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Trumbull, Vanderlyn, Allston, and Leslie, are all her sons, and would probably now be her honours, if she had given proper encouragement to their talents. Sculpture is not likely to make much progress in a land, where there are no models, and in which the ideal has no existence; nor architecture, where utility is always preferred to beauty; nor music, where the common labours of life would hardly be stopt to listen even to the lyre of Orpheus. In these respects, however, they cannot be charged with having degenerated; they possess quite as much taste in either of them, as they inherited from their ancestors.

From the imperfect account, which we have now given of the state of intellectual cultivation in America, we may draw the following general conclusions: First, that classical learning is there generally undervalued, and of course neglected; secondly, that knowledge of any kind is regarded only as a requisite preparation for the intended vocation in life, and not cultivated as a source of enjoyment, or a means of refining the character; and thirdly, that the demand for active talent is so great, and the reward it receives so sure and so tempting, as invariably to draw it away from retired study, and the cultivation of letters. It is not, therefore, to be expected, that she will

very soon produce any critical classical scholars, or great poets, or superior dramatic writers, or fine works of fiction; in a word, any extraordinary productions of learning or taste. But mind is not inactive there; it is continually wrought upon by the most powerful excitements, and it must display itself in a manner worthy of its field of action. In enterprise, personal intrepidity, force of individual character, adroitness in the management of business, quickness in execution, ingenuity of mechanical invention, and all the qualities which constitute physical talent, if the expression may be used, England never had a rival but America. These are the faculties first called forth, because first needed. If in these she has proved herself worthy of the stock from which she sprung, may it not be expected that she will exhibit a like equality in powers of a higher order, when a more improved and refined state of society shall bring them into action. We do not believe that America is the most enlightened nation on earth, although it has been so enacted by the authority of her legislative assembly; but we do believe, that she will disprove the charge of intellectual inferiority, whenever proper cultivation of the mind shall cause it fully to develop its faculties.

REMARKS ON KEEPING IN REMEMBRANCE THE CAPACITIES OF HUMAN NA

TURE.

Books are loved by some merely as elegant combinations of thought; by others as a means of exercising the intellect. By some they are considered as the engines by which to propagate opinions; and by others they are only deemed worthy of serious regard, when they constitute repositories of matters of fact. But perhaps the most important use of literature has been pointed out by those who consider it as a record of the respective modes of moral and intellectual existence that have prevailed in successive ages, and who value literary performances in proportion as they preserve a memorial of the spirit which was at work in real life, during the times when they were written. Considered in this point of view, books can no longer be slighted as fanciful tissues of thought, proceeding from

the solitary brains of insulated poets or metaphysicians. They are the shadows of what has formerly occupied the minds of mankind, and of what once determined the tenor of existence. The narrator who details political events, does no more than indicate a few of the external effects, or casual concomitants, of what was stirring during the times of which he professes to be the historian. As the generations change on the face of the globe, different energies are evolved with new strength, or sink into torpor; faculties are brightened into perfection, or lose themselves in gradual blindness and oblivion. No age concentrates within itself all advantages. The knowledge of what has been is necessary, in addition to the knowledge of the present, to enable us to conceive the full extent of human

powers and capacities; or, to speak more correctly, this knowledge is necessary to enable us to become acquainted with the varieties of talent and energy, with which beings of the same general nature with ourselves have, in past times, been endowed.

The three principal bequests which men receive from past ages are, science and the mechanical powers it confers -history, which, in exhibiting the sequence of events, affords materials for the philosophy of experience and the inspiration emanated from the literary monuments of past habits of thought and feeling. The first is a certain legacy. The use made of the second depends upon the degree of intellectual activity with which the receiving generation is endowed. The efficacy of the last depends upon the degree of moral life continuing to pervade the minds of mankind; for a nation, although alive to the investigation of causes and effects, may sink into such a state of moral darkness and stupidity, as to be unable to perceive any meaning in the memorials of former genius. When this takes place, the noblest compositions appear to be only a rhapsody of words, because the feelings which ought to correspond to them have no longer any existence. Helvetius or Holbach would probably see nothing but a dreary blank in the pages of Dante or Milton; and for the same reason, in the society in which they lived, the highest works of art would be valued only for the mechanical merits of their execution. The mind which they express would be a dead letter. The knowledge which relates to objects of sense is of a nature which can hardly be lost sight of. Certain qualities are said to belong to certain objects; and as the objects have a permanent existence independent of human habits, they remain always extant for examination. But the case is totally different with regard to mental qualities, which, when they disappear, leave behind them only the remembrance of actions afterwards reckoned strange, perhaps, and the result of barbarous prejudices-or endeavour to stamp traces of themselves upon literary compositions, which subsequent generations may, if they chuse, in order to preserve a low self-complacency, interpret by a shallow and mputed import quite different from e real one, or throw aside as dull

