c& nass roNOBNar
               • /    PtnLOMATirEAii Hall,  25th September, 1S39.
Til.  Jamb* C. Ciov.:                                           ■
 !5ih,—The undersigned have been appointed a committee, on behalf of the
Pbitomathean Society, to tender you their grateful and heartfelt ackno wl-
*d"ments for the very able, eloquent, and instructiveAddress just deliver-
t«Cby yourself, in their hearing ; and to request a copy of the same for  jp^
publication.
  The open, candid and independent manner in which yOu delivered your
sentiments and ooinions in regard to a  subject fraught with  so much in-
terest to the  American People; the deep solicitude you feel in the  im-
provement and elevation of the Literature of our Republic, warrants us
in the assertion, that your Address will meet with a most cordial receptioa
from the free, liberal and enlightened  portion of our citizens.
  Accept, sir, the well wishes of the  Society we have the honor to repre-
sent, for your welfare and prosperity  io future life; and permit us to sub-
scribe ourselves,
               Vary respectfully,
                          Your obedient servants,
                                           WM.  K. EPWARDS,
                                           LINZY  SEALS,
                                           JOHN W.  DUNBAR.
                                   Rloomington, Se?t. 26th, 18SS.
  »CTTMM'w;--Tfie terms in which you allude to the Address which, o»
la*t evening, I had the honor to deliver before the Philomathean Society
are highly nattering; and in granting the  request which you, m behalf of
that body, are pleased to make, I cannot refrain from expressing the grat-
ification which the fact that the sentiments to which I gave utterance met
in some decree with your approbation, affords me.
  Inasmuch as the strictures which I made on the state of American soci-
ety are sometimes severe, and may appear  to partake of the  spirit that
rervades books of British travel, it may not be improper for me to remark
that 1 neither approve of the conduct of their authors, nor of the motives
that prompted to it.  While I have given expression to what I conceive
to be truths, in a language too plain, perhaps, to be generally pleasing,
my object was to turn public attention, if possible, to the disadvantage*
uador whieh our literature labors, in the hop*  that suck meaenre. wouM 
a
 k>« grt-daalij adopted &• »re eelculated to pieee  it ultimately oe a hettar
 footing.  In performing this duty, my sense of the importance of n high
 literature was such that I have given vent to my feelings when,  perhaps,
 I should have been content to  state facts.  This, together with the un-
 popularity of some of the opinions I have ventured to defend, will cause
 tie address to be condemned by those, at least, who  cannot bear to hear
 taeir imperfections alluded to.  At this, however, I shall not complain, if
 tie perusal of it, which I now surrender into your hands, shall have the
 t-.T?ct to awaken those to a sense of their duty, who are qualified to vindi-
 cate the claims of literature.  I should be unworthy the cause which I have
attempted, though feebly, to defend, of the country that gave me birth, and
of the honor of having addressed the Philomathean Society, were I to
shrink from the publication of any opinion or sentiment which I consider
true, merely because it may happen to be unpopular, and may, consequent-
ly, for a time, subject ma to the animosity of rancorous opposition.
                           Yours, very  truly,
                                              JAMES C.  CROSS.
Messrs. Edwards, Seals, and Dunbab, 
ADDRESS.
   Were we to be guided by the results of experience
 in other places, in regard to the measures which  most
 certainly conciliate prejudice and inspire a generous par-
 tiality, we should attempt to win your favor by an un-
 restrained indulgence in the turgid effusions of adulato-
 ry admiration, and by raising sacrificial  whisperings in
 your ears.  We trust,  however, that, to-day, we are
 blessed with the singular privilege of addressing an au-
 dience, so free from uneducated prejudice,—so liberal
 and enlightened in opinion, and so wise in the judgment
 it has  formed of the value to truth of free and indepen-
 dent discussion, that it will be enabled to  listen, with pa-
 tience  if not interest, to the strictures, sometimes severe,
 but  believed to be always just, which we may make on
 the  present  state  and  future prospects  of America
 Literature.  This theme has not been selected  from
 a belief of the peculiar  applicability of its discussion
 to the circumstances of those whom we expected to meet
 at this time and in this place.   Entirely unacquainted,
 by personal observation, with the character of this com-
 munity, and having been honored with an  invitation from
 the Philomathean  Society, to  address it, although un-
 known until  to-day, to  every  one of its  members, I
 should be doing violence to my sense of justice, as well
 ;is wanting in gratitude to those who, I fear, more from a
                1


V*li. —..... 
[I J
spirit of benevolent encouragement than from lite sober
dictates of wisdom, have selected me to minister on this
interesting occasion, were I not emphatically to declare
that the sentiments to which I may give utterance are
not designed to be cast, as a reproach, on the intellect-
ual and literary character of the enterprising and public
spirited State of Indiana.
   As a nation we have been  too much in the habit of
looking exclusively at, and being dazzled with wonder
by, the bright side of all that concerns us.  In order to
judge of any thing  with accuracy, it is necessary that
we should view it under all its phases, and examine it
under every possible variation of aspect.   We have ta-
ken  too much pains  to cheat ourselves  into the belief
that we are, in almost every  respect,  superior to any
other people, however august or ancient.   There are
some points, it is true, in regard to which we are unri-
valled, while it is equally true  that there arc others,  in
regard  to which, we have been greatly surpassed.  In
other words, there  are defects in our character, which
have not been sufficiently signalized and commented on.
They should, however, be made known.  No excuse
can be given for their concealment.
   The first step towards the correction of errors  and
the reformation of vices, is to obtain the conviction of
their existence.  But he who assumes the responsibility
of exposing the absurdity of the former, or of pointing
out the atrocity of the latter, is generally  condemned as
a foe, when sound policy and strict justice would regard
him as a friend.   Never, at the most eventful period of
our history, had the intellectual, the refined, or the in-
fluential such arduous duties to perform, such heavy and
solemn pledges  to redeem, as  at the  present moment.
Under a deep sense, therefore, of the obligations which
he owes his country, suffer a humble and an unimpor-
tant individual to forego the satisfaction  which would
arise from the selection  of  topics of praise and admira-
tion, while he attempts  to discharge what he considers 
[ 3 ]
sacred duty,   lie, who would maintain the dignity of
the human character and preserve untarnished the lus-
tre of his country's glory, would not select an occasion
like that on which we are to-day assembled, for time-
wooing or time-serving—for flattery or falsehood—for
cozening or lying.   All such are invoked by their patri-
otic admiration of our republican institutions,—by their
strong desire to see their prosperity promoted and guar-
anteed, and  by their zealous ambition to have them
crowned with unfading laurels of perpetual renown, to
speak, frankly and  freely, the plain uncourtly truth.
The loose and debauched  state of morals;  the soft ef-
feminacy of  manners;  the degraded condition  of the
press, and the stupid  indifference, if not blindness,  of
the public, to the surrounding current of folly and dis-
traction, not  only imperiously demand  it,  but conjure
and implore all those, whose teaching would instruct, or
example edify, to save the nation from  that  deep and
unfathomable void in which intellect is to be confounded
and happiness forever lost.
   Our country is remarkable in  all that forms  its ele-
mentary character, and extraordinary in the sources of
brilliancy which must, if  properly awakened into exer-
tion, gild with the streaming splendors of future glory,
a magnificent superstructure.   From the day of  its dis-
covery up to the present moment, its annals have been
the record of events singular in all that excites curiosi-
ty; important, in all that inspires  interest;  beautiful,
in all  that fascinates; wonderful, in all that  is stupen-
dous in unexpected achievement, and unprecedented, in
all that has defied or distanced calculation.  The know-
ledge  of  its existence sprung from  the deep forecast of
taunted  and  calumniated science; its  people issued
from the bloody loins of a bigotted persecution; its in-
terests were nursed in the arms of oppression; it hopes
were, for a time, blighted  by the tainting breath  of bru-
tal intolerance and unendurable  exaction; and  it  has
reached mature and vigorous manhood, in the midst of 
                       [ ft]
toils the most laborious; difficulties the  most discour-
aging, and dangers the most appalling.
   The  unexpected rise of this republic; the rapidity
of its unprecedented march to its  present  dignity and
grandeur;  the sudden impulse which it gave to the tide
of emigration from every corner of Europe, and which
is still flowing in undiminished volume into the remotest
forests of the American domain; the extraordinary ex-
tension  of its territory, both by purchase and conquest;
the brilliant trophies which have marked  with triumph
our contests both by sea  and land, and which brought
to an honorable, if not to a glorious, termination a war
with the most experienced and powerful nation of Eu-
rope ; the establishment of a government which has lib-
eralized its own people and enlightened those of other
countries, and  the diffusion of  happiness on a scale so
comprehensive as to be wholly unexampled in the annals
of the world are so many features in the history of this
republic, which prove to us that it has been under the
special direction of Divine Providence, and that it is de-
signed,  under the auspices of wisdom and virtue, to be
a great  example to mankind.
  Although there is so mucji  of which we may justly
boast, and of which the American citizen should never
cease to be proud, it is necessary, in this brief and has-
ty survey of the blessings which a kind Providence has
bestowed upon us, and which give us an unchallenged
pre-eminence amongst the nations of the  earth, not to
forget, that we enjoy, and that we have pushed to the
farthest verge of propriety the liberty of the press—the
privilege of reproving the arrogant insolence of power,
—the right of exposing to all the furies  of republican
vengeance malversation in office,  and the unallievable
prerogative of denouncing in terms of unmitigated ran-
cor and animosity treacherous usurpations of authority.
This is  a boon, which should fasten on the affections of
the patriot, and he should guard it, with the greatest
vigilance, against the secret encroachments of fraud and 
I ■ I
defend it, with invincible firmness, against the open as-
saults of violence.  By the liberty, however, we do not
mean the licentiousness of the press.   The  one, like
Plato's guardian angels, continually showers down bles-
sings, while the other, like  the God of  Epicurus,  as
zealusly pours down storms and tempests.  The one is
the terror of tyrants and the safeguard of free  institu-
tions, while the other is a pen dipped in the fiery lava
of a volcano, that withers, violates and destroys. *' Wher-
ever the freedom of the press exists," says a celebrated
writer,  " I  must assent that literature,  well or ill con-
ducted, is the great engine by which I am persuaded all
civilized states must ultimately be supported or over-
thrown."
  Is this true?   The lessons of experience, and  the
voice of wisdom concur in vindicating its claims to uni-
versal credibility.  Public opinion, which is  generally
but little more than the opinion of the public press, ex-
erts even an influence over the most despotic forms  of
government, and, in a republic, rules with an almost om-
nipotent sway.   What a subject, then, of solemn reflec-
tion does the state of literature present!  How anxious-
ly solicitous should we be to impart to it a sound and an
elevated character,—to purify it of all its vain  and  vi-
sionary splendor,—to render  it propitious to the refine-
ment of manners,—to make it instrumental and subsi-
diary to the elegancies of life, and to stamp it with the
ennobling  attributes  of virtue and  self-approbation.
Then, would it alleviate, refine  and embellish the inter-
course of social life; eloquence would then throw around
it its most attractive brilliancy; history would  then in-
vest with the most seducing splendor the truths of de-
monstration, and cast a pleasing charm over the plausi-
bilities of ingenious speculation, and poetry would then
array it in all the graces of the most tempting  solicita-
tion.
   In every government, literature should be an object of
peculiar care and attention, but in  a republic, where the 
[S]
noblest features of the human character are oftenest dis-
played, and the sublimest energies of the human soul of-
tenest called forth, it should be cherished, admired, and
cultivated.  Intellect, knowledge, and virtue alone can
warm it into life, and give energy and effect to its insti-
tutions.  Under their guiding and restraining auspices
prosperity is adequately guaranteed, but without them,
ruin, complete and overwhelming is sure, ultimately, to
overtake it.  When, therefore, we reflect how obviously
the destinies  of mankind are dependant, in a great de-
gree, upon the experiment, as it is called, now in the pro-
gress of trial, wisdom, intelligence and patriotism should
unite  in pushing it forward to successful consummation.
It is in the power  of most other nations to look back
through a long and checkered history for landmarks and
beacons to guide them through the difficulties by which
threatened disaster may surround them.  We, however,
are peculiarly unfortunate in this respect.  We have no
voluminous annals to which reference can  be made  for
the lessons of experience, or for the precedents of the
past to direct our uncertain footsteps through the dan-
gers of the unexplored future.   We are but  of yester-
day, with no authority to justify—no experience to sanc-
tion,—no precedent to encourage or embolden,  but are
thrown entirely on our  intelligence and  sagacity to
choose, amidst  a crowd  of plausible and imposing, but
new and untried expedients.   Philosophers and states-
men may search in vain, in the records of history,  for
the model of  the government under which we live, and
have hitherto prospered.   Our future success must con-
sequently depend upon the wisdom with which we con-
ceive, and the promptness with which we execute. The
principles on which we act must be deduced  by  reason,
guided by the beacons of experience, and invigorated by
a knowledge  of the  past,  from the circumstances in
which we  are placed.   Intelligence and virtue are, in
in ordinary times, necessary to our progressive improve-
ment, but in circumstances of difficulty and danger they 
[ '■> ]
are absolutely indispensable.   There have been period*
of deeper gloom, times of more serious disaster, and sea-
sons of heavier misfortune, but the annals of the world
furnish no record of any age  so pregnant with all that
concerns man's future and final destiny.
  Superiority in literature is that excellence which casts
the light of a more seducing  and enduring  brilliancy
around the glory of a country than can be derived from
any other source whatever. Victories, though numerous
and brilliant, evince nothing more than the strength  to
conquer, and the power to  oppress, while they as often
betray the  blindness of passion, and the heated zeal  of
implacable  animosity, as they do the forecast of wisdom,
or the generosity of relenting hostility.   Political revo-
lutions usually exhibit nothing more  than a monstrous
union of turpitude and treachery, and a hideous imbrog-
lio of cruelty, corruption and sanguinary violence.  But
a nation's literature, embodying the noblest triumphs of
the human  understanding, sheds upon a country a bright
and an inextinguishable lustre.  Unstained  by blood,
undefamed  by violence, unsullied by vice, and  undis-
graced by crime it gives us the exact lineaments of the
age in  which it flourished,  and reflects the living image
of those who, remote from the noise and hurry of tu-
multuous life, worshipped, with a singleness of heart,
and a guiltless purity of purpose, at its hallowed shrine.
For the interests, therefore, of those  who expend their
lives in the cause   of letters, a liberal and enlightened
public  will  always  feel a tender and sympathysing con-
cern.  u He who gives glory to his own country,"  says
an English  orator,  Mr. Wyndham, "gives it that which
is far  more valuable  than any acquisition  whatever.
Glory alone is not to be taken away by time or accident.
It is that fine extract, that pure essence which endures
to all ages, while the grosser  parts, the residuum, may
pass away and be forgotten!"
  We cannot, therefore, hold in too sacred remembrance
the names of those who have advanced  our literature, 
[ 10 ]
or regard with a too holy reverence those who are ex-
pending their lives in the cause of human improvement
and human happiness.   To treat them with neglect; to
despise or oppress them is treason, not only against the
interests of earth, but against the throne of heaven it-
self.   The memory of the illustrious dead is the fair-
est and richest  heritage a country  can receive.   All
other glory is delusive and perishable.  Unless record-
ed in the volumes of literature, the bloodstained laurels
of military achievement are obliterated and forgotten;
the painted canvass fades and grows dim; the chisselled
marble moulders and crumbles into dust; the shattered
and glittering fragments of empire decay and  arc lost;
the pride of power, the arrogance of supremacy, the
soarings of ambition are prostrated to the earth by suc-
cessive centuries of barbarism, and  no token now  re-
mains to tell the historian the story of their dignity and
of their desolation.
  What are the intelligible memorials of the rise, pro-
gress, decline and final overthrow of those vast empires
which every thing around us  prove once overshadowed
and convulsed this continent ?  Gigantic ruins which
demonstrate that here once flourished arts and arms,
perhaps long before the dawn  of civilization in Europe;
relics of  a remote antiquity,  which tell us that centu-
ries of industry, energy and enterprise; of national valor,
sacrifice and supremacy; of national pride, exaction and
oppression have revolved in vain, which the written page
would have rescued from the fathomless gulph of obliv-
ion, and  have  rendered subsidiary to the progress of
mankind in improvement.  Countless  ages of ignorance,
superstition and savage barbarism have rolled over, per-
haps the most interesting regions of the earth, which
live only in the mutilated marble scattered around the
grave where the dead glory of the people must forever
slumber.  Had they,  however, cultivated letters with
the zeal with which they evidently prosecuted the arts
and studied arms, the glory of their achievements would 
                       [  e  J

have been undiminished bv the progress of time, and we
should not now be left to conjecture the strength end dig-
nity of these nations, which have been consicred to the
regions cf never-ending forgetfulness.   From the infirm-
itie:?'of age they might have gone down snently to the
tomb, or, from the fierce impetuosity of savage  incur-
sion, they might have been broken in  pieces, and their
shattered fragments rolled over and ground to dust by
the rude hand of barbaric violence, but literature would
have rescued their fame from oblivion, and have borne
it triumphantly above the raging storm which was hur-
rying all else far into the ocean of irredeemable destruc-
tion.
  What was it that caused Greece and Rcme, like stars
shining through lowering clouds, to beam with such gor-
geous brilliancy, from amidst  the darkness of surround-
ing nations ?  What was it that gave them not only the
brightest names in the ranks  of intellectual superiority,
but which, ly the matchless  fame of theimrrr^, raised
them to the topmost pinnacle of power ?  Every reader
of history  will at once respond that it was their  devo-
tion to, and success in, the  cultivation of letters that
placed on their brow the wreath cf unrivalled merit, and
secured to their, the enthusiastic homage of all posterity.
Never have  any  people  so assiduor: :Iv studied  these
means which powerfully encourage the lofty aspirations
of genius, and call out the sublime olibrts of the human
mind.   Even kings, consuls and conquerors, around
whom the hostile glories of the battle field had cast the
glare of a most imposing gvandeur, envied the honors,
the classical orations conferred by an enraptured peop-Ia
on the efforts of triumphant genius.   The respect which
they paid to the strength and dignity of intellect single
ovt both Greece and Reree as.illustricns above all that was
great in ancient, and enu^i to  all that is glorious in rncd-
ern time.^, and caused their progress m the arte ana thetr
achievements in  arms to shine eternal on the record of
deathless fame. The influence of poetical hterat\ *e on the 
[ M ]
social habits and political opinions of antiquity, cannot
be, perhaps, at this distance of time determined  with
much exactitude or precision.   Enough, however, has
reached us to prove that it was infinitely greater than it
has ever exerted on any modern people, even in the mo-
ments of their highest literary renown,  and of their
brightest military splendor.  It elevated and refined na-
tional sentiment, while it purified and ennobled the ten-
derest sensibilities of the heart; it inspired an indomita-
ble desire to excel  in all the higher walks of life, while it
taught the priceless value of firm and untainted public
virtue; it led the people to seek wisdom, and  to admire
beauties, while it enabled them to reach the highest me-
ridian of intellectual refinement.  It gave wings to am-
bition, energy and perseverance to enterprise, and raised
to a supreme pitch of grandeur and  glory the military
renown of antiquity.   Who does not recollect the me-
morable response given by Phillip to the ferocious para-
site who  advised him  to destroy Athens ?   "And by
whom," said he, indignantly, "shall we then be praised?"
