the young, and public provisions for the support of schools. He tells us, that 'public funds for the education of the whole community are endowments exclusively American, which have been in operation here for several ages, whilst the most improved governments of Europe are but essaying such a groundwork, which indeed some of them dread, and others dare not risk.' Well would it be for the world, if this latter clause were not too true, and the time were come, when the kings and great ones of the earth should see no frightful omens in the progress of intelligence, and feel no thrills of alarm at the natural struggles of men to become free. In this country, almost from the first arrival of the pilgrim band at Plymouth, public attention has been drawn to schools. Nearly two hundred years ago funds were appropriated for this purpose, and the paternal solicitude of our ruling powers, in the cause of education, has become a deep woven trait in our fundamental institutions.

"By the constitution of the United States,' says Mr Ingersoll, 'it is the duty of government to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. Not one of the eleven new states has been admitted into the Union without provision in its constitution for schools, academies, colleges, and universities. In most of the original states large sums in money are appropriated to education, and they claim a share in the great landed investments, which are mortgaged to it in the new states. Reckoning all those contributions federal and local, it may be asserted, that nearly as much as the whole national expenditure of the United States is set apart by laws to enlighten the people. The public patronage of learning in this country, adverting to what the value of these donations will be before the close of the present century, equals at least the ostentatious bounties conferred on it in Europe. In one state alone, with but 275 000 inhabitants, more than forty thousand pupils are instructed at the public schools. I believe we may compute the number of such pupils throughout the United States at more than half a million. In the city of Philadelphia, without counting the private or the charity schools, there are about five thousand pupils in the Commonwealth's seminaries, taught reading, writing, and arithmetic, at an expense to the public of little more than three dollars a year each one. Nearly the whole minor population of the United States are receiving school education. Besides the multitudes at school, there are considerably more than three thousand under graduates always matriculated at the various colleges and universities, authorized to grant academical degrees; not less than twelve hundred at the

medical schools; several hundred at the theological seminaries; and at least a thousand students of law.'

We apprehend that our sentiments do not fully harmonize with those of the author, concerning the value of the ancient languages, as a branch of study for American youth. Forcible reasons can no doubt be urged, why the study of these languages will for a long time be more limited in this country, than in Europe, but we would fain believe it a deceptive vision, which bodes the day, when they will perish under the mass of knowledge destined to occupy entirely the limited powers of the human understanding.' The varieties of moral and physical nature are exhaustless; they can never be explored; and as the world grows older, and one age after another brings its stock of intellect into action, multiplying discoveries and inventions, disclosing new facts in science, contriving new devices in art, and thus extending indefinitely the fields of knowledge, the period must arrive, when a long and industrious life will be too short to compass all necessary attainments. But even then, we should hope a remnant may be spared to visit the groves and cull the flowers of antiquity, to go up to the fountain and drink the pure waters, to draw something from the sources, whose treasures have enriched the empire of thought and sentiment, fancy and taste, for many hundred years.

To say nothing of the excellent discipline, which the young mind receives in studying a language so admirable in its artificial forms, as the Latin or Greek, to say nothing of its effects to sharpen his faculties by leading him to discriminate the nicer shades in the meaning of words, and to detect the bearing and force of one part of speech on another, which, in those highly polished languages, is always an exercise of skill and judgment; to say nothing of these benefits, worthy in themselves of the highest consideration, there are other reasons why the study of the ancient languages ought to be fostered in our schools. The men, who wrote in these languages, were ornaments of their species; the works they have left are the choicest models of human composition; refined in taste, elegant in diction, rich in imagery; distinguished by a deep insight into the nature of man, the springs of passion, the impulses of feeling, and motives of action. These models are the transcripts of nature; the mind formed on them will

gain the refinement bestowed by culture, without losing the native strength too apt to be diminished by a redundance of artificial applications. But they possess a still rarer virtue. Time was when the Greeks were free; they thought, and spoke, and wrote as freemen; the poets and orators, the philosophers and historians, equally caught the spirit and assumed the tone of liberty and self government. These are the seeds, which we desire to have scattered in the minds of our youth. However fantastically they may have shot up on some occasions, however abortively they may have put forth in the German universities and secret societies of Europe, however licentiously they may have run riot in the French revolution, no such difficulties or dangers can be apprehended here. Our institutions are firm and well balanced; the impulse of Greek and Roman liberty will tend to preserve the equal action of their several parts; we have nothing to fear from excess, because we have been too long in possession of the sober reality to be made giddy with the day dreams of romance. Greater is the danger, that we shall forget our distinguished privileges, than that we shall value them too highly, or talk of them too much.

