member, now a peer, himself one of the most eloquent men of England, whose political and personal ties bound him particularly to remain during the delivery of one of these master-pieces, after nearly every body else had withdrawn, actually crawled out of the house to escape unnoticed from an intolerable scene. Johnson, the editor of Chatham's famous speeches, in a number of the Rambler, treats the graces of eloquence with elaborate ridicule and contempt; and Hume, in his Essay on Eloquence, and Blair, in his Lectures on Rhetoric, acknowledge that they are not characteristics of British oratory. The printed speeches of England are among the finest specimens of the art of composition; but it is notorious that in parliament and at the bar the most celebrated speeches avail nothing with those to whom they are addressed; and eloquence, in the pulpit of the established church is, I believe, a thing unheard of. The talent of effective oratory is much more common in America, where laws are made, controversies are settled, and proselytes are gained, by it, every day. An eloquent professor or lecturer, in England, is very rare, if there be any such. While it is well known that the medical school of Philadelphia owes its success, in part, to the mere eloquence of its lecturers. Crowds of listeners are continually collected in all parts of this country to hear eloquent speeches and sermons. The legislature, the court house, and the church, are thronged with auditors of both sexes, attracted by that talent which was the intense study and great power of the ancient orators. Thought, speech, and action, must be perfectly free to call forth the utmost

powers of this mighty art. It requires difficulties; but it needs hopes. Its temples in free countries are innumerable. When its rites are administered the most divine of human unctions searches the marrow of the understanding; the orator is inspired, the auditor is absorbed, by the occasion.

Annual sessions of five and twenty legislatures multiply laws, which produce a numerous bar, in all ages the teeming offspring of freedom. Their number in the Unired States has been lately computed at six thousand; which is probably an under estimate. American lawyers and judges adhere with professional tenacity to the laws of the mother country. The absolute authority of recent English adjudications is disclaimed: but they are received with a respect too much bordering on submission. British commercial law, in many respects, inferior to that of the continent of Europe, is becoming the law of America. The prize law of Great Britain was made that of the U. States by judicial legislation during flagrant war between the two countries. The homage lately paid by the English prime minister to the neutral doctrines proclaimed by the American government, in the beginning of the French revolution, which declares them worthy the imitation of all neutral nations, may teach us that the American state papers contain much better principles of international jurisprudence than the passionate and time-serving, however brilliant, sophisms of the British admiralty courts. On the other hand, English jurisprudence, while silently availing itself of that of all Europe, and adopting without

the lower Mississippi, 330,000, giving a total of 1,210,000 miles as the area of what is termed the Mississippi basin. Most if not all of these vast streams are innavigable but by steam boats, owing to the course of their currents and other circumstances. These then are the latitudes of steam boats, which have been abandoned in some parts of Europe, as too large for their rivers, and too expensive for their travelling. In less than ten years from this time, steam boats may pass from the great lakes of the north-west by canals to the Atlantic, thence to the isthmus of Darien, and across that to China and New Holland. They now ply like ferry boats from New York to Pensacola, New Orleans and Havanna, with the punctuality and security, and more than the accommodation, of the best land carriage of Europe. Wherever this wonderful invention appears, overcoming the winds and waves by steam, measuring trackless ocean distances by the quadrant, and protected from lightning by the rod, it displays in every one of these accomplishments the genius of America.

In the ordinary art of navigation, the construction, equipment, and manipulation of vessels, commercial and belligerent, America is also conspicuous. The merchant vessels of the United States, manned with fewer hands, perform their voyages, generally, in one third less time than those of the only other maritime people to be compared with them. And without referring to the achievements of the American navy as credentials of courage or renown, I may with propriety remark, that an intel

ligent and scientific fabrication and application of arms, ammunition, ships, and all the materials of maritime warfare, are unquestionably demonstrated by their success in it.

The mechanics, artisans, and laborers of this country are remarkable for a disposition to learn. Asserted European superiority has been of great advantage to America in preventing habitual repugnance to improvement, so common to all mankind, especially the least informed classes. Superior aptitude, versatility and quickness in the handicrafts, are the consequences of this disposition of our people. A mechanic in Europe is apt to consider it almost irreverent, and altogether vain to suppose that any thing can be done better than as he was taught to do it by his father or master. A house or ship, is built in much less time here than there. From a line of battle ship, or a steam engine, to a ten penny nail, in every thing, the mechanical genius displays itself by superior productions. The success of a highly gifted American mechanical genius now in England, seems to be owing in part to his adapting his improvements, by a happy ingenuity, to the preservation of machinery, for which several English mechanics have been enriched and ennobled, but which would have been superseded as useless had it not been thus rescued.

If a ship, a plough and a house be taken as symbols of the primary social arts of navigation, agriculture and habitation, we need not fear comparisons with other people in any one of them. In the intellectual use of the elements, the com

To these imperfect views of education, literature, science, and the arts, I will add sketches of the American mind, as developed in legislation, jurisprudence, the medical profession and the church; which, in this country, may be considered as the other cardinal points of intellectual exercise.

Representation is the great distinction between ancient and modern government. Representation and confederation distinguish the politics of America, where representation is real and legislation perennial. Thousands of springs, gushing from every quarter, eddy onward the cataract of representative democracy, from primary self-constituted assem blies, to the State Legislatures, and the national Congress: Three thousand chosen members represent these United States, in five and twenty Legislatures. There are, moreover, innumerable voluntary associations under legislative regulations in their proceedings. I am within bounds in asserting, that several hundred thousand persons assemble in this country every year, in various spontaneous convocations, to discuss and determine measures according to parliamentary routine. From bible societies to the lowest handicraft there is no impediment, but every facility, by law, to their organisation: And we find not only harmless but beneficial, those various self-created associations, which in other countries give so much trouble and alarm. It is not my purpose to consider the political influences of these assemblies, nor even their political character. But their philosophical effect on the individuals composing them, is to sharpen