to extravagant caricature. The lineaments of the picture may be true, but the coloring is gross. I shall not stay to describe the social peculiarities of our oriental countrymen. The east must indeed be a hard subject, which could catch no roseate hue from that pencil whose creations decked in fanciful splendor even the sorry realities of the islands of Loo Choo. Such pictures of the national habits remind one of the portraiture given of Muscat, by a British officer, as depicted by Sir John Malcom, in his sketches of Persia. The ship having touched at Muscat, the commander called for the account which each officer was required, by a rule of the admiralty, to give of the people, when a reluctant tar presented the following graphic delineation: The inhabitants of Muscat. As for manners, they

have none; and their customs are very beastly.'

Without discussing the social diversities which prevail in different parts of the confederacy, I will seize upon features which are common alike to all. We may discern in the somewhat rugged outlines of the social landscape, one gentler spot upon which the eye may rest with pleasure. It is a trait in the American character, which belongs rather to a chivalric and poetic, than to a plodding and commercial, age. Let the boorish German and the selfish Briton complain of the inconveniences and privations which it imposes. Let the great champion of female rights herself inveigh against its influence upon the sex, while she felt, at every step of her American pilgrimage, its humanizing effects. It is too nearly connected with manly virtue and native generosity, ever to be lost or neglected. I allude to the respect which, in America, is ever and at all times paid to woman. The American will cherish this spirit of courtesy, as a distinctive quality, as a noble characteristic. Without aspiring to the extravagant romance of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia, he may be ever ready to contend, with generous ardor, for the rights and honor of his country women.

With many estimable points in the national manners, it cannot be denied that our vainglory and impatience under censure are excessive. The gibes of a vulgar Englishman inflict as much pain as if they were the offspring of correct judgment, and informed criticism. It is said that certain medals and dull jests, invented by the United Provinces against Louis XIV., led to the celebrated expedition of that monarch, in 1672; and had nearly been the cause of their ruin. The United States may instance more dull jests from British tourists than Louis had to complain of. But thanks to their sharp-sighted and active ill nature, we have been made to perceive peculiarities and imperfections in our social state, of which we had not before discovered the existence.

America has nothing so much to avoid, as the adoption of modes unsuited to her habits, and uncongenial with her situation; modes which are recommended by no taste, but that arbitrary one which depends upon the ever-changing and capricious mutability of foreign fashion. That system of society is always the most agreeable, which springs out of circumstances, and is the natural and unforced growth of the soil in which it flourishes. To all cavillers at the peculiarities of our social state, let us at least be able to make one reply, that it is our own. Let it have the merit of reflecting the true condition of the national mind; let it be devoid of false or fanciful pre

tensions. While this system is polished to the highest refinement of which social intercourse is capable, LET IT BE AMERICAN. As a nation, we have a right to this system. It forms a part of that conquest which was achieved at the revolution; it belongs to our individuality; it springs from our independence.

If we go beyond the surface of the American character, an unrestrained impetuosity of action is discoverable. We perceive this feature in the destructive fury of an excited multitude, in the frequent commission of passionate homicide, and the still more frequent occurrence of the duel, that shocking relic of an unenlightened age. Causes greatly inadequate, and often frivolous, have led to such disasters. But what shall we say to a fatal rencontre with Bowie knives, in the very hall of a state legislature, and the deadly use of the rifle, by members of Congress? Such enormities do deeper injury to republican institutions, and more vitally affect the national character, than the wittiest sarcasm against the homeliness of our domestic society.

It is much to be regretted, that a practice so repugnant to every principle of sound ethics and good citizenship, is not branded with indelible odium. But it cannot be concealed, that while a mortal rencounter is deplored, and the survivor is execrated, the man who declines a challenge is persecuted as unmanly, and charged with cowardice. But we need not despair. The moral as well as the literary schoolmaster is abroad. Mobs and duels cannot withstand the potency of his influence. The force of opinion, that tremendous engine, which, in this country, overpowers every opposing element, is rousing from its torpor, to a just appreciation of their evils. It will speak with a voice which cannot be silenced, when the excitements which have agitated the popular wave shall have subsided, and party spirit shall repose from its load of violence and crimination. One of the effects of universal liberty is, to make every man a politician, since each citizen forms a part of the state. As politics is the great highway of honor, all are ambitious of entering it. In this crowd, the high and the low, if such a classification be admitted, are jostling each other. Here no illustrious alliance can promote the success of a candidate.

