God. Native character, strength and quickness of , mind, are not of the number of distinctions and accomplishments, that human institutions can monopolize within a city's walls. In quiet times, they remain and perish in the obscurity, to which a false organization of society consigns them. In dangerous, convulsed and trying times, they spring up in the fields, in the village hamlets, and on the mountain tops, and teach the surprised favorites of human law, that bright eyes, skilful hands, quick perceptions, firm purpose, and brave hearts, are not the exclusive appanage of courts. Our popular institutions are favorable to intellectual improvement because their foundation is in dear nature. They do not consign the greater part of the social frame to torpidity and mortification. They send out a vital nerve to every member of the community, by which its talents and power, great or small, are brought into living conjunction and strong sympathy with the kindred intellect of the nation; and every impression on every part vibrates with electric rapidity through the whole. They encourage nature to perfect her work; they make education, the soul's nutriment, cheap; they bring up remote and shrinking talent into the cheerful field of competition; in a thousand ways they provide an audience for lips, which nature has touched with persuasion; they put a lyre into the hands of genius; they bestow on all who deserve it or seek it, the only patronage worth having, the only patronage that ever struck out a spark of celestial fire,'-the patronage of fair opportunity. This is a day of improved education; new systems of teaching are devised; modes of instruction, choice of studies, adaptation of text books, the whole machinery of means, have been brought in our day under severe revision. But were I to attempt to point out the most efficacious and comprehensive improvement in education, the engine, by which the greatest portion of mind could be brought and kept under cultivation, the discipline which would reach farthest,

sink deepest, and cause the word of instruction, not to spread over the surface like an artificial hue, carefully laid on, but to penetrate to the heart and soul of its objects, it would be popular institutions. Give the people an object in promoting education, and the best methods will infallibly be suggested by that instinctive ingenuity of our nature, which provides means for great and precious ends. Give the people an object in promoting education, and the worn hand of labor will be opened to the last farthing, that its children may enjoy means denied to itself. This great contest about black boards and sand tables will then lose something of its importance, and even the exalted names of Bell and Lancaster may sink from that very lofty height, where an over hasty admiration has placed them.

But though it be conceded to us, that the tendency. which is alleged to exist in this country toward the political career, is not a vicious effect of our free institutions, still it may be inquired, whether the new form of social organization among us is at least to produce no corresponding modification of our literature? As the country advances, as the population becomes denser, as wealth accumulates, as the various occasions of a large, prosperous and polite community call into strong action and vigorous competition the literary talent of the country, will no peculiar form or direction be given to its literature, by the nature of its institutions? To this question an answer must, without hesitation, be given in the affirmative. Literature as well in its origin, as in its true and only genuine character, is but a more perfect communication of man with man and mind with mind. It is a grave, sustained, deliberate utterance of fact, of opinion, and feeling; or a free and happy reflection of nature, of characters, or of manners; and if it be not these it is poor imitation. It may, therefore, be assumed as certain, that the peculiarity of our condition and institutions will be reflected in some peculiarity of

our literature; but what that shall be it is as yet too early to say. Literary history informs us of many studies, which have been neglected as dangerous to existing governments; and many others which have been cultivated because they were prudent and safe. We have hardly the means of settling from analogy, what direction the mind will most decisively take, when left under strong excitements to action, wholly without restraint from the arm of power. It is impossible to anticipate what garments our native muses will weave for themselves. To foretell our literature would be to create it. There was a time before an epic poem, a tragedy, or a historical composition had ever been produced by the wit of man. It was a time of vast and powerful empires, of populous and wealthy cities. But these new and beautiful forms of human thought and feeling all sprang up in Greece, under the Istimulus of her free institutions. Before they appeared in the world, it would have been idle for the philosopher to form conjectures, as to the direction, which the kindling genius of the age was to assume. He, who could form, could and would realize the anticipation, and it would cease to be an anticipation. Assuredly epic poetry was invented then and not before, when the gorgeous vision of the Iliad, not in its full detail of circumstance, but in the dim conception of its leading scenes and sterner features, burst into the soul of Homer. Impossible, indeed, were the task fully to foretell the progress of the mind, under the influence of institutions as new, as peculiar, and far more animating, than those of Greece. But if, as no one will deny, our political system bring more minds into action on equal terms, if it provide a prompter circulation of thought throughout the community, if it give weight and emphasis to more voices, if it swell to tens of thousands and millions those sons of emulation, who crowd the narrow strait where honor travels,' then it seems not too much to expect some peculiarity at least, if we may not call it improvement,

in that literature, which is but the voice and utterance of all this mental action.There is little doubt that the instrument of communication itself will receive great improvements; that the written and spoken language will acquire force and power; possibly, that forms of address, wholly new, will be struck out, to meet the universal demand for new energy. When the improvement or the invention, (whatever it be,) comes, it will come unlooked for, as well to its happy author as the world. But where great interests are at stake, great concerns rapidly succeeding each other, depending on almost innumerable wills, and yet requiring to be apprehended in a glance, and explained in a word; where movements are to be given to a vast empire, not by transmitting orders, but by diffusing opinions, exciting feelings, and touching the electric chord of sympathy, there language and expression will become intense, and the old processes of communication must put on a vigor and a directness, adapted to the aspect of the times. Our country is called, as it is, practical; but this is the element for intellectual action. No strongly marked and high toned literature; poetry, eloquence, or ethics; ever appeared but in the pressure, the din, and crowd of great interests, great enterprises, perilous risks, and dazzling rewards. Statesmen, and warriors, and poets, and orators, and artists, start up under one and the same excitement. They are all branches of one stock. They form, and cheer, and stimulate, and, what is worth all the rest, understand each other; and it is as truly the sentiment of the student, in the recesses of his cell, as of the soldier in the ranks, which breathes in the exclamation:

To all the sons of sense proclaim,
One glorious hour of crowded life
Is worth an age without a name.

But we are brought back to the unfavorable aspect of the subject, by being reminded out of history of the

splendid patronage, which arbitrary governments have bestowed on letters, and which, from the nature of the case, can hardly be extended even to the highest merit, under institutions like our own. We are told of the munificent pensions, the rich establishments, the large foundations; of the museums erected, the libraries gathered, the endowments granted, by Ptolemies, Augustuses, and Louises of ancient and modern days. We are asked to remark the fruit of this noble patronage; wonders of antiquarian or scientific lore, Thesauruses and Corpuses, efforts of erudition from which the emulous student, who would read all things, weigh all things, surpass all things, recoils in horror; volumes and shelves of volumes, before which meek-eyed patience folds her hands in despair.

When we (have contemplated these things, and turn our thoughts back to our poor republican land, to our frugal treasury, and the caution with which it is dispensed; to our modest fortunes, and the thrift with which they are hoarded; to our scanty public libraries, and the plain brick walls within which they are deposited: we may be apt to form gloomy auguries of the influence of free political institutions on our literature. It is important then, that we examine more carefully the experience of former ages, and see how far their institutions, as they have been more or less popular, have been more or less associated with displays of intellectual excellence. When we make this examination, we shall be gratified to find, that the precedents are all in favor of liberty. The greatest efforts of human genius have been made, where the nearest approach to free institutions has taken place. There shone not forth one ray of intellectual light, to cheer the long and gloomy ages of the Memphian and Babylonian despots. Not a historian, not an orator, not a poet is heard of in their annals. When you ask, what was achieved by the generations of thinking beings, the millions of men, whose natural genius was as bright as that of the Greeks, nay, who forestalled the Greeks in the first in