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with the mild beams of Christianity. How bright might have been the pages of her now blood-stained history! The traveller on the fields of Flanders, might not have been compelled to stop, and inquire the cause of those rank tufts of corn, and those luxuriant patches of grass, which now meet his eye. Hell would not then have opened her mouth, without measure, under ill-fated France. It was learning without religion, that did the horrible work. It was the negative, or the infidel, or the licentious literature of antecedent years. It was because that in the age of Louis XIV., the forming age of France, men thought, and wrote, and reasoned, irrespective of the Bible.

The great lesson which these facts teach us, is, to be on our guard— to seize the favorable moment-to pre-occupy the ground. Our state of probation in this respect is not past. We have not left it on record, to our disgrace, that we could be satisfied with powerful intellectual resources disconnected from moral obligation. With a few exceptions, we have no permanent literature now. We have written no Analogy, no Principia, no Pilgrim's Progress, no Paradise Lost. We have nothing which can be called a national literature. It is only indulging a useless vanity, and placing an obstacle in the way of our future success, to think that we have. Our literature is yet to be created. Those great controlling influences, which lift themselves into the upper firmament of thought, which are to be like the polar light, always visible and always to be regarded, are yet to be collected together. Light is here. There are scattered rays every where. But they have not been concentrated into reigning and radiant orbs. The fourth day is not come.

There are men among us, capable of furnishing original and fundamental productions. The remark, which is frequently made, that we are attached to a light and superficial literature, and, like children, pleased with excitement, is not entirely true. There is a considerable number of men, who judge of a production according to its intrinsic worth, who in their common reading, are accustomed to analyze and refer to general principles. New England, on this very point, is exerting an influence, which is felt to Detroit and Mobile. Instances of bad taste, which occur in the productions of our western brethren, are explained as demanded in a new country, or as atoned for in the existing circumstances. Boston exerts the same influence on Cincinnati, that London does on Boston. If we are guilty, we fear, whatever we may say to the contrary, the condem. natory voice which is coming over the waters. So our western friends, however much they may despise the little territory east of the Hudson, are extremely sensitive in regard to the opinion which shall be entertained of them here.

A great object, therefore, an ultimate object, which all our colleges, and which every man educated in them, should have in view, now and forever, is the highest possible cultivation of science and literature IN CONNECTION with religion. It is an object great enough for the consecration of every energy, physical and mental and moral, which God has given us. may be exhibited a vigor of intellect, a purity of taste, a strength and fervor of religious feeling-all in delightful combination, such as the old world has never yet seen.

Here

Now is the time. We have separation enough from the other continents. We have sphere enough. We have no need to record our discoveries on columns of stone, to be wearily deciphered by some subsequent age. We may spread them out before a great people. We may record them on ten thousand living and breathing hearts.

The possession of such a literature is consistent with an earnest attention to the Greek and Roman classics.

A strenuous attempt has been made to maintain the position that the classics do not furnish materials of thought--that if they were all cut off in a single night by some Caliph Omar, or General Amrou, there would be little cause for lamentation. Now the reverse of this is undeniably the fact. There are, and there forever will be, in them, materials for thought. In one sense, there is no exhausting the literature of any age. Materials for thinking will be gathered from the past in all the future changes of society. One age is not set over against another age simply. It is set over against all others. Illustrations from the arts and sciences of Greece and Rome can be gathered now, which could not have been suggested two hundred years ago. On the other hand, in some future aspect of society, certain events which transpired long since may give rise to original and important trains of thought. Every age is immortal. Individuals may die and be forgotten, but the collected wisdom, the embodied sense of every generation will live till time shall be no longer. Because William Cowper translated Homer, and William Gifford translated Juvenal, is the inference to be made that we have the whole material of thought which can be furnished by the poet of Scio, or the satirist of Rome? Would the best possible translation of Paradise Lost into French, exhaust that amazing effort of human genius? Rays of thought emanate, in all directions, from an original author; which a score of translators cannot gather up. Suppose an individual is deeply interested in such writers as Plato, Pindar, Thucydides, and Tacitus-having followed their luminous track a certain distance, he feels an unwonted energy in his own mind. He springs from the beaten path, and seizes on some new combination of thought, or views of truth, which never occurred before to a human mind. There are many passages in the classic authors which give the student the power to think. A man who thoroughly understands and relishes an original author, will think well himself. Show me an individual whose favorite book is Chillingworth, or Butler, or Pascal, or John Howe, and I will show you an individual, who can strike out trains of reflection for himself.