Alexander  fought,  overrun  empires,—desolated king-
doms, deposed and created kings, that the historians,
poets and musicians of Athens might exclaim,  << How
great is Alexander!"   aO Athenians,"  cried he, "how
dearly do I purchase your  esteem !"  Such  reverence
;  id poetry, towering in all the pride of uncontested ex-
cellency, command amongst the ancients, that  on one oc-
casion, when  a Grecian army had surrendered, those of
the prisoners, and those only, who could repeat a stanza
of Euripides, shook the  stern  purpose of a savage ty-
rant and  stayed the eager hand of the executioner.
  Since the revival of  learning, almost every nation in
Europe has been signalized by a golden  age," in which a
high and polished ' literature flourished, and over men's
minds held sway.  Italy, Spain, France and  England
can each boast  of  a bright constellation of superior in-
tellects, whose influence was felt not only in the ages in
which they respectively lived,  but will  continue to be 
[ r-t ]
gratefully acknowledged so long as a taste for the plea-
sures of the understanding  shall be cultivated, and so
long as learning is not lost in the fathomless depths of
human degradation.
   The world  will  testify that the original  and clear-
sighted intellects, that have embellished with the beau-
tiful  productions of genius and art those periods  that
rank highest in the annals of literature, have done more
to purify and enlighten  public sentiment,  to  smooth
down the asperities of public intercourse, to refine pri-
vate manners, to steady and confirm the true principles
of public conduct, to fortify  the  domestic virtues, to
strengthen the bands of national union, to render more
indissoluble the  ties of social  interest, to establish the
truths of the  Christian faith, to confirm the precepts of
sound philosophy, in a word,  to extend the mastery of
reason and intelligence to the farthest verge of civiliza-
tion, and to bring out in bold  relief all the splendid ex-
cellences of the human character, than the operation of
all other causes combined, and it will require such fin-
ished models of high perfection in literature as laurelled
and  diademed both Greece and  Rome on the throne of
glory, to raise us, as a people, to a high degree of intel-
lectual excellence or literary renown.   In this point of
view, if we except Washington, Franklin has done more
for America than any other of her sons.  He has  won
more  and  brighter trophies,  established  a higher  and
more enduring fame and extorted  from unanimous but
reluctant Em-ope  more pure and Undented, praise than
any other man in America.  Let us, therefore, admire
his genius, and cherish in# grateful reccllection  his nu-
merous excellences, and let him be regarded as guilty of
high treason on  fairest virtue, and  as a traitor to his
country who shall attempt to sully by detraction or dim
by the imputation of crime the lustre of his name.
  In a representative republic public opinion  exerts the
most absolute  dominion  over all  ranks  of society.   No
means eV>s!d, therefore, be spared to impart to it a lib* 
                       [ 14  ]

era! and an enlightened character.   It ewes its nature
and eriste.n e to the joint agency of those who conduct
use  public press, and those who  enjoy a vigorous and
paramount influence in fashionable society.   They, un-
less strcngly imbued with the  spirit of a sound and pro-
gressive literature will not be  able nor will they attempt
to  render it moral  and intelligent.   Without these in-
dispensable qualities public opinion will throw no safe-
guard around civil freedom, nor  will it rescue  private
virtue from the taint of indiscriminate pollution.  Where
the public press is unrestrained  by morality and unen-
lightened by literature, we shall generally find  society
unreclaimed from vice by religic.ii and unredeemed from
ignorance by philosophy.   Amongst a pecple thus situ-
ated we re3  displayed, unrelieved by a single circum-
stance cf rnitigaticr, all that is  corrupt in the exercise
of power, profligate in the means of personal enjoyment,
abundant in ths sources of pennyless  misery,  and re-
fined in opulent depravity.
 ^  It is a sound literature alone that  can pir.ify the tur-
bid sneam cf morals and contend successfully with the
blandishments and  specioas allurements  of vice.  Its
first effect is  to enrich the mind  with the treasures of
knowledge; secondly, to enlarge the sphere of thought;
and, thirdly, to increase the capacity for rational enjoy-
ment, £Ed jur;t in proportion to the attainment of  these
ends do we see the  expanding circle of morality  grow
wider and wider.   Strengthen the intellectual  powers,
and yon dp much towards restraining  the vicious  incli-
nations of the heart.  Give a taste for intellectual plea-
sures, and yen diminish the desire for gross bodily  grat-
client ions,,                   *
   Men, when instructed in the immutable principles of
moral and political truth, are less susceptible of  ungen-
erous and unjust impressions.,  and cherish with  less te-
nacity vulgar and injurious prejudices.  With them par-
ty spnut rages with less rancor and animosity; religious
bigotry dens not persecute with such infuriate zeal! nor 
r  i:>  i
do the ur.govorftable passions sway the too excitabfe
multitude w"<th such vindictive and destructive violence.
  By sound  literature  we  mean  deep and thorough
knowledge.   This will rarely fail to produce a firm and
farvant attachment to liberal and enlightened  institu-
tions, whether they be social, civil  cr political in their
character.  It is the natural and the unrelenting foe of
precipitate innovation and of avoidable revolution. The
years of youth and the midnights of mature manhood,
which are requisite to obtain even a dim and imperfect
glimpse of the true principles of government, will cause
those who have made the acquisition to shrink with the
mingled emotions of alarm and distrust from the adop-
tion of new and untried expedients—rash and unwarrant-
ed innovations.  The past history of n snhind, furnish-
es too many illustrations of the disadvantageous conse-
quences that have resulted from injudiciously tampering
with institutions, which the consolidated wisdom of cen-
turies had been employed in building up, and which the
eventful experience of ages had-sanctioned, for the mind
restrained by the principles of morality, and enlighten-
ed by the truths  of science to risk the peace and pros-
perity of a  people upon  the validity of a plausible but
untried seesennancr.  Sound philosophical and political
infor'."-"atier:, r   exiles men to the institutions under
which they  live, if they are  at all endurable; it teaches
them the hazard of rash and inconsiderate change, and
enables them to regard, in a spirit of generous indulgence
venial errors of judgment, and to look, with an eye of
composuo, on temporary vices of the public  administra-
tion,  rather than  attempt  to correct the former or re-
form  the  latter by a resort to measures more dangerous
in their tendency  than the evils of  which complaint is
made.
   But this forbearance and enlightened benevolence of
disposition, is not to be expected from the  imperfectly
instructed,  who nee the faint and questionable outlines
cf  truth through the  thick mists of ignorant prejudice 
[ 16 J
and angry passion.  Innovation upon the established
order of things is generally the mongrel offspring of sel-
fishness, and of confined and superficial  views.   The
consequences of change or convulsion are not weighed
by  such persons, for they are wholly incapable of it.
Nor do they regard the verdict which posterity may pass
on their conduct.   Why should they ?  They derive no
authority from antiquity.  Of its volumes of experience
and lessons of wisdom they are  as ignorant as they are
of the grave's unfathomed mysteries.  Just sufficient
knowledge has been acquired to render them disaffected,
and to cause them to act with headlong and unreflecting
violence under the impulse of political excitement.  In
repelling the supposed invasion of their rights or in vin-
dicating fancied encroachments on indefeasible privileges
we would not do them the injustice to allege that they
always act under the impulse of improper or indefeasi-
ble motives.   They unconsciously, however, become the
instruments of designing and dissembling demagogues
—sans cullotte  statesmen,  who magnify  every change
into a political convulsion—construe every  concession
into disgraceful submission—and every compromise into
unconditional surrender.  Who contemplate  the  san-
guinary dangers of revolution with undisturbed compo-
sure, and who would persuade the less informed but not
less excitable multitude, that every evil, however trivial
and unimportant, threatens public liberty and private
happiness with irretrievable overthrow.
  Knowledge is indispensable to self government.   Not
that which is superficial and imperfect, but that  which
is deep and thorough.  While it is admitted that there
is no royal road to its attainment, those who speak most
loudly and  least wisely on  the subject of liberty and
equality should learn that there is no democratic high-
way to it.  It can only result from time, industry, and
good natural capacity.  When, therefore, it is recollect-
ed that so many years of human life are necessarily em-
ployed in obtaining a subsistence, and so many other du- 
1.1'  I
ties call off attention and consume time, to expect that
the great body of society can obtain more than a very
limited acquaintance  with the  simplest  elements  of
knowledge, must be regarded as extremely absurd: for
them to acquire  clear, correct and comprehensive views
of any abstract  subject that does not lay directly in the
way of their daily pursuits is utterly impossible.  Were
it otherwise it cannot be  believed that they have sufii-
cient leisure to  investigate knowledge  for themselves.
They must receive it at  second hand and upon trust.
Such enlightenment, therefore, so far from constituting
a suitable  preparation  for self-government places the
subjects of it more completely  in the power of those
who would not scruple to make their influence subserve
the attainment of the most unhallowed ends.
   Even were it  possible, however, to give society suffi-
cient intellectual instruction the task of preparing man
for self-government would be but half performed.  To
invigorate  thought without chastening, elevating and di-
recting it by reforming and purifying the heart, would
be  to increase dissatisfaction without augmenting in  a
commensurate degree the means of counteraction.  In-
telligence without morality  increases the force of pas-
sion and diminishes the capacity to resist the allurements
of vicious  solicitation.   It magnifies the  advantages
which rank and  station confer,  and  produces a settled
dislike to the toils and duties of the more humble walks
of life.  This necessarily augments the host of aspiring
fortuneless adventurers, who would rise above the home-
ly joys and guiltless toils of obscurity ;  and, in propor-
tion as the  number of them increases, will be the diffi-
culty and danger of the enterprise.   Resolved, howev-
er, on  bettering  their worldly condition, the heart that
hesitated will no longer shrink from perfidy and ingrati-
tude, and the hand that trembled will be no longer un-.
willing to perpetrate.
   Nor will moral culture itself always be able to pre-
vent the evils of  that ambition which superficial know- 
[  18)
ledge will rarely fail to enkindle, especially when the
means of its gratification are distant  or inaccessible.
Man is naturally depraved, and if you disgust him with
his condition, he will ameliorate it, whatever may be the
risk to himself, or the hazard to those  with whom he
may be connected or  surrounded.   In  the hurry and
bustle of excessive excitement, by which he voluntarily
encompasses himself, the voice of conscience is soon si-
lenced, and success, whatever may be the means of its
attainment,  brings the only music to his ear—affords the
only balm to his heart.
  Let me not be understood to contend that knowledge
increases the natural depravity of man.   No one would
venture the  vindication of a proposition so extravagant-
ly absurd.   There is  a close alliance, an indissoluble
union between an elevated and a progressive literature,
and  rectitude of moral principle.  Where the. former
flourishes the latter will surely abound.   The one is the
natural and  legitimate propagator of the other.  If the
former fails  to produce the  latter,  it must itself  soon
cease to exist.  Daik night surrounds with its hollow
shades, where the substance is not followed by its shad-
ow.  Nor is it  true that  knowledge will  increase the
guilt or the  misery of man.   When these results follow
its acquisition, as they often do, they are  not to be as-
cribed to its depth and variety, elegance  and abund-
ance, but to its scarcity and superficiality.  When this
is the case there must be  much shallow reflection, and
but little consecutive thought; much error of judgment,
and but little rectitude of moral or  political principle.
In such a community  truth  and justice will never hold
sway,  until their dominion  over  human   conduct
is secured  by  increasing  the  amount  and  popu-
larity of  knowledge.  But is it possible so  to  instruct
society as to enable it, en masse to think correctly ?
An affirmative response would be utterly absurd and ri-
diculous.  Many have not an inclination to study; ma-
ny more have not leisure, and a still  larger number have 
t 19]
not the capacity to think deeply, and education cannot
give it to them. What nature has made barren, instruct
tion cannot make " blossom like the rose."  Whatever
efforts, therefore, may be made to  instruct these three
numerous classes of individuals, must end in rendering
them superficial and inadequate.   Leek the wide world
over, and you will discover that no course of policy is
so unfavorable to morality, so hostile to religion, and so
destructive  to  government as that which fills a country
with superficial thinkers.   They ridicule  morality, be-
cause they would be considered above vulgar prejudice;
they sneer at  religion, because they would be  thought
too smart to be gulled by an idle and stale superstition,
and they would overthrow government,  because  they
cherish an ever vacillating and unmingled hatred of the
personal aggrandizement of all but themselves.
  Public opinion, which rules tyrannically in a republic,
can assume  a sound character only under the auspices
of an elevated literature.   The truth  of this we have
already vindicated, and  if it  be a postulate  no longer
open to controversy, the question may  be asked, Is the
general diffusion of learning favorable to high efforts of
genius, or to originality of thought ? Startling and par-
adoxical as may appear the reply which much reflection
on the subject constrains me to give, I must respond in
the negative.  What is to be understood by the hourly
enunciated phrases;  "diffusion of knowledge"—"gen-
eral education."  To compress the results of the expe-
rience and investigation of all past generations into such
a form as to make it the familiar elementary knowledge
of the present, and to place it within the reach of every
human being in  the republic.  This will certainly  save
those who are in the pursuit of learning much  labor, but
its effects appear to us, and we say so with great defer-
ence to the sentiments of those with whom we differ, to
be, in every other  respect, prejudicial.   The  goal is
reached without that feverish excitement  which grows
out of the pursuit  having  been  experienced, and  that
                o 
[ 20 ]
glow of pleasure which arises  from the acquisition of
knowledge, and  which constitutes the most lasting  and
satisfactory portion, having been felt.  Exercise  is as
necessary to intellectual as it is to bodily developement.
When, however, learning is brought to us, instead of
obliging us to  go after it, the slumbering passions are
never called into play, nor are the smouldering energies
of the soul ever  kindled into a flame by ambitious fires.
When knowledge is acquired without toil  or difficulty,
education neither strengthens the powers of reason nor
invigorates the faculties  of thought.   It trains neither
to habits of zealous industry, nor to a fondness for close
and laborious investigation', but lulls into a state of leth-
argic indifference, which  is with extreme difficulty en-
couraged to undertake the drudgery of protracted  and
perplexing research, or, indeed, to engage in the pursuit
of intricate and complex trains of reasoning.  If we
would, however, enlarge the circle of the sciences; ex-
pand the sphere of useful knowledge;  exalt the dignity
of human nature, or take those large and comprehensive
views of social and political organization which tend to
the advancement of mankind, the intellectual faculties
must be trained  to habits of patient and persevering in-
vestigation, and taught to appreciate the difference be-
tween continuous and desultory thought.
   When knowledge is obtained without  obliging the
mind to submit to that  toil and to contend with  those
difficulties  with which profound education  is always
purchased, a strong inclination for severe study Mill ne-
ver be felt, and a refined taste for  elevated and elegant
pursuits will  never be imbibed.  It is much  easier to
learn the results to which others have arrived, than to
follow them out by  long and laborious analysis for our-
selves ;  to adopt than to create; to follow than to lead
into the abstract and  untrodden ways of investigation;
to recollect than to reason; to be dazzled by the lustre
of successful genius, than to arise, in the strength  and 
[ 21 ]
 majesty of mind, and soar into the lofty and inaccessi-
 ble fields of fancy.
   The nursling of diffusive education, familiar with ev-
 ery abridgement, finds himself, in despite of his hetero-
 genious store of all  kinds of knowledge, utterly incapa-
 ble, on account of his deficiency in habits of investiga-
 tion, of making any  other use of  it than what  experi-
 ence and observation had  already illustrated and en-
 forced.  Should he, however, venture beyond the settled
 limits  of experimental truth, into the boundless regions
 of philosophical speculation, or attempt to shine in the
 higher spheres of poetical imagination, where vigorous
 genius has bloomed and flourished, he will find  himself
 wholly unfitted  " by nights of  study and laborious
 days," for any thing grand in conception, splendid in
 thought, elegant in  sentiment, cogent in argument, or
 rich and sublime in  imagery, but  ineffectually toiling
 under  the vivid blaze of a meridian sun  to  make day-
 light visible.
   Should he, in some wild  unreflecting  pean of ambi-
 tion, undertake to strike out new views in literature, or
 to illustrate unfamiliar principles in science, he will form
 a practical acquaintance with the difference bet wen im-
 bibing and imparting knowledge.   The progress he will
 make in the career of innovation and dnscovery will be
 so slow in comparison to the rapidity with which he be-
 came acquainted with what his more laborious predeces-
 sors had achieved, that he  will, in all probability, dis-
pirited and disheartened, relinquish the enterprise as al-
together hopeless.  But should he, contrary to  all ex-
pectation, persevere, he will not long remain ignorant of
the fact, that, if he is resolved on the improvement of
any practical science, he must abandon all idea of effect-
ing a conquest over the many other  departments of
knowledge.   He who desires a smattering of many, will
certainly be proficient in but few, if any of the branch-
es of human learning.  Excellence  is the  offspring  of
 concentrated, not divided attention.  He will, morover. 
[ 22 ]
  ascertain, by a very brief experience, that all that the
  most sanguine  expectation can hope to realize will be
  very inconsiderable, when compared with the bright ar-
  ray of truths that have been  already discovered ;  and,
  also, that the amount of knowledge which he will thus
  acquire will be  exceedingly small  compared with what
  he would, in all probability, have mastered, had he been
  content to learn instead  of  attempting to  teach.   Sad
  reflection will soon  convince a mind unaccustomed and
  disinclined to vigorous thought and close investigation,
  that it will prove, in  future, much more  conducive to
  personal ease to be satisfied with adopting, instead of at-
  tempting to create; with following, instead of attempting
  to lead;  with imitating, instead of attempting to invent
  or  to discover.   In this way the extensive diffusion of
  learning invariably tends  to weaken the powers  of
  thought, and to emasculate  literature of its vigor and
  independence.
    In order that literature may move forward with a
 steady, progressive  and majestic force, it  is important
 that the public should learn to respect and honor those
 who, at so many sacrifices, impart life to it and give  it
 impulse.   Indispensible as this evidently is to its suc-
 cessful cultivation, it will not be difficult to show that
 the diffusion of knowledge effectually counteracts every
 disposition there may be in the public mind, to single out,
 as objects of generous reward and  unguarded admira-
 tion, those whose lives have  been dedicated to its ser-
 vice.  Not only  will  it render  public  opinion  careless
 and indifferent to the claims of the  literati, but it will
 cause it to be unjust, if not actually hostile to any efforts
 that may be made in the cause of letters.  This you
 doubtless consider a sufficiently paradoxical assertion;
 a little  reflection, however,  will satisfy you that  it is
 true.
