freest kind,-in which the genius of the people and the national laws have forever destroyed the possibility of perpetuating wealth in families,-the masses must, necessarily, be forced into violent action and continued effort, not only to acquire fortune, but for necessary maintainance. In this constant strife of the people against want or for accumulation, they have but little time to turn aside into the paths that are bordered by flowers, and where the muses dally and revel in perfect liberty. The habit of trade has the direct tendency to make men not only count the cost, but to look for an income from the outlay of their money. The question asked is-will it pay? The feeling that rises in the heart is the same as that with which they make a bargain:-is this a profitable investment?—and, thus, the dollar becomes the metre by which every thing is estimated when it passes under the scrutinizing eye of so prudent and parsimonious a class. The student is regarded as a dreamer. He is looked upon as a useless member of society. He does not immediately produce a profitable result, which tells upon minds that are always listening for echoes. Literature has a multiform duty assigned to it. It is the recorder of history, the teacher of truths, moral or scientific,-the vehicle of poetry and amusement. I speak of Literature in its higher offices, for we can scarcely dignify with so august a title that mass of verbiage which suffices for the ordinary conveyance of news, or for political discussion.— Literature, then, addresses a loftier state of the mind. It is not content with mere information, although that is one of its main reliances; but it looks to Philosophy as the analysis of human action,-to Poetry,

as the vehicle of sentiment and experience to the human heart, to History, as the Recording Angel whose pen lingers over the great deeds and the great thoughts of a virtuous ancestry. Its business is not only with the present but the past. It is the treasurer of intellectual legacies; the diffuser of generous sympathy-the foe of selfishness, the vindicator of mind, the nurse of ideality.

It was remarked by Mr. Legaré, one of the purest scholars given by America to the world-in advising a young friend, at the outset of his life, that, "nothing is more perilous in America than to be too long learning, or to get the name of bookish." Great, indeed, is the experience contained in this short paragraph! It is a sentence which nearly banishes a man from the fields of wealth, for it seems to deny the possibility of the concurrent lives of thought and action. The "bookish" man cannot be the "business" man! And such, indeed, has been the prevailing tone of public sentiment for the last thirty or forty years, since it became the parental habit to cast our children into the stream of trade to buffet their way to fortune, as soon as they were able either to make their labor pay, or to relieve their parents from a part of the expense of maintainance. Early taught that the duty of life is incompatible with the pursuits of a student, the young man whose school years gave promise of renown, speedily finds himself engaged in the mechanical pursuit of a business upon which his bread depends, and either quits forever the book he loved, or steals to it in night and secrecy, as Numa did to the tangled crypt when he wooed Egeria!

In the old world there are two classes to which

Literature can always directly appeal,-government, and the aristocracy. That which is elegant, entertaining, tasteful, remotely useful, or merely designed for embellishment, may call successfully on men who enjoy money and leisure, and are ever eager in the pursuit of new pleasures. This is particularly the case with individuals whose revenues are the mere alluvium of wealth, the deposit of the golden tide flowing in with regularity, but not with those whose fortunes are won from the world in a struggle of enterprize. Such men do not enjoy the refreshing occupation of necessary labor, and consequently, they crave the excitement of the intellect and the senses. Out of this want, in Europe, has sprung the Opera,-that magnificent and refined luxury of extreme wealththat sublime assemblage of all that is exquisite in dress, decoration, declamation, melody, picture, motion, art, that marriage of music and harmonious thought, which depends, for its perfect success, on the rarest organ of the human frame. The patrons of the Opera have the time and the money to bestow as rewards for their gratification; and yet, I am still captious enough to be discontented with a patronage, springing, in a majority of cases, from a desire for sensual relaxation, and not offered as a fair recompense in the barter that continually occurs in this world between talent and money. I would level the mind of the mass up to such an appreciative position, that, at last, it would regard Literature and Art as wants, not as pastimes,-as the substantial food, and not the frail confectionery of life.

And what is the result, in our country, of this unprotective sentiment towards Literature? The an

swer is found in the fact that nearly all our young men whose literary tastes and abilities force them to use the pen, are driven to the daily press, where they sell their minds, by retail, in paragraphs;-where they print their crudities without sufficient thought or correction;-where the iron tongue of the engine is forever bellowing for novelty;--where the daily morsel of opinion must be coined into phrases for daily bread,--and where the idea, which an intelligent editor should expand into a volume, must be condensed into an aphoristic sentence.

Public speaking and talk, are also the speediest mediums of plausible conveyance of opinion in a Republic. The value of talk from the pulpit, the bar, the senate, and the street corner, is inappreciable in America. There is no need of its cultivation among us, for fluency seems to be a national gift. From the slow dropping chat of the provoking button holder, to the prolonged and rotund tumidities of the stump orator-every thing can be achieved by a harangue. It is a fearful facility of speech! Men of genius talk the results of their own experience and reflection. Men of talent talk the results of other men's minds; and, thus, in a country where there are few habitual students, where there are few professed authors,— where all are mere writers,-where there is, in fact, scarcely the seedling germ of a national literature, we are in danger of becoming mere telegraphs of opinion, as ignorant of the full meaning of the truths we convey as are the senseless wires of the electric words which thrill and sparkle through their iron veins!

It is not surprising, then, that the mass of American reading consists of newspapers and novels;-that

nearly all our good books are imported and reprinted; that, with a capacity for research and composition quite equal to that of England, our men become editors instead of authors. No man but a well paid parson, or a millionaire, can indulge in the expensive delights of amateur authorship. Thus it is that Sue is more read than Scott. Thus it is that the intense literature of the weekly newspapers is so prosperous, and that the laborer, who longs to mingle cheaply the luxuries of wealth, health and knowledge, purchases, on his way homeward, with his pay in his pocket, on Saturday night, a lottery ticket, a Sunday newspaper, and a dose of quack physic, so that he has the chance of winning a fortune by Monday, whilst he is purifying his body and amusing his mind, without losing a day from his customary toil!

In this way we trace downward from the merchant and the literary man to the mechanic, the prevailing notion in our country of necessary devotion to labor as to a dreary task, without respite or relaxation. This is the expansive illustration of Mr. Legaré's idea, that no man must get, in America, the repute of being "bookish." And yet, what would become of the world without those derided, "bookish" men?— these recorders of history-these developers of science these philosophers-these writers of fiction-these thousand scholars who are continually adding by almost imperceptible contributions to the knowledge and wealth of the world? Some there are, who, in their day and generation, indeed appear to be utterly useless;-men who seem to be literary idlers, and, yet, whose works tell upon the world in