lage, and on the silver sails of the sloops and shipping, gliding noiselessly through the gleaming waters.

Not forty years since, and the ground now occupied by this beautiful town and a population of two thousand souls, was a desert, frequented only by bears and panthers. The American verb to progress (though some of my friends in this country deny that it is an Americanism) is certainly not without its apology; even a foreigner must acknowledge, that the new kind of advancement which greets his eye in this country, seems to demand a new word to pourtray it.

The young town of Burlington is graced with a college, which was founded in the year 1791, and has lately received considerable additions. The state of Vermont, in which it stands, whose population may be somewhat less than three hundred thousand, contrives to support two establishments of this description; and, perhaps, in no part of the union is greater attention paid to the education of youth.

The territory passing under the name of Vermont is intersected, from north to south, by a range of mountains, covered with ever-green forests, from which the name of the country. This Alpine ridge, rising occasionally to three and four thousand feet, nearly fills up the breadth of the state; but is every where scooped into glens and valleys, plentifully intersected with streams and rivers, flowing, to the eastward, into the beautiful Connecticut, and, to the west, into the magnificent Champlain. The gigantic forests of white pine, spruce, cedar, and other evergreens, which clothe to the top the billowy sides of the mountains mingle occasionally their deep verdure with the oak, elm, beech, maple, &c. that shadow the valleys. This world of forest is intersected by tracts of open pasture, while the luxuriant lands that border the water-courses are fast exchanging their primeval woods for the treasures of agriculture. The most populous town in the state contains less than three thousand souls; the inhabitants, agricultural or grazing farmers, being scattered through the valleys and hills, or collected in small villages on the banks of the lakes and rivers.

The plan of government is among the most simple of any to be found in the union. The legislative department is composed of one house, whose members are chosen by the whole male popula

tion of the state. In this mountainous district, peopled by a race of simple agriculturists, the science of legislatiou may be supposed to present few questions of difficulty; nor has it been found necessary to impede the process of law-making by forcing a projected statute to pass through two ordeals. You find in the constitution of Vermont another peculiarity which marks a people Argus-eyed to their liberties. In the other republics the people have thought it sufficient to preserve to themselves the power of summoning a convention, to alter or amend their plan of government whenever they may judge it expedient; but the Vermontese, as if unwilling to trust to their own vigilance, have decreed the stated election of a Council of Censors, to be couvened for one year at the end of every seven years, whose business it is to examine whether the constitution has been preserved inviolate;" whether the legislative or executive branches of government have performed their duty as guardians of the people, or assumed to themselves, or exercised other or greater powers than they are entitled to by the constitution;" to take in review, in short, every public act, with the whole course of administration pursued since the last meeting of the censors.

The assembly now meets in the little town of Montpelier, situated in a secluded valley in the centre of the state. Having gained the centre, the seat of government is now probably fixed. It is a strange novelty in the eyes of a European to find legislators assembled in a humble and lonely village to discuss affairs of state.

The men of Vermont are familiarly known by the name of Green-mountain Boys; a name which they themselves are proud of, and which, I have remarked, is spoken with much complacency, and not unfrequently with a tone of admiration or affection, by the citizens of the neighbouring states.

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

It has been common of late years to summon the literature of America to the European bar, and to pass a verdict against American wit and American science. More liberal foreigners, in alluding to the paucity of standing American works in prose or rhyme, are wont to ascribe it to the infant state of society in this country: others read this explanation, I incline to think at least, without affixing a just meaning to the words.

It is true that authorship is not yet a trade in this country; perhaps for the poor it is a poor trade every where; and could men do better, they might sel dom take to it as a profession; but, however this may be, many causes have operated hitherto, and some perhaps may always continue to operate, to prevent American genius from showing itself in works of imagination, or of arduous literary labour. As yet, we must remember, that the country itself is not half a century old. The generation is barely passed away whose ener gies were engrossed by a struggle for existence.

