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later years. Looking to this circumstance, to the multitudes that frequent our colleges at home, and to the spreading regard for science, we feel authorised to predict that the rising generation will equal the standard of revolutionary excellence,' at least in copiousness and solidity of information, in depth and accuracy of thinking, in the arts of composition, and the graces of polished life. Why, under the excitement of a great emergency, they should prove deficient in dignity of sentiment, force of resolution, vigour and propriety of exertion, is not easily perceived. It is contrary to the Old Bachelor's own theory with respect to science and literature, that the wider diffusion, and more systematic pursuit of them be supposed detrimental to the moral energies of a people. And the imputation of such an influence to the increase of commerce, as commerce is pursued, or of wealth, as wealth is acquired and distributed in this country, appears to us unphilosophical;-alike unsupported by reason and experience. This point, however, would exact more space in the examination of it than we can at present afford.

In the foregoing observations, we have had in view the whole United States; but our author refers often to Virginia alone, and it is from the condition of things there, that his general impressions appear to have been taken. We agree with him thus far,that education is not any where among us, so perfect as it might be, either in the scheme of studies, or, the moral discipline; and we must presume from his representations, even after a liberal discount for rhetorical flourishes, that it is on a miserable footing in Virginia. He dwells, with great earnestness, upon the various phases and mischiefs of the evil, and communicates fully his ideas on the subject of education in general. These are for the most part, correct, striking, and finely developed. We give our hearty assent to all that he urges with respect to the culture of the female mind, and we admire not a little, the letters signed John Truename, as contrived with much ingenuity for their two-fold purpose, and replete with good sense, delicate humour, and natural feeling.

But we can never admit the opinions advanced in the twentyeighth number, concerning the inexpediency or inefficacy of all great public institutions in the shape of endowed universities and colleges. We were not prepared for such opinions from the Old Bachelor, by the following passage of the twelfth number, in which he gives an account of the tenor of what he had written on the the subject of education. I take a candid, impartial view, of those schools which private exertions have raised, and which private patronage supports. I examine their defects, and demonstrate from the very nature of things, the utter impossibility of such establishments presenting to our youth, a regular, systematic, and sufficiently wide range of instruction.'

The arguments employed in the twenty-eighth number against public foundations for tuition are, in substance, the objections

made specially to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge by Adam Smith and the Edinburgh Review. The papers of that Review concerning the Oxford edition of Strabo and Edgeworth's Professional education, and the second article of the first chapter of the fifth book of the Wealth of Nations, are evidently the sources of most of our author's notions on the subject: And, doubtless, he would not have put them forth, had he ever perused the several expositions and vindications of the true character and course of studies of those seats of learning, which have been since published, particularly the Oxford Replies,' in which the Scotish reviewers are refuted with equal strength of reasoning and elegance of diction. We do not mean to undertake here the defence of Mr. Barlow's plan of a National University, which the Old Bachelor chiefly assails; nor do we propose to discuss the main question; but we think it adviseable to make a few loose remarks of a general nature, and to notice some errors of fact into which he seems to have fallen.

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In the first place, it is unfair and illogical to argue from the inconveniences or disappointments which may have been found to attend institutions formed in the dark ages upon the principles and prejudices of those ages, organized with a view to particular, ecclesiastical ends, and fettered with a multitude of gothic regulations and statutes. If universities so constituted, were slow to abandon exploded errors, and to recognize new modes of philosophising, it does not follow that the like would happen with the great colleges we might now construct, of which the arrangement must necessarily be conformable to the liberal spirit, sturdy reason, and mature experience of the age. In the present state of knowledge, it is difficult to conceive what discoveries or improvements could be made, which such establishments would have an interest or inclination to reject; which they would not, indeed, be eager to appropriate and advance.

Again: although the absolute governments of Europe may have made learned societies and corporations the conduits of their favourite doctrines, and those bodies may have leaned to the side of power and prerogative against the people, general circumstances are so different in this country, that it is obvious nothing similar could occur. With whatever share of the management of a university the federal executive, or that of a state, might be invested, we must still hold it impossible he should succeed in warping such an institution to any sinister purposes of his own, when we consider his general official responsibility, the vigilance of republican jealousy, the American spirit of independence, and the justness and force of public opinion. It is this opinion, ever active and irresistible, the watchfulness of rival institutions, and the ambition of fame, besides the supervision of authority, which would prevent remissness on the part of the professors, although their chairs should be so endowed as to furnish an ample subsistence. But it would not be necessary that they should be made entirely in

dependent on their hearers; that the situation of a professor should be a fixed station, which no exertion could render more lucrative. Let enough be assigned to each chair to shield the occu pant from want; to compensate him for the risk he incurs in the outset; and let him look for further emolument to his class, and he will have the same stimulus as the private teacher for unremitting exertion, added to the incitement of acting on a public and more exalted theatre; he will equally find his account in keeping up with the march of science, and adopting all improvements without delay. In short, in the case either of a great national institute or of state universities, most of the dangers announced must prove imaginary; the apprehensible evils might be easily obviated, and the universally acknowledged and precious uses of such institutions secured almost without alloy.

We are told by the Old Bachelor, that in the progress of society, funds for collegiate establishments will no doubt be accumulated, when their benefits are evident and a necessity for them felt, independently of government; that 'the rich who have funds, will, whenever they are strongly impressed with the necessity of it, either by associations or otherwise, provide proper seminaries for the education of their offspring.' These allegations are certainly at war with all experience, and especially with that of Virginia, where, as our author bitterly complains, but one considerable public school exists, and this founded by an English monarch. Notwithstanding the extent of private opulence in that state, and the serious inconveniences and disadvantages so long suffered from the absence of establishments, 'presenting a regular, systematic, wide range of instruction;' it is the government which has finally been compelled to undertake them, and provide means for their support. We consider it as fortunate for Virginia that she has not allowed herself to be influenced in this matter by the opinions of the Old Bachelor, but has preferred to follow the example of all the enlightened nations of modern times; an example which is in itself a strong argument in favour of public endowments.

