those means. We are a great commercial, and are to be a great military people, only through the federal system; we can

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become a literary and philosophical people by the same agency alone. All these qualifications are necessary to constitute national greatness, upon the scale which suits our unrivalled opportunities. We must be Greece, Rome, and Carthage, at once; or, what is more modern, Italy, France, and England, in the same frame."

Generally speaking, our systems of education for girls are practically better than those for boys; and accordingly, our women generally are more intelligent and conversible than the men. In some of our larger cities, it is fashionable for the young ladies to learn the elements of botany and chymistry, in addition to the common rudiments of female instruction. In our own city of New-York, Mr. Griscom, a celebrated teacher, has established a course of lectures on natural philosophy for young ladies, who attend him in great numbers, from our most respectable families. Such a course of instruction, combined with suitable reading and reflection at home, would lay the basis of solid and substantial information, as the means of utility and delight throughout the whole of life.

Miss Hannah More's "Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education" are admirably adapted to render women sensible, well-bred, and excellent in all the various relations and charities of life. They teach, that domestic virtue is woman's chiefest ornament and praise, and more likely to be found in a liberally educated than in an unintelligent female. Her observations on this point are peculiarly good; there is, at present, room only for the few following sentences. "Since, then, there is a season, when the youthful must cease to be young, and the beautiful to excite admiration, to learn how to grow old gracefully, is, perhaps, one of the rarest and most valuable arts which can be taught to woman. And, it must be confessed, it is a most severe trial for those women to be called to lay down beauty, who have nothing else to take up. It is for this sober season of life, that education should lay up its rich resources. However disregarded they may hitherto have been, they will be wanted now. When admirers fall

away, and flatterers become mute, the mind will be driven to retire into itself; and if it find no entertainment at home, it will be driven back again upon the world with increased force. Yet, forgetting this, do we not seem to educate our daughters exclusively for the transient period of youth, when it is to maturer life we ought to advert? Do we not educate them for a crowd, forgetting that they are to live at home? For the world, and not for themselves? For show, and not for use? For time, and not for eternity?

"The chief end to be proposed in cultivating the understandings of women, is to qualify them for the practical purposes of life. Their knowledge is not often, like the learning of men, to be reproduced in some literary composition, nor even in any learned profession; but it is to come out in conduct. It is to be exhibited in life and manners. A lady studies, not that she may qualify herself to become an orator or a pleader; not that she may learn to debate, but to act. She is to read the best books, not so much as to enable her to talk of them, as to bring the improvement which they furnish to the rectification of her principles, and the formation of her habits. The great uses of study to a woman are, to enable her to regulate her own mind, and to be instrumental to the good of others. To woman, therefore, whatever be her rank, I would recommend a predominance of those more sober studies, which, not having display for their object, may make her wise without vanity, happy without witnesses, and content without panegyrists; the exercise of which will not bring celebrity, but improve usefulness."

The American ladies have learned, that it is not altogether the business of their lives to administer to the mere pleasure of man, as the plaything of his hours of relaxation from the toils of ambition, or the cravings of wealth; to be entirely absorbed in the pursuits of ephemeral fashion, and "when God has given them one face, to make unto themselves another, to jig, to amble, and lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make their wantonness their ignorance." They have discovered,

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that God has given them such high capacities of excellence, such acute perception, such exquisite feeling, such ardent affection, for the purpose of becoming man's companion and guide; the soother of his sorrows and heightener of his joys; the object of his proud submission, his dignified obedience, his chivalrous worship; the being whose smile forms the joy of his life, the sunshine of his existence.

"Till Hymen brought his love-delighted hour,
There dwelt no joy in Eden's roseate bower.
In vain the viewless seraph, lingering there,
At starry midnight charm'd the silent air;
In vain the wild-bird caroll'd from the steep,
To hail the sun slow wheeling from the deep;
In vain, to soothe the solitary shade,
Aërial notes in mingling measure play'd;
The summer wind that shook the spangled tree,
The whispering wave, the murmuring of the bee,
Still slowly passed the melancholy day,

And still the stranger wist not where to stray;
The world was sad, the garden was a wild,
And man, the hermit, sigh'd till woman smil'd."

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CHAPTER VII.

On the Habits, Manners, and Character of the United States.

THAT foreigners, who do not speak the same language as the people of this country, should be extremely ignorant of the resources and character of the Americans, is not a subject of surprise: the very circumstance of their speaking in a different tongue, added to the general prevalence of despotism in their respective governments, and want of information in their subjects, will sufficiently account for their unacquaintance with the past history, the present situation, the future prospects of the United States. But Britain can find no such excuse for her portentous ignorance of this country: her blood flows in every vein, and quickens every artery of the giant offspring, sprung from her teeming loins; her language, laws, religion, habits, manners, and pursuits, have reproduced another Britain in this western world, on a far more extended scale of capacity, magnificence, and power, than its venerable mother can ever hope to attain; cooped and cabined in as she is, by the narrow dimensions of her own territorial dominions.

Indeed, the general, not to say universal ignorance which prevails in Britain, alike in the government and in the people, respecting all the essential qualities, and national characteristics of these United States, is almost incredible to those who have not attentively examined the subject. Perhaps it is chiefly owing to the intercourse between the two countries being almost exclusively commercial; for in general merchants are not apt to investigate a country, either very comprehensively, or very accurately, beyond the states of its markets,

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