   A general familiarity with the standard  productions
 of elegant literature  will induce the belief that they can-
not be excelled or even equalled.  The moment the false 
                       [  23 j
           •
and ungenerous impression is imbibed that the proudest
efforts of the present or the future must fall below the
noble achievements of the past, the sneer of contempt
will be thrown at every performance that ventures to
brave the  settled prepossessions of its judges.  Works
of superior merit  are already very  numerous, and if
faithfully studied, they  will consume more time than
any general scholar will be able to devote to them.   In-
stead of desiring he will, therefore, deprecate their in-
crease.  Make the public at large acquainted with  all
the great triumphs of intellect, and you, by that  very
familiarity, diminish  instead of increasing respect for
extraordinary mental endowment,  and  consequently,
for the finest  models of classical  literature.  This I
assert on the principle that that which is easy of attain-
ment, and  is in the  possession of all, is never highly val-
ued.   Induce  all men to believe that they are literary
critics, and a very limited amount of knowledge is suf-
ficient to do this, and you will soon have all the lustres
of literature blotted and erased from the records of re-
membrance.   The arrogant egotism of the upstart cox-
comb will  be found sitting in final judgment upon works
which ages of undivided admiration had canonized.
Thus the general diffusion of knowledge will commence
by preventing the increase of the noble and endearing
monuments of genius, and will end by dispelling that
mysterious and soul inspiring charm with which they are
at present  invested.
  If a people that  have once been liberalized  and en-
lightened by a profound literature should cease to cul-
tivate refined and elegant  pursuits, they are sure to fall
into a state of mind as hostile to elevation of sentiment,
as it will prove inimical  to independence of thought.
Undelighted  with the blaze of the most prodigious tal-
ents,  they  will not be guided by the precepts of the
soundest philosophy;  utterly incapable of a judicious
admiration, they will  snarl  from mere wantonness,  at
genius towering in the zenith of unrivalled power;  una- 
[ 24 J
ble to discriminate or feel the beauties of a literary per-
formance, they will, with an air of exquisite vulgarity,
sweepingly condemn it as full of faults. Like "parvenu"
gentility and self assumed importance, they venture to
condemn, though they distrust their ability to praise.
By the former course of conduct they may, with the vul-
gar, gain a certain degree of credit; but, by the latter,
if unjust, they will be, in the estimation of the refined,
infallibly disgraced.  From a people that has undergone
a moral and intellectual deterioration, so deplorable and
revolting, to expect a love of letters, a desire to engage
in the profound speculations of philosophy, or  to soar
into the loftier regions of fancy, would be no less nuga-
tory and idle, than it would be absurd  and preposter-
ous.
   Do we discover any indications of this indifference to
works of reason and intelligence in the present state of
American society ?  He whose observation has not been
chained by benevolent prepossession, or  judgment bias-
sed by a commendable feeling of patriotic partiality,
must answer in the affirmative.   The standard works
of original genius; of deep, comprehensive, and inde-
pendent  reasoning that called  forth the admiration of
our revolutionary ancestors, have been  superseded by
those of mere gaiety and amusement.   Trashy novels,
pregnant with flimsy, gauzy, glittering nonsense,  have
now usurped the places which were formerly dignified
by the poetry of Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden and Pope,
and the prose literature of Bacon, Addison, Taylor,
Hooker, Burke, and  a host  of other illustrious writers
who have left names in the commonwealth of letters,
which time cannot tarnish, nor stupid insensibility  to
their merits take away.
  The homage which was formerly paid to the omnipo-
tence  of truth has been, by a depraved  taste, transfer-
red to the omnipotence of fiction.   Instead of works of
original invention and discovery—of philosophical spec-
ulation, and of elegant and sublime poetry,  we abound 
L 2t> ]
in encyclopedias, abridgements of all kinds, biographies
of men, who should be immortal in their progeny only,
spun out to a  most unendurable length, with  a wire-
drawing amplification,  equal  to that of Guicciardini
himself, polemical theology, which neither reforms  nor
enlightens, ravings about orthodoxy, and newspaper vin-
dictiveness and vituperation.
   This unflattering sketch of the present state of liter-
ature in the United States will not be, by those acquaint-
ed with its actual condition, charged with the taint of
exaggeratidn.  Though the system  of general educa-
tion has not hitherto been enabled to shed the glare of
knowledge into every dwelling, its well-meaning but de-
luded advocates have succeeded in scattering a very
large amount of detached, desultory and undigested in-
formation through all ranks of society; and to this cir-
cumstance are we, in a great  measure, disposed to as-
cribe the present degraded condition of letters, as  well
as the present alarming indifference, too distinctly man-
ifested by the public, in regard to their advancement.
   The efforts  which  have  been made to bring knowl-
edge to the door of every man, has  already made of us
a nation of industrious readers, but superficial and un-
phiiosophical reasoners; they have strengthened the
memory, but have  enfeebled  the active  powers of
 thought; they have made us timid and  fastidious as  it
 regards trifling imperfections,  while they have  rendered
 us almost insensible to the fervid bursts of real genius;
they have cooled the ardor of unguarded admiration,
 while they have  rendered us almost incapable of any
 sublime or powerful  efforts , they have taught a relish
 for the rubbish of fiction,—the noise and glare  of which
 should captivate fools only, while they have  dissipated
 the bold zeal of glorious enterprise; they have blasted,
 at least for the present, the hopes of an original nation-
 al literature, while they are making of us spiritless, cold
 and imbecile triflers; they have made us court  the plau-
 dits of the uneducated  multitude, while they  have ex- 
[ 26 J
 tinguished the fires of ambition on the altar of true fame;
 they have superinduced in us a disposition to magnify
 the value of extensive, without rendering us very scru-
 pulous as to the kind  of knowledge;  and  they have
 stretched to the utmost limit of their capacity the infe-
 rior, while they have caused the higher faculties of the
 mind, which have almost ceased to be exerted, to be un-
 derrated.  Such are the effects which  we believe  the
 diffusion of knowledge has already produced, and, if we
 have not been guilty of exaggeration, it  is perfectly
 manifest that it would be rash and inconsiderate to main-
 tain that we have, or that we can expect ever to have,
 a dignified, and an advancing literature.
   The truth is, there is no deeply rooted and pervading
 love of letters in the United States.  Nor have we a  lit-
 erature which, strictly speaking, is in any respect wor-
 thy to be regarded as national.  This is the more to be
 regretted in a country where, like that of the  United
 States, public opinion exerts a dominion imperious and
 irresistible.   That we have given  utterance to the sim-
 ple, unexaggerated and deeply mortifying truth is evin-
 ced by the indisputable fact that we have no standard
 of literary taste to which we can confidently appeal, and
 by  which just criticism  may estimate the merits of  na-
 tive talent.   Should we ever be able  to boast  of a  na-
 tional literature it will grow out of the circumstances in
 which we may be placed, and the scenery by  which we
 are surrounded.  It will be the offspring of our social
 and political institutions, and,  if elevated and substan-
 tial, it will be bold  and* independent in thought; lofty
in its aim; elegant in sentiment, brilliant in diction, and
rich in the playful felicities of fancy.  In a word, it will
be peculiar  to, and  characteristic of us as a  people.
Should such a literature fail, as it certainly would, to
meet the  flattering approval of the British critic,  the
American writer, so far  from being disheartened by  the
clamor of interested opposition, should hail it as conclu-
sive proof that he is not a traitor to his country, nor an 
                       L  27)

kalian from the  commonwealth of Israel.   The  nature
and tendency of cur institutions are different, in so ma-
ny re ;pects, from those of Great Britain, that a  corres-
ponding difference in medes cf thinking and habits cf
acting, must necessarily arin?.  The points cS dissimili-
tude being radical and fundamental, they wage a war cf
uncompromising hostility- against the principles, accor-
ding to which the government of Great Brits in is  ad-
ministered.  It would he preposterous, therefore, to ex-
pect that those literary performances which praise  rod
defend <ur instituticn-', whatever be the beauty  cf their
style,  the grandeur and originality cf their conceptions,
the polish and finish of their execution,  would fail to
provoke much angry censure and vulgar and opprobri-
ous denunciatian.   In  regard, however to works cf a
general nature, which do net involve the description of
peculiar and characterizing principles,  interest and il-
 liberally will scarcely be able to sway  the judgment so
 far as to arouse the slumbering passkns into such fierce
 and vindictive opposition as to caus3 them toba treated
 with intentional injustice.  But, such production*, how-
 ever creditable in an intellectual and scientific  point of
 view,  can have but  littl-3 agency in  creating a standard
 of taste, or in giving us  a national literature.   Instead
 of individualizing, it amalgamates and confounds us with
 the whole human race.   But let our history, our ances ■
 tral greatness and our coteinporary renown be themes
 of earnest defence, proud exultation and warm eulcg}*,
 and we shall be exhibited to the wcrld as a highly fa-
 vored and a peculiar people.
   The writer, hawever,  who exhibits such striking evi-
 dence of devotion to his country, is sure to provoke the
 insolent contempt of the arrogant Englishman, and to
 causo himself to be sneered at as a "truly American au-
 thor," as if there could  be any credit in being any thing
 els3.   By a recent  English traveller it is said;  "A truly
 American author is one  who deems  it necessary, not
 only to show an extreme predilection  and fondness for
                 4 
[ 28 ]
 lis native country, its history, its institutions—to se<*
 he past enveloped in a mist  of glory,  and the future
veiled in a golden  dust  cf prophetic anticipation, but
also an anxiety to  invent occasions for a palpable sneer
at Old England."  Now, with the exception of the last
clause of  the extract you have just heard, which  is as
unfounded in fact  as it is  unamiable, not to say ungen-
tlemanlyin spirit,  I defy the microscopic eye of  criti-
cism to detect the  least fault.   Surely, such a writer as
Mr. Stewart  feebly  attempts to ridicu'e, cannot be ob-
noxious to the aversion even of an  Englishman, who
will think  soberly and feel properly on the subject. The
republican author  will be fond  to  doating  partiality of
his country, but not  to gross  injustice or blind infatua-
tion;  he will  be  proud of its history,but he will not
close  his  eyes to  the guiding lights of  past experi-
ence;  he will cherish  with  filial  piety its institu-
tions, but  will not consider it his duty to denounce those
of every other country as base and vindictive, cruel and
false; he  will pay  the grateful homage of enthusiastic
admiration to deeds  of ancestral renown, but he will
not be dazzled  by the  false glare of imaginary glory;
and he will look forward  with the confidence of unwa-
vering hope to a  brilliant future, but he will not deny
the possibility that all the splendor of the highest  pres-
ent and past prosperity may  not be able  to dispel the
gloom of despondency and despair with which it  may
be overshadowed  by events  unforeseen and disastrous.
Such are  the  characteristics cf a truly American au-
thor !  To find fault with, and to sneer at  old  England
constitutes no part of it, while we regret to say, and it
is no less true than disreputable, that maliciously  to
snarl at every thing American, seems to enter as an es-
sential element into  the character of a truly English
traveller.
   In regard to the policy of training youth to study the
nature and to admire the excellencies of our institutions
     ubt can possibly exi^t.   It will keep alive and vj- 
[  29 ]
vidly burning, the flame of patriotism;  and as this is
most necessary in, it should be most sedulously cultiva-
ted in a Republic.   This is chiefly to be  accomplished
by a flourishing native literature.  A  civilized  people,
without any great works in history, poetry, or the line
arts, who are in the daily habit  of consulting those in
which  the constitution and laws of a foreign nation are
themes of rapturous praise and enthusiastic admiration
will be deficient in national character and national feel-
ings if not  animated  by sentiments of attachment 'o
other countries.   If they are not made sensible of the
excellencies of their form of government; taught to love
their fellow-citizens, and to emulate the exploits  of their
great men, their patriotism will dwindle into a cold and
sluggish sentiment of indifference, which  will  as cer-
tainly render them  incapable of any great intellectual
triumph,  as it will make them feeble and irresolute de-
fender? of their rights and liberties.
  The excellence of the British  constitution, and the
virtues and glory of England's  great men have been
celebrated by some of the finest  eloquence and some of
the sublimest poetry that ever filled the heart with rap-
ture or fanned the patriot passions  into flame.   If you
would feel the magic force of true patriotic minstrelsy,
read the nationalities of Cowper, of Campbell, of Scott,
and the Bannock-Burn of Burns, and you will soon learn
the steadfast devotion to the institutions of a country
which  it is certain to inspire.   It throws a bewitching
charm over the  noble and endearing features of every
form of good government, while it defies the turpitude
of treason to tarnish its glory, or the force of violence
to destroy its existence.  Nor is this all.  So potent is
the influence which British literature exerts that we,
from our  familiarity with, and  admiration of it, not-
withstanding the many causes of alienation,  entertain
warmer feelings toward England and a stronger  bias to-
wards the English constitution than is compatible with 
                       [30J

 a proper respect for ourselves or an ardent devotion to
 the prosperity of our country.  This, though not a mat-
 ter of surprise is doubtless a subject cf just and severe
 reproach.
   In y(u:h patriotism should be inspired and republi-
 canism taught.  Impressions made in eailv life are so
 difficult to eradicate that we often sec visible traces of
 them in those far advanced  in the deiline  of life.   It
 should therefore be an object of the first importance to
 k:ep the stream of scholastic literature peifjctly free of
 deleterious  foreign  inmiities,  and to limit  as much as
 possible the influence cf such wcrks as  inculcate prin-
 ciples that are hostile to the moral and political interests
 of the government under which we live.  But has this
 oar30 bec 1 obier/ed in tho  education of our  youth?
 H Lvo our yoang man boan trained ao in habit? of repub-
 lican feeling and acting?   The response tint is given
 mist be in tho negative.  In most of our schccls, ccl-
 Lgei, an 1 universities, there is such an intense admira-
 tion of BrLteh literature  that  when those upon whose
 principles the perpetuity of this government must  de-
 p3nd, enter the tumult and bustle of active life, they
 are f mnd to bo bett3r qualified to submit as Brinsh sub-
jects than  to act as American citizens.  Most of  the
 b'o':s with which they aremado familiar, whether they
 rekts to morals, religion, law, history or poetiy,are the
 or;pri:ig of British genius, and inculcate British princi-
 ples, and British motives of action.  When they leavo
 coltego they know  much more of English history, biog-
 riohy and general literature, than they do of the same
bvinch3Sof teaming as they have been cultivated in tho
Uiitc-d Statss.   They  dwell with infinite delight upon
all that has  shed ren-wn en a long line cf noble Ai glc-
Sacoa an-esy-w, while  actually  ignorent cf,  or treat
weth col J an!  rn unifying indifference of contempt those
sibhrne  achievements of  our  immediate  forefathers
w.nch veil! be- thorns of triumphant exaltation  so bn£ 
                       f 31 3

a/5 freedom shall flourish in tho full radiance of its me-
ridian splandor, an J continue to swell tho hoart of man
with c; j *y unspeakable and full of glory."
   is thi* not ominous of our fate ?   Is it not an alarm-
ing forerunner of a tual hostility to institution? which
obviously require,  in theso eventful and  portentous
times, all that is pure in patriotism, stern in viitue, stead-
fo?t in allegian;o, elevated and national in learning, firm
and unshrinking  in courage, to sustain and  perpetuate
them.   Invest foreign  iastituti>ns  with the blandish-
rnants of superior attraction, and you  debauch the pa-
triot from his allegiance;  gild tho manner; ani customs
of a strange people with a soducdvc brilliancy and you
weaken the bonds of social union; irradiate with the
charms of irresistible fascination the conquests  of for-
eign enterprize  and exertion, and you cast the mantle
of unmerited oblivion  over deeds that would have flat-
tered the pride and have strengthened the patriotism of
all antiquity in the brightest days of its greatness and
glory.
   We are politically independent of, but arc still in a
state of most shameful and mortifying intellectual sub-
jectfon  to Great Britain.   Undismayed  in the presence
of her embattled legions, we pusillanimcmdy quail be-
fore her censors of criticism; we r'fu^e to throw off
th i' y >ke under whi h tin  nati. nal mind  biUerly gicans,
and ay which  it has been emasculated  of its strength
and independence.   Will the tim3 never arrive when our
you h shall  no longer  breathe the pestilential  air cf
h titutions  which they  should  distrust if not  des-
pite?   When will tire genius of free  institutions be
all .wed to  press its  cwn  children to its bosom—
be permitted  to  exr-rcise the sacred and precicu? of-
ii iq of nourishing them from  the clear  fountains of re-
publican patriotism; be allowed to rear them up to the
stature and vigor of mature manhood, under the untaint-
ing auspices of a pure, proud, and progressive national
literature?  Net until tho abject and  cringing  spirit 
[ 32]
which leads to the imitation of that literature which has
raised the "fast anchored isls" to an unrivalled pitch of
excellence and  glory is extinguished.   A  disposition to
truckle is so disreputable that whenever it is manifested
it is sure to be treated with ridicule and contempt: and
is so prejudicial to efforts of genius that wherever it is
discovered there we are certain not to find any of those
model? of classical learning which dazzle by their lustre,
—which are unobnoxious to, and defy the utmost sever-
ity of criticism,—and which bask in the meridian rays
of public favor.   For those, therefore, over whom it has
stretched  its blighting dominion to attempt to win a res-
pectable rank in the republic of letters would be as ab-
surd and extravagant  in idea, as it has always  proved
hopeless and impossible on trial.
  The history of European literature abundantly testi-
fies to the fact that those who have rested  satisfied with
following the example of others, instead of striking out
some unexplored path to fame for themselves, have  in-
variably failed to wake up in the breast of posterity a
single emotion   of interest or thrill of pleasure.  Nor
need we look forward to any more enviable  doom than
early and unreconcilable oblivion so  long  as we follow
with a tame and imbecile subserviency whatever hap-
pens  to be the   prevailing fashion of British literature.
To this humiliation the pride of real genius will never
condescend, and it  is because our  writers  have  not
spurned with a steadfast,  dignified aversion  the unau-
thorized sway of of foreign domination that so many of
thom have been  greeted with the sympathy  of benevo-
lent commiseration,  and the sneer and contempt of de-
grading ridicule.
  Every period  which has, by a bright constellation of
superior minds rendered itself illustrious in the annals
of solid or polite learning, has treated  with  such abso-
lute disdain  every temptation to follow or  to imitate the
distinguishing characteristics of  any prior golden age,
that it is utterly impossible to find any  two of those who 
[  33  1
stand cut in bold relief upon the calender of time that
owe their celebrity to the same fascinating peculiarities.
Nor of that galaxy which shed lustre on any renowned
age can you find any two stars that shone brilliantly in
the same sphere.  That of Augustus was not only an
era of the highest poetical glory, but one that will' be
admired with speechless wonder and amazement, so long
as literature shall  last, produced  Virgil, Horace, and
 Ovid, not to mention a shining host of others scarcely
inferior to them  in intellectual and literary merit,  each
of whom, though radiating the light of sublime genius,
consecrated to immortal remembrance different branch-
es of poetry.   A  crowd  of most extraordinary  men,
dazzled by the vivid splendor of  their thoughts, and en-
riched by the  most brilliant achievments of fancy, the
early part of the  last  century.  Swift, and  Pope, and
Gray, and Bolingbroke, and Addison, with a multitude
of inferior luminaries who adorned and  illustrated the
literature of that period will shine eternal in the spheres
of fame.  They were all enthusiastically admired : not,
however,  because  there was any striking resemblance
between their original, profound  and masterly produc-
tions, but because each shone in the meridian of his
own bright and gorgeous effulgence.