To my mind, the objection in regard to the corrupting moral influence of the classics is equally futile. Where is the human production which is not capable of perversion, or that cannot furnish aliment to a depraved heart? We are not to judge of a book, any more than we are to judge of an individual, by a single trait or passage, by a single, or by half a dozen incidents. But we are to inquire what is the general tendency? What are the great principles inculcated? What, on the whole, is the effect on the reader? Now I am willing that the principal classics should be tried by this rule. I am willing that Xenophon's Anabasis, and Tacitus's five books, and Virgil's Georgicks, and the Essay on the Sublime, and the immortal Plato, should be subjected to a most rigid scrutiny. It is saying nothing to the purpose, to aver that there are things which will offend a delicate taste and a Christian heart in Anacreon, and Terence, Ovid, and Aristophanes, and Horace, any more than it is disparaging Addison, and Collins, and Knox, and Johnson, to say that there are such writers in the same language as Congreve, and Shenstone, and Fielding, many of whose works would have disgraced Babylon and Corinth. The fact is worthy of mention, in this place, that the principles of taste, which a few of the best writers of Greece and Rome, adopted, were of such a character as were inconsistent with the lower forms of depravity. By the assistance of a few scattered rays from Revelation, shining on the reason of these men,

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they caught some glimpses from the unseen world, which placed them immeasurably above the throng which crowded the Piræus, and the Campus Martius, or even with the majority who frequented the Lyceum and the Grove. The mind of Tacitus seems to have been preserved from all the grosser forms of defilement, by the state of his country;-a melancholy presentiment of the cause of her overthrow, appears to have made him unwilling to add to the vices which were undermining her strength.

Again, an original, Christian literature, in this country, is consistent with a diligent attention to foreign modern literature. Some men imagine that the great object-the acquisition of an American literature-could be accomplished, if we were to prohibit the importation of all books from London :-that if we were left to work our own stock, independent of the intellectual warehouses on the other side of the waters, new forms of beauty and grandeur would spring from beneath our wonder-working hands. But is the case thus? Is a literary monopoly, any where, a good thing? Does the fact that we have but a scanty original literature, show that the booksellers in St. Paul's church-yard and Piccadilly are the cause? No let the gates of knowledge be opened wide into every land. If better books can be made in England than we can make, let us have them. We need the productions of the British press in order to maintain the English language in its purity. It is of inestimable service for us to have reviews there. If any one thinks that we are in no danger, let him read the Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. Our best models, what we call thoroughly native American works, were written by men well versed in English literature. Some of the admired state papers, of the early years of our revolutionary struggle, were written by such men as Wilson and Witherspoon, men who were educated at the British universities. In later days, such writers as Dennie of the Port Folio, Professor Frisbie, and the late Mr. Evarts, were thoroughly conversant with English literature. Our most eminent living statesman now devotes two months out of the twelve to these same studies.

Instead, therefore, of decrying the models of taste and genius of past ages, and of other countries, it is our wisdom to study them patiently and thoroughly. This is not slavery. This is no degrading subjection to the models of antiquity, which will cramp our genius.

Instead of placing a prohibition on foreign books, would that our presses teemed with the thoughts of Pascal, and of bishop Beveridge, and of Thomas Adam, and of John Howe. It is the borrowers; it is the second rate authors, who complain of the effect of the introduction of English books-men who draw their resources from the shallows and flats of Alison and Hugh Blair, and never come within reach of the gigantic shadows of John Howe and of Joseph Butler.

Another object, of no little importance, is, that all our books for Sabbath schools, and for children, should be properly written, both in regard to sentiment and style. The American Sunday School Union have no unimportant and irresponsible concern in providing the intellectual aliment, and in regulating the taste, of half a million children. Why not give to children a correct literary taste from the first? Why invent a barbarian language for their special benefit? Why must the elements of a bad taste be first rooted deep, in order that the best portions of youth should be spent in correcting and reforming them? Why must boys write in a turgid and excessively ornamented style? There are those, who are taught to express manly thoughts in manly language, who are very early imbued with the principles of pure taste; who, for instance, are instructed to compare the

delineations of nature which are found in the Bible, and in our best poets, with the original; who can see and feel how accurately and how beautifully they describe the riches of the earth, and the glories of the heavens.

Another desirable measure, is the establishment of scholarships, or something equivalent, in connection with our colleges.