Here no one

'Stands for fame on his forefathers' feet,
By heraldry proved valiant or discreet.'

No patent of nobility is recognised, except that which has been conferred by bountiful nature, with the great seal appendant of moral and intellectual superiority.

A contest in which a nation at large form the judges, must be as public as the tribunal which pronounces the decree. Hence oratory, of a certain order, is cultivated throughout the republic. So universal is this cacoethes loquendi, that we have been called 'a nation of talkers.' The stripling just emerging from college, the mechanic fresh from his labor, the man of science forgetting his laboratory, and the artist abandoning his easel and his studio, have been known to pay to this object a temporary devotion.

But what is the kind of cultivation which an art so much practised receives? Does the oratorical aspirant, like Demosthenes, form his manner and fashion his style by the diligent study and frequent

transcription of a great model? Does he, like Cicero, deem it necessary to be accomplished in all the polite and elegant learning of the age? No! The preparation which he requires, is the art of juggling the multitude; the beach before which he practises his frothy declamation, is a roaring and tumultuous town meeting. The empty diffusiveness, no less than the general inelegance, of our declaimers, is a theme of standing reproach. :

'To thump, NOT REASON, their whole force they bend,
And all their sense is at their fingers' end.'

Louis XII. was once heard to complain, that the cause of his growing gray, was the long-winded speeches to which he had been doomed to listen. If long speeches may produce such an effect, the American nation should be the most grisly people' under the sun. Our senators and legislators, our convention-men and judges, our jurors, and the sovereign people themselves, should all be as hoary as badgers. Unmeaning verbiage and idle circumlocution are the crying evils of the land. But let it not be forgotten, that amid this profusion of windy haranguers, we may name an Ames, a Patrick Henry, a Pinckney, a Wirt, beside many illustrious contemporaries, as worthy of proud niches in the great temple of oratory; men who, by the commanding power and brilliancy of their eloquence, would confer honor upon any nation of ancient or modern times.

It was not likely that a society composed of such men as emigrated to this country, would long permit science to be in its cradle. Every thing around them, indeed, invited to practical labor. The deep forests and the glassy streams spoke a language which could not be misunderstood. But no sooner had the austerities of nature assumed the more pleasing garb of cultivation, and were made capable of ministering to convenience, than money gave up to science a part of that dominion which she had previously enjoyed. Over this little principality, the powers of theology and verse disputed for a time the palm of empire. The rule which theology asserted, was marked by copious effusions of ink, if not of blood. A close and cautious

spirit of investigation succeeded. We are indebted to this spirit for such a benefactor as Godfrey. To this, and the superadded impulsion of a subsequent age, we are to ascribe a Rittenhouse and a Franklin; men whom no situation but that in which they were placed, and no institutions but those of America, could have fostered and formed. The genius of these men bore upon it the impress of their birth-place. The authors of the planetarian and electricity, not to mention the maxims of Poor Richard, were the spontaneous growth of the American soil, cherished and nurtured by the genial spirit of our home-bred institutions. But apart from physical science, nature had placed before the learned of America a subject of inquiry peculiarly its own. The minds of antiquarians were called into action respecting the antiquities and former condition of the American continent. They were to explore the descent, languages, and original state, of that remarkable race whom our ancestors found in possession of this country. Nature herself had committed this subject to our assiduity and care. As oppression and rapacity were

fast hurrying this devoted race into the grave, it became us, as an intellectual nation, at least to gather the scattered and mutilated fragments of their history, so as to inscribe upon their tomb an intelligent epitaph. Without disparagement to the learned labors of a Bartram, the writers of the Mithridates, a Heck welder, a Pickering, a Cass, a Schoolcraft, and a Gallatin, it may be said that it was reserved for a venerable citizen of Philadelphia to penetrate the labyrinths of this intricate subject; and by it, to add one of the brightest leaves to the American bays.

In the department of polite and elegant literature, native genius. has imparted celebrity to spots, even in the new world of America. The original genius of Cooper, the inimitable pen of Irving, the beautiful page of Bryant, have made the scenes of their descriptions classic ground. Bancroft and Sparks are doing for our history and historical names, what those are achieving in the walks of external society and external nature. We are not old enough to point the literary pilgrim to the mouldering tombs of a Westminster Abbey. The axe with which our forests have been felled, is still in the hands of the wood-chopper. His sturdy strokes may almost be heard amid the noise of our cities, which they have so lately contributed to build. They are only silenced by the greater din of busy life, which exigency or enterprise has called into being, in spots where nature reigned in majestic wildness and primeval solitude. But young as is the country, in its physical state, the materials are at hand to form a system of literature, which shall at once be new and improved.