America was not asleep during the thirty years that Europe had forgotten her: she was actively employed in her education ;-in framing and trying systems of government; in eradicating prejudices; in vanquishing internal enemies; in replenishing her treasury; in liquidating her debts; in amending her laws; in correcting her policy; in fitting herself to enjoy that liberty which she had purchased with her blood; in founding seminaries of learning; in facilitating the spread of knowledge;-to say nothing of the revival of commerce; the reclaiming of wilderness after wilderness; the farilitating of internal navigation; the doubling and tripling of a population trained to exercise the rights of freemen, and to respect institutions adopted by the voice of their country. Such have been the occupations of America She bears the works of her genius about her; we must not seek them in volumes piled on the shelves of a library. All her knowledge is put forth in action; lives in her institutions, in her laws; speaks in her senate; acts in her cabinet; breathes even from the walls of her cities, and the sides of her ships. Look on all she has done, on that which she is; count the sum of her years; and then pronounce sentence on her genius. Her politicians are not ingenious theorists, but practical statesmen; her soldiers have not been conquerors, but patriots; her philosophers are not wise reasoners, but wise legislators. Their country has been and is their field of action; every able head and nervous arm is pressed into its service. The foreign world hears nothing of ther exploits, and reads none of their lucubrations; but their country reaps the fruits of their wisdom, and feels the aid of their service; and it is in the wealth, the strength, the peace, the prosperity,

the good government, and the well-administered laws of that country that we must discover and admire their energy and genius.

In Europe we are apt to estimate the general cultivation of a people by the greater or less number of their literary characters. Even in that hemisphere, it is, perhaps, an unfair way of judg ing. No one would dispute that France is greatly advanced in knowledge since the era of the revolution, and yet her literary fame from that period has been at a stand. The reason is obviousthat her genius was called from the closet into the senate and the field; her historians and poets were suddenly changed into soldiers and politicians; her peaceful men of letters became ac tive citizens, known in their generation by their virtues or their crimes. Instead of tragedies, sonnets, and tomes of philosophy, they manufactured laws, or martialled armies; opposed tyrants, or fell their victims, or played the ty rant themselves.

Barlow, known only in England as the author of the Columbiad, was a diplomatist and an able political writer. The venerable Dwight was here held in honour, not as the author of “The Conquest of Canaan," but as the patron of learning; the assiduous instructor of youth, and a popular and energetic writer of the day. I could in the same way designate many living characters whose masterly abilities have been felt in the cabinets of Europe, and which here are felt in every department of the civil government, and in all the civic professions. These men, who, in other countries, would have enlarged the field of the national literature, here quicken the pulse of the national prosperity; eloquent in the senate, able in the cabinet, they fill the highest offices of the republic, and are repaid for their arduous and unceasing labours, by the esteem of their fellow-citizens, and the growing strength of their country.

But while America was thus sought by enlightened individuals, the parliamentary speeches and pamphlets of the time show how little was known by the English community of the character and condition of the colonists. Because the government had chosen at one time to make Virginia a Botany-Bay, an insult which tended not a little to prepare her for the revolution, the country of Franklin, Washington, Patrick Henry, Jefferson, Schuyler, Gates, Greene, Allen, Dickenson, Laurens, Livingston, Hamil

ton,

ton, Jay, Rush, Adams, Rittenhouse, Madison, Monroe, and a thousand other high-minded gentlemen, soldiers, orators, sages, and statesmen, was accounted a hive of pickpockets and illiterate hinds.

MR. JEFFERSON.

Mr. Jefferson affords a splendid elucidation of a remark contained in my last letter, that the literary strength of America is absorbed in the business of the state. In early life, we find this distinguished philosopher and elegant scholar, called from his library into the senate, and from that moment engaged in the service, and finally charged with the highest offices in the commonwealth. Had he been born in Europe, he would have added new treasures to the store of science, and bequeathed to posterity the researches and generous conceptions of his well-stored and original mind, not in hasty "notes," but in tomes compiled at ease, and framed with that merve and classic simplicity which mark the Declaration" of his country's "independence." Born in America,

"The post of honour is a public station;" to this therefore was he called; and from it he retires, covered with years and honours, to reflect upon a life well spent, and on the happiness of a people whose prosperity he did so much to promote. The fruits of his wisdom are in the laws of his country, and that country itself will be his monument.

The elections which raised Mr. Jefferson to the chief magistracy, brought with them a change both of men and measures. The most rigid economy was carried into every department of government; some useless offices were done away; the slender army was farther reduced, obnoxious acts, passed by the former congress, repealed, and the American constitution administered in all its simplicity and purity.

The policy of Mr. Jefferson, and that of his venerable successor, Mr. Madison, was so truly enlightened and magnanimous, as to form an era in the history of their country. The violence of the fallen party vented itself in the most scurrilous abuse that ever disgraced the free press of a free country; it did more, it essayed even to raise the standard of open rebellion to that government of which it had professed itself the peculiar friend and stay.

