ertions of their successors. The schools next in importance are those at New York, Boston, and New Haven; in all of which there are learned and skilful professors. As the system of instruction in these institutions is precisely similar to that generally adopted in Europe, it is unnecessary to give any particular account of it. But the practice of medicine in America being free to every one, and no proof of knowledge and skill required, these schools are attended only by those who have some ambition to be distinguished, or some conscience about trifling with the life of a fellow-being; all the rest pursue a cheaper and more expeditious mode of acquiring the healing art. They put themselves for a short time under the direction of some country physician, by the aid of whose experience and library, the latter consisting of Buchan's Domestic Medicine, the Physician's Vade Mecum, and Underwood on Lying-in Women-they soon learn to bleed, blister, purge, and manage a case of obstetricks, which fully qualifies them to become what is called, in the language of the country, a doctor. Old habits are not easily changed, and hence the union of half a dozen trades in the same individual, which was quite unavoidable while the population of America was thin and scattered, still remains, although the necessity no longer exists. Throughout the country, except in the considerable cities and towns, physicians are also surgeons and apothecaries, and from a very laudable spirit of accommodation, they provide themselves with a kind of portable dispensary, furnished with the requisite number of gallipots and phials, which, upon common occasions, occupies a corner of a commodious pocket, fitted up for that purpose, and is transferred to the saddle-bags, when a wider range makes it necessary to ride. Thanks to the kind providence of God, the evil arising from these ignorant practitioners is much less than would naturally be feared as the life of man must be trusted in such and so many hands, it is a most convincing proof of his benevolence, that the art of saving, or at least of not destroying it, can be acquired without either great talents or great knowledge.

The Bar.-The common legal education in America is very wretched; until within a short time, there was VOL. IV.

but one school for the science of jurisprudence, and that a private one; very lately a law faculty has been added to the college at Cambridge, and two distinguished jurists appointed as professors; and a course of law lectures is now given at Baltimore. For the sake of exactness, it may be added, that a professorship of law has long been established at the college of William and Mary in Virginia, which has sometimes been filled by able men; this, however, at present, is in a state of perfect inactivity, as is every thing else belonging to the college. But the common and almost universal mode of studying the profession is with a practising barrister; an apprenticeship is served with him, like that, which is served with an attorney here. And indeed he is both attorney and barrister, and his library or office, as it is called, is a place of business more than a place of study; and therefore the nominal student becomes a mere clerk, and spends his three years in learning the forms of writs and legal instruments, not the principles of that science, which is the "mirror of justice.' Another and a still more serious objection to the private mode of legal education, is the want of books, which necessarily attends it. The library of lawyers in the country, (and in America no village is without one at least,) rarely contains above twenty or thirty volumes, as the statutes of the state inwhich he lives, a few books of forms and precedents of declarations, Blackstone's Commentaries, some of the elementary treatises on bills of exchange and promissory notes, and possibly one or two of the English common law reporters. It is evident enough what must be the effect of this upon the young student; he soon comes to regard his books in the light of a mechanic's tools; as the means, merely, by which he gets his bread, and degrades the liberal and noble profession of the law into the dirty business of a pettifogger. But in some parts of the country, there is an insult to the profession even more disgraceful; almost the whole ceremony of study is dispensed with; a tailor or a cobbler, by being a few months in the office of a lawyer, is transformed into a defender of the life and property of his fellow-beings; and there are more instances than one, of the maker of legal 4 A

essors. The schools are those at New New Haven; in all learned and skilful system of instrucions is precisely silly adopted in Eury to give any parBut the practice erica being free to oof of knowledge these schools are ose who have some guished, or some Hling with the life all the rest pursue expeditious mode aling art. They short time under country physician, se experience and onsisting of Buchicine, the Physiand Underwood -they soon learn rge, and manage a which fully qualiwhat is called, in country, a doctor. asily changed, and half a dozen trades idual, which was while the populathin and scatterIthough the necessts. Throughout t in the considerns, physicians are apothecaries, and e spirit of accomDrovide themselves ortable dispensary, requisite number ials, which, upon occupies a corner ocket, fitted up for is transferred to the 7 wider range makes ride. Thanks to e of God, the evil gnorant practitionhan would naturally life of man must be d so many hands, it ng proof of his bee art of saving, or estroying it, can be either great talents