and ineffective. Whether the literary records of past ages happen for a time to be regarded with interest or not, few improprieties can be more palpable than that of sneering at the painstaking of antiquarians and philologists, who make it their study to preserve or restore these vehicles, in which the pedigree of human thoughts and feelings is retained for future examination.

As society advances through its different stages, the external circumstances of life, and the objects about which men are engaged, become such as no longer to task or exercise more than a small part of the general aggregate of human energies and capacities. The vivifying heat of external inspiration ceases to dart its rays through the mind; and if the deeper feelings still continue to bestir themselves of their own accord, it is in vain that they search among outward circumstances for objects upon which to spend their force. Even if a project, romantic in its end, were then to be conceived, the means employed for its accomplishment would still require to be prosaic, to adapt them to act in concert with the other causes at work for the time. The degree of sentiment with which ordinary wars are contemplated by the nations engaged in them, is not likely to increase, but diminish, and sink into that species of interest which attends a game of cards when the stakes are deep.

If the modes of existence are likely to assume forms so barren and monotonous, as no longer to draw forth and exercise the range of human sentiments, then the great problem to be determined is, how far the power of thought is capable of carrying life into the recesses of the mind, and maintaining it there with the assistance of the imagination. Even mere reflection, if sufficiently profound and earnest, has its greatness; and, in the midst of the most monotonous and mechanical circle of events, human nature is still noble, if it remembers the extent of its own faculties, and confides in its high destination. Events, indeed, are of no importance, if those movements of the mind, which they should chiefly be valued for producing, can take place without them. It is evident, from the position which external circumstances are assuming, that it is only by what happens in the

world of thought, that any farther development of the human mind can take place. Not that any important discoveries are likely to be made in the fluctuating world of intellectual speculation and opinion, whose barren deductions leave the mind as torpid as they find it. Warmth and vitality can only be expected from the sphere of poetry and the arts, whose object is to attain to an exhibition of the eternal relations of thought and sentiment. But the perceptions which are arrived at in this sphere will depend entirely upon what is taken for granted, or, to speak more correctly, upon what mankind have the strength of soul to feel and to believe; for here the suggestions of their own nature are the subject of investigation, and if their nature is silent, or is made so by voluntary obtuseness or levity, no process of logic will be able to discover any one of its secrets. Of course, poetry and the arts are here spoken of, not as merely imitative and graphical, but as the means of approximating to beauty, and of expressing the truly fine and perfect relations of thought and sentiment. When all romantic achievements, and other subjects of poetry, have vanished from external life, there still remains for man the most sublime, pathetic, and inexhaustible of all subjects, namely, the struggle of evil propensions with the divine affections in his own mind. The endless variety of outward forms, in which this fundamental idea may be clothed, affords room for the exercise of every species of talent, and for the expenditure of the brightest, as well as of the most sombre colours of imagination. The number of elementary conceptions that strongly interest us, is much smaller than is generally supposed. Their application to different circumstances suffices to produce a multiplicity of aspects, which is equally useful for exemplification and for gratifying the fancy. In treating the class of subjects above mentioned, the object of poetry, however, should not be to express in a literal, or what is called psycological manner, the relations of the different feelings, or to exhibit mechanically their stirrings as they actually take place. The nature of language is at variance with such an exhibition, and the imagination receives no impulse from it. Even sympathy ceases to regard with interest