  On the  revival of tetters in Europe an absurd attempt
was made to construct  literature  on classical models.
The consequence was, that no reference being made by
the writers of that period to the circumstances in which
they were placed or the influences under which  they
acted, and their  productions possessing not the energy,
fire, depth of thought, ease  and  harmony of versifica-
tion, brilliancy of diction, general elegance of style, nor
any of the more essential qualities which criticism re-
quires in the character  of a sound and an original  lit-
erature, they were but  little studied and less admired.
The literature of that age  was timid, sordid, sycophan-
tic, inspiring tho mind with an affected enthusiasm for
ancient lore,  while it was  radically deficient in  those 
[ 34)
grand and sublime conceptions that fill and astonish the
mind;—those large and comprehensive views which ex-
tirpate prejudice, illuminate and strengthen the intel-
lectual powers; those refined, noble, and generous sen-
timents, which elevate and chasten the affections of the
heart; cherish in the  breast all the  lof,ier  feelings of
emulation, and give to the mind that microscopical and
unwonted  s n nbility which renders it exqui>iteJy alive to
the beau ifol  productions cf genius and art.
  Those being the defects of the literature of the peri-
od to which we have just referred, it is evident that  it
could have enjoyed  but little immediate and no lasting
reputation.   So soon, however, as the Latin tongue was
abandoned as the common vehicle of thought,  and au-
thors began to write in the vernacular languages of Eu-
rope, a new literature instantly, and, I may  ?ay, in-
stinctively, sprung into existence, which in a fow years
began to  assume a strictly national  character.  Italy
was the first  to throw off the yoke of ancient bondage.
She was soon followed in the career of  mental emanci-
pation, at different intervals  of time, and in the order
in which we shall enumerate them, by Spain, Portugal,
England, France, and, last of all, by Germany, which,
in little more than a century, reared  up a vigorous rnd
gigantic  native  literature.   If  we  would,  theufne,
wake  up the slumbering  fire of genius,—make it  to
beam with celestial light, and to  scar  into the higher
regions of intellectual happiness, we must declare  cur
literary independence of Great Britain;  we must lerm
to shudder with unaffected horror at the brutal butche-
ry perpetrated by our patriotic songsters on seine of the
finest poetry  that ever British valor inspired. We must
cease to listen with patience to the mangled and quiv-
ering numbers of British muse reluctantly scunding the
pagans of  American prowess and  patriotism.   Whose
heart does not sicken,—whose pride is  not humbled,—
whose honor  is not attainted,—whose character is not
disgraced when poor Columbia is made feloniously  to 
[ 35]
Strut with an air of vulgar elegance in the place of Brit-
tania, and when he he£rs one poetaster stupidly exclaim
she "needs no bulwarks, no towers along the steep," and
another  re-echo, with insolent assurance,  she  "wields
the trident," rules the waves," and "her home is on the
deep."   There is no true lover of his country who would
not prefer hearing our triumphs celebrated in the most
miserable and beggarly doggerel that ever issued from
the cell of a mad-house,  than to  see them glorified in
the most exquisite and sublime strains  of  British poet-
ry.
   In vain, however, may  we look for the extirpation of
this base and ignoble spirit, so humiliating  to American
literature, so long as the system of education now pur-
sued in our colleges  and universities undergoes no signal
amelioration.   An original, a profound and comprehen-
sive literature can only result from,  and be sustained by
deep and extensive erudition.  To  attempt its erection
on any other  foundation, would be to  construct a  frail
and flimsy fabric, which would be  able to withstand nei-
ther the fierce assaults of criticism,  the insulting taunts
of biting sarcasm, nor the  odium of that neglect and
contempt, which never fails to hurry the objects of their
aversion into the bottomless  gulph  of early  and  redemp-
tionless oblivion.  Let me ask, is there one who  will
contend that the standard qf scholastic instruction is so
high in this country, as to warrant him in supposing, be-
lieving or maintaining, that any other  fate awaits the
generality of those efforts that are  being  made in the
cause of American literature ?  To this question, I am
persuaded, that humbling as it may be to  the pride of
the understanding, and withering to the hopes of the
friend of letters, you will respond in the negative.  If
an indissoluble connection exists between an elementa-
ry instruction,  and the subsequent  expansion  and en-
lightenment  of the  mind,  then it  is evident that the
curricula of study  pursued in our colleges are  not only
too hinited, but the time dedicated to the attainment of 
[36 ]
a knowledge of the sciences, which engage attention too
brief to form an adequate  and substantial preparation
for the more elevated objects of literature.
  This preciptancy is in part  to be ascribed to the van-
ity of teachers, but chiefly to the impatience  of those
whom they instruct.  Indeed, such is the restless anxi-
ety of  American youth"to attain^the stature and to as-
sume the responsibilities of men  that sufficient time  is
reluctantly spared to learn even  the terms of the  sci-
ences,  they profess to have studied and pretend to un-
derstand.   With this more imperfect acquaintance with
the  mere  elements of  knowledge, they  thoughtlessly
rush into  the distracting scenes of public  life and are
soon irrecoverably lost in the boiling vortices of tumul-
tuous faction.   He who enters on public life before great
progress  has  been made in intellectual  education  will
never be  able  to  become  a  proficient scholar after-
ward.   Carried precipitately  along by the turbulent
current of incessant business  no time can  be snatched
from the  toils and troubles of life to pause and reflect,
—to generalize knowledge, or to watch over  the oper-
ations  of the mind.  For  this cause too  often do we
see  those on whom college education  has conferred
its  choicest blessings  either  relinquish  the pursuit  of
letters altogether, and permit  from inclination or neces-
sity the few and feeble impressions that had been made
on their minds to be obliterated, or cultivate them with-
out  ardor or zeal, at detached  and distant intervals of
time.  We have, consequently, sciolists of every grade
and every hue, arrayed in all  the arrogance and imper-
tinence of upstart  scholarship, with but  few of those
who possess the  reach of thought and copiousness  of
knowledge of accomplished erudition.
   Why is it that in the halls of Congress and in our
State Legislatures so few philosophical statesmen are  to
he found ?  Men, whose minds having been  expanded,
enlightened and liberalized by thorough mental cultiva-
tion, nrc qualified  to take those profound and original 
[ 37 ]
views which adapt them to new combinations of circum-
stances, and enable them to sway in the great convulsions
of human affairs.   Because of the imperfection of col-
legiate instruction and the contraction  of habits which
are at war with the profundity of philosophical research
and the polish of literary refinement.
   Let us dwell for a moment on the character of a states-
man who was not less remarkable for the perfection  of
his educational training, than he is illustrious for the
wisdom and comprehensiveness of his farsighted views.
The life  of Turgot, the extraordinary individual  to
whom we allude, was wholly engrossed with philosophi-
cal and political investigations, up to  the time of his
ministry, which was in the forty eighth year of his age.
He was much devoted to the elegant and ennobling pur-
suits of literature in general,  but more particularly  to
the  comprehension of those moral and  political princi-
ples which have  for their object the  advancement  of
mankind; " to the study," to use his own expressive
words, "of the  science  of  public happiness."  What
was the result ?  When you read his writings you fan-
cy that you are communing with a man born to legislate
for the happiness of a world.   From the preamble  of
Turgot's  laws, those master pieces of composition,  as
they were denominated by  Condorcet,  we  may select
numerous specimens of a high,  pure and  sublime elo-
quence ; and learn also what are some of the intellect-
ual and literary qualifications  of a  finished statesman.
Those acquainted with the labor of Turgot cannot fail to
regret, on reading the Institutes of Justinian, that he,
instead of Triboniao, the ''exquestor of cur sacred pa-
lace," had not been at the ruler of the  world's right
hand, and guided the pen that was legislating for so ma-
ny nations and so many ages.
   Look into our halls  of legislation, and what do you
find there ?  Accomplished scholars and philosophical
statesmen ?   No; most assuredly.   A few brilliant lus-
tres, it is true, are seen  to  throw their light upon t'nc 
                       I  :i8 ]

dull, impenetrable masses of mortality by  whom the\
are surrounded.  The great body of those who crowd
those places can set up no just claim to either clearness
or  comprehensiveness of intellect.   The  number of
those on whom legislative distinction has been conferred
and who have been, in some degree,  prepared for the
offices they fill by laborious application, is  incredibly
small, whiio the multitude of those who have rendered
their  minds insusceptible of improvement by indulgence
in low, degrading and enervating pleasures is alarmingly

  ..a  the heterogeneous compound of ignorance and il-
hberaiity, stupidity and stubbornness, talents and attain-
ments, of which  our deliberative assemblies  consist,
there are those who,  never venturing beyond the enun-
ciation o? a monosyllable, would, however, distinguish
themselves from those with whom they  are  associated
by the  affectation of what is  styled  business  habits.
Who are they, and what are their claims to considera-
tion and  respect ?   Mere  men of detail,—successful
tradesmen, accustomed to the tranquil accuracy of com-
merce,—yeomen, trained to  the sober anil dull concerns
of agriculture,—or county court lawyers,  acquainted
with the quips, and cranks, and low devices of the law,
who have  been transferred  from their money-shops—
from the implements cf husbandry, or from the  arena of
municipal  litigation,  to the bureau of the statesman,
when not one of them has proved himself to be an able,
accurate,  and perfect man of business, but wretched
drivellers and drudges, wholly  destitute of those enlar-
ged  understandings  that  enable men to comprehend
and to enforce great principles.
  Read the .speeches of those who would make laws for
a nation of freemen ?  Of what do they consist  ? Stale,
common place c;notations from  the Latin classics, for
1 r.v of them know any thing of the Greek, threadbare
philosophy, fahe and  canting morality, vulgar and vin-
dictive personal vituperation, pci-nlces wit and malicious 
[ 39 ]
ridicule, uttered with ail the uncivil vehemence of angry
posnen glowing with volcanic heat and fury.   Beauty
oi diction, elegance and profundity of thought, cogency
an I relevancy of argument, flowing in rich streams from
the depths of luminous and extensive  minds, that have
ranged through the whole extent of human literature,
are  rarely  to  be found in our legislative assemblies.
Nor at this need we be surprised, for,  as has been truly
remarked by Bcntham, "nothing but laborious applica-
tion, and a clear and  comprehensive  intellect, can ena-
ble a man on any given subject, to employ successfully,
relevant arguments drawn from  the subject itself.   To
employ personalities,  neither  labor nor  intellect is re-
quired.   In this sort of a contest, the most idle and  the
most ignorant are quite on a par with, if not  superior
to the most industrious and the most highly gifted indi-
viduals."
   In no vocation do we observe  the injury  which liter-
ature sustains from our system of education so striking-
ly illustrated, as in the manner in which the public press
in the United States is conducted.   Its practical results
can in no way be so accurately estimated,  as by ascer-
taining what is the average character of our literature.
This, it must be conceded, is to be found in the actual
condition  of the public press.   If any doubt should ex-
ist on this subject, it  must be  removed when it  is recol-
lected that a large majority of those who belong to the
"corps editorial" have received  what  is denominated  a
university education.   The style in which they write,
and the principles by  which their  conduct is regulated
must therefore be regarded as the  legitimate results of
education.
   There was a time when genius and literature crowd-
ed the public journals with instruction, and filled their
fleeting pages  with  the  sweetest effusions of fancy.
Then it was that homage was paid to intellectual supe-
riority, and virtue received due  commendation and re-
ward ; then the object was to inculcate  morality,  and 
[ -to j
not to excuse or to defend vice;  to confirm attachment
to the constitution and to secure obedience to the laws,
and not to alienate the affections of the people by en-
snaring them in the toils of dismembering factions ; to
advance literature  by illustrating new principles, and
not to disgrace it by  making it the scourge and pest of
society; to throw light upon history and not to darken
it by a recklessness of truth;  to exemplify and eluci-
date the characters of the deceased, and not to  obscure
and render unintelligible those of the living by  flattery
and falsehood ; to strengthen the caucus  of just criti-
cism, and not  by an unrestrained license to encourage
wanton and  unauthorized lucubrations of mediocral
minds;  to promote a taste for the refined joys of elegant
literary retirement,  and not a relish for the gross and
degradiug gratifications of sequestered voluptuousness;
to aim at the approval of the wise and just, and not to
court the ignoble breath of vulgar fame.
  Proud indeed, would I be could I with justice declare
that this is the general character of the public  press as
it is conducted at present.  Facts, however, which can-
not be disguised or  misinterpreted constrain me to al-
ledge that it is its antipodes in almost every particular.
Since the epoch  of  the revolution, the influence of the
newspaper press has been widened and deepened, but
in patriotism, intellect, and literature it has lamentably
deteriorated.  We  are not disposed, however, to pass
upon it a sweeping sentence of indiscriminate denunci-
ation. Amongst those who are engaged in journalism,
a few may be found  who, for solid learning and great tal-
ents, and a steadfast rectitude of principle, would have
reflected honor on any country in the purest days of its
morality or the highest periods of its literature.  The
conduct of the individuals to whom we allude,  is as far
above all praise as the principles by which it is regula-
ted is proof against the  allurements of the strongest
temptation.  Aware of the obligations which  they are
under, both to their conscience and their country they 
[41  )
are uniformly found in the active exertion of every ef-
fort, and in the employment  of every fair and plausible
means that seems calculated  to  drive from the atmos-
phere of public life those lowering clouds which look so
dark and  threatening, and to clear the  walks of social
intercourse of all those impediments by which vice would
obstruct its progress.  Deeply penetrated with  a  sense
of the high responsibilities of the station they occupy,
and knowing that to the remotest verge of civilization
the newspaper press exerts an overshadowing, if not an
omnipotent control, they do all in their power to give
strength,  firmness and uprightness to public opinion; to
fortify and confirm true domestic ties; to elevate, refine
and embellish private manners, and to encourage a taste
in the public mind for elegant and scientific pursuits.  In
the United  States newspapers  have  a  more extensive
circulation, and are  sought, by all ranks of society, with
more eagerness than are similar publications in any oth-
country in the world.  Indeed, we daily meet with  in-
dividuals who flatter themselves into the belief that their
attainments in literature  are rather remarkable, and
who, nevertheless, have derived their whole  stock of
shadowy  and unsubstantial information from the  politi-
cal journals.  Moreover, the  style  of composition of
 our daily and weekly literature is a model to  most of
those who are in the habit of studying  it;  and it is not
uncommon for such persons, without being aware of the
presumption of which they are guilty, to  arrogate to
themselves the dignity of men  of letters.   It is  mani-
fest, therefore, that  too much talent, learning and integ-
rity cannot be employed in the public press.  We could
designate a number of editors who,  sensible of the  in-
 fluence they exert over the  literary character of the na-
 tion, never cease, by the force of precept and the  exam-
 ple of a pure and an elegant style of writing to do all in
 their power to  advance the cause  of popular letters.
 Such men are entitled to our warmest gratitude, and to
 them too much respectability cannot be given. 
( 13 )
    To these encomia, however,  nineteen  twentieths  of
  those who assume the responsibilities of editorship can
  establish, by their past conduct  or prospective reforma-
  tion, no just claim. At least, that proportion of them are
  much more remarkable for moral depravity and mental
  weakness, than for irreproachable purity of deportment,
  and intellectual vigor; for stupid  ignorance, than for
  respectable attainments in literature; for gross indeli-
  cacy of expression,  than strict decorum of manners ;
  for an insolent contempt of truth, than  a  stern  adher-
  ance to rigid justice; for a total  recklessness of  princi-
  ple,  than for a mild and blameless purity of purpose.
    Instead of considering sound principles as immutable
  as  adamant,  and as  indestructible  as the pillar of
  Smeaton,  they veer round with every tide  of circum-
  stances, as often as the wind shifts a point, or a woman
  changes her mind.   Trimmers and  time servers, they,
 from party purposes, alternately  defend and  defame the
 same men and the same measures, and without an emo-
 tion of shame or a pang of remorse, irrecoverably sink
 themselves into  a  bottomless gulph  of incongruities.
  1 hey spread the pall of indiscriminate forgetfulness over
 the faults of an infamous friend, while they wrong in his
 most sacred rights, and torture in his dearest feelings,
 the undebauched foe.   They irrecoverably sully  The
 purity of patriot honor, while those attainted with tur-
 pitude and disgraced by crime rise to greatness,  under
 their pestilential auspices.  Bearing the impress of omni-
 potent depravity, and heedless of the horror of such a
 remorse as vice,  unredeemed  by a single  virtue must
 bring, they sweep the land with  a moral and political
 pestilence.                                   l
   That which has struck us as one of the strangest pc-
 cuhanties of the  times, and furnishes us also with con-
 clusive proof of a revolting state of morals  for which
 the profligate should blush, is to see those very journals
 which are known  to be the irreconcilable foes of  every
generous, humane and virtuous sentiment encircled with 
[43 ]
the radiance of the most  extensive popularity.  Jour-
nals conducted by men whose every act has proved them
to be as cold, deadly and unforgiving in their enmities
as they are notoriously false, faithless, and perfidicus in
their friendships : infamous  in all that is vindictive in
depravity, they assail without shame or sorrow, charac-
ters the most upright and immaculate, with as little hes-
itation or remorse, as they do those,  who, like them-
selves, waste their time and consume  their  health in
pleasure, riot, and debauchery: who, to revenge an in-
sult, deep and  inexpiable, or fancied and imaginary,
have had recourse to means so detestible that the most
treacherous would hesitate to credit, and which ordinary
uprightness would have even perjury to disown; who,
to gratify a malicious inclination for biting sarcasm, and
to indulge overrated talents for obscene wit, and vulgar
crimination, have often sacrificed every feeling of nature
and every law of honor:  men, whom the most humane
philosophy has not civilized, the most munificent chari-
ty softened,  the tenderest friendship attached, the ful-
lest  concessions conciliated, the sternest  morality re-
claimed, and the  purest faith converted, have, in reck-
less insubordination to and contempt  of the appeals of
friends, the exactions of society, the  claims of family
and the terrors of the law, goaded with cruel and unre-
lenting fury the votaries of virtue into the disgusting
mysteries of every frightful form of vice.  Such men
there are, who watch over the public press, and  whose
influence in giving character to public opinicn is not lim-
ited or circumscribed.  They are not only popular, but
their journals are read with an avidity which  is shock-
ing to morality, insulting to religion and  in frontless
mockery of all those glorious hopes which the patriot
must cherish in  despite  of the  present disheartening
prospects, for the present elevation and future advance-
ment of American literature.
  Our system of education has rendered itself obnox-
ious to critical aversion  by inculcating false ideas of
              6 
[44 ]
scholarship, and by causing very limited attainments to
pass current in society for deep and  varied  learning.
