Ambition accompanies active talent, as uniformly as heat does combustion, and directs its efforts to the attainment of the most desirable honour within its reach. In America, this honour is public office or professional distinction, and, therefore, all the talent of the country is drawn into the current, which sweeps in one of these directions. To establish the truth of the opinion we have advanced, and prove, that the low literary reputation of America, and the small show she makes in our libraries, are owing to bad education, want of learning, and the peculiar use to which talent is there applied, and not to any deficiency of it, we must trace its display in the course, which we say it takes.

The bar is the profession, which attracts the greatest number and the highest talents, and, notwithstanding the wretched state of preparation, in which most young men are when called to it, the country may well boast of the lawyers it has produced. In this profession, the deficiencies of education must be made up by after diligence; no man can attain to a high rank in it without legal learning; in spite of all the prejudices of the country, and the general disposition to reduce the system of jurisprudence to a few maxims of common sense, the common law of England remains, for the most part, the law of the land; and a knowledge of that, every one knows, cannot be acquired without laborious study, by the mere force of genius, however great. In all the states where this system still continues in force, we find a learned bar; and, although the lawyers entitled to this distinction are few, these few are eminently so; and, to prove it, we refer to the common law reports of the cases adjudged in the courts of final jurisdiction in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. In some of the states, the issue of a suit depends chiefly upon the jury, and then the pleas of the counsel are of course rather appeals to popular feeling, than legal arguments; these are admirable schools, in which, to acquire a readiness of extemporaneous speaking, and great powers of that kind are often displayed in them; but as courts of justice, they deserve not to be named. The learning of the American bar has been displayed principally in their courts; and the only written evidence of it is contained in the

reports. Blackstone's Commentaries, and many other of the English elementary treatises, have been reprinted in the country, with notes, pointing out the alterations or modifications of the English law by their statutes. The civil law is not used at all, and not studied but by a very small number of curious scholars; and, in general, the English books are the only authorities cited, except in the admiralty courts, where the early Italian, Spanish, French, and Dutch writers upon maritime law are often referred to. It is difficult to draw a just parallel between the American and English bars, for two reasons; first, because in the former, the various departments of legal business are united in the same individual; and, secondly, because their period of preparatory study is much shorter, and their means and system of education greatly inferi or; if proper allowance be made for these disadvantages, the first class of lawyers in America may be considered equal to the same class in England, in point of legal learning, and superior in extemporaneous speaking. We need not repeat what we stated so explicitly in the first division of our subject, that the well educated lawyers form but a small part of the whole number; it is of this small part that we have been speaking, and upon them the whole character and credit of the bar must

rest.

The intimate connexion, which exists in America between the bar and the senate, leads us, in the next place, to consider the character of the latter. No country ever had occasion for a greater proportion of statesmen, and in none was political education ever less attended to. Three thousand five hundred legislators are constantly required for the general and state governments; and, in the whole country, there is not a course of lectures, either upon their own constitutions, the law of nations, political economy, statistics, or history, and very little public instruction of any kind in these important departments of science and learning. The bar is the school in which the greatest, and almost the only requisite for a statesman is acquired, fluency in speaking. Want of the necessary knowledge is not the greatest evil arising from the want of proper political education; a far greater one is, that men who have been pursuing a profession for a

long time, are very apt to have their minds somewhat narrowed by it, and are therefore not capable of taking such extensive views as politicians, as ought to be done by those, who are legislating for the whole community, and not for a particular class of it. Notwithstanding this defect, the Congress of the United States has generally been distinguished for the wisdom of its political measures, and always for a large proportion of powerful and eloquent speakers. It is not surprising that the latter characteristic should mark this body; the Americans are eminently a speech-making people; the practice begins in childhood; their colleges are full of clubs for exercise in this art; the frequent recurrence of elections, and of the caucuses which precede them, is continually nourishing this passion for haranguing; and it is in this way that a young man of talent always brings himself into notice. Nearly every thing is done by direct appeal to the people; a short speech has more effect than ever so many written volumes upon the same subject; and, therefore, the talent is cultivated as the great engine of political power. Thus we see how general is the habit of public speaking, and we may infer from the use, which is made of it, what must be its character; the genius it calls forth is as rich and luxuriant as the vegetation upon the great rivers of the west, and, at the same time, as wild and unpruned. The speeches of the members of Congress might be referred to, if they had ever been published collectively, as the best proof the country has given of the talents, which it possesses. Journals of both houses are regularly printed, but they do not contain full reports of the debates. American eloquence has its own peculiar character; it is not British eloquence; it is neither so dignified, chaste, nor learned, but it is bolder and more rapid in its flights, and more impassioned in style and manner. It somewhat resembles the Irish, but it is far less laboured and artificial. The striking defect, both in the forensic and parliamentary cloquence, is bad taste, a defect which evidently arises from neglect of classic reading. We are told in the beautiful biographical sketch of Fisher Ames, one of the finest geniuses and most elequent orators which the country has produced, that he read Virgil in the

original, and Homer in Pope; and even this is a degree of erudition far greater than is possessed by many of the best speakers in the land. The occasions, which have called forth the greatest exercise of talent, were the discussions in the state legislature of the proposed federal constitution; the debates in congress upon the treaty made with this country by Mr Jay, in 1794; and those upon the repeal of the judiciary bill, and the other changes made by the friends of Mr Jefferson, when they first came into power, in 1801. Most of the speeches upon these great questions have been published, and should be read by any one, who wishes to form a just opinion of American eloquence. Those of Mr Ames, upon the two former, are contained in his works, a book which makes every reader regret, that such superior talent and genius should have been wasted upon subjects of party politics, which, from their very nature, can be but of local and momentary interest. But with him there was only one object of ambition, and that was to serve his country; to this he sacrificed the more extended fame, which he certainly must have gained, if he had written for the world. The same period presents us with another strong testimonial in favour of American intellect; it produced the federalist a work, which saved the constitution from being strangled in its infancy. These papers, written by Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, but mostly by the former, contain a remarkably clear and able defence of that constitution, and may be regarded as a perfect commentary upon its principles; could they but have conferred upon it the immortality they have procured for the country, we believe none of its friends would have cause to fear for its fate.

The observations we made upon Mr Ames, might be extended to the country in general; the writing talent is all expended upon short desultory compositions; newspaper essays, and orations upon the anniversary of their national independence, make up the whole body of political literature. The love of this kind of political food commences in childhood, and grows with the growth; the extent of it may be inferred from the number of different newspapers published in the country, which at present exceeds five hun dred.

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 preventing, 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 induce ment 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 nothing 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, in 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 Philadel phia 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; espe cially 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