but one school for the science of jurisprudence, and that a private one; very lately a law faculty has been added to the college at Cambridge, and two distinguished jurists appointed as professors; and a course of law lectures is now given at Baltimore. For the sake of exactness, it may be added, that a professorship of law has long been established at the college of William and Mary in Virginia, which has sometimes been filled by able men; this, however, at present, is in a state of perfect inactivity, as is every thing else belonging to the college. But the common and almost universal mode of studying the profession is with a practising barrister; an apprenticeship is served with him, like that, which is served with an attorney here. And indeed he is both attorney and barrister, and his library or office, as it is called, is a place of business more than a place of study; and therefore the nominal student becomes a mere clerk, and spends his three years in learning the forms of writs and legal instruments, not the principles of that science, which is the "mirror of justice." Another and a still more serious objection to the private mode of legal education, is the want of books, which necessarily attends it. The library of lawyers in the country, (and in America no village is without one at least,) rarely contains above twenty or thirty volumes, as the statutes of the state in which he lives, a few books of forms and precedents of declarations, Blackstone's Commentaries, some of the elementary treatises on bills of exchange and promissory notes, and possibly one or two of the English common law reporters. It is evident enough what must be the effect of this upon the young student; he soon comes to regard his books in the light of a mechanic's tools; as the means, merely, by which he gets his bread, and degrades the liberal and noble profession of the law into the dirty business of a pettifogger. But in some parts of the country, there is an insult to the profession even more disgraceful; almost the whole ceremony of study is dispensed with; a tailor or a cobbler, by being a few months in the office of a lawyer, is transformed into a defender of the life and property of his fellow-beings; and there are more instances than one, of the maker of legal

robes becoming afterwards the wearer of them, and of a transfer from the bench above named, to that of a court of justice.

In divinity, very nearly the same course is pursued, as in medicine and law. Some good theological schools have been established within a few years at Princeton, New Jersey; at Andover and Cambridge, Massachussets. The motive for establishing these schools was proselytizing, no doubt; but that matters not; they furnish good libraries, and other means of learning; and there is no way so sure of checking bigotry and superstition, as by extending knowledge, and giving scope to free inquiry. The old practice is however the most common one, and the greatest number of the theologians, are still educated in the study of a private clergyman, to which the objection of the want of books applies even more forcibly than in the two preceding cases; for clergymen in America are commonly poorer than physicians and lawyers, and hence their libraries are even more miserable. Sometimes Cruden's Concordance, the English Bible, and the Greek Testament, form the whole collection; to which Calvin's Institutes, Stackhouse's Body of Divinity, Doddridge's Family Expositor, and Priestley's Theological Works, are added, according to the amount of the living, and the degree of orthodoxy or heresy of the incumbent. With means like these, or a very little better than these, a great part of the most respectable class of clergymen in America are prepared for dispensing God's law to man, and it must be confessed that they are very exemplary, and vastly more learned than could be expected from their means of becoming so. It is needless to say any thing of the Tunkers and Tumblers, Muggletonians, Jemima Wilkinsonians, and Elias Smithites, and a thousand other such deluded sects, who profess to preach by direct inspiration, and look upon all human learning as mere paganism; all countries, which allow of any freedom of religious worship, have had the same-America is remarkable only for the variety, number, and proportion of them.

The last subject of importance connected with education is libraries. These are, for the most part, pitiful; the largest in the country is that of