Young men are apt to believe, when they leave college,
invested with the honors of the baccalaureate, that their
education is finished, when in fact they, have scarcely
passed the threshold of science and letters.   That those
therefore, who glow with the fire of genius should, af-
ter the phantoms of collegiate instruction have been pur-
sued for a fixed length of time, be anxious to become au-
thors is not a matter  of much surprise.  Before  the
mind has been enriched by the stores of abundant know-
ledge, and matured in the field of extensive observation;
before it has formed the least  acquaintance  with the
world, Or even familiarity with  itself, it  precipitately
rushes in
         ■ "Where angels dare not tread."

With all the impatience of youth and hazardousiiess of
inexperience, to  restrain and guide; with nothing but
the blind partiality of self-love and the confidence of un-
wavering hope to buoy it up  in  the perilous enterprize,
the arrogance of self  conceited scholarship enters the
lists where genius and knowledge have formidable array-
ed, themselves.   Seduced by the persuasive suggestions
of fancy, and urged by the delusive promptings of am-
bition, it dares to look on the burning glories of the me-
ridian sun, before its  tender vision can bear the feeble
and scattered glimmerings of the  stars.  The  conse-
quence is that much of our literature, from the state of
mental impreparation in which  it is produced, is light,
trivial and fantastic;  consisting of crude  and fanciful
speculations, which glitter with the tinsel of false  wit,
or scholastic trifling, swelled into a  fictitious importance
by the specious but shadowy embellishments of rhetoric.
   The decidedly vulgar taste of the reading part of the
 nation may also, in part, be ascribed to our system of
precipitate education.  Exceedingly  superficial in its
 character, it has awakened the inferior but has failed to 
L 45  J
reach  the higher powers of thought; vain and pomp-
ous, it has led the imagination to spurn the restraints of
sound  philosophy, while it has taught it to revel with de -
light in all that is romantic, exaggerated and improbable.
Works, therefore, of reason and research—the finished
productions  of  the  old English  classics—have given
way to the unprecedented popularity of performances of
pure fiction.  Indifferently qualified by  education  and
unencouraged by  the taste of the public, authors have
almost ceased to think or to reason—to illustrate or to
enforce —while they waste intellectual existence in wea
ving wild and  improbable speculations or in indulging
the revolting and insupportable extravagances of wan-
ton imaginations.  Instead of sweetening and embel-
lishing the social circle by inspiring a  taste for the refi-
ned and elegant occupations of learning and the muse,
they render it insipid, if not disgusting by encouraging
a morbid relish for the fiery host of absurd fancies, with
 which the majority of modern novels teem.  In  this
grovelling subserviency  to the corrupt inclination of the
times, there is mingled no manly thought of a higher
 future—no toiling for posterity—no inspiring hope of a
glorious immortality.
    Our system of education is certainly defective, inas-
 much as it does not embrace in the circle of its disinter-
ested  benevolence,  the instruction of females.  This,
 such as it is, rendered useless and disgusting, however,
 by the frippery of modern manners, I do not alledgeFhas
 been neglected.  No man in his senses will contend that
 our young ladies  do not spend a  sufficient  number of
 hours at the piano to  ruin the health of an Amazon, or
 trip the 'light fantastic toe' to such perfection as to cause
 Terpsichore herself to blush, or learn enough of French
 to corrupt the principles of a Lucretia, or acquire such a
 taste  for works  of mere gayety and  amusement, the
 bloated offspring of extravagant fancy, as to cause them
 to neglect ifnot to contemn every other species of litera-
 ture.  These, however} are the defects not the exceilen- 
[46 j
cies of education, which consist not in an acquaintance
with that literature which, addressing itself exclusively
to the imagination, 1 alls into the languors of pleasure,
and has for its object a delicate and emasculate refine-
ment, but that  which embraces philosophy, eloquence,
history, and those other departments or learning which
refer chiefly to the heart and understanding, and depend
upon a knowledge of human nature,  and an attentive
study of all that contributes to its actual enjoyments.
   Such attainments, with  the sway which women  al-
ready exert over modern society, would have the happi-
est effect in giving a taste for literary and scientific pur-
suits.  Enable them to feel  a deep and an ennobling in-
terest in the cultivation of tetters, and men will be con-
strained, as a matter of necessity, in order to maintain
their natural superiority, to turn their attention directly
to the expansion and elevation of the mind.   This would
arouse the  dormant  faculties of the opulent and unem-
ployed portion of the community, who study more the
means of sensual indulgence than those  of intellectual
enjoyment.  Such persons find great comfort and coun-
tenance in the degradation to which the female mind is
reduced by light and trivial accomplishments, which re-
quire no exertion of thought for their display.  But en-
rich it with substantial learning, and you, at once, cut off
this source of self-gratulation.   There is no being for
whom an educated and a deserving  woman feels a con-
tempt so sovereign  and unutterable as she does for a
stupid and  illiterate man.  She shrinks from him with
a dislike at once instinctive and unconquerable.  Nor is
the aversion of  an ignorant and a vulgar woman  for an
educated and a  polished man much Jess.   The influence
of intellectual illumination over her mind is such that if
she should  be unfortunately united  in wedlock to such
an individual, it would be impossible for her to be happy.
If she  is neglected, she imagines that the time he spends
in his study should  be devoted to her personal service.
Milton's first wife, whom he married from a scdden faa- 
[ V J
cy, was unable to endure his literary habits, and finding
his house too solitary for her  romping disposition, beat
 his nephews and conveyed herself away at the expira-
tion of the honey-moon.  The wife of Bishop Cooper be-
came so jealous" of his books that she consigned the la-
bor of many years to the flames, and the alledged reason
 why  Lady  Seville destroyed the most valuable manu-
 scripts of Sir Henry was that they engrossed too much
 of his  time.  If she is not neglected, so mortifying to
 an illiterate  woman is the  infinite and  unapproachable
 superiority of an accomplished man that she cannot ob-
 literate from her mind the  harrowing conviction that his
 attention to  her, though the  most tender  and soothing,
 is the insolence of familiarity or the pride of condescen-
 sion.   Her inferiority, she  is  aware, cannot be concealed
 from him, and if she is not neglected and avoided, the
 most favorable construction she puts upon his conduct is
 that she is pitied ; and such  is the mysterious structure
 of the female heart that rather than be pitied she would
 bo despised. Tho ignorance, therefore, of females is the
 chief cause why literary men are generally so unfortu-
 nate in the state of wedlock.
   Both nature and reason have, in civilized society, made
 women the dispensers of every species of social distinc-
 tion, and this, if they are properly educated, acting on
 the otrongest principle of our nature, will  cause every
 man in whom all sense of ohame is not blunted, e.yery
 emotion of pride stifled, and all desire to win the friend-
 ship and esteem of the sex extinguished, to place a pro-
 per estimate on learning.   When women read they talk
 of what they have read,  not however, from affectation
 or pedantrv, as stupid coxcombry  would alledge, for the
 two-fold purpose cf deterring those who possess know-
 ledge from making a proper use of it, and to screen their
 ignorance  from detection and mortifying exposure, but
 because it is an agreeable and instructive amusement as
 well as a  most natural  subject of conversation,  Let
 bo-ks travel from the libra-v to the saloon and we shall 
f»»]
 soon see who ^v ill keep them  company or be there  to*
 give them a warm and friendly reception.  When women
 cultivate a taste for letters, those who would shine as
 men of fashion find it necessary to establish a more sub-
 stantial claim to respect than that which consists in the
 glitter of an elegant costume, or the flippancy of a whi-
 ning cockney who, enamoured of his own eloquence, and
 swollen with the pride of self-conceited merit, considers
 himself at liberty to tire by his loquacious nonsense all
 those who may happen  to be so unfortunate as to be in
 the purlieus of his insolence.
   We may transport ourselves with joy,  and hail with
 acclimations of triumph, the graceless sycophant, who
 lulls us into a  dangerous security by flattering our in-
 telligence, our taste for literature and the elegant refine-
 ment of our manners: and we  may convulse ourselves
 with rage when the honest critic denies the one or ques-
 tions the truth of either  of  the others, but the fact is,
 and it should be told in language that cannot be miscon-
 strued, rebuked in a spirit  that will not admit of  com-
 promise, and those beggarly substitutes for education,.
 which  are the cause of it, frowned on with a firmness
 that cannot flinch or be flattered into a dereliction of its
 duty, that there is not in either sex  or  in any rank  of
 life, from the level in which  penury pines, to the palace
 in which all shine  in  the deceitful glare of fastidious re-
 finement, any real  sensibility to those magical powers of
 literature, which enchain, soften and regulate the heart;
 those sublime  conceptions  of elevated  genius,  which
 command the admiration of ages and survive the revo-
lutions of empires.  A prostituted  press; the ignorance
of a majority of those who constitute what is called the
learned professions:  the rage  for light  and frivollous
reading, together  with  some other causes which we
shall more particularly notice presently, have extinguish-
ed all desire in  the mass of what is considered good so-
ciety to reach the higher regions of intellectual improve-
ment. 
L 19 J
   Though this is a truth which cannot be denied or im-
pugned, he who has dared to make  the least reflection
on society has been rebuked in a spirit of the angriest
resentment.  Such conduct is exceedingly silly and child-
ish.   Passion and presumption are poor succedanea for
reason and intelligence, and the attempt to substitute the
former for the latter will never be able to refute the fact,
sanctioned by the caucus of polite criticism, as well as
by the results of common observation, that a want of
taste for literature is an infallible mark of vulgarity of
mind, or that to frame a state of society entitled in any
respect to be regarded as good, around the opulent em-
bellishments of which literature does not throw its ele-
gant fascinations, is utterly impossible.
   What are the elements of good society ?  The com-
petent judge will at once respond good manners and good
conversation.  These are  fundamental and indispensa-
ble.   Without either of them such a thing as good so-
ciety, in the proper acceptation of the phrase,  cannot
possibly exist.  The former, that is, good manners, im-
ply a general desire to please, and a delicate perception
of what may be pleasiug or displeasing to others.  The
latter, that is, good conversation, implies varied and ex-
tended knowledge, combined with a high  degree of in-
tellectual cultivation.  To look, therefore, for either the
one or the other amongst a vain,  frivollous, ignorant
selfish and unfeeling set of persons,  would be  absurd
and preposterous.  The individual well read in  elegant
literature will be able to multiply and vary the topics of
interesting conversation, to an almost unlimited extent;
selecting them with  judgment, and he will descant on
them with elegance and ease.   Uniting wit and knowl-
edge—lively and vigorous sallies with trite, racy and
interesting remarks—he will be easy, dignified and cour-
teous, but not familiar—polite and polished, without ar-
rogant pretension.  Society made up of such individu-
als is perfectly good—it will be enlightened and  accom-
plished.   "Such a superiorty," says Hume, "do the 
(50)
pursuits  of literature possess  above every other occu-
pation,  that even  he who  attains but a mediocrity in
them, merits the pre-eminence above  those that excel
the most in the common  and vulgar professions."   It
was his attainments in literature, above all his other ac-
complishments,  notwithstanding the dark shades and
deep rooted vices of his character, that has cast a charm
around the memory and fame of Julius Caesar,  and it
was the ineffectual attempts of James the 1st, to figure
as an elegant author that sunk him into contempt.   By
an  intimacy with the writings of those who have felt
most strongly and naturally, and  thought most  deeply
and vigorously, we acquire a purity of feeling, an ele-
vation of sentiment and a dignity of character that will
generally prevent us from being tainted and poisoned by
the pestiferous  breath of moral or political  prostitu-
tion.
  To the existence of an original and a profound nation-
al literature, independence of thought and fearlessness
in the avowal and defence of principle are considered in-
dispensable.  These features have been regarded as pe-
culiarly pre-eminent in the  constitution of an intellectu-
al character. Indeed, so prevalent is this sentiment that
much extravagant eulogy has been  bestowed upon our
republican  form of government on account of its sup-
posed tendency to  develope and sustain  independence
and intrepidity in all our intellectual operations.   Much
as I would be delighted, could I believe this true,my par-
tialities shall not so far debauch me from my allegiance
to truth, as to  induce me to shrink  from attempting to
expose its fallacy.  It is an opinion that has not been de-
duced from observation,  and  cannot,  consequently be
sustained by an appeal to facts.  A little reflection would
have convinced those who have found in  this supposed
effect of our form of government occasion for hyperbo-
lical bursts of patriotic eloquence that  the tendency of
republics is directly averse to a bold, manly, and an un-
reserved expression of opinion.   This has proved to  bo 
[91 ]
invariably the result, at least, whenever democratic in-
stitutions have been prematurely introduced, as was the
case in France, or when injudicious  or intemperate ef-
forts have  been made  to  over-expand the demccratic
principle, as is the case, at the present lime, in the Uni-
ted States.  Between the  cringing courtier in the pel
ace, and the supple demrgogue en the stump, theie  is
but little difference.  The one flatters, and fawns,  cod
cheats  the  King—the other puffs, and premises,  *r.d
pledges, and gulls the people.  Compare the mean com-
pliance and fawning sycophancy—the vice excused or
defended-^-the dereliction  cf duly palliated or approved
—the inconsistency cf  conduct in morals and in  politics
reconciled and recommended, from which  the unseared
conscience must instinctively recoil, when  France was
a republic, with the stem,  unccurtly truths to which
Louis the  14th, that impatient and prodigal  despot,
was constrained to listen to, from  the lips of Bcssuet,
Massilon, Fenelon, and Bcurdaloue, when France was a
monarchy!  Where do we see  that masculine cast of
thought, and caustic severity  cf expression applied to
the follies, vices and inconsistencies cf these who  hold
places in the United  States, by those who  have already
received, or who  look up to them for office, as caused
the throne of Fiance to tremble, and drove the pcifde-
cus Henry the 8th,  of Erglcrd, ficm his bloody  pur-
pose; who, instead of sending Latimer to the stake, as
he had threatened, and as was his  fell purpose to do, af-
ter hearing that virtuous and undaunted prelate repeat
with additional force and  severity, his denunciations of
vices of which  the king was notoriously  guilty,  tcck
him into greater favor than  he enjoyed before.
   Where is the candidate for office who  dares remind
the people  of their vices  and cf their  fellies?   Who
will venture to  r  prove them  for their selfishness cr.d
their injustice?   Where is  the fearless minister of the
gospel who will  brave oppression by telling his parish-
ioners of the blackness of their perfidy, and the malig-
              7 
(52)
nity of their ingratitude ?   What  novelist, unmindful
of the persecution of Cooper, will venture to record the
treasonable suspicion that we are not the most refined
and elegant people  in  the  world ?   What patriot will
dare maintain that we are not the most moral  and reli-
gious—the most literary and scientific—the bravest and
most invincible people that omnipotence ever blessed, or
the sun ever shone upon ?
  Indeed, so far is this dastardly truckling to popular
opinion carried, that the aspiring politician submits with
extreme reluctance to the publication of his sentiments
clearly, explicitly and irrevocably expressed. When they
stand upon record he knows they may be brought up in
judgment against him,  after which, he will not find it so
easy, by shuffling and prevarication,to keep himself in the
"aura popularis," as when he is confronted by nothing
more than the hurried, perhaps misunderstood, and im-
perfectly recollected expressions of debate.  On an oc-
casion when  a young representative had  made a most
finished display  of parliamentary eloquence,  and was
requested to furnish a copy of it for publication, an aged
kinsman, hacknied and  practised in the ways of poli-
tics, and who had experienced much inconvenience on
account of his frequent changes cf opinion, advised him
to decline the honor, remarking  that it wras impossible
for  him to foresee how  long  it  would be expedient to
identify himself with the sentiments to which he had
given utterance in a burst of most impassioned oratory.
  The intolerance of party spirit in the United States
is such, and it results naturally from the peculiar char-
acter of our institutions, that we have reason to fear it
has tended very much to repress the exertions of genius
and talents  in  the cause of  tetters.  The obligation
which almost every  zealous partisan considers himself
under to condemn, where no  crime has been committed,
and to denounce, where no moral principle has been vio-
lat^tL simply because opinions have been expressed that
c^psree his  narty or personal interest, is so severe a re- 
[ 53]
flection on our justice and liberalty, as must cerrtainly
cool the ardor of authors of merit--as must very much
diminish their desire, if it does not so alarm their fears,
as to deter them from appearing before the public. The
disheartening clamor, and vulgar opposition which have
been too  often  excited, exclusively  on this ground,
against those who have dared to speak freely and frank-
ly, must doubtless have caused many writers to pause
and hesitate, with fear and trembling, before  they ven-
tured to vindicate their claims to respectability or their
right to reward.  When an author knows that  should he
refuse to  bend himself to the support  of absurd prin-
ciples, or to espouse tho  pretensions of an ignorant "co-
terie,"  partisan persecution, which rages in the United
States with the fiercest violence,  will  cause his senti-
ments to  be misrepresented  and caricatured—his mo-
tives to be impugned—his  style of composition to be
with illiberal severity criticised and unfeelingly condem-
ned, and himself made an object of provoking ridicule
and contempt, he  must not only  feel  conscious of the
possession of all the loftier elements of intellect, but he
must glow with a spirit that will spurn every difficulty,
and a courage that will conquer every disadvantage, if
the rich current of original and  independent thought is
not congealed.
   Where  a firmness and  rectitude of purpose which
cannot  be shaken by menaces, nor seduced by  the temp-
tations  of  power  are most  needed, we find  the most
questionable evidence of their existence.  The opinion
of the public is but little more than that of the public
journalists, and it rules  with a tyrant's despotism over
every interest in the country.  But who are they, that
assume the terrible responsibility of giving character to
public opinion ?  The hireling defenders  of party  and
the retained apologists of faction.   Does Augene so far
forget himself and his allegiance to the party to which
he has sworn fealty,  as to deny its infallibility and to
suggest the propriety of reform, he is at once ostracised 
                       CM  ]

 and pursued by all the furies of vengeance as a renegade
 and vagabond.  Does any one hearken to the advice gi-
 ven by Phoebus to Phaeton, "in medio tutissiman ibis,"
 and attempt to steor a middle course, ho is exposed  to
 the merciless cross-fire of contending factions.  Is any
 013an aristocrat  in sentiment?  he  is charged with a
 deure to lord it over and oppress the poor.  Does he de-
 fend the democracy ? he i3 denounced as  an agrarian,
 diorganizer ani anarchist.  Doc^ ho undertake to keep
 a strict eye over the m >rol 5 and manners of the public ?
 ho  will fin 1 vices ana* follies in all ranks of society suf-
 ficient to provoke thes3vore3t  censure, but woe to  him
 who diros to touch the sacred mantle of its infallibility
 ■—ho will certainly bo rewarded for hio toil by having
 conferred on him the c eonpiimentary cognomen of snarl-
 ing, malicious harranguer—-a cold,merciless and unfor-
 giving misanthrope.