Suppose, for instance, that thirty thousand dollars should be given to a collegiate institution, to be distributed into portions of two or three thousand dollars each-the income to support, in part at least, eight or ten scholars, for a few years after they had graduated-might not the results be of great importance? It is not unfrequently the fact that an individual, at the end of his four years' course, is too young to enter with advantage on his professional studies. More thoroughly-formed habits of study, and more mature consideration of various topics, over which he might have passed, would be of eminent utility-as preparatory to entering on the study of either of the professions. There may be, also, a few young men, in every college, to whom such a course is the obvious one which Providence has assigned to them as a permanent employment. There is no danger of too much study and mental discipline in this country. The warning, which is frequently uttered against scholastic habits, and literary seclusion, is a mere unmeaning outcry. If our colleges only taught the theory of the sciences, without one practical application, they would be worthy of all the support which they have ever received. There is little ground for apprehension, that any of our professional men will become too learned. The danger is all on the other side. The demand for cultivated and uncultivated talent in this country, of all kinds, is now very great, and it will be greater. Twenty men will go prematurely to their work, where one will remain too long at a collegiate or professional school. Almost every circumstance in youthful character and feelings, almost every feature in the character of this country, and of this age, unite, in saying to the scholar, as the Hebrew prophet said to the Jews, Let us depart hence. But with that same prophet I would say, Wo to him who goes on the ocean of public life in its present agitated state, without well digested knowledge. Radically defective is that system of collegiate or professional instruction, which does not lay the foundations of knowledge below the waves of excitement, on the rock of fixed principle. It is no doubt a fact that some of our public men fail of doing much good-not from any physical or moral defect, but because they entered on public life too early. The resources of any man will be soon exhausted unless he is constantly and systematically acquiring. Another advantage of the arrangement would be, that these scholarships would help to form a literary atmosphere around a college-an object, it is needless to say, of great importance. Another unquestionable benefit would be, that they would occasionally furnish an individual who would seize some one of the commanding eminences of literature, and on it erect a strong and never-failing light.

There is an opportunity to perform an important service for our country and for mankind in several departments of our literature. Let an individual write the history of the United States, with purity of taste, with liberal and philosophic views, with thorough research and analysis, and with the spirit of an enlightened Christian, and he would do an incalculable good. Let another individual, choosing early and beginning late, with a close acquaintance with human nature, with a knowledge and love of our free institutions, write the life of General Washington-not concealing, Hayleylike, the clear evidence that Washington feared God and obeyed his commandments.

Any arrangement at our colleges, which could supply such a deficiency, any provision, which would have the tendency to furnish the men, who would breathe through every department of literature the spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ, surely ought to be cheered with ample encouragement. There are more than a million of Christian professors in this country; yet our literature is not by any means a Christian literature. Many of the men who create it, or who copy it, and diffuse it, are either opposed to Christianity, or entirely indifferent to its claims. They may speak well of religion in the abstract, but they do not like its living power. Some of them are believers in general, and infidels in particular.

STATISTICS.

THE subject of Statistics, is the investigation and exposition of the actual condition of states and nations, in regard to their internal organization and foreign relations. It embraces literature, science, political economy, art, trade, morals, religion, and in fact all the subjects of human knowledge. Schlözer, as quoted in the American Encyclopedia, says, "History is statistics in a state of progression; statistics is history at a stand." It differs from geography in this respect, that though many particular facts belong equally to both, yet geography arranges them always on the principle of locality, but statistics with reference to their effect on the general condition of a nation. Statistics was first treated scientifically in Germany. Achenwall gave it, in 1749, its name and systematic form. The principal writers on this subject are Schlözer, Hassel, Niemann, Stein, Balbi, Gioja, Dupin, a French writer of the first order, Meusel, Staudlin, Colquhoun, Von Hammer, Pitkin, Seybert, Holmes, Darby, &c. &c.

NEW ENGLAND IN 1760.

FROM a discourse preached by the Rev. Ezra Stiles, before the convention of the Congregational clergy of Rhode Island, April 23, 1760, we have gathered a number of interesting particulars, respecting the ecclesiastical condition of New England, seventyfive years since. The following, as he supposed, was the condition of the different sects. Jews, 70. Moravians, 70. Episcopalians, 2,100 families, or 12,600 souls. There were 27 Episcopal missions, including two itinerances. The 27 missionaries, with three other ministers, officiated in 47 churches and places of divine worship. Six or seven of the congregations were large, others were small; some not exceeding 15 or 20 families each. Friends, 16,000-a large estimate. Baptists, 22,000. Belonging to no sect, 10,000. The sum of all these deducted from 500,000, the population of New England at that time, leaves 440,000 Congregationalists.* "At present," says Dr. Stiles, "the Congregationalists have about 515 churches, which double in less than 30 years. The aged ministers, now living, have in their day, seen 130 churches increase to 530. In 1643, the 15,000 souls in New England, were cantoned into 34

* If there be any error in the preceding account, we are inclined to think that it is in estimating the number of nothingarians too low. There were then no Methodists in the country. The first regular Methodist preacher was the Rev. William Black, who arrived in Boston in 1784. As early as 1768, some of the British soldiers in Boston, were Methodists, and held meetings. The first regular Roman Catholic congregation in Boston was assembled in 1784.

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