In connexion with a series of judicious remarks on the progress of literature in the United States, the author justly observes, that, notwithstanding the preeminence held over us by European countries in attainments, which time only can mature, yet in the literature of fact, of education, of politics, and perhaps even of science,' they have by no means left us so far behind. Our domestic literature is adequate to our immediate wants, and the demand has never risen above the supply. The learned professions are full; schools of law, medicine, and divinity are numerous, and competent to educate as many students as are required in these departments of life. We do not abound in the luxuries of literature, and for a very good reason, we want other things more; and it is natural that we should look to our wants, before we begin to pamper our taste. Another reason is, that we have this kind of manufacture already fabricated to our hands; the market is so well supplied from abroad, that our men of genius find their wits much more profitably employed in other pursuits. In whatever tends to diffuse useful intelligence, to elicit thought, invigorate the New Series, No. 17.

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mind, and build up the structure of society on the basis of just principles, our literature is not deficient. Talent, like other commodities, will find its way to the best market. The field of political science is so broad under our forms of government, and the reward of political distinction so speedy and liberal, that we cannot be surprised at seeing many in this road to eminence, who, in other countries, would be induced to court the muses, and loiter in the haunts of ornamental literature. Utility is the watchword of American genius; it loves to contrive and operate for the good of man; it is better pleased to improve the arts and increase the solid comforts of life, than to embellish its less substantial forms. In this respect it accords with the spirit of our government, and with our condition as a young and rising people. When we grow older, and have more leisure, more wants, and more wealth, we can afford to indulge in luxuries, our appetites will be sharpened, we can spare a portion of the effective talent of the community to provide delicacies, and the American soil will be found not less fertile in the products of fancy and taste, than it now is in the fruits of a practical invention, and wise maxims of political science.

"The publication of books,' observes Mr Ingersoll again, is so much cheaper in this country than in Great Britain, that nearly all we use are American editions. According to reports from the Custom Houses, made under a resolution of the Senate in 1822, it appears that the importation of books bears an extremely small proportion to the American editions. The imported books are the mere seed. It is estimated that between two and three millions of dollars worth of books are annually published in the United States. It is to be regretted, that literary property here is held by an imperfect tenure, there being no other protection for it than the provisions of an inefficient act of Congress, the impotent offspring of an obsolete English statute. The inducement to take copy rights is therefore inadequate, and a large proportion of the most valuable American books are published without any legal title. Yet there were one hundred and thirty five copy rights purchased from January 1822 to April 1823. There have been eight editions, comprising 7500 copies of Stewart's Philosophy published here since its appearance in Europe thirty years ago. Five hundred thousand dollars was the capital invested in one edition of Rees' Cyclopædia. Of a lighter kind of reading, nearly 200,000 copies of the Waverly novels, comprising 500,000 volumes, have issued from the American press in the last nine years. Four thou

sand copies of a late American novel were disposed of immediately on its publication. Five hundred dollars were paid by an enterprising bookseller for a single copy of one of these novels, without any copy right, merely by prompt republication to gratify the eagerness to read it.'

These interesting particulars bring to mind a subject, which has for sometime past excited the attention of many of our most enlightened men; we mean the duty on books. It is justly deemed a matter of serious regret, that a statute should still be retained in our revenue laws, which operates as so heavy a discouragement to the diffusion of knowledge, and at the same time yields so meagre a pittance to the national treasury. The duty is fifteen per cent on the invoice price of books, which, by other incidental charges at the custom house, is increased to nearly eighteen; that is, for all books purchased from abroad, we pay the amount of one sixth of their cost to the government. This feature in our laws will appear the more remarkable, when contrasted with the policy of other nations, whose institutions and liberal spirit we have not been taught to consider superior to our

own.

Every one knows the rapid advancement, which learning has made in Germany during the last half century, and one of the chief causes is allowed to have been the direct encouragement afforded to it by the Protestant Governments. So far from imposing duties on foreign books, they have granted every possible facility to tempt booksellers to bring them into the country. Even the transportation of books in the public post waggons is charged at a lower rate than other articles. If France, Spain, and Russia, have acted on less enlightened principles, than the governments of Germany, they have nevertheless been guided by a policy much more liberal than ours. As for England, she has kept on her duties, and perhaps such a course was expedient; but it has proved unfavorable to knowledge. Great Britain has been tardy in adopting the improvements in science, and imbibing the spirit of enlarged literature, which have gained ground on the continent. She has made her own books, and read them, and in some branches of knowledge has been contented to loiter far behind her neighbors. The republic of Colombia imposes no duties on books.