The medical profession does not exhibit such a mass of talent as the bar; but, from the superior means of education provided for it, in point of learning, it is by far the first. We have before said, and we here repeat, that in regard to medical schools, America cannot justly be charged with neglect; the fault now consists in not prevent ing, by law, ignorant quacks from practising the art. The colleges of physicians assume the right to give licences, but their licence is a mere certificate of recommendation, and not a commission, without which a man cannot enter upon the practice; and, as ignorant people are always jealous of learning, in many parts of the country, charlatans are much more encouraged than those whose education entitles them to this certificate. But the regularly bred physicians do full justice to the advantages they enjoy; in no country is greater practical skill discovered among the faculty; and this, we think, is a strong proof of the truth of our opinion, that the bad system of early education in America is the cause of all their supposed intellectual inferiority. The loss is comparatively little felt in this profession, and, perhaps, it may be even advantageous to neglect the cultivation of the mind, and the acquisition of a fine taste, when one is destined for a pursuit in life, in which these qualities are rarely called for; but, however this may be, classical learning is not an indispensable requisite for a good physician; for it is quite certain, that better are to be found no where than in America; and as certain, that very few of them could read Hippocrates and Galen, or even Celsus, in the original. Still the medical faculty has done more for the literary and scientific character of the country, than all the others together. The college of physicians at Philadelphia, and the Massachusetts medical Society at Boston, publish their transactions regularly; and very respectable medical journals are published in Boston and New York, under the direction of private individuals. Several works in high esteem, have appeared from the professors of the Philadelphia school, on anatomy, surgery, materia medica, and the diseases most frequent in the United States. In New York, the medical writings have been more in the nature of dissertations, and are to be found chiefly in the medical re

pository of Drs Mitchell and Miller, and the medical register of Dr Hosack. In Boston, a fund has been placed at the disposal of the medical society, out of which prizes are annually given for the best treatises on the subject proposed; this has had a very beneficial effect in directing the attention of students and young physicians to the most important inquiries, and has produced many valuable dissertations. On the whole then medical science may be considered in a very respectable state in America, and requiring only some extension of its present means, and a power of excluding ignorant pretenders from the profession to perfect its character.

Before we proceed to speak of the American clergy, we must make a few observations on the state of religion. There being no established church, and, in general, no obligation to provide religious instruction, a great part of the country is either entirely destitute of it, or dependent upon itinerant preachers for all they receive. The whole number of religious teachers being five thousand, as shewn by the latest accounts, it appears that only about two thousand of them have received any kind of preparatory education, all the rest being fanatics and pretenders to immediate inspiration; and of this two thousand one-half at least are in New England, and of the remaining thousand, but about two hundred in the great district of country south and west of the Chesapeak, containing a population of more than four million souls. Thus we see, that, in speaking of the clerical profession, we are obliged to leave out of consideration very nearly one-half of the country, and certainly that half, which is most distinguished for talent and genius. In fact the profession is never thought of by any of the native young men of the South, all the supplies it receives are from the North. It must not be inferred from this, that the sacred office is held in no respect; that is not the case, but it is a respect which ambitious men never covet. If we were to proceed in this inquiry, we should find, that the clerical profession must hold out the least inducement to men of talent, and that, more particularly, in those parts of the country of which the growth is the most rapid. It is the least lucrative, most laborious, and offers no honours

in expectation. Its comparative decline has been very great for the last twenty years, and it must be still greater for the future, unless some change should be made to place it more upon an equality with law and medicine; and how this could be done, it would be difficult to say-there are no orders of clergy, and hence there can be no hope of preferment to act upon the ambitious, and no promise of leisure to tempt the scholar. Itinerant preachers are continually gaining upon the educated clergy, even in New England, where the people are the soberest, and in the other states they have almost succeeded in extirpating them. If farther proof be necessary that the profession is losing its attractions for young men of talent, the fact, that the only parishes now sought for, or accepted by such, are those of the cities, affords a conclusive one; and a stronger even than this is shewn by the records of the annual academic degrees; Harvard College first conferred degrees in 1642; for the next succeeding eighty-eight years, one-half of the whole number educated there entered the church; but, during the last equal period of time, the proportion has been only one out of five. To confirm this fact, we refer to the catalogue of the graduates, in which the clergy are printed in italics. This picture must be particularly pleasing to the admirers of the anti-church establishment system; and it was for their gratification that we sketched it. We now return to the subject, which more properly belongs to us here to consider, and proceed to give an account of the state of learning among the clergy. Critical learning was not introduced into the study of theology, until within a very few years. The old American divines, notwithstanding their superiority to the modern, as classical scholars, relied entirely upon the English version of the Scriptures, and English commentators. Of late the German system has prevailed, and the doctrine of inspiration, being now renounced by many, the Bible is subjected to the common rules of criticism, and hence must be studied in the original languages. The character of the leading clergy is therefore essentially changed; theological controversy, which was heretofore purely metaphysical, is now reduced to mere Biblical criticism; their learning is