  With all  the disadvantages under which they oper-
 ate, those that  conduct tho public press,  are perfectly
 familiar, and being impelled by the "res angusta domi,"
 they must either starve in the midst  of plenty, or pu-
 sill  loimously ani criminally dosert their duty and sub-
 mit without a murmur to the despotism of Dirty, what-
 ever may be the absurdity or the intolerance of its de-
 crees.   They must silence the  voice of  conscience,
 while they  listen  wilh breathless  subserviency to the
 dictates of faction; they must  deform anldisgiine  the
 truth, white they  gill  with seductive plausibility un-
 blushing falsehood; they must confer distinction upon
 others, (such as it is, and such as it ever will be, white
 derived from so foul a source,) while they do violence to,
 and degrade themselves:  they  must float quietly along
with the tide of unprincipled an:1 grasping selfishness,
ani make no attempt to-calm tho raging waves  of vice
 and folly, or to stem tho torrent of intemperate passion.
 coal automata, moved by the will of a master, or Swiss
  idiers, ready to fight under an^ banner, and willing  to,
 ce'iend any  cause. 
I WJ
  The sectional peculiarities, which are observed to
characterize the population of many  of the  States of
the Union, should  be mentioned  as amongst the causes
that have retarded our literature, and prevented it from
assuming a national character.  Before the war of in-
dependence the colonies had not banded together for any
common purpose.   Holding but  little intercourse with
each other, and differing in many instances in language
and  religion, there was but little community of senti-
ment or interest amongst them.  At that time it  is cer-
tain that nothing like a national character had been for-
med.  Ever since  the time when they confederated to-
gether in the cause of freedom, and became a separate
and  independent nation, they have been a refuge to the
unfortunate of every clime, and a sanctury to crimes of
every dye.  Within  the the limits of the United States,
we see representatives from  every quarter of the globe,
and hear the language of almost every latitude spoken.
Confirmed habits must therefore be assailed and over-
turned—ancient customs relinquished—new  modes of
thinking and feeling acquired—asperities  of character
softened and smoothed down—prejudices  removed  and
predilections forgotten, before the population cf  this
country can present an uniform  national arpect.   Nor
can any good reason be given for believing that this re-
sult may soon bo anticipated.  The same cause, which
has hitherto acted  to prevent it, is not only still in cpcr-:
ation, but seems in fact to increase in a reduplicating ra-
tio.  So long as this glorious republic shall last, and so
long as the governments of Europe shall find it to their
interest, from necessity or  inclination, to oppress the
people, so  long will  myriads continue to flock  to cur
shores in search of a home and of happiness, and so
long will it be unreasonable to expect that the popula-
tion  of this country will present  an  uniform character,
or harmonize with the beautiful  scenery over which it
is and will be scattered, or act in perfect concert with 
[  56 ]
 its social and political institutions.  Till then our hope**
 of a national literature must not be sanguine.
   There  is at this time no cause  that  operates more
 prejudicially to the interests of literature, than the com-
 plete conquest which the love of money has obtained
 over the affections.  No other desire is felt—no other
 is expressed.  No class of persons has escaped the fangs
 of its despotism.   Every rank in society feels its ma-
 lignant sway, and so clearly is it incorporated with eve-
 ry thought, word  and action, that no influence seems
 able to circumscribe or subvert it. Neither morality, re-
 ligion, or philosophy has been able  to prevent the most
 gifted minds in the land from worshipping at the shrine
 of a most unholy and  debasing  idolatry.   Those who
 should have been employed in responding to the insult-
 ing taunt, "In the four quarters of the globe who reads
 an American book? or  goes to an American play? or
 looks at an American picture or statue?  what does the
 world yet owe to American physicians and  surgeons?"
 have been blunting the keenest sensibilities, and prosti-
 tuting the most precious time and the  noblest, faculties
 to the ignoble service of commerce ; to speculating in
 lands; to gambling in stocks, and to time-serving in po-
 litics.
   So widely has the pestilence spread,  and so desolating
 has been the ruin  which it has scattered over all those
 glorious anticipations of  the future renown of our liter-
 ature, and which we should  not cease  to encourage so
 long as hope sheds one solitary cheering ray  on the sub-
ject, that it has already nearly deadened all  the vivaci-
 ty and extinguished nearly  all the  ardor of genius. If
 Napoleon, when he pointed the finger of scorn at Eng-
 land, and denounced her  as a nation of shopkeepers had
 included us in the same category, he would not have
treated us with injustice.  If Talleyrand, were to arise
 from the grave and visit us as he did nearly half a centu-
 ry ago, he would say now, if the  testimony of Marryat 
t«]
is to be credited, as  he said then, 4< I do  not know  an
American who has not sold his horse or his dog." Such
a state of society is very unlike that iu which military
propensities predominate, in which classical studies are
cultivated, and erudite speculations are encouraged.
   It is a fact, and it would be useless and absurd to at-
tempt its denial, that money has assumed an importance
in the United States which has never been ascribed to
it, nor experienced in  those countries which have been
rendered famous by military achievement, or illustrious
by the profundity of their philosophical, or by the splen-
dor of their poetical  literature.  Who can desire a more
striking  or conclusive exemplification of  the deep-root-
ed existence  of the spirit of sordidness than is to be
found in the fact that our laws actually suborn those not
proof against  bribery to betray  those who may have
been allied to them in  villainy, or, as often happens to
charge those with crime whose characters have never
been sullied even by imputation.   France, stained  by
the blood and disgraced by the horrors of rape and rev-
olution, would shrink with disgust from the use of means
which a tyrant would  blush openly to employ.
   When virtue is rewarded and  vice punished  by  the
giving and taking of money, the possession of it assumes
a  dignity and  an importance so overshadowing that the
former must necessarily soon cease to exist, and  the lat-
ter  to be restrained by the fear of  punishment.  The
exaction of a fine of those  whom opulence protects from
feeling the sacrifice, has  but little if any tendency  to
suppress the ebulitions of the depraved propensities, or
to moderate the violence  of rebellious passions.  The
principle, moreover, on which  it  is imposed, is  at war
with that equality of  rights  which should never cease
to exist amongst freemen. But if it should unfortunately
happen, it should  not  be permitted to grow out of the
fictitious superiority which wealth may  give one indi-
vidual over another.  There  is no justice in that law
which, for the commission of the same offence, doom* 
[»)
virtuous poverty to the toil and infamy of a work-hotise,
while opulent villainy is suffered to roam at large seek-
ing whom it may devour.
  '' Virtue should be its own reward," but  where is the
morality of those  malicious sneers which  are,  in the
newspapers, indignantly flung at those who, after hav-
ing received a favor from honesty, refuse to insult it by
the tender of pecuniary compensation.   Such is the ex-
travagant value  placed on  money  that  it  already
threatens to arrest every fine impulse of the  heart,
and  to extirpate every noble  sentiment of the soul.
No deed of generosity, disinterestedness, magnanimi-
ty, or mere honesty is performed without the authors of
it being at once insulted with the proffer X)f money, and
whether refused, as it ever will be by the honorable and
highminded, or accepted, as it ever will be, by the grov-
elling, greedy, and mercenary, all obligation is forever
cancelled-.  The noblest acts are thus reduced by  the
spirit of avarice to the level with the vulgarest transac-
tions.  The consciousness cf having  acted nobly—cf
having dealt justly, or of having performed even a du-
ty, is not regarded as a sufficient motive to, or adequate
reward for, uprightness of conduct;  while, to refund
money fraudulently embezzled is enough to obviate eve-
ry stain—to re-establish a character for honesty, and to
restore to such confidence as interested avarice is capa-
ble  of reposing.
  Literature cannot be  made to spring out of every
soil, or to bloom and flourish in the ripeness of vigorous
maturity in every  clime.   This happens only  amongst
those who have made considerable progress in civiliza-
tion and in the cultivation of letters,  and  at those re-
markable epochs when great events call out the sublime
energies of stupendous minds.  Under such circumstan-
ces, it not only flourishes, but rt subjects the intemper-
ance of passion to the dominion  of reason:  and this
supposes the existence of a strong sense of justice,—a
lively sensibility to moral and physical beauty,  and a 
(59)
lofty sentiment of admiration of great and ennobling ac-
tions.  Then  it  is that literature agitates all the stag-
nant sensibilities of the heart, and awakens all the dor-
mant faculties of the roul; then it cxcits en ir.fvjcnce
which no opposition can  resist and which no revulsion
can overthrow.
  How widely different is this state of things frcm that
which obtains in a community where money is the God
of their idolatry!   Those who compose it will be found
perfectly deaf to every appeal, however earnest and mo-
ving, that does not bring some sensual gratification, pro-
misethe promotion of some sordid interest, or the achiev-
ment of some selfish end.  Bewildered  by the gaudy
pomp of ostentatious display, they would not exchange
one day of sensual enjoyment for years  of the highest
seasoned and  most refined  intellectual pleasure; they
would not relinquish one single source cf gross, grovel-
ing self-indulgence  to have their names recorded high in
the annals of  deathless fame.   Lulled into the languors
of luxurious ease, they are strangers to every sentiment
that is generous or ennobling in its nature.  Of the emo-
tions of private benevolence, their  hearts arc  as  ig-
norant as their  minds are incapable of comprehending
the necessity  and importance of pubiic-rpiiitod munifi-
cence.  To yield to the impulses of the  former or em-
brace the sublimating views cf the latter, they would
consider the blind extravagance of  wanton prodigality.
   White superfluous and unwieldy  wealth produces a
neglect of the claims of literature, it fosters a taste for
the gross allurements of taste and smell.  The high, ra-
tional and satisfying enjoyments of those  who delight in
the solitude of study, or the acclamations that hail the
triumphs of successful genius,  are regarded by those
whom wealth enables to indulge their sensual  inelina-
tions, as a mere  mortmain, or a tinkling symbol. To be
encircled by the glittering and fluctuating  blandishments
of high life, is sufficient  to  realize the highest hopes of
the most ambitious, and these have been  so diversified^
              8 
[60)
and have  been carried to such a degree of refinement,
that they minister in the completest manner to "recher-
che" wants of the most fastidious.  The senses, thus
beset with the most captivating seduccments, the mind
must be,  by the excessive indulgence of the  corporeal
faculties,  deprived of its energy, and  the fancy of its
fervor and vivacity.
  Not only has literature lost its attractions  in the ea-
ger pursuit of money, but the prevailing  spirit  of the
age has caused the public mind to be actually hostile to
it.  The cultivation of letters has not only ceased to be
an  honorable  and a dignified employment,  but has
become decidedly disreputable.  Instead of promoting
his interest, the votary of literature will find that so soon
as it is ascertained that his time is employed exclusive-
ly in endeavoring to enlarge the sphere of'knowledge, his
hopes of worldly advancement will be  blasted.  Such,
indeed,  is the degradation to which men of letters are
reduced, that unless  the proudest spirits,  glowing with
the fires of immortal genius, will descend from the lefty
peaks of Parnassus,  to mingle in the conflicts of an in-
ferior order of beings; unless they will tread the crowd-
ed thoroughfares  of business, and  lose themselves  in
the tumultuous intercourse of an  agitated  city, they
are set down as brainlessvisionaries, whom insti uction
cannot enlighten nor interest reclaim from  the dominion
of distempered fancy.   He who dares  to sport in the
fairy fields of  imagination—to create around him poet-
ry's pleasing images—to live in ''his own green world of
thought," wholly disqualifies himself, in the eyes of the
vulgar public to engage with success in the common con-
cerns of life.  How gross, greedy, and grovelling is this
absurdity!  Because the mind blazes into the celestial
fire of genius, and has been rescued  from  the thraldom
of ignorance and prejudice by the polite and elegant ac-
complishments of literature, is it unfitted for the ordi-
nary duties and responsibilities of commen men ?  Is he
who has made mankind  his study—who  has analyzed 
                       [  SIJ

his intellectual and moral nature—who takes compre-
hensive views of passing events—who can reveal the se-
crets of the future in consequence of his intimacy with
the eventful history of the past, necessarily incompetent
to the  task of understanding and practising the vulgar
details of business ? Nc man who is capable of the sim-
plest effort of thought would maintain it, and yet it is
the conclusion to which the tradesman's logic leads him,
and from his decision, in this mercenary age, there is no
appeal.  He who feels proud of his tuneful capacities,
and would rise into the regions of fancy, or soar into the
empyrean fields of thought, must curb the unholy desire,
—must repress his yearnings after the proud trophies
of renown,—must crush a spirit that is superior to the
charms and allurements of wealth,—and must manacle
and pinion down in obscurity that  sublimity and rich-
ness of imagination that  would fill immensity with its
glory,  to become a dull, plodding and pains-taking being.
He must submit to see literature proscribed and genius,
that might have soared to a flight as high as that of Ho-
mer, and have blazed;  with a splendor as heavenly as
that of Milton, ostracised and driven from the heights of
Parnassus by the withering sneer of the stupid shaver,
or the cruel persecution of the unprincipled usurer,  be-
fore whom j in:this financial age, society moulds its bland-
est complexions, with a cringing sycophancy that would
disgrace the utmost excesses of oriental adulation.  For
whom  are these sacrifices to be made ?   For those who
believe that the highest thought not immediately con-
vertible into gold, is more valueless than the basest coun-
terfeit ; for muck-worms  who are "of the earth, earthy"
—for specimens of humanity, from whom God's image
and inscription has been worn, and whom, when he calls
them to a fearful responsibility, he will scarcely be able
to recognize for his own.
   Though  the injury which literature is experiencing,
from the belief that its  pursuits and those of business
are incompatible, is undeniably great; reflection evinces 
                      [«J
that it is not founded in reason, and history demonstrates
by a great number of the most illustrious facts, that it
ois not been deduced from observation.  The wisdom cf
ojlcmon has never been questioned, and yet he was the
aumor of the Canticles; great as Demosthenes was as
an orator, he is not  less celebrated as a practical states-
man ; Julius Cao<ar  was not the less  able as a general,
because he had the capacity to leave in his elegant and
finished account of his campaigns a monument of his
none as an author;  Cicero won as many laurels  at the
bar as he did in his study; Shakspeare was equal as a
theatrical manager, and superior as a dramatic poet, to
any of his successors; Milton was nearly as well kncwii
in the ago in which he flourished as a politician, as he is
at present as a poet; Lorenzo de Medici and Sir  Wm.
Forbes were as famous for their literary and scientific
attainments, as they were for their financial talents ; no
one will question the regal abilities of old Frederick  of
Prusrhi, Catharine  the 2d  of  Russia,  or Elizabeth cf
Engvmd, because they devoted  much time to liteiary
composition; Lord Chesterfield was  aspclhbcd a  cour-
tier as any member of the  Regent's ccuit, and nlso a ve-
ry voluminous  classical writer; Sheridan,  though the
author of  some of the finest comedies in any lanrurge
was as able a debater as any man  in the British House
of Commons;  posterity does not esteem Franklin  the
loss highly as a business man because we admire his lit-
erary lain  rs,  and  honor  his  scientific achievements;
Count Ruaoford was nearly as able as an officer in  the
held,  as he was successful in the cultivation of science ;
! Viny: Aikenside was an excellent practical physician,
eis Pleasures of the Imagination combme as much fine
feeling, rich imagery, classical elegance, and sweetness
of versification as any didactic peem of the same extent
in the English language;  Goethe,  though sublime as a
poet, was able as a practical anatomist; Ccbbett was
the ablest  writer and the best* farmer in  the British
House of Commons; John Quincy Adams is the most 
[63]
business and the most literary rnan in Congress; and
M-irryatt is an  experienced sea-captain and an elegant
author.  Illustrations  might  be  easily multiplied,  but
enough surely have been adduced to satisfy ycu not on-
ly that  it is absurd but invidious and cruelly unjust, to
allege that merely because a man may have literary pre-
dilections, he is therefore disqualified for business.
  That a pure literature is patriotism's most steadfast
friend  I think you are hardly disposed to doubt, after
what has already been urged upon that point; and that
wealth, the common enemy of both morals and tetters,
is its irreconcilable  and exterminating foe we shall not
find difficult to establish.  Superabundant affluence, un-
anointed by the ameliorating influence cf polite accom-
plishments in literature, and the substantial attainments
in science invariably produces an irresistible  desire to
in lulgo in the voluptuous enjoyments of luxury.  These
are purely sensual and selfish in  their nature, and turn
thought, feeling and action exclusively upon  those ef-
feminate pleasures which minister to personal  gratifica-
tion.   Just in the ratio that this effect is produced,  do
wo find the intellectual powers weakened, and  the con-
trol of  the moral faculties over human conduct dimin-
ished.   As the barriers which oppose the free expan-
sion of the soul are  multiplied will it be found difficult
to soften and humanize the heart,—to awaken the kind-
lier sympathies of human  nature,—to purify the social
affections,—to teach self-denial and self-control, and to
inspire love to God and good will to man.
  Amongst those who have become effeminate by emas-
culating debauchery, truth and  candor,  integrity  and
virtue  cannot long exist, and  their degradation  will go
on increasing, with  a  frightful impetuosity, until such
excellence will he regarded as the  ridiculous fancies of
an ignorant and obsolete age.  Long, however, before
dereliction of principle reaches this point, a servile and
sycophantic philosophy, which, yielding to and flatter-
ing the vices that prevail, will not only be popular with 
[ 04 i
those infected with wealth's inglorious vanities, but it
will be their exclusive rule of action.
  Love of country will, in a republic, long be able to re-
strain  within endurable bounds, the gross excesses and
insolent exactions of the affluent.   The tendency of
these, however,  instead of diminishing, is daily to in-
crease, until at length too powerful to be operated on by
patriotic considerations, opulent selfishness will obtrude
its sordid front  in unwashed  baseness.   Devotion to
country is then transformed into devotion to self, when
the idea of sacrificing personal interest to public pros-
perity will be denounced as an enthusiastic and canting:
absurdity.
  When a people has become so enervated by the refine-
ments of luxury, and degraded by the debauchery of
voluptuous depravity, as to be dead to shame, and de-
funct in gratitude, which an abandonment of the public
interest evidently implies, they will palliate and excuse
the dangerous encroachments of arbitrary power; they
will suffer right after right to be tamely surrendered as
scarcely  worth defending; they will see  the privileges
of the many merged in the usurped prerogatives of the
few,  without, a murmur or complaint, and when, at last,
morals and manners have become alike corrupt and em-
broiled, they will not hesitate  to tolerate, nor blush to
defend a court disgraced  by corruption,—polluted by
lust,—enervated  by  every species of  emasculating re-
finement,  and stained  by every  hue of sanguinary
crime.
  The gaudy pomp and show of wealth has so fired the
imagination  and  conquered the affections, that the peo-
ple are without difficulty taken in the toils of every glit-
tering scheme, whether it be the suggestion of knavery
or the vision of enthusiasm.  That  steadfastness of
mind,  simplicity of heart,  and  rectitude of purpose
which  so remarkably characterized  our ancestors, and
which  secured them against the encroachments of fraud
and the delusions of distempered fancy, have fallen into 
[65]
desuetude.  The stern principles of  an uncomplying
morality, which they not only respected but scrupulous-
ly observed, are looked  upon as the stupid errors and
vulgar prejudices of an unenlightened age, and he who
avows or defends them is considered antiquated and pu-
ritanical.  The consequence of which is that visions, as
wild and impracticable  as ever charmed the eye of an
enthusiast, are eagerly adopted, and acted upon with as
much confidence as if they were demonstrated truths.
