This may appear a serious symptom to one who regards the moral welfare and growth of his country. These attachments, though they never enter into the judgments formed by political economists of the happiness of a people, have a prodigious influence in forming and strengthening habits of order, stability, subordination and even of thrift. In the experience of well regulated commonwealths they have ever been found sources and aids of quiet, domestic affections, withdrawing men from turbulence and the love of change. They are more intimately than we are wont to believe the basis of patriotism, so that where local attachments are feeble, true love of country is seldom found. We would gladly see them stronger and more pervading among our people.

The marked and differences between the Southern and the New England character, are thus sketched by Mr. Murray. The reasons which he assigns for the difference, have doubtless had great influence.

"A gentleman must be very difficult to please, if he does not find the Charleston society agreeable; there is something warm, frank, and courteous in the manner of a real Carolinian: he is not studiously, but naturally, polite; and, though his character may not be remarkable for that persevering industry and close attention to minutiæ in business, which are so remarkable in the New England merchant, he is far from deficient in sagacity, courage, or enterprise. Altogether, with due allowance for exceptions, I should say that the Carolinian character is more akin to that of England; the New England, to that of the lowland Scotch. These affinities (supposing that I am justified in observing their existence) are by no means to be wondered at, if we consider the original elements of which each of the colonies was formed, and the additions which they subsequently received from the mother country. Moreover, the southern colonists, who were mostly episcopalians, and many of them members of the oldest and noblest families in Britain, retained till very lately a predilection for institutions which were little regarded by their northern brethren.

That which may be cited as most important and influential in the formation of their character, was their habitual preference of an English collegiate education for their sons. Before the year 1770, almost every planter sent his boys to Oxford or Cambridge, where he had been himself educated; the necessary consequence of this custom, was a partial adoption of the manners, tastes, and perhaps, too, the faults of the British youth of the higher classes. Hence they imbibed a fondness for horses,

and hunting, and other gay amusements, as well as a share of the light accomplishments of the day; all of which tended to make them averse to the drudgery of business. This disinclination was increased by the nature of their property in Carolina, which, being cultivated by slaves, under the inspection of a factor, left them little of the business of a proprietor, excepting the yearly or half yearly audit of accounts. As I before said, there were many exceptions to these remarks: men who waged war in person with the ancient forest, and with their own hand, or under their own eye, planted, in its place, maize, rice, and cotton! men who attained wealth by hardship and perseverance : but these instances, though not rare, formed the exception, not the rule, as may be gathered both from colonial history, and from the internal and more certain evidence of character above described.

Since the declaration of independence, many causes have been in operation calculated to change the manners and character of the Carolinian; but they have only partially effected this change, and a close and attentive observer can very plainly recognize in the quality of the stream the fountain whence it flows. The most obvious change is that of education, for which it is no longer the fashion to select Oxford or Cambridge. Connected with this is the change which has taken place in the laws of succession to real estate; these used to be conformed to the English law of primogeniture; whereas now, a division of property among all the children takes place, and the planter, with his own portion of the paternal estate, can no longer send his sons to an English university; they are accordingly educated at some college near home, or more usually in the eastern states. My opinion of these, as compared with Oxford or Cambridge, would not be believed unprejudiced, even if it were entirely so; let the science and scholarship of young men whom they respectively send forth, decide the merits of each. I take it for granted, that, in respect to classics and pure mathematics, the Americans would not care to contest the point, because, from the limited attention which they bestow upon these studies, it cannot be expected that they should make the same progress as students who devote to them several years of intense labour, in order to take a first class or a wrangler's degree; but whether they do not, at the different colleges in the United States, receive an education as well suited to the objects which they are destined to pursue in after life, is a different question. The best that I have seen is West Point; that establishment has sent out many young officers well grounded in the lower mathematics, and the other branches of science required in an engineer."

The opinions of such a traveller, himself a man of taste and thoroughly trained in the severe classical discipline of England and Scotland, quick to detect any deficiency or vain assumption of merit in classical studies among us, and yet ready to appreciate and acknowledge true merit wherever found, are worthy of careful attention. On these subjects his opportunities of observation were ample enough to enable him to form a fair judgment, though our literary institutions were not a special object of his attention, and we believe his representations to be in the main remarkably accurate.

"The education of young men in America is not usually such as to give them a taste for the fine arts, or for classical literature. The course of study adopted is too extensive, and embraces a field which it would require many years to cultivate, even to produce a moderate proficiency: the result is what might be expected, that, although the American colleges can now boast of the names of many professors of deserved celebrity, the young men who have been educated at them come forth into the world with a considerable quantity of superficial attainment, but not with that deep laid foundation of knowledge which can resist the dissipation of life. The number of well read scholars in America is very limited. I know not whether I should have noticed the circumstance, had not my attention been called to it by the puerile vanity, which leads so many of their speakers and periodical writers to introduce stale quotations from the Latin authors.