more exclusively professional; and their sermons more in the style of exegetical lectures. This applies particularly to the Unitarians; the orthodox clergy are not so learned, but they retain more of the old stamp; their tendency, however, is the same way, as all the new theological schools now adopt this system of critical enquiry. For a long time after the settlement of America, the clergy were the only men of letters in the country; education was as wholly in their hands as it now is in the hands of the ecclesiastics in Italy and Spain; literature and science also looked to them alone for support. That period produced a number of curious and important works, which are far less known in this country than they deserve. The most remarkable among them are, Cotton Mather's History of New England, and the writings of his father Increase Mather; Ward's Simple Cobbler of Agawam in America; Hubbard's Indian Wars; Cotton and Norton's Theological Works; and Eliot's Indian Grammar; and his Translation of the Bible into the language of the Massachusetts Indians-a work which gained him the title of the Indian apostle. During the greater part of the last century also, the clergy continued as before, almost the sole protectors of literature and science; but the latter received more attention from the physicians after the establishment of the medical schools at Philadelphia and Cambridge in 1764 and in 1783. Their writings in this period were chiefly sermons and local history, and in neither of these departments of literature did any thing very remarkable appear; but, in controversial divinity, a powerful Coryphoeus stept forth; as a metaphysical theologian, Edwards has never been surpassed, if equalled; it is scarcely in the power of the mind to reason with greater closeness and force, than he has done throughout his works. He is the very Euclid of divines; and the Americans would do well, in claiming due honour for their geniuses, to put him at the head of the list; for the country never produced a greater. If we were to bring the history down to the present day, we should find many names that deserve to be mentioned. Within the last twenty years America has produced full as great a number of good sermons, in proportion to her educated

clergy, as Britain, but then the same body has not produced much other literature, as they are continually doing here; the reasons for which have before been given. From the views we have now taken, it appears that the whole number of religious teachers in America is but about half what is requisite for the population-that of these, three-fifths are ignorant deluded fanatics, who possess almost exclusively one great portion of the country-that the proportion of regular clergy is diminishing, and the profession daily becoming less respectable and that the spirit of controversy and sectarism extends to all classes, who interest themselves at all in religion. Massachusetts and Connecticut generally, and several of the cities in the other states, are still favoured with a respectable, and, for the most part, wellinstructed clergy, but the residue of the land is a prey to delusion.

Having shewn that there is no class of society in America devoted exclusively to letters, and that the professions afford little or no leisure for other studies, it cannot be expected that literature and science should be successfully cultivated there. Certain it is, they have hitherto done very little for either. Franklin is their only philosopher whose discoveries have been of much importance to mankind; and if the whole stock of their literature were set on fire to morrow, no scholar would feel the loss. We do not mean to say, that they have produced no. thing worthy of being preserved; we have already mentioned several professional works of high value, and we might add others to the list; but they are not the master productions of the mind, în whose preservation all the world is interested. Mr Irving has shewn much talent and great humour in his Salmagundi and Knickerbocker, and they are exceedingly pleasant books, especially to one who understands the local allusions. Belknap, Minot, Ramsay, and Jefferson, have written valuable histories of different portions of the country; and Marshall of the Revolutionary War, and of the hero who commanded in it. Freeman Buckminster and Channing's Sermons are specimens of great elegance and fine taste in writing; in essays and the lighter kind of composition, Franklin, Dennie, and Wirt, were uncommonly successful; in the literary journals, a

great deal of talent has often been displayed, and the little patronage they have received is a strong proof of the want of literary taste in the public. The Portfolio, formerly conducted by Dennie, was one of the most amusing and best edited journals of the kind ever published in any country; Walsh's American Review displayed talent enough to entitle it to the highest patronage; and the Cambridge Repository was a work of learning that would have done credit to any body of critics; but none of these received the support they deserved. At present this complaint could not be made with equal justice; the North American Review, printed at Boston; the Analectic Magazine at New York; and the American Register at Philadelphia all receive a good share of public patronage; from these journals the best knowledge of the progress of literature in the country is now to be gained. In works of imagination and taste, very little has been produced. Mr Warden, in his Chapter upon the Literature of the Country, mentions a long list of original dramatic productions; but he is careful to express no opinion of their merits, and we are quite sure he would have omitted them altogether, if he had but have taken the pains to read them. In romance and novel writing their success has been about the same; Brown's Wieland and Arthur Mervyn are the only ones whose fame is likely to survive the life of their authors. The poetic muse has been more fruitful; but her offspring do not indicate a great degree of vigour in the parents. Barlow's Columbiad is a long heroic, and Trumbull's MacFingal, or, as it was once cited in the Quarterly Review, "a Poem by a Mr Fingal," is a Hudibrastic quite as respectable for the number as for the excellence of its lines. There was also an Epic called the Conquest of Canaan, by Dr Dwight; and as he is the only American, whom Campbell has admitted into the company of English bards, he seems entitled from that honour alone to a more particular notice than the rest; especially as the editor complains that he was unable to learn one word of his history. This gentleman, who had the misfortune to be called by "the baptismal name of Timothy," and in consequence thereof to have become an object of derision to the Edinburgh

Reviewers, was at one time a distinguished clergyman at Greenfield in Connecticut, and afterwards president of Yale College; as a pulpit orator, and a writer of sermons, he had a high reputation in his own country. For a long while he was at the head of the Calvinistic clergy of New England; and, from the infallibility claimed for him by his disciples, he received the name of Pope Dwight from his opposers. His two poems, the Conquest of Canaan and Greenfield Hill, were the productions of his early life, and were surely not the most favourable proofs he gave of talent. He died two years since, at the age of sixty or thereabouts. A better taste and a more genuine spirit of poetry has been discovered in some of the smaller and later productions. Alston's Sylph of the Seasons, Pierpont's Airs of Palestine, and the Bridal of Vaumond, are decidedly the finest transatlantic poetic compositions we have seen. It will no doubt be thought more difficult to account for American barrenness in creative literature, than in works of learned industry, allowing them to possess a common share of genius; but even here we do not look upon the attempt as desperate. Admitting that genius is too subtile to be confined by any covering in which ignorance may wrap it-that it comes into life at its own call from the brain in which it exists-it does not follow that it may not afterward suffer some deforming compression, like the flattening of the heads of the Indian children. Indeed precisely this effect is produced upon it in America; the instant it appears, it is forced into some professional refrigeratory, where it undergoes the process of condensation, and is then turned out for ordinary use, as a common preparation of the shops. There is nothing to awaken fancy in that land of dull realities; it contains no objects that carry back the mind to the contemplation of early antiquity; no mouldering ruins to excite curiosity in the history of past ages; no memorials, commemorative of glorious deeds, to call forth patriotic enthusiasm and reverence; it has no traditions and legends and fables to afford materials for romance and poetry; no peasantry of original and various costume and character for the sketches of the pencil and the subjects of song; it has gone through no period of inVOL. IV.

fancy; no pastoral state in which poetry grows out of the simplicity of language, and beautiful and picturesque descriptions of nature are produced by the constant contemplation of her. The whole course of life is a round of practical duties; for every day there is a task for every person; all are pressing forward in the hurry of business; no man stops to admire the heavens over his head, or the charms of creation around him; no time is allowed for the study of nature, and no taste for her beauties is ever acquired. It is astonishing how little there is of the ideal and poetic in life there-what neglect of every thing intellectual-what indifference to all that belongs to imagination-and what perfect concentration of the whole faculties in the pursuit of wealth, and the prosecution of the calling or profession, be it what it may. If this affords no solution of the difficulty, we know of nothing that will; the fact is undeniable, that hitherto they have given no proof whatever of genius in works of invention and fancy, and unless we allow that the failure is owing to the want of proper subjects to awaken it, and proper materials to nourish it, in the manner above shewn; or that it is displayed in a different sphere, we must agree with Buffon and Raynal, that the human mind has suffered a deterioration by being transported across the Atlantic. As Englishmen, we should not feel much pride in this belief of the degradation of American intellect; we would rather hope that they will one day reflect lustre upon their ancestors, and add to the glories of the common language.