A national literature does not imply an abandonment of those masters of the human heart, who have traced, with pencils of genius and truth, the great features of human nature. The literature of Rome, embellished and refined, while it imitated, that of Greece. The polite learning of modern Europe is largely indebted to both, for its elegance and nature. Pope and Thomson are suns formed by the converging rays of less distinguished luminaries. Genius. cannot be impaired of its gifts, by pondering the fair forms which genius itself has created. The fire which was lighted by Prometheus, may be kept alive by the torches of Homer and Virgil, of Milton and Shakspeare. America owes it to herself and to mankind, that her system of letters should be her own. As a mirror, it should reflect American manners; it should embody American ideas; it should inculcate those great principles of social morality, upon which man must depend for his advancement and perfection.

But however learning and genius have added to the national fame, partiality itself must admit, that little active aid has been contributed from the public bounty. Astronomical science yet asks for an observatory, and the national library languishes for want of encouragement. When we compare the pigmy collections of Philadelphia and Cambridge, the largest libraries in this country, with the magnificent cabinets of Paris, Vienna, London, and many others, it need not be concealed, that the national pride receives a wound. In the various departments of history, except domestic, modern literature and science, our collections do not embrace all which the wants of the learned student demand. The life of Columbus, by Irving, a work destined to imperishable fame, could not, from the absence of

materials, have been written in America. Mr. Wheaton could not have brought to completion his learned and elegant history of the Northmen, except in Europe. The admirable work on Ferdinand and Isabella, by Mr. Prescott, though written on this side of the Atlantic, was chiefly dependant for its materials on the other.

The library of Philadelphia is upward of a century old. Its late highly intelligent librarian* computes the present number of volumes at 46,000; a number exceeding, it is true, any other library on this side of the Atlantic, but not commensurate with the growing wants of the literature and science of the city. The Royal Library of Paris, less than half a century ago, numbered only 80,000 printed volumes and мss. It now presents, in its totality, upward of 700,000 volumes. The British Museum, founded long since the establishment of the Philadelphia Library, now amounts to 240,000 volumes. The value of a library, it is true, does not depend upon its numerical superiority alone; but there is no doubt, from the bibliographical knowledge which guards the Royal Library of Paris, and the British Museum, that the excellence of their contents is in proportion to their number.

It becomes a wise and enlightened people, intent upon a high destiny, to adopt the means necessary to subserve it. It was one evidence of decay, that in a luxurious age of the Roman empire, the reading of Roman senators was confined to Marius Maximus and Juvenal. In a country in which native energy has not been debilitated by luxury; where mind, untrammelled, roves with perpetual activity, explores new regions of thought, and penetrates new sources of truth and intelligence; where every man is a reader, and all have a keen appetite for knowledge; the means should be multiplied commensurately with its importance and necessity. Without dwelling longer upon a theme which might be amplified by so many reflections, it is enough to say, that no act would confer higher literary glory upon the United States, than adding to the treasures of its public library. The government of France requires a copy to be deposited in the Royal Library of every work which is issued from the press, throughout the kingdom. A similar regulation obtains in Austria and Russia, for the benefit of the royal libraries of Vienna and St. Petersburgh. From the operation of so wise and salutary a provision, these libraries are monuments of honor and renown to those despotic nations. The British Museum, which has proved, in England, the great nursery of merit, the light of genius, the ladder to eminence, has been fostered by the same liberality, aided by the direct munificence of the sovereign. Congress has already purchased the papers of Washington and Madison. It could present adequate inducements to private persons for the opening of their private cabinets, in which are deposited those documents which are so material to illustrate our national history, and transmit our national fame. It could enact a law similar to those which aug

* GEORGE CAMPBELL, Esq., whose integrity of character and scrupulous accuracy in regard to facts, have gained for him as deserved a name, as his high repute in bibliography. This gentleman was librarian of the Philadelphia Library for twenty-three years, during the whole of which time he attended the library regularly six days in the week, and was never once absent from his post.