'We shall find,' says the Old Bachelor, that the most eminent men in Europe, particularly in England, have received their education neither at public schools nor universities.' This statement is altogether inaccurate. As respects the continent of Europe, the very reverse may be affirmed. By far the greater part of those who illustrate its annals either as divines, statesmen, jurists, scholars, poets, military commanders, passed through its universities, in which a liberal education has been at all times, almost exclusively, sought. With regard to England, the great majority of her brightest names are to be found on the rolls of Oxford and Cambridge: The Bacons, the Newtons, the Barrows, the Clarkes, the Spencers, the Miltons, Drydens, Addisons, Temples, Hales, Clarendons, Mansfields, Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Wyndham, &c., are in the list of their alumni. Even

consummation may be fairly inferred from the case of lord Byron. For one such person who may have been disheartened by the aspect of that Rhadamanthean tribunal, hundreds of dunces and quacks have been emboldened to make free with the press, and hardened in their unlawful courses by the opposite scheme of judgment pursued in so many other quarters.

Few reflecting minds can fail to be convinced, that to set up exorbitant pretensions for American literature and science, has a tendency to retard their real progress and check the growth of their external reputation. In the proportion that we overrate ourselves, are we liable to be undervalued abroad, and to grow sluggish or fall short, at home, in the race of excellence. If we proclaim ourselves contented or delighted with what scarcely reaches mediocrity, none among us will seek, and few comparatively will know it possible, to ascend beyond that point; and foreign nations must suspect that we are deficient in the powers, either of production or discrimination. These considerations are substantial and obvious, but the common practice implies that they have been disowned or overlooked. The honest expression of a belief of our general backwardness in the train of the muses,-the candid exposure of the demerits of a particular American book, has been, for the most part, viewed and stigmatized as evidence of a recreant, anti-American spirit. The hue and cry raised on such occasions, and still, we fear, ready to be raised in spite of the clearest demonstration of its injustice, has the two fold inconvenience of repressing all truly enlightened and instructive criticism, and multiplying the enterprises of presumption and imposture.

Such a strain of remark as the foregoing, might be regarded as of no very favourable omen for the Essays of the Old Bachelor; but we have meant merely to put our readers in a right way of thinking on a matter of some importance, and not to pre'pare them for a sentence of condemnation on a deservedly popuÎar American work. The preamble may serve, perhaps, to afford us some protection in freely excepting, as is our design, to what we deem seriously exceptionable in the diction and doctrines of the author. We have temptations which, we must confess, we can scarcely withstand, to give into unqualified panegyric in this instance. We look with gratitude and wonder upon a gentleman of the bar, in whom the severest labours, and highest offices, and amplest emoluments, and brightest laurels of his profession, have not stifled the generous ambition of shining in the career of letters; who so far from sympathizing in the contempt or indifference which seems to be generally entertained among us for every kind of excellence not appertaining to active life, lays the chief stress upon the utility and dignity of literary speculation; whose mind has been for a long term of years exposed to the atmosphere of courts, and the attrition of the world of business, without losing any of the finer poetical qualities with which it was richly endowed.

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A vein of the most delicate, and at the same time, lofty sentiment runs through these Essays, written, as we understand, but a few years ago; they discover an unabated enthusiasm, a youthful freshness of feeling, for whatever is admirable in the productions of nature and art, and especially for the grand and beautiful in the conceptions and expressions of the masters of ancient and modern literature. What fascinates us, too, is the invariable, earnest solicitude of the author, manifested not only in this work, but in his British Spy,' to spiritualize the character of his countrymen; to engage them in the noblest studies and habits; to mould them to that standard of perfection on which his thoughts and affections are so intensely fixed. It was marked of Cicero, by one of his cotemporaries-that, notwithstanding he prized the reputation which he had established as the first orator of Rome, far above every other distinction or blessing, he laboured strenuously and unremittingly to raise up some master of his art who should surpass even himself, and realize the perfect model figured in his imagination. The jealousy with which it was natural for him to contemplate the idea of a superior or rival, seemed to be absorbed by his passionate and generous love and admiration of eloquence in itself, as at once the most sublime and beautiful result of the combined powers of the human mind and heart. Every reader of his rhetorical treatises, is likely to make the same observation concerning the fervor of his wishes, and the liberality of his spirit in this respect. He would have cheerfully forfeited his fame of preeminence, with all posterity, could he have produced that consummate orator, whose image perpetually occupied his fancy and fired his enthusiasm, while it humbled his pride.

We do not mean to call the author of the Old Bachelor a Cicero; but it is notorious, that, in the State which claims precedence of the rest of the American confederation, in the field of oratory, he enjoys, if not the palm of forensic eloquence, at least, and deservedly, an equal share of reputation with the most brilliant of its boasted models. There is, indeed, no one of his profession, throughout the Union, with whom he may not vie as an advocate. It is, in adverting to these circumstances, in connection with the anxious, restless zeal which animates all the writings of this gentleman, for the perfection and utmost splendour of the art of speaking among his countrymen, that we are reminded of the case

of the prince of Roman orators. With a like enthusiasm and disinterestedness, he labours to fashion the youth of Virginia particularly, into patterns of oratory with whose excellence none existing could be compared, and before whose honours his own must, in a great degree, fade. Of the general impressions in his favour, left by the essays which we are about to examine, the most lively, perhaps, is that of his public spiritedness; of their uniform, studied tendency to attach every reader to the cause of morality and knowledge. Among those impressions also, is the belief of his

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