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a matter of course, conceded to them. Can this bare anything to do with the modern tendency of our young clergy to rely for position and influence, not upon talents and professional labours, but on the dignity of office and the supposed sacredness conferred by the imposition of hands?

Dr Wayland's reasoning and suggestions have prevailed with the Corporation, and the new system has this winter been introduced into the Brown Cniversity.

There is one university in the United States—that of Virginia, founded by Jefferson in 1819—in which a system similar to that I have been describing has been followed since its foundation. It is the most liberally constituted university in the United States. The stadents are there allowed to select their own course of study, and, after three years and due examinations, to take out their degree of B.A. in that study. The professors are all equal in rank, and the president is annually elected out of their own number by the votes of their own body. The university receives 15,000 dollars a-year from the State, out of which each professor receives 1000 and a free house-the president for the time being has 500 more. The rest of their income is derived from the fees of the students; and as these are at liberty to select their own classes, the reputation of a teacher is an important element in regulating his income. There is no fixed chaplain appointed by the State. The professors elect their own chaplain, generally for two years only, and pay him by private subscription. The number of students in this university is about 320; so that it may be considered as very prosperous.

In a university which desires to stand well in public estimation, it is necessary not only that the students, but that the professors also, should be industrious and improving men. With the view of securing this, Dr Wayland contemplates also the introduction of the system of com

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petition in teaching, which is common in some of the Continental universities, where a professor extraordinary occasionally carries off the pupils from the ordinary professor. Discreetly applied, this principle may do good. But, in a university with small endowments, if unnecessarily introduced, it might disgust good men, and drive them from the institution.

The poverty of the Brown University is greatly in favour of the energetic and broad movement of Dr Wayland. Where the professors have comfortable and secure endowments, they are naturally disinclined to novelties; and where a university has scholarsbips enough to buy students, its heads will not trouble themselves with the wants and wishes of the public, or consult how they may make their institution most useful to the country in which it is placed. And yet, what a waste of pecuniary and mental power in suffering so much excellent machinery to employ itself in preparing so unsatisfactory a material !

VOL. II.

2

CHAPTER XXX.

Free-soil and abolition meetings at Boston.-Attack on Mr Webster.His speech in Congress.—Alleged natural unfitness of New Mexico for slavery. Intelligence of a Boston meeting.-Stump orators of the southern States.-Use of the abolition party in the States.-Extreme religious views of the leaders of this party.-Dr Webster's trial.— Energy of a Boston jury.-Common schools in Massachusetts.— Principles on which they are based.-Most important facts regarding them.-Amount of assessment levied for school purposes.-What such an assessment would realise in Great Britain.-Private schools in Massachusetts.-Why these are necessary.-Proposed payment of professors by a public tax.―Education schemes of the early reformers. -Parish-school system of Scotland.-Recommendations of John Knox.-His plans fully carried out eighty years after in Massachusetts. -Expected influence of New England schools on ours at home.United States' arsenal at Springfield.-Connecticut valley and river. -Amherst college.-President Hitchcock and the footprints of birds. -Greenfield and the Upper Connecticut.—Mr Marsh's collection of bird-tracks.-Turner's Falls.-Valley of the Westfield River.— Potsdam sandstone in Berks county.-Soils of the Black River limestone.-Sail down the Hudson.-Compared with the Rhine by Mr Cooper. Higher ascent of the tide in this river compared with former times.-Causes of this.-Case of the river Wear.-Interest attending such observations.-Clubs in Boston.-Discoveries of mineral phosphate of lime in various parts of the United States. Importance of this to British and American agriculture.—Return to England.

MARCH 22.—During my stay in Boston, I have attended two separate meetings in Faneuil Hall on the subject of slavery-one called by the Free-soil party, the other by the extreme Abolitionist or Garrison party.

The attack of the Free-soilers was chiefly upon Mr

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Webster, on account of his speech in Congress on the 7th of this month. In this speech Mr Webster declared his opinion to be, that there was no territory in the possession of the States in regard to which legislation, as to slavery, was possible, or, if possible, could do any good. The vast territory of Texas—so large that a bird could not fly over it in a week—was already, he said, secured to slavery by treaty, so that the faith of the nation was bound up in the acknowledgment of slavery there;—while as to New Mexico and California, slavery was impossible there, from the nature of its climate and soil; so that, were it proposed in any bill to apply the Wilmot proviso to these countries, (no slavery north of 36° 30',) “I would vote against it. The use of such a prohibition would be idle as respects any effect it would have upon the territory; and I would not take pains uselessly to re-affirm an ordinance of nature, nor to re-enact the will of God.” To the first of these reasons of Mr Webster, it was answered, that the treaty with Texas was unconstitutional, and not binding-in which a statesman, however, would scarcely concur. To the second, that it was not true; and upon this the chief issue was joined. Mr Webster explained his meaning to be, that such slavery as exists in the southern States, for the cultivation of sugar, cotton, tobacco, &c., could not exist in those States, and therefore, “ why re-enact the will of God.”

But it was answered, that the same thing had been said of Texas, though since annexation the statement had been proved to be untrue, and that too little was yet known of the physical geography of New Mexico and California to entitle any one to give a positive opinion on this point. But even supposing cotton and su

could not be grown, yet slavery—as of old, in New York and New England, and in still older times under the Greeks and Romansmight be maintained in various forms, and for various purposes, in these new States, if the Federal Govern

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ment did not forbid it. It will be a melancholy, though, as many may think, a deserved punishment, to all free states of the Anglo-Saxon blood, if the retention of slavery in this vast south-western country shall enable cheaper and more manageable labour to be applied to manufacturing purposes, where soil and climate forbid the profitable employment of it in the cultivation of the soil. Amid the increasing misery and degradation of our labouring populations, we shall then regret that the [ power we once possessed was not exercised more vigorously for the establishment of freedom among a race of men whose condition must exercise a certain measure of influence upon our own.

But that, in reality, the system of slavery is not considered to be excluded from New Mexico, by a natural necessity, as was argued by Mr Webster, may be inferred from the final result of the California admission and slavery questions in Congress. By that result, and with Mr Webster's concurrence, an area of New Mexico proper has been handed over to Texas and slavery, equal to 95,000 square miles.

It is not difficult to reconcile this action of Mr Webster, as Secretary of State, with all his previous declarations, when circumstances were different; but it must have cost him much to consent to this increase of the slave territory of Texas-to the admission of three new slave States formed of its territory, and to the giving of a territorial government to New Mexico without an anti-slavery proviso-in the face of the strong language in which he expressed himself on the subject of slavery in the territories so late as 1848. "My opposition to the increase of slavery in this country," he said, the increase of slave representatives in Congress, is general and universal. It has no reference to the lines of latitude or points of the compass. I shall oppose all such extension, and all such increase, in all things,