Nor  is  this wild and feverish excitement to engage in
wild and ruinous speculations, confined to any particular
walk of life.   We daily  see or hear the most alarming
proofs of it in  the political, commercial,  agricultural,,
and  domestic spheres of operation.   In  government
those entrusted with  power are seen to engage  in the
perilous adventures of untried policy;  in commerce re-
course is had to unfamiliar and rarely successful expe-
dients ;  in agriculture extravagant speculations,  which
the sober would not entertain, and which have already
led to incredible ruin ; and, in  domestic life, an excess
of extravagance, which prudence and economy if con-
sulted would  have resisted, has destroyed the peace and
 corrupted the principles of thousands.
    Have we not reason to apprehend from this intempe-
rate zeal in the pursuit of worldly advantage the most
alarming and disastrous consequences.  Morals will be
 deteriorated,—the bonds of society loosened if not torn
 asunder,—the  influence of religion impaired,  and  the
 government itself corrupted.  Amidst the shock of jar-
 ring  and conflicting interests—the broils and ferments of
 contending and rival factions, the retired walks of sci-
ence and literature will be, if  they  have not already
 been, forsaken for the crowded highways of life; those
 great institutions, in which learning at present scarcely
 finds a refuge, will be overturned by the levelling spirit
 of a jealous and infuriated populace, and religion will be
 degraded to a vulgar trade, the object of which will be
 to confirm  instead  of removing the prejudices  of the 
[66]
selfish—to inflame instead of subduing the unruly pas-
sions of the sensual.
   Have we not already had a bitter foretaste cf the de-
termined  and desperate spirit which will  pervade the
land if human conduct is not regulated  upon a princi-
ple different from that which  controls it at  present, in
the numorous dangerous and fatal rencounters that take
place with alarming frequency in almost every city in
the union; in the horrid murders that come to us from
all quarters by every mail;  the numerous assassinations
with which, within a few years, our country has been
disgraced; in the murders and  assassinations which
have been perpetrated  even in our courts of law  and
halls of legislation; in the  destruction of property of
every species without adequate  cause or provocation :
in the violent resistance to the decrees of law,  by the
banded and infuriated  multitude :  in the unauthorized
and inexcusable intemperance of  certain States with the
domestic institutions of ethers : in the infliction of the
most  cruel, shameful and ignominious punishments en
individuals often innocent cf the alledgcd offences, not
only without the sanction, but in open defience cf the
law:  in the  frightful and reckless waste of human life,
on our waters, which has become too common to excite
interest or to provoke a passing  remark: in the arson,
burglary, highway en 1 st: eet robberies that have been so
frequently perpetrated with impunity, as to occasion no
surprise, but  rather  to encourage  their  repetition: in
the vice that openly boasts of its profligacy: in the li-
centiousness that seeks concealment more for conven-
ience than from a consciousness of guilt;  in the numer-
ous domestic broils and flue's, ard in the facility  and
frequency with which connubial engagements are dissol-
ved.
   Surely the mind must shrink with terror and amaze-
ment, and the  heart must  sicken with  sorrow at the
wide  spread moral  desolation  that overshadows the
land: at the dark clouds of harm that  sit lowering 
[67]
around our future prospects.   When we refer to these
ancient governments that flourished in all the strength
of reason and intelligence—that swayed in all the ma-
jesty of undisputed power the destinies of empire—that
shed forth the brilliant and unsullied lustre of noontide
splendor—and that flung far  into the distant future the
light and blaze of their glory  and example, we find that
so long as the people resisted the gross allurements of
sense; so long as the heart was net sullied by the guilt
of sensuality; so long as the public administration was
not debauched by the refinements of depravity, so long
no serious accident endangered—no reverse cempromit-
ed—no disaster overthrew public prosperity or private
happiness.  But whenever a  people sinks into an effem-
inate luxury, and the love o( money prevents the benev-
olent feelings from  sweetly dilating themselves ;  when-
ever profligacy enkindles the dissolute affections;  when-
ever vice  exposes manners to the blighting influence of
corrupt associations; and whenever the government, in-
stead of feeling a generous concern  for,  endeavors by
faithlessness, prodigality, or  profligacy to heighten and
exasperate the miseries of mankind, civil liberty  has
ceased to  shed its blessings and national power to exert
its usual sway*  In the decline and final overthrow of
all those governments, which ceased to be restrained by
virtue and guided by wisdom, do we not see prefigured
the decay of our beloved institutions—the decline of
our social prosperity—the irredeemable  forfeiture  of
our political independence, and the  demon  of discord
and violence shaking to pieces all that was cemented by
the purest blood  of patriotism, and  sweeping a land
whose deeds must live  in  immortal remembrance with
the besom of indiscriminate disaster*
  The ascendancy  which pecuniary importance has ob-
tained over the minds of men operates unfavorably to
high efforts of genius, by the  insignificance to which it
necessarily reduces those who cultivate letters.   In no
                   9 
[68]
other country in  the  world are native men of letters
treated with so little  consideration  or respect  as they
are in the ordinary intercourse of society in the United
States.  The "millionaire" not only gives tone to socie-
ty, though  he may  have studied  delicacy of senti-
ment, and elegance of manners at the butcher's block,
and have been trained to a nice sense of pride, and to a
true and noble sort of honor in the hostry, but takes the
unwarrantable liberty of treating the  most intellectual
and accomplished men in the country with the arrogant
insolence of familiarity, and the ostentatious pride  of
condescension.  Such degradation of the dignity of ge-
nius goes far to deprive society  of  that charm  which
men of cultivated minds would throw around it, and  to
tarnish that lustre which literature would shed upon  it.
  Successful bankers, brokers and tradesmen have ob-
tained complete ascendency in the estimation of the pub-
lie.  By the force  of  money thay have awed men into
an unconditional  subserviency  to their purposes that
could scarcely be looked for in the passive slave or the
enlisted soldier.   In every sphere of life, from thejjiost
hotiorabls to the most exalted, and in every profession,
from the niost unhallowed to the most holy, we see a
truckling to the money changers, the most disgraceful
to the dignity of human nature, and the most degrading
to the pride of the human understanding.  Though  as
awkward as if born with two left hands, and as blunt as
if parading the stables of  Tastersals, they command in
the saloon an  homage that would flatter the vanity of a
Corinthian of the first water amongst the most fashion*
able.   Such men, and they constitute the  greater part
of the male portion of what is called "good society,"
having contracted habits of thought, and of feeling that
exclude them  from all intimate  communion with those
whose pursuits have been  conducted in the elegant re-
tirement of literary and philosophical leisure, and being
incapable of appreciating/ or even of understanding 
[ «9 J
them, it is not surprising that they do not place a high
value on their labors, or that they rather  tolerate than
desire or court their society.
  Such men are the blight and mildew of our social
system.   Under their administration, society icoses its
life and elasticity; all that elegant ease and vivacity of
manner so characteristic of, and which casts such a se-
ductive brilliancy around the  best  European society.
They carry  into the social circle those  topics of vulgar
conversation which engage the  thoughts,—constitute
the subjects of discussion and competition in the busy
places of  men, and on  the highways  of life.   There
your ears are constantly stunned by the busy din of the
Rialto, the  Bourse,  and the  Exchange.  Of the lan-
guage  of  polished society they are, generally speaking,
as ignorant  as they are of the  language  of the inhabit-
ants of Georgium  Sidus.  They forget, but I beg par-
don, they  never heard, that the social circle is common
ground, on which all men meet on a footing of common
equality,  and where it is expected that the lawyer will
come without his brief, the merchant without his ledg-
er, the farmer without his spade, and the physician with-
6ut his drugs.  People should unite in society  for the
purpose of cultivating learning and good feeling; cool-
ing the ardor of party excitement; soothing the rival
spirit that rages with too  much violence amongst the
members  of the same profession; obliterating the cold-
ness and indifference  which is  apt to grow up between
men who  are in pursuit of different and opposing inter-
ests ; removing the barriers to social intercourse which
exclusive  habits are almost certain to erect; and rubbing
off  the asperities of life,, that society may be reduced
to an even and polished surface.
  How are these objects to be  accomplished ?  How
are we to  draw off" attention from those sordid and vul-
gar cares, low and grovelling interests, enervating plea-
sures and degrading intrigues  which business men ob-
trude into private society ?  By giving intellect that as- 
[70]
ccndancy to which it is entitled; by encouraging a taste
for refined, elegant and scientific pursuits; by purifying
manners; by softening, refining and elevating the affec-
   nn and by rendering it  more fashionable to have
 nines  well stored with knowledge than purses well lined
with gold.
   But our hopes on this subject are not very sanguine.
The deep rooted passion for ostentatious display cannot
to easily  eradicated.  Those who have  the ascendancy
will, if possible, retain it, for power like the dagger of
Macbeth, invites the willing imagination to grasp it, al-
though it may be as unworthy to wield it. Unfortunate
is the present organization cf society, and difficult and
dangerous will be the  task of him who attempts its re-
formation.  Upon a better footing, however, it must be
placed, before literature, enlivened by the vivid flashes
of a sportive fancy  and steadied in  its course of pro-
gressive improvement, by the sound admonitions of  en-
lightened  reason, will be able t,o  impart  to it an exem-
plary and unblemished character, or  to shed such glory
on the  country as will dazzle and delight the wonciering
eye.  The degraded state to which meu of letters are
reduced in the social circle, and which almost amounts
to an exclusion of them  from it, operates as, an insuper-
able barrier to rapid literary advancement.   They feel
that they  are insulated  beings, awakening neither the
interest, the sympathy,  nor the admiration of the mass
of gross  mortality in the midst of which they merely
vegetate.  This being the case, it is not surprising that
but few should attempt to force their  way to permanent
renown by the exclusive  cultivation of letters, or that
many of those who engage in  the enterprise, should
cense to be bewildered by their  fascinations, after hu-
miliating experience has convinced them, as it certainly
wiii, that  the  highest intellectual excellence will bring
b;jt little honor, glory  or emolument.   The brief histo-
•v of Amnican literature already furnishes many facts
 chkh j.rote that a number of those who had been smit- 
[71 ]
ten with the ardent love  of classical and ancient lore,
and who blazed with the fire of true genius, relinquished
pursuits of philosophy and literature  long  before the
mind had even reached its  meridian  splendor;  before
the taste had been matured and refined by exercise,and
before any noble or enduring monument had been erect-
ed  in the commonwealth  of letters, and that too, for
some more profitable and palpable, though less rational
and dignified means of personal advancement.  So nu-
merous are the ways of pecuniary  aggrandizement, and
so seducing are the temptations with which  wealth has
been  invested, by a laxity of morals, and a mean ser-
vility of manners, that he who is superior to the former,
or has firmness enough to resist the allurements of the
latter, must feel the fire of genius glow within him with
uncommon  ardor.   Few  have the courage  to pine in
hopeless  beggary on the very summit  of  Parnassus,
while thousands who never felt a  noble impulse, or ex-
pressed a generous sentiment are wallowing in wealth
in the vale below.
   Having already  adverted  at considerable length to
the various ways in which  avarice injuriously  affects
literature, we would close the consideration of this part
of our subject, by propounding a question to which we
trust those whose hearts have been polluted  by its de-
basing lust, may be able to return a more consoling and
satisfactory answer than has occurred  to us.  The be-
nighting  influence of the reigning passion is confessed
on all hands—it is seen in every action, and is illustra-
ted in every enterprise, from the most trivial to the most
important —but what, I would inquire, do those who are
in the practice of the unholy and debasing idolatry pro-
pose to accomplish by the unwieldy fortunes which ma-
ny of them succeed in amassing ?   Is it that they may
retire, after having expended the years of mature man-
hood, in the perturbing enterprises of business, "otium
cum dignitate ?"   The expectation is as unreasonable
as  it is evidently unrealizable.  To ingraft  the refine- 
[71)
 ments of retired, tranquil enjoyment,  upon the  active
 and engrossing habits of pecuniary accumulation, is ut-
 terly impracticable.   Or do they hope,  that having had
 to submit in their own persons to the inconvenience of
 labor and the coarse privations of poverty, to be enabled
 to place their children above the necessity of the;former
 and the humiliation of the latter ?  Such objects would
 be aimed at by gross undisciplined minds only, and they
 are often the most remote from them, when they fancy
 themselves to be most closely  in their proximity.   The
 lazy and luxurious votaries of sensual pleasure, may, in
 early life, revel in the delights of opulent ease until
 they often become, even before age has shed its sterile
 scars upon their brows,  the  signalized  illustrations of
 succorless poverty, and of redemptionless pollution. Or,
 finally,  do they look  to enjoy the proud satisfaction of
 seeing their sons in possession of the honors and digni-
 ties  of  the government.  So far as money is adequate
 to the accomplisment of their hopes the wildest fancies
 may be gratified.  They forget, however, if they ever
 knew, that a knowledge of the science  of government
 and legislation,  together with the sciences of political
 economy and jurisprudence  are not to be learned by
 those whose youth is spent in idleness and dissipation.
 If, therefore, ever mastered, it will be,  only by minds
 that have been trained to investigation  by strict  disci-
 pline, and thoroughly imbued with profound elementary
 knowledge, submitting their faculties to the assiduous
toil of years.  That the sons  of the  opulent  will not
 bring minds to their study strengthened and sharpened
by previous cultivation, is evident to all  those who have
watched their career through college.  They are reared
up under auspices the  most unpropitious  to habits of
close application, and, as a natural consequence, to the
acquisition of that knowledge which is so indispensable,
and the developement  of those qualities which  are so
important a  preparation  to the proper  government of
men.  Commanding without exertion, all the comforts 
(78)
and elegancies  of affluence, it would be demanding of
them more than human nature is able to perform, to ex-
pect that they should submit to a severe course of mor-
al and  intellectual discipline.   It  would be to expect
that an  African slave should labor for his master like a
Roman  soldier for victory and empire;  it  would be to
look in  a pampered  eastern despot, whose every want
has been gratified, and every pleasure flattered, for the
beauty  and courage, the swiftness and strength, of  A-
chilles.   The sons of opulence, like  the lilies, "they toil
not, neither do they spin," but, verily, they are not ar-
rayed like Solomon in all his glory.   An unfruitful and
unprincipled manhood, succeeds in most cases, to an idle
and  crapulous youth, and how, from such a seed-time
should a harvest be expected of legislative or any other
kind of wisdom ?
   Those who  have been  nursed  in  the  enervating
arms of luxurious indulgence, will necessarily be train-
ed  to  habits  of acting and  of thinking, which  are
sure to entail  on them an ignorance which instruc-
tion cannot enlighten, a profligacy which morality can-
not reform, and a latitudinarianism which religion will
not be able to convert.   In  the intercourse of social re-
finement they will prove as incapable of enjoying their
ancestral affluence, as they will be to restrain the trans-
ports of passion, or to repress the violent  ebulitjons of
gross insolence or brutal severity.   Having lived with
the  associates of Cataline, they often become  profi-
cient debauchees, but never sages.   Though they may
have enjoyed every opportunity of education, and have
been stimulated by  every  incentive of example, they
will rarely gratify the cherished hopes of  an indulgent
father,  or realize the irrepressible aspirations of a fond
and ambitious mother, who, too often, has occasion in the
union of a fortunate daughter to the brilliant destiny of
an accomplished and able man, to exclaim with Corne-
lia, "How long shall I be known as the mother-in-law
of Scipio, and not as the mother of the Gracchi ?" with- 
[74]
out the assurance which  Tiberius and Caius gave hef
that the period was not distant.
  Who are the men that have figured on the political
stage of this great confederacy ?  The offspring of af-
fluence and the nurslings of elegance and ease ?  No—
most assuredly ?   The men who have shone with lustre
bright and unsullied, sprang from an origin the most un-
enviable, and  from parents the most pennyless; men
who, pressed by want,  forced their way  over every ob-
stacle—subdued every disadvantage, and raised them-
selves to the highest stations  of distinction and emolu-
ment, while those unacquainted with the pangs of pov-
erty, and unaccustomed to the sneer of contempt, were
crawling along the cool, ignoble vale of private life, bend-
ing the supple hinges of  the knee to those  with whom
they scorned  association in the halcyon days  of boy-
hood.
  Those countries in which literature has flourished to
the highest perfection, were remarkable for the distin-
guished respect which was paid those who cultivated it.
Instead of treating them  with that  cold  and repulsive
indifference which, in  the  United States,  congeals
thought and extinguishes  the fire of genius, they receiv-
ed such honors as are the  best  calculated to stimulate
them to exertion, and to render them impatient of in-
glorious rest.  Both Greece and Rome owe all their ce-
lebrity to the homage which they paid to intellectual su-
periority.   Throughout all those countries in Europe in
which literatue flourishes, men of letters are respected
and honored.  In England, in particular, talents are ap-
preciated, attainments are admired.  Enter Westmin-
ster Abbey, that ancient pile, rendered venerable by the
lapse of more  than a dozen centuries, and you will not
see the tombs  of Beings, but monuments which the en-
lightened gratitude of a noble nation has erected to the
fame  of those illustrious men  who have covered her
with glory, as  was to have been seen of yore, those of
the Sophocles' and Plato's of Athens.  Well am I con- 
[ 75 ]
vinced that the sight of such enduring tokens of regard
for men of genius have enkindled the undying flame of
ambition in many a heart, and have caused the remains
of more than one man of sublime mental energies to be
deposited in consecrated ground that would  otherwise
have died, in all probability, unnoticed and unsung.  See-
ing,  then, the wide*difference there is between Great
Britain  and the United States in regard to  the honor
that  is paid to celebrated men of letters, should we  be
surprised that those few distinguished individuals, who
have redeemed us from scorn in  the estimation of Eu-
rope, should fly from the contaminating contact of those
vulgar prejudices which degrade them at home, not on-
ly to indulge communion  with congenial spirits,  but to
take that station in society to which they are entitled,
and which they know a liberal  and enlightened people
will not deny them.  Franklin is much  more indebted
for the brilliant fame he enjoys with posterity, to the un-
divided  applause of Europe, than  to the eulogistic no-
tices which his countrymen have taken of him.   Even
Washington, who should live in the affections of every
heart, has had the charm of a most attractive brilliancy
thrown around his name by some  of the most eloquent
orators  and splendid  poets of England.  Hear what
Franklin  said to  him  in one of his letters in 1780:—
" Should peace arrive, after another  campaign or two,
and afford us a little leisure, I should  be happy  to see
your Excellency in Europe, and to accompany you, if
my age  and  strength would permit, in visiting some of
its most ancient and famous kingdoms.   You would, on
this side the sea,  enjoy the great reputation you  have
acquired, pure and free from those little slanders  that
the jealousy and envy of a man's countrymen and co-
temporaries are ever endeavoring to cast  over living me-
rit.  Here you would know and enjoy  what posterity
would say of Washington; for a thousand leagues have
nearly the same effect  as a thousand years.  The feeble
voice of those grovelling  passions cannot extend so  far
            10 
[ 76 1
either  in time or distance."   For what does  Irving
stand indebted to  his countrymen ?   For their  stupid
neglect and opprobrium in the first place, and afterwards
for the senseless  repetition of praises, which had been
covered by the frost of many English winters.   Such
conduct must be regarded not only as insolent, but in-
sulting,  When our newspaper  critics hailed his  tri-
umphs with acclamation,  after Byron had pronounced
him as an English classic, second only to Scott,  it re-
minded us of the impudence of Horace Walpole, who
pretended to discover  that Johnson had sense.   Why
should Cooper feel grateful  to the American public ?