PARTIES.

It may now be said, that the party once misnamed Federal has ceased to MONTHLY MAG. No. 363.

exist. There is indeed a difference of political character, or what will express it better, a varying intensity of republican feeling discernible in the different component parts of this great Union; but all are now equally devoted to the national institutions, and in all difference of opinion, adinit the necessity of the minority yielding to the majority. And, what is yet more important, these differences of opinion do not hinge upon the merits or demerits of foreign nations, French or English, Dutch or Portuguese. The wish of your venerable friend is now realized;—his counGenet may trymen are Americans. now make the tour of the states, and Henry of New-England, with infinite safety to the peace of their citizens; and even Massachussets herself would now blush at the name of the Hartford convention.

Genet is, or was at least when the author was last in Albany, a peaceable and obscure citizen of the state of New York. It is curious in a democracy, to see how soon the factious sink into insignificance. Aaron Burr was pointed out to me in the Mayor's court at New York, an old man whom none cast an eye upon except an idle stranger. In Europe, the bustling demagogue is sent to prison, or to the scaffold, and metamorphosed into a martyr; in America, he is left to walk at large, and soon no one thinks about him.

BLACK SLAVERY.

I must here refute a strange assertion, which I have seen in I know not how many foreign journals, namely, that the United States' government is chargeable with the diffusion of black slavery. Every act that this government has ever passed regarding it, has tended to its suppression; but the extent and nature of its jurisdiction are probably misunderstood by those who charge upon it the black slavery of Kentucky or Louisiana; and they must be ignorant of its acts who omit to ascribe to it the merit of having saved from this curse every republic which has grown up under its jurisdiction.

There are at present twenty-two republics in the confederacy; of these, twelve have been rendered free to black and white; the remaining ten continue to be more or less defaced by negroslavery. Of these five are old states, and the other five either parted from these, or formed out of the acquired territory of French Louisiana. Thus, Kentucky was raised into an inde

4 K

pendent

pendent state by mutual agreement between herself and Virginia, of which she originally formed a part. Tenessee, by mutual agreement between herself and Carolina, to which she was originally attached. Mississippi was sur rendered to the general government by Georgia, to be raised when old enough into an independent state; but with a stipulation that to the citizens of Georgia should be continued the privilege of migrating into it with their slaves. Louisiana proper, formed out of a small portion of the vast territory ceded under that name, came into the possession of the United States with the united evils of black slavery in its most hideous form, and the slave trade prosecuted with relentless barbarity. The latter crime was instantly arrested; and under the improving influence of mild laws and mental instruction, the horrors of slavery have been greatly alleviated,

In 1787, the congress passed an act, establishing a temporary government for the infant population settled on the lands of Ohio; and the government then established has served as the model of that of all the territories that have since been formed in the vacant wilderness. The act then passed contained a clause which operated upon the whole national territory to the north-west of the Ohio. By this," slavery and involuntary servitude" were positively excluded from this region, by a law of the general government. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, have already sprung up in the bosom of this desert; the three first independent states, and the latter about to pass from her days of tutelage to assume the same character.

Thus saved from the disgraceful and ruinous contagion of African servitude, this young family of republics have started in their career with a vigour and a purity of character that has not an equal in the history of the world. Ohio, which twenty-five years since was a vacant wilderness, now contains half a million of inhabitants, and returns six representatives to the national congress. In the other and younger members of the western family, the ratio of increase is similar. It is curious to consider, that the adventurous settler is yet alive, who felled the first tree to the west of the Alleghanies. The log-hut of Daniel Boon is now on the wild shores of the Missouri, a host of firmly established republics stretching betwixt him and the habitation of his boyhood.

DANIEL BOON.

Among others I mention, with plea. sure, that brave and adventurous North Carolinian, who makes so distinguished a figure in the history of Kentucky, the venerable Col. Boon. This respectable old man, in the eighty-fifth year of his age, resides on Salt river, up the Missouri. He is surrounded by about forty families, who respect him as a father, and who live under a kind of patriarchal government, ruled by his advice and example. They are not necessitous persons, who have fled for their crimes or misfortunes, like those that gathered unto David in the cave of Adullum: they all live well, and possess the necessaries and comforts of life as they could wish.