Harvard college, which is now said to contain 25,000 volumes; six or eight years since, it had little more than half that number, and this rapid increase affords a pleasing proof of the improving state of the institution. Next in consequence is that of Philadelphia, being the city and the Logan libraries united, which make together about 20,000 volumes. The Boston Athenæum library has 12,000, and the Philadelphia about 6,000. Beside these, the remaining public libraries are those of the other colleges, which are all inconsiderable, from 8,000 down to a few hundred; those of the literary and scientific societies, none of which are important enough to be particularly mentioned; and, lastly, the social libraries as they are called, being small collections of books, made up in the country towns by subscription, which are about equal in value and number to those nicely matched octodecimos, that are put into a gilt and lacquered box for children, and distinguished by the name of a juvenile library. These out of the question, (for it is quite impossible to calculate their number, and they are always of a kind of books of no importance to a scholar,) all the other public libraries of every kind do not contain above 150,000 volumes, of which not more than 30,000 are distinct works; for, as they form so many different libraries, they are, of course, made up of multiplied copies of the same. This then is the whole compass of learning, which the most favoured American scholar has to depend upon. It is uncertain what is the number of books now extant in all languages; we have used a library of 250,000 volumes, which contained no duplicate, and it was so perfect, that it was difficult to ask for an author not to be found in it. The largest library in Europe contains nearly 400,000 volumes, duplicates not included, and perhaps it may be about right to estimate the whole number of printed books in the world at 500,000. This being the case, America furnishes about one-seventeenth of the means necessary for extending learning to the utmost, and about one thirteenth of what the city of Paris alone affords. Another comparison will shew her po verty in a manner equally striking. Germany contains 30 millions of people, who have 2 millions of books in public libraries for their instruction, exclusive

of those of the sovereigns and princes, which are always accessible to scholars. America contains 10 millions of people, who have 150 thousand books for the same purpose. But the 2 millions in Germany are more read than the 150 thousand in America, and the result of the comparison will form the second part of our subject,

Every thing else, which belongs to education, may be described negatively, they exist not. There are but two botanic gardens in the whole country, one at Cambridge, and one near New York, neither of which is extensive enough to be of great use, and what is still more discreditable to them, they contain but a very small number of the indigenous plants of the country. It is the same with their cabinets of natural history. The only good one is Peale's museum in Philadelphia, a private collection seen for money. All the rest in the country are not equal

the

HUMAN LIFE, A POEM.

WE are all happy to receive a poem from Mr Rogers, as from a benefactor whose delightful genius bestowed on us some of the purest moral and intellectual enjoyments of our youth. We have long ceased to regard his poetry as the subject of criticism, and we think of it as of the pictures of some great master, the sun-setting landscapes of a Claude Lorrain,—solely for the perfection of its own mild and melancholy beauty, that seems, though in truth the very height of art, to be very reflection of nature. We could almost suspect the man of having a bad heart, who could think, without delight, of that exquisite poem, the "Pleasures of Memory." There we see pictured with a soft, fleeting, and aerial pencil, all the soft, fleeting, and aerial joys of childhood and youth; and none but hearts either originally insensible by nature to those pure delights, or since hardened against their recollection by worldly pursuits and evil passions, could peruse, without many deep emotions, those records kept by genius of the bright springtime of its existence.

Short as that poem is, yet how wonderfully comprehensive! All the multifarious pleasures of human life successively pass before us for a moment, and then disappear, as the poet's mind

to the private cabinet of Professor Blumenbach, nor so rich in American productions. As yet they have no observatory, and hence do not know the longitude of their own meridian; and, lastly, there is but one gallery of the fine arts, and that is mentioned only to show that its existence is known.

We have now finished the sketch of the schools and other means of education in America, in which we have carefully avoided increasing the dark colouring of the picture. In the view to be taken of the state of learning, we shall point out the improvements, which have been made of late in the institutions, and the proofs, which have been given of an awakening spirit for science and literature, and the causes and consequences of the existing defects will be more particularly examined.

BY SAMUEL ROGERS." *

brings them forward into mellowed light, or keeps them back in glimmering shadow; and when we lay down the witching book, we feel as if waking from a dream in which the past had been restored to us with all that we long ago sighed to lose, and a world spread around us composed only of what was pure, serene, and beautiful.

It is thus that all men, however strange or wild their destinies may have been, find something in that poem applicable to themselves; and that, simple as its music is, the same low key, which, when struck, awakens within gentler hearts only a pleasing sorrow, calls up to those of "sterner stuff" feelings of a more profound regret, and a more overwhelming melancholy. Accordingly, the "Pleasures of Memory" is not the favourite poem of young minds alone, nor of those gentler spirits, for whose sakes its music seems to flow; but it has, in an especial manner, taken hold of the hearts of men of the very loftiest intellects, and breathed its magic into minds successfully devoted to the pursuits of high worldly ambition.

Perhaps no other poem ever accomplished so much with so little ostentatious labour. This is owing to the exquisite art of the poet. There is nothing abrupt, imperfect, or mis