what partakes so much of the dryness of mere observation. The object of poetry should be to express the characteristics and tendencies of the different mental elements, together with their contrasts and collisions, under shapes, and in events, presenting a graphical aspect to the imagination. No doubt verisimilitude would be destroyed, if separate characters were to be invented, and held up as the representatives and vehicles, each of a single mental propension. This would be to exchange nature for the insipidity of allegory. The very conception of an individual implies the presence of the whole component qualities of human nature, in whatever proportions they may exist. The way to avoid both allegorical improbability and psycological dryness, would be to render individuals symbolical of different feelings, not so much by the permanent qualities attributed to them, as by the circumstances in which they were placed, and the relations in which they stood to each other for the time. The studied exhibition of character (that is to say, the exhibition of the proportions in which qualities are possessed by individuals, and of the consequences resulting from their combination) has always a tendency to lead the mind out of the region of true poetry into that of intellectual scrutiny. The spectacle presented is of a mixed nature, which rather excites curiosity and reflection, than occasions within us any progressive enchantment, or climax of feeling. If we wish to be filled with the highest species of enjoyment which poetry can afford, we must not sit down to investigate philosophically the nature of individuals, as we would do that of machines, whose powers we wish to understand. On the contrary, we must think of nothing but the living feelings that are drawn out, for the time, by the situations in which characters are placed. It is not here meant to speak of situations that interest by the vulgar sensation of suspended curiosi ty, but of those which, being unat tended with doubt, draw their inte rest from the nature of the feelings which acquire ascendancy in the persons placed in them. A situation that can inspire, only one feeling may still be impressive; but, in contemplating it, we experience but a passive sympathy. The highest poetical charm

proceeds from that exultation and enthusiasm which is felt in seeing one sentiment for its moral beauty preferred to another, and in the awakening of hope which follows such a choice a hope not connected with events, but with the bias which has been acquir ed by the feelings. If true dramatic genius ever revives in this country, it will probably accomplish its triumphs in a different direction from that pursued by Shakspeare, who, in carrying to such perfection the drama founded on character, and on the blind natural impulses of human affections in their

mixed state, has yet left room for others to succeed, in employing that new class of materials which is generated by contrasting the divine elements of our nature with the human ones, and exhibiting their relations and respective tendencies a class of materials upon which imagination will find it easier to spread forth pure and brilliant colours, than upon subjects partaking less of the aerial nature of romance, and more of the hardness and opaqueness of the produce of ob servation.

HINTS CONCERNING THE COLONIZATION OF AFRICA.

MR EDITOR,

THE Society of Encouragement for National Industry in France, has granted prizes for various discoveries in the arts and sciences, but I wish government, or some society of our own country, would offer a liberal prize for the best mode of colonizing Africa, and for ameliorating the condition of the inhabitants of that vast but little known continent.

A well digested plan for the discovery of this continent might be followed by the most desirable events. The efforts of the African Association, to say the least, have been lamentably disastrous; little good can be anticipated from the efforts of solitary or scientific travellers, in a country where science is not cultivated, and when the travellers know little or nothing of the* general language of Africa, nor of the manners and dispositions of the natives. A knowledge, therefore, of the African Arabic appears indispensible to this great undertaking, and it should seem, that a commercial adventurer is much more likely to obtain his object than a scientific traveller; for this plain reason, because it is much easier to persuade the Africans, that we travel through their country for the purposes of commerce, and its ordinary result, profit, than to persuade them that we are so anxious to ascertain the course of their rivers.

Accordingly, it was aptly observed

The general language of Africa, is the western Arabic; with a knowledge of which language, a traveller may make him. self intelligible wherever he may go, either in the negro countries of Sudan, in Egypt, Abyssinia, Sahara, or Barbary.

by the natives of Congo, when they learned that Major Peddie came not to make war nor to trade. "What then come for? only to take walk and make book?"

I do not mean now to lay down a plan for the colonization of Africa, nor for opening an extensive commerce with that vast continent, but I would suggest the propriety of the method by which the East India Company govern their immense territory. I would wish to see an African company form ed, on an extensive scale, with a large capital. I am convinced that such a company would be of more service to the commerce of this country than the present East India trade, where the natives, without being in want of many of our manufactures, surpass us in ingenuity; but the Africans, on the contrary, are in want of our manufactured goods, and give immense sums for them.