The Lord of the wilderness, Daniel Boon, though his eye is now somewhat dimmed, and his limbs enfeebled by a long life of adventure, can still hit the wild fowl on the wing with that dexterity which, in his earlier years, excited the envy of Indian hunters; and he now looks upon the " famous river” Missouri with feelings scarce less ardent than when he sarveyed with clearer vision, “ the famous river Ohio." The grave of this worshipper of nature, wild adventure, and unrestrained li berty, will be visited by the feebler children of future generations with such awe as the Greeks might regard those of their earlier demigods. The mind of this singular man seems best pourtrayed by his own simple words. "No populous city, with all the varieties of commerce and stately structure, could afford so much pleasure to my mind as the beauties of nature that I find here."

LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

The Americans are certainly a calm, rational, civil, and well-behaved people; not given to quarrel or to call each other names; and yet, if you were to look at their newspapers, you would think them a parcel of Hessian soldiers. An unrestricted press appears to be the safety-valve of their free constitution; and theyseem to understand this; for they no more regard all the noise and sputter that it occasions than the roaring of the vapour on board their steam-boats.

Were a foreigner, immediately upon landing, to take up a newspaper, (especially if he should chance to land just before an election,) he might suppose that the whole political machine was about to fall to pieces, and that he had just come in time to be crushed in

its ruins.

But if he should not look at a newspaper, he might walk through the streets on the very day of election, and never find out that it was going on, unless, indeed, it should happen to him, as it happened to me, to see a crowd collected round a pole surmounted by a cap of liberty, and men walking in at one door of a house, and walking out at another. Should he then ask a friend hurrying past him "What is going on there ?" he may receive for answer, "The election of representatives: walk on: I am just going to give in my vote, and I will overtake you."

But if the declamation of the press passes unregarded, its sound reasoning, supported by facts, exerts a sway beyond all that is known in Europe. Here there is no mob. An orator or a writer must make his way to the feelings of the American people through their reason. They must think with him before they will feel with him; but, when once they do both, there is nothing to prevent their acting with him. It would be impossible for a country to be more completely deluged with newspapers than is this; they are to be had not only in the English but in the French and Dutch languages, and some will probably soon appear in the Spanish. It is here not the amusement but the duty of every man to know what his public functionaries are doing: he has first to look after the conduct of the general government, and, secondly, after that of his own state legislature. But besides this, he must also know what is passing in all the different states of the Union: as the number of these states has now multiplied to twenty-two, besides others in embryo, there is abundance of home-politics to swell the pages of a newspaper; then come the politics of Europe, which, by-the-bye, are, I think, often better understood here than on your side of the Atlantic. But, independent of politics, these multitudinous gazettes and journals are made to contain a wonderous miscellany of information; there is not a conceivable topic in the whole range of human knowledge that they do not treat of in some way or other; not unfrequently, I must observe, with considerable ability; while the facts that they contain, and the general principles that they advocate, are often highly serviceable to the community.

EDUCATION.

The education of youth, which may

The

be said to form the basis of American government, is, in every state of the Union, made a national concern. Upon this subject, therefore, the observations that apply to one may be considered as, more or less, applying to all. portion of this wide-spread community, that paid the earliest and most anxious attention to the instruction of its citizens, was New England. This probably originated in the greater democracy of her colonial institutions. Liberty and knowledge ever go hand in hand.

In the other

The state of Connecticut has appropriated a fund of a million and a half of dollars to the support of public schools. In Vermont, a certain portion of land has been laid off in every township, whose proceeds are devoted to the same purpose. states, every township taxes itself to such amount as is necessary to defray the expense of schools, which teach reading, writing, and arithmetic to the whole population. In larger towns these schools teach geography, and the rudiments of Latin. These establishments, supported at the common expense, are open to the whole youth, male and female, of the country. Other seminaries of a higher order are also maintained in the more populous districts; half the expense being discharged by appropriated funds, and the remainder by a small charge laid on the scholar. The înstruction here given fits the youth for the state colleges; of which there is one or more in every state. The university of Cambridge, in Massachussets, is the oldest, and, I believe, the most distinguished establishment of the kind existing in the Union.

Perhaps the number of colleges founded in this wide-spread family of republics, may not, in general, be favourable to the growth of distinguished universities. It best answers, however, the object intended, which is not to raise a few very learned citizens, but a well-informed and liberal-minded community.

The child of every citizen, male or female, white or black, is entitled, by right, to a plain education; and funds sufficient to defray the expense of his instruction are raised either from public lands appropriated to the purpose, or by taxes sometimes imposed by the legislature, and sometimes by the different townships.

The American, in his infancy, manhood, or age, never feels the hand of oppression.