It may be urged in answer, that a classical education, such as is given at the English universities, is not desirable in America. That may be true; but it does not meet my objection, which is, that the course pursued is calculated to give a smattering of various branches of knowledge, rather than to extend the range of sound learning or useful science. If Homer and Plato are not worthy that so large a portion of early life should be devoted to them, at least the moral and political wisdom of Aristotle and Cicero deserve to be studied. Or even granting that these, too, are antiquated and unenlightened in their views, Bacon and Montesquieu, Newton and La Place might be made the objects of careful and profound study. Whether any of the above authors are so studied as to exercise an influence upon the habits and tastes of the higher classes in America, beyond the walls of their colleges, I leave it for themselves to determine.

I think it principally owing to the above causes that the young men in the United States, who are the sons of wealthy parents, and in independent circumstances, are so apt to seek their

amusement in racing, billiards, trotting horses, &c. They are not sufficiently grounded in literature to love it for its own sake. There are no galleries open to them, containing the attractive and immortal works of the great masters in statuary or painting. Can it excite wonder, especially if they have not the opportunity and advantages of travel, (which it has been the absurd practice of some of their authors and critics of late to deride,) that they may seek for pleasure in such pursuits as are within their reach."

"There are several excellent institutions in Lexington: a theological seminary, one of the professors in which is a young English clergyman (minister, also, of the episcopal church here); he seems a very interesting young man; his branch of instruction is chiefly in the Eastern languages; and he assured me that he had several students familiar with the Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldee. He says, that the capacity of the young men in this part of the world is very good, and that there are fewer bookdunces than he remembers at schools in the old country; but the generality of them are very badly grounded in the classics. The process of mental cultivation in America is somewhat analagous to their agricultural system; in both cases they look too extensively to the quantity of produce immediately to be obtained, and pay too little attention to the culture and improvement of the soil. It has been often remarked, that an American course of collegiate education, extends over a field that would occupy a man of good abilities forty years to master; but a student is supposed to have travelled over it in three or four years : and he may have travelled over it; but it is with the same advantage as some of our fashionable London loungers travel over Switzerland and Italy, as fast as well-paid postilions and a light britchka can take them-they have seen Mount Blanc, and been over the Simplon; they have visited St Peter's and the Coliseum; have sat in a gondola and seen the Bridge of Sighs; have eaten ice and macaroni in view of the Bay of Naples; and have yawned admiration before the Apollo, the Venus, and the Cartoons! Then they return-travellers!

With equal advantage is a youth educated on the encyclopæ dia system, so pernicious to industry or to sterling knowledge and acquirement. The number of young men who acquire a taste for reading is singularly small in America. They will tell a stranger who makes this observation, that they are too busy, that they are engaged in mercantile and other affairs. This, in fact, (though a plausible one,) is only an excuse; they have time enough to give to the theatre, the dance, the race course, the trottingmatch, the billiard-table, the tavern-bar, &c., but to find a young man, having left college five years, who could read Pindar and

Euripides, or even Horace and Juvenal, for pleasure, would be no easy task-at least among those whom I have seen at New York and the other cities in the United States."

In Lexington, Mr Murray found, what we wonder he could find in America, a mad-man who still loved his Virgil.

"Among the men was a presbyterian clergyman, a native of Ireland. He was still so wedded to his professional dignity, that he would not put on a shirt unless it was marked "the reverend." His only companion was an old copy of Virgil. He said, he only read the first six books of the Æneid. I asked him to read me twenty lines; and, under pretence of not understanding them, prevailed upon him to construe them, which he did with great fluency, without hesitation or mistake."

The reason of the inadequate attention paid to classical studies in this country, is owing in great measure to a prevalent impression, which Mr Murray hints at, that there is a better way of fitting men for the practical duties of life. We doubt if there is-or rather we would say that so little of the classics is now learned, and that little so speedily forgotten, that the experiment has hardly been fairly tried. Nine tenths of those even who are, as we call it, liberally educated, have their habits, tastes, and feelings, hardly in the slightest degree affected by their classical studies. We believe that scarcely an individual can be found who has experienced anything of their value in the improvement of his own perceptions, tastes and character, who would not earnestly urge the introduction of these studies on a larger scale in every course of liberal education.

Another reason may be the universal character of all our schemes of education. All our youth must learn somewhat of every thing. Every one must learn, ancient languages, modern languages, go over the whole range of natural philosophy, through the vast empire of the natural sciences, morals, politics, economy,'government, &c. &c. In this so wide circuit, each separate science is only glanced at, and the classics, which are supposed to have a less intimate relation than any other study to the practical business of life, come in for a share proportioned to their imagined value.

It is well that these views have not influenced all. There are some among us, like the salt of the earth, whose tastes, habits, and characters have been moulded by classic disci