no beneficial action of Congress. It is not my intention, at present, to inquire into the motives which have hitherto operated upon the minds of the members who compose that august assembly, and prevented them from digesting and adopting some measures for enhancing the honor of our nation, and raising it to the highest point of elevation, by lending their aid toward the encouragement of science, literature, and the arts. I cannot bring myself to believe, that those numerous and enlightened statesmen, who, on many occasions, discover so much reach of understanding, comprehension of the maxims of political wisdom and of powers of oratory, are insensible to the benefits which would result to their country, from her elevation to a distinguished rank in science and literature. The sensibility they discover, when her literary pretensions are attacked and disparaged by foreigners, affords sufficient evidence, that they are not indifferent to the honors which are to be reaped, and the glory to be acquired, in this high career of competition and aggrandizement. An established character in science and letters, is undoubtedly all that is requisite to give a finishing to the structure of our great republic, and place a capital upon the glorious column of our national greatness and superiority. We are not among the number of those writers who undervalue the pretensions of America in this respect, or allow that she has not honorably acquitted herself in the strife of intellectual greatness: so far from it, we maintain, that when all the circumstances of her recent origin, her long colonial subsistence, her arduous struggle for independence, and her situation in a new and uncultivated wilderness are rightly estimated, she has not only accomplished wonders in the improvement of her lands, in the extension of commerce and manufactures, and in the introduction and increase of all those arts and accommodations that civilize and refine a community, but she has furnished her full supply of illustrious men, who have elevated themselves to imperishable fame in every department of honorable exertion. During the short period of her existence as a nation, she has supplied her full quota of philosophers who have unfolded the mysteries of nature, of statesmen who have enlightened and swayed her councils, of orators who have adorned the bar and pulpit, of writers who have displayed all the powers of genius both in poetry and prose, and of artists who have exhibited most finished specimens in statuary and painting. How many centuries had England subsisted, before she was entitled to the honors reflected upon her during the celebrated ages of Elizabeth and of Anne, and France before she could boast of the similar distinction she obtained in the era of Louis the Fourteenth Nations, as well as individuals, must pass through the ages of childhood and youth before they arrive at full maturity and venerable age. It cannot be reasonably expected that in our republic, the established laws of the moral world should be contravened.

Nor let it be alleged to the discredit of our country, as has sometimes been done, that as our situation and circumstances have been different from those of old countries in Europe, the results should be different that we have not, like England and France, arisen out of the savage and barbarous state, and been compelled to pass through the usual stages to civilization and refinement; but that, deriving our ori

VOL. VIII.

68

gin from a flourishing and enlightened nation, we ought at once to imbibe all her arts, sciences, laws, and refinement of manners. Our intercourse with England and France, no doubt, confers upon us inestimable advantages, and greatly accelerates our progress toward the prosperity and perfection of the social state. But our connection with no European state can supersede the necessity of that bodily activity and exclusive devotion to the pursuits of business, which are indispensable to the operations of agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, the practice of the useful arts, and the general accumulation of wealth. Before a nation can possibly attain the opulence and leisure which are indispensable to the cultivation of science, she must pass through that process by which those advantages are attained. Of what importance is it to her, that the richest products of industry, and all the luxuries of civilized life, are in possession of her neighbor, if her poverty compels her to deny herself their indulgence, or that the brightest lights of science are beaming above her head, if, delving in the soil, and absorbed in the maintenance of themselves and families, her citizens are unable to comprehend and enjoy them? The United States, then, are at this time precisely in that condition, and those habits, both intellectual and moral, in which the true philosopher and nice observer of human affairs would expect to find one of the most lively, active, and enterprising people that ever inhabited the earth. Our country exhibits all the features of a Hercules in his infancy, and if, like that renowned hero of antiquity, she has vanquished the enemy who attempted to strangle her in her cradle, like him also, in her full maturity and vigor, she will astonish the nations, and fill the world with the renown of her exploits and acquisitions.

After having thus exhibited the just claims of our country, and enthusiastically exulted in her opening prospects, let us now endeavor to animate her in the career of scientific and literary distinction. She can arrive at eminence in this respect through no other path than that through which it has been reached by her predecessors and contemporaries; which is, by calling into active and efficient operation all those agents which stimulate mankind to scientifie and literary exertion. To this end, ample rewards must be provided for men who achieve eminence in any branch of learning, or produce any exquisite specimens in the arts of painting, statuary, and archi

tecture.

There are many beneficial results to be anticipated from the establishment of a literary institution of the kind contemplated at Washington, upon a large and liberal foundation. In order that it should supply a real desideratum in our country, at this time, and effectually meet our scientific and literary exigencies, it should be so elevated in its structure, as to be raised out of the sphere of competition with any of those excellent seminaries which are already in operation throughout the several states. These perform important offices for the public, and minister inestimable services in their respective districts; and this great federal establishment, instead of superseding their labors, or interfering with their claims, should be so arranged as to operate in accordance with them, and carry forward and consummate that system of discipline and instruction which had been left

incomplete in their course. Pupils issuing from all other subsidiary colleges, should here commence their studies anew at the points in which they had terminated; and, placed under the care of efficient professors in all the departments of learning, should be borne through more adequate routines of study, initiated into the deepest mysteries of science, and required fully to explore those fields of discovery and disquisition which they had before been able to contemplate only in dim and indistinct vision. Beside conducting their pupils through higher and more recondite fields of inquiry and speculation, lectures upon the most important branches of science should be habitually delivered to them, and their understandings enlarged and taste refined by every practicable method of intellectual nurture, and by perpetual references to the finest models of writing, natural and moral philosophy, all the higher branches of the mathematics, metaphysics, or the science of the human mind, natural theology, international and municipal law, the constitution and jurisprudence of their own country, history, and the belles-lettres, political economy, a more extended perusal of the Greek and Latin, English and French classics, together with continued exercises in eloquence, and composition both in prose and poetry, should here become objects of close application and sedulous attention. In order to make ample preparation for modelling the young men's modes of thinking, communicating eloquence to their conceptions, and refinement to their principles of taste, a library embracing every important work of genius, and an extensive philosophical apparatus should be collected; the most exquisite specimens of painting and statuary should be opened to their visitations; a lawn and tasteful walks should be provided for their intellectual recreation; societies instituted in which, after they have attended to the debates of congress, they should endeavor to form themselves upon the model of the most eminent statesmen and orators of their country, and in a word, every expedient tried to fit them, at a future day, to become the lights of the republic, the guardians of her laws and liberties, and the pillars of her safety and prosperity.

The establishment of an institute upon this large and liberal foundation would not only afford considerable support for a large number of professors and fellows, who would dedicate their whole time and talents to the promotion of knowledge, but under the auspices of the great legislative and executive councils of the nation