guages, continually perfecting themselves under the prevalence of liberal ideas, have brought them to a degree of moral certainty and common attainment, which must render the dead languages less important hereafter. Their study will be confined probably to a few; and may, perhaps, in the lapse of time, perish under the mass of knowledge destined to occupy entirely the limited powers of the human understanding. While, therefore, we are discussing whether the learning of the ancient languages ought to be maintained, innovating time is settling the question in spite of unavailing efforts and regrets for the immortal authors of European literature. Thus we may understand why the Latin and Greek languages are less cultivated in America than in Europe. Unfettered by inveterate prepossessions, the mind, on this continent, follows in its march the new spirit that is abroad, leading the intelligence of all the world to other pursuits.

Since the career of this country began, education on the continent of Europe has severely suffered by political fluctuations, and continues to be thwarted by political superintendence. Whatever science and literature accomplish there must be in spite of a perplexing and pernicious education. Wanting the stability and tranquillity and security of free institutions, their existence is in perpetual fluctuation and jeopardy. The schools are regulated by one dynasty to day, by another on opposite principles to-morrow, as the instruments of each in its turn, employed as much in unlearning what had been

taught, as in learning what is to be inculcated, continually molested and convulsed by state intrusion. The arts and sciences which war requires and requites, may be encouraged and advanced: and fortunately for mankind, their extensive circle embraces many in which peace also delights or may enjoy. The northern universities have best preserved both their liberality and their usefulness. But in southern Europe, learning appears to be disastrously eclipsed where it has never ceased to receive Pagan and Christian sacrifice for more than two thousand successive years.Liberty, says Sismondi, had bestowed on Italy four centuries of grandeur and glory; during which, she did not need conquests to make her greatness known. The Italians were the first to study the theory of government, and to set the example of liberal institutions. They restored to the world, philosophy, eloquence, poetry, history, architecture, sculpture, painting, and music. No science, art, or knowledge could be mentioned, the elements of which they did not teach to people who have since surpassed them. This universality of intelligence had developed their mind, their taste, and their manners, and lasted as long as Italian liberty. How melancholy is the modern reverse of this attractive picture! When even freedom of thought can hardly breathe, and freedom of speech or writing has no existence, revolution is the only remedy for disorder; sedition infects the schools, rebellion the academies, and treason the universi

ties. In America, where universal education is the hand-maid of universal suffrage, execution has never been done on a traitor; general intelligence disarms politics of their chimerical terrors; our only revolution was but a temperate transition, without mobs, massacres, or more than a single instance of signal perfidy; every husbandman understands the philosophy of politics better than many princes in Europe. Poetry, music, sculpture, and painting, may yet linger in their Italian haunts. But philosophy, the sciences, and the useful arts, must establish their empire in the modern republic of letters, where the mind is free from power or fear, on this side of that great water barrier which the creator seems to have designed for the protection of their asylum. The monarchs of the old world may learn from those sovereign citizens, the ex-presidents of these United States, the worth of an educated nation: who, having made large contributions to literature and the sciences, live in voluntary retirement from supreme authority, at ages beyond the ordinary period of European existence, enjoying the noble recreations of books and benevolence, without guards for their protection, or pomp for their disguise, accessible, admired, protected, and immortalised. The Egyptians pronounced posthumous judgment on their kings we try our presidents while living in canonised resignation, and award to those deserving it," an exquisite foretaste of immortality.

In adult life we may trace the effects of the causes

just indicated in education. The English language makes English reading American and a generous, especially a parental nationality, instead of disparaging a supposed deficiency in the creation of literature, should remember and rejoice, that the idiom and ideas of England are also those of this country, and of this continent, destined to be enjoyed and improved by millions of educated and thinking people, spreading from the bay of Fundy to the mouth of the Columbia. Such is the influence of general education and self-government, that already over a surface of almost two thousand miles square, there are scarcely any material provincialisms or peculiarities of dialect, much less than in any nation in Europe, I believe I might say than in any hundred miles square in Europe; and, what is perhaps even more remarkable, the German, Dutch and French veins which exist in different sections, are rapidly yielding to the English ascendancy, by voluntary fusion, without any coercive or violent applications. Adverting to the great results from the mysterious diversity of the various languages of mankind, the anticipation is delightful in the effects of the American unity of tongue, combined with universal education throughout this vast continent,-the home of liberty at least, if not the seat of one great empire.

But speaking and writing the language of an ancient and refined people, whose literature preoccupies nearly every department, is, in many respects, an unexampled disadvantage in the comparative estimate.

America cannot contribute in any comparative proportion to the great British stock of literature, which almost supercedes the necessity of American subscriptions. Independent of this foreign oppression, the American mind has been called more to political, scientific, and mechanical, than to literary exertion. And our institutions, moreover, partaking of the nature of our government, have a levelling tendency. The average of intellect, and of intellectual power in the United States, surpasses that of any part of Europe. But the range is not, in general, so great, either above or below the horizontal line. In the literature of imagination, our standard is considerably below that of England, France, Germany and perhaps Italy. The concession, however, may be qualified by a claim to a respectable production of poetry; and the recollection that American scenes and incidents have been wrought by American authors into successful romances, some of which have been re-published and translated, and are in vogue in Europe; and that even popular dramatic performances have been composed out of these incidents. The stage, however, is indicative of many things in America, being engrossed by the English drama and English actors. But as a proof of American fondness, if not taste, for theatrical entertainment, I may mention here that an English comedian has lately received for performances before the audiences of four or five towns, whose united population falls short of four hundred thousand people, a much larger income than any of the actors of that country receive in which this sort of C