The 'lustre of his genius, in its first  bright dawnings,
dazzled  not the vulgar, nor pleased the judicious eye.
But, after England had stamped his Spy with the seal
of public and palpable approval, he  was considered a
writer of distinguished ability.  Now, however, because
he has too much independence, and too sacred a regard
for truth, to flatter the insatiable vanity of his country-
men, he is set down as a dolt  and a driveller.   Their
stupid second-hand praise, or their malicious disparage-
ment, will not add to, nor subtract from his permanent
reputation.  Posterity, far removed from the sphere of
personal feeling, and personal influence, will do him jus-
 tice.
   The state of the book-trade in the United States is
unpropitious to the exertion of native talent, and, con-
 sequently  to the developement of a high literature.
 Editions of new English books issue from the American
 press  in regular uninterrupted succession.  Scarcely a
<day passes by, without the table of thefscholar being
 graced by a copy of some work, the production of for-
 eign genius.   To many  of these, superiority has been
 enfeoffed, and for the American mind, under its peculiar
 and oppressive disadvantages, to expect successfully to
 compete with them would be scarcely less frantic than
 hopeless.  They generally come from men of great in-
 tellectual capacity., of deep learning,  of pure and refined 
r  -i i
taste, who have, for many years, breathed a purely lit-
erary atmosphere, and have lived in the midst of circum-
stances the best calculated to give great quickness,  ac-
curacy and delicacy in all matters of intellectual taste.
To equal  them would be flattering to the  pride  of the
most exalted amongst us, but to surpass them at present
would  be  impossible^
   The republication in the United States of such works
as we  have just  referred to, costs the  book-seller no-
thing more than  the paper and press work, the conse-
quence of which is, that unless the American author can
afford  to write gratuitously, those engaged in the book
trade will wage against him ungenerous and oppressive
hostility.   No matter what may be the merit of his pro-
duction—no matter though  he brandish the  Olympic
thunder of Homer, and crowd his pages with those sub-
lime conceptions that fill and astonish the mind, he will
not float  gracefully and buoyantly on the tide of popu-
lar favor, unless some influential publisher condescends
to take him under his patronage.  To obtain this indis-
pensable  advantage, an author must gratuitously tender
his lucubrations, or sell the copy-right for a trifle.
   Extensive as is his agency in the cruel oppression un-
der which native talent groans, it should not be ascribed
exclusively to the publisher of books.  The public not
only connives at their proscription  of domestic talent,
but is led, both by inclination and interest, to encourage
and perpetuate it.  Works  of British' production are
reprinted in the  United States without  a single stiver
going into  the pockets of their authors ;  consequently
they are  furnisned to the public at a much cheaper rate,
and the publisher receives a much  more satisfactory
 profit, than if native literature were encouraged, and
 native genius  rewarded.
   By encouragement of  native learning, however, we
 do not mean the publication and approval of every at-
 tempt at literature that may happen to have the singu-
 lar  bad fortune to be cf American origin.   Authors are 
r <*  i
nunierous, and many of them fill their  volumes with
such a tawdy and ridiculous parade of swaggering non-
sense, that they deserve more to share the fate of poor
Cinna, the poet, who was kilted by Mark  Anthony's
mob,  for making bad verses, than they do to be gracious-
ly entrenched in the estimation of the public as men of
tetters.  We too frequently find the phrase "encourage-
ment  of native literature" confounded with the  indiscri-
minate praise of every performance, without regard to
peculiar and individual merits, which the ignorance or
cupidity of authors may think fit to palm upon  the pub-
lic. Than this,  no  more effetcual means could be adopt-
ed to  repress the exulting pride of conscious talents, or
to cause the paradoxical ravings  of  weird  and mystic
theorizing to be confounded with that pregnancy of  im-
agination and elegance of language which place an au-
thor high  in the ranks of literature.  When works of
every grade of  merit are amalgamated in the  melting
furnace of overheated patriotism, real genius  becomes
disgusted and disheartened, and no longer finds  an inex-
haustible fund of delight in the calm retirement of undis-
sipated and philosophical leisure.   Such conduct would
argue either a want of sagacity to discriminate  peculiar
claims to admiration, or the existence of an unauthori-
zed and imbecile lenity  towards lucubrations as insane
as the ravings of Robelais, unredeemed from utter scorn
by his wit or humor, which must sink literature into
complete contempt.  It is not the number or variety of
literary productions, but their excellency, which is to
shed light on learning, and glory on the country.  Like
the Spartans at Thermopylae, we should regard more
the strength than the number of our literati.
  In the United States a taste for literature is  less  in-
dulged as a passion, than cultivated as a profession.  It
is not, therefore, an elevated or an elegant employment,
but a  pursuit in dignity and importance no higher than
the mere vulgar trades and professions.   Viewed in this
light,  the fire which ambition kindles upon its altars is 
[ ™)
 evidently the same as that which burns upon the alter of
 Mammon, and the priests who minister at it delight in
 that gross homage which is paid to themselves, and look
 not for that  pure and unsullied glory  which a grateful
 posterity has never failed to award to the  eternal forms
 of truth and beauty, as they are reflected in  the mind
 of true genius.
   He who is prompted to the study of literature, by the
 consideration that it may enable him  to advance more
 speedily and directly his personal interest, will never
 hesitate to use such means as are best calculated to com-
 pass the object in view.   The sentiments of such an indi-
 vidual will never be more elevated than the moral princi-
 ples by which his conduct is regulated, nor will the flights
 of his genius be higher than the mark at which he aims.
 He who places happiness in ignoble and sensual gratifi-
 cations, and is always eagerly grasping at the phantom
 pleasure, will never be able to make much  progress in
 science or literature.   He who suffers himself to be be-
 wildered  by the plaudits of the uneducated crowd, or
 dazzled  by the  ostentatious  pageantry  of pecuniary
 power, will never feel burning within  him  those fierce
 and unquenchable  fires that blaze throughout eternity.
 He who feels his cheek blushing for his poverty, when
 he beholds the senseless displays  of unwieldy magnifi-
 cence, will with extreme reluctance dedicate himself to
 those pursuits  which enforce, extend,  and refine  the
 maxims of prudence,—which illustrate, bind, and enli-
 ven  the  precepts of morality,—and  which humanize,
 dignify and exalt the soul.  He  who would exchange
 the glory of intellectual and literary superiority  for the
 wealth of Croesus, the fame of Alexander, or the power
 of Napoleon, will never scale the giddy  heights of Par-
 nassus, will never  by the resistless and  overbearing
 strength of his talents, force his way to everlasting re-
 nown.
   Individuals who could  be thus easily seduced from
their allegiance to the most ennobling of pursuits, will 
[ *<> J
 never willingly expose  themselves  to the neglect and
 contempt, with which the stupid^and sordid  delight to
 oppress them; to the turpitude and treachery of profes-
 sing friends ; to the malicious insinuations of pusillani-
 mous foes;  to the insolent sneer and feigned contempt of
 awakened envy; to the vindictive paroxysms of exas-
 perated vanity, or the deep  and deadly  vengeance of
 irritated pride.
   Multitudes there are in every country, but they abound
 to an incredible extent in the United States, who write
 not for posterity.   Their highest aim is to win, if pos-
 sible, an ephemeral popularity, that their greedy desires
 for emolument may be gratified.   The abject and crin-
 ging slaves  of public opinion,—the fomenters and flat-
 terers of popular vices,  they tamely follow instead of
 attempting to lead; they palliate and excuse, instead of
 reproving and reforming derelictions of duty;  they lay
 grovelling and prostrate at the footstool of power, and
 offer incense to ermined villany, instead  of strangling it
 in the unrelenting grasp of fierce and deadly denuncia-
 tion.
   Under the auspices of such writers, it is impossible
 for literature ever to assume a stable or a  commanding
 character.  It will vary with every revolving era, and
 in every new turn that it takes, we shall be greeted  by
 the same overwhelming association of repugnance, pre-
judice and disgust; in every fresh aspect  that it exhibits
 we shall be shocked by the same  bold defying libertan-
ism, and in every new form  that it assumes, we shall
be dinned by all the meanness and servility of hyper-
bolical adulation paying obsequious court at pride's un-
hallowed shrine.  By such writers,  nature is always
treated like  the magazine of  a magic lantern, in which
beings the most beautiful or grotesque, angels or demons
fairy forms or hideous contortions, are equally admissi-
ble, provided they make the spectator stare and awaken
the curiosity of the public.   Under their guidance, po-
etry will  corrupt, instead of  purifying  morals—it will 
[ 81 ]
enervate, instead of invigorating the faculties of thought
—it will vitiate, instead of ameliorating the affections
of the heart.  History, instead of being a faithful and
unassailable record of truth, will be a disgusting reposi-
tory of  flattery and falsehood, of disreputable and re-
volting absurdities.  Eloquence, instead of throwing an
impregnable safeguard around  liberty  and law, will,
with  its  persuasive ardor and treacherous embellish-
ments, betray them both into the hands of their  most
implacable foes.   Satire,  instead  of exhibiting vice in
all its  loathsome deformity, will be employed to  carica-
ture virtue.  The  legitimate  objects of literature will
be lost sight of, and the responsibilities of genius will
be forgotten, by authors who rush with the ardor of an
Olympic struggle after present popularity, and pecunia-
ry profit.
  The authors of such a literature have no idea of true
fame.   They confound it with popularity, with the idle
buzz of fashion, and with the flattery of favor or friend-
ship.   This is not only  a limited  view of authorship,
but it tends directly to the production of an inferior and
a frivolous literature.  Popularity cannot be displeasing
to  the pride of real  genius, but it never  exerts such
sway over it as to inflate with vanity or presumption the
mind of an author duly impressed with a  sense of his
obligations to posterity.   He  knows well that the irre-
strainable loquacity of common reviewers  is no  more
like the  voice of true fame, than the  smouldering fire
which the peasant piles upon his hearth is like the stea-
dy  blaze of the vertical sun.   He knows that the vulgar
acclimations of the multitude may give notoriety, but
that they never can confer real honor or permanent re-
nown.  He needs not the conviction that the intellectu-
al glimmer of false lights  may dazzle the  uneducated,
but will  never please the  judicious eye, and  that, al-
though pomp of style, parade of erudition, eccentricity
of thought and fervid bursts of passion, may captivate
the crowds it requires literary attainments, both splen- 
( S2)
did and solid, to command the admiration of the accom-
plished scholar.

Gentlemen of the Philomathean Society:
  Would you cultivate literature with success,—would
you attain the heights of moral and intellectual excel-
lence, and have your name ennobled by unwithering re-
nown ?  If so, you must not be nursed to it by any vain
hope of personal aggrandizement,—by any splendid an-
ticipations of worldly grandeur, but by a pure, an un-
defiled and an inextinguishable love of it for itself.   You
must pursue it as a passion, that lives and breathes in
every thought word and action, and not as a profession
that may be relinquished at will.   You must dwell with
tongueless transport on  the original forms of beauty and
sublimity, as they arise in your minds,  and  your eyes
must beam with unearthly joy as you reveal truth after
truth in the great chain of moral and physical events.
You must give to literature the fervent and sublime de-
votion  of the wilderness, the closet, and the cell.  You
must  not court the versatile applause of the thought-
less, giddy, and inconsistent multitude, but stretch your
hopes far beyond a procinctive futury, and wait calmly
and patiently for the  award of a just and impartial pos-
terity.   You must pass over the present, and expect to
live in  the memory of ages yet unborn.  It  is the ad-
miration of nations yet unrecorded in the book of time,
that you should desire,  and by which you should be in-
spired ; for the brightest living reputation cannot be so
imposing to the imagination as that which is covered by
the hoar, and rendered venerable by  the roll  of innu-
merable ages.   Fame's  proud  temple stands upon the
tomb, and he who would have a foretaste of immortali-
ty while a pilgrim on earth, will have  no more chance
of winning a place in it, than the fiends have of gaining
paradise.  You must, like Gallileo delineate in despite
of the infuriate bigotry and irreclaimable stupidity of
inquisitors, the motions of our planet on the walls of a 
[83 ]
dungeon ;  like Dante, though wandering in hopeless ex-
ile,—his life an uninterrupted series of misfortunes, and
complaining  bitterly of having to ascend  the stairs  cf
other men's labor, with unabated zeal for  immortality;
like Cervantes,  sinking  under the infirmities  of age,
and groaning in anguish under the torture of famishing
penury, irradiate the  damps of imprisonment, and ex-
tract from midnight glooms and  impervious  darkness,
perceptions  more . lovely and inspiring  than noontide
splendor; like  Tasso, cruelly suffering in the solitude
and despondency of a mad-house, celebrate the beauty
and death of a Clarinda, and  the love and flight of an
Ermina ;  like Camoeus, after disastrous shipwreck, buf-
fet the waves with one hand,  and with the other hold
triumphantly above the roaring surge the manuscript of
the  Luciad,  which was dearer to him than life; and
like Milton, who, when earth's unstable glories had fa-
ded away, cast  his mental vision on Heaven's extended
landscape, where, revelling among  the spangled splen-
dors of the firmament, or, sporting through the unresist-
ed void of space,  where thunders roar,—blazing tor-
rents stream,-tempestuous whirlwinds burst, and storms
pour their rage, he beheld all the strife,  heard all tho
wild uproar of conflicting devils and angels, and follow-
ed in all it3 convulsive heavings, the desperate and sub-
lime ambition of him who thundered against the battle-
ments of  heaven.
   Such is the spirit that should prompt,  and such the
ardor that will  inspire those of you that have a real
passion for literature.   It is to such sacrifices as those
to which we have just referred, that we are indebted for
all those ''fancies chaste and nobtej'^that have soothed
the senses and delighted the fancy; elevated, expanded
and electrified the throbbing heart; sweetened and em-
bellished  the social circle; shed a soft, undazzKng lus-
tre over the refined joys of retirement; and gilded hu-
man life with a brilliant and inexhaustible variety of
charms and graces; that have asvserted the rights of in-
              1.1 
/
         [84 J
tellectual freedom;  sublimated reason  to  the highest
pitch of refinement; dismantled the arrogance, imper-
tinence, and insolence of despotic power of all its vain
and delusive splendor;  poured a flood of holy grandeur
over the pure and uncontaminated precepts of the Chris-
tian faith, and made the world rich in all the fulness of
superabundant bliss.
  Let me cherish the fond and pleasing hope that  the
Alumni of the University of Indiana, but the members
of the Philomathean Society in particular, will arise in
the dignity and strength of genius and intelligence, and,
by a just, solid,  forcible, and an original style of wri-
ting, give birth to such an era  of  intellectual glory as
will  not only gladden and invigorate  the languishing
powers  of thought, but obliterate from the mind  the
comfortless and mortifying reflection that we have not a
national literature.   Let me believe that, scaring in the
unclouded majesty  of reason, you  will, by  all that is
rich and brilliant in thought, and exhaustless in the cre-
ative energy of fancy, rouse the nation from  the with-
ering lethargy in which  it slumbers, and save future
generations from the torture and  disgrace of eternal
self-condemnation.   Let me, however, remind you, that
in the career you are to  run, and  wdiich the prophetic
 eye of experience has laid open to you,  distinction is
 only to be reached  by two sorts of  beings—reptiles and
 eagles.  You  must succeed either by the unblushing
 servility of your flattery, or by your bold, uncompro-
 mising probity.  There is no middle couree--no "just
 medium" between truth and falsehood, and lot me hope
 that like the guar led and knotted oak, which knows its
 strength,  and haughtily  defies the fury of the ancjry
 storm; yen will plant yourselves firmly on the ground of
 everlasting  and  vr-.:-? "reside  t-cib,  rod prove  your-
 selves  as uncompliant to the solicitations of vice, as re-
 kaclOly .  ...;■;; -Cj.iilJi.;C.i Ol" jhClien.
    'vWuIn you rise in  the awftilness of grandeur, and
 Ahia« with the splendor  of ercn nee   like  the  sun  in 
L»0
tht zenith of his glory, you must not be dazzled by tha
trappings and embellishments  of wealth, nor blush to
acknowledge honorable poverty, which in the days of an-
cient virtue was  the  glory  of  Fabricus.  Let not the
love of money chill the generous impulses of  youth,—
contract the feelings of the  heart, nor impoverish the
powers of the mind.  Bow not down in crouching syco-
phancy, and in the anguish  of conscious meanness, the
stupendous strength of genius, to swell the arrogance and
to defend and palliate the bloated insolence of monied
aristocrats,  who, in feeling, intellect, and action are no
better than  pedlars.  But by the force and greatness of
your talents, the steady rectitude of your public princi-
ples, the unstained purity of your private manners, and
the spirit of firm and uncompromising hostility to the
dull and tasteless entertainments of dissipated society,
humble the  self-complacent  pride of monied corpulence
and rebuke the arrogant impertinence of the unlearned
and unlettered rich.  Expose to the blighting  influence
of that speaking energy which passion mirrors for the
 self-sufficiency of the Jack-in-office.   Never  wheel  or
 veer to accommodate yourselves to the  political trade
 winds, but, like  the  grampus, which, though assailed
 and buffeted by the  roaring waves  and  rolling surges,
 keep  on an undeviating  course.   Strengthen not the
 ferocious and impure hand of fanaticism, and  suffer not
 holy tyranny to  hold a reverend place in public estima-
 tion,  but breathe into the ear of virtuous despondency
 the faith and hope of heavenly inspiration.   Color not
 the designs of mischief by the  fair  appearance of  truth
 and candor, but  dissolve  and disperse the confederacy
 of deists who lurk in ambush to surprise and devour the
 unhappy wanderer.  Strike with Cyclopean  force the
 open and avowed atheist—awaken him  from  the philo-
 sophic dreams of infidelity, and urge him, if possible,
 to emulate the zeal,  the piety, and simplicity of former
 times.  Preserve your minds untainted by the poison of
 prejudice, unclouded by the turbulence of passion, nn- 
[ 86 J
enslaved by the despotism of party, and your indepen-
dence as unsullied by the slightest imputation as  the
soarings of the eagle are free and unfettered on her pur-
ple hills.  In all you do let it be from an impulse as up-
right as if acting in the reverend presence of canonized
forefathers, and what you say let it be so chaste as not
10 offend ears the most morally attuned, and so pure that
nnshocked  the priest may hear it.  In a word,  be as
fully prepared for every occasion that may require it, to
submit your actions and motives to  the ordeal of strict
examination, as if you knew you would have to vindi-
cate them in  days as undented as those of  Aristides,
and before a  tribunal as rigid and exacting as that of
Areopagus.   Do this, and no patriots in the country will
command more respect;  no  literatists in the republic
will shine with a purer lustre, and no saints in Heaven
will inspire truer reverence.
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