To complete our view of this subject, we have now to add a few remarks on the state of science and the arts. We have a right to expect that America will do a great deal for science; for it is comparatively little affected by the obstacles, which retard her literary advancement, and, in many of its departments, it directly assists in perfecting that practical talent for which she is so eminently distinguished. They have not yet furnished many names to be entered upon this catalogue of fame. Franklin's is the only one whose right is undisputed; Rittenhouse can hardly be considered more than an ingenious mechanic; and Rumford's claim rests rather upon his successful application 4 N

of science to practical uses, than upon his own original discoveries in it. One more might be added, whose right must be allowed whenever it is sufficiently known; we allude to Dr Bowditch, the astronomer, to whose merits the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh have lately borne testimony by receiving him as a member. For the proofs which this gentleman has given of his profound science, we refer to the Transactions of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published at Boston, particularly to the fourth volume, which contains several articles by him. Natural history appears to be the subject, which now receives the most attention, and that is cultivated with great zeal. In this branch of science they have produced several valuable works, within a few years: Wilson's Ornithology is a splendid book, and we can conceive no reason but its high price (30 guineas) which has prevented it from finding its way into more of our libraries; Cleaveland's Mineralogy is generally known, and as generally esteemed; Maclure's little work on the Geology of the United States is a very interesting view of the great outlines of the formation of the country; Bigelow's Medical Botany, and Elliott's Carolina Flora, both now publishing in numbers, are executed with great abilities and correctness, and promise to be important additions to the science; and Nuttall's Genera of the North American plants is a useful catalogue, particularly as a supplement to the larger Flora of Pursh. Other works of the same kind are now preparing for publication: Professor Cleaveland's Geology of Maine, Bigelow and Boot's New England Flora, Hosack's Flora of North America, and Muhlenberg Flora Lancastriensis, edited by Collins, may shortly be expected. The scientific expedition up the Missouri, and its tributary streams, cannot fail to add a vast deal to our present knowledge of the kingdoms of nature; and the very undertaking of it is a proof of a good spirit in the cause. Another indication of the increasing attention to science is seen in the improved character of the learned societies: the papers now published in their transactions are far more respectable than formerly. The fourth volume of the Memoirs of the American Academy at Boston, recently

received here, would better stand the ordeal of the reviewers, than a volume of the Transactions of the Philosophical Society at Philadel phia did about sixteen years since. This last-named society seems hardly so active as some others in the coun try, which, probably, is owing to the establishment of a new society in the same city, the Academy of Natural Sciences, which has already published several very interesting papers on zoology, botany, and geology. It must be highly pleasing, to all the friends of natural history, to hear of this attention to it in a country, which lays open such a field for research. We hope that reparation for past unpardonable neglect may be made by future activity and zeal. Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Charleston, Carolina, are all making spirited exertions, through the instrumentality of societies, for its promotion. In this last city, by the influence of a single individual, a taste for botany has been created, and liberal patronage extended to the sciences; a garden has been established, which should, and, we hope, will be made a depository for all the plants of the tropics, for which it is so admirably fitted by the mildness of the climate. We know of no other scientific associations which have not been mentioned, except the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York. There are several for the promotion of agriculture and the useful arts, and two for aiding inquiries into their own history. The oldest of these two was established at Boston about thirty years since, and has published sixteen volumes of historical papers, which are for the most part important materials for history. It is called the Massachusetts Historical Society. The other, at New York, was formed in 1809, and has published two volumes of the same kind as that at Boston. Both of these societies have considerable libraries of books connected with the objects they are designed to promote.

As to the fine arts, America is just about where she was when first discovered by Columbus. She is evidently in no danger, from what De Pradt considers as a mark of decaying liberties, a taste for these luxuries. She might have painters if she would, for she has given birth to several of the most distinguished of the age. West, Copely,