According to a late author, who has given us the fullest description of Timbuctoo and its vicinity, a plattilia is there worth 50 Mexico dollars, or 20 mizans of gold, each mizan being worth two and a half Mexico dollars. A piece of Irish linen of ordinary quality, and measuring 25 yards, is worth 75 Mexico dollars; and a quintal of loaf sugar is worth 100 Mexico dollars.

Now, if we investigate the parsimonious mode of traversing the desert by

+ See New Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, article, Africa, page 98.

See the account of Timbuctoo, appended to Jackson's account of Morocco, published by Cadell and Davies, London, chapter 13th.

the Arabs, we shall find (by the same author's notes and manuscripts, collected during his residence, as agent for Holland, and general merchant at Agadeer, in Suse, which manuscripts I have been allowed to inspect) that a journey of 1500 English miles is performed from Fas to Timbuctoo, at the rate of 40s. Sterling per quintal, so that loaf sugar (a weighty and bulky article) can be rendered from London at Timbuctoo, through Tetuan and Fas, including the expense of a land carriage of 1500 miles, at about £6 per quintal, thus:

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Shillings 120

6d. So that, if 100lb. loaf sugar, rendered at Timbuctoo, cost 120s. 6d. and sells there for 100 Mexico dollars, at 4s. 6d. each, or for £22, 5s., there will result a profit of 270 per cent.

The profit on fine goods, such as the linens before-mentioned, is still more considerable, being not subject to so heavy a charge, or per centage for carriage. The immense quantity of gold dust and gold bars that would be brought from Timbuctoo, Wangara, and Gana, in exchange for our merchandize, would be incalculable, and perhaps has never yet been contemplated by Europeans.

In the same work above noticed, third edition, page 289, will be found a list of the various merchandize exportable from Great Britain, which suit the market of the interior of Africa or Sudan, and also a list of the articles which we should receive in return for those goods.

Plans to penetrate to the mart of Timbuctoo (which would supply Houssa, Wangara, Gana, and other districts of Sudan, with European merchandize) have been formed, but if a treaty of commerce were made with any of the negro kings, these plans would be subject to various impediments.

The goods, in passing through hostile territories (these sovereigns living in a state of continual warfare with each other), would be subject to in

numerable imposts, not to say imposi tions; it might therefore be expedient to form a plan whereby the goods should reach Timbuctoo, through an eligible part of the desert. But some persons who have been in the habit of trading for gum at Portendic, have declared the inhabitants of the Sahara to be a wild and savage race, untractable, and not to be civilized by commerce, or by any other means. This I must beg leave to contradict. The Arabs of Sahara, from their wandering habits of life, are certainly wild, and they are hostile to all who do not understand their language; but if two or three Europeans, capable of holding colloquial intercourse with them, were to go and establish a factory on their coast, at an eligible spot, and then suggest to them the benefits they would derive, being the barriers of such a trade as is here contemplated, their ferocity would forthwith be transferred into that virtue, in the practice of which they so eminently excel, hospitality, and the most inviolable alliance might be formed with such a people.

I speak not from the knowledge derived from books, but from an actual intercourse with these people, and from the experience derived from having passed many years of my youth among them.

An advantageous spot might be fixed upon on the western coast, from whence the caravans would have to pass through only one tribe with perfect safety, and subject to no impost whatever, neither would they be subject to any duty on entering the town of Timbuctoo, as they would enter at the Bab Sahara, or gate of Sahara, which would exempt them from toll, duty, or impost.

That civilization would be the result of commerce, and that the trade in slaves would gradually decrease, with the increase of our commerce with these people, there can be little doubt, and, independent of the advantages of an extensive commerce, the consolation would be great to the christian and to the philanthropist, of having converted millions of brethren made in the perfection of God's image, and endowed with reason, from barbarisma

to civilization.

Let us hope, then, that some of the intelligent readers of your interesting pages will direct their attention to this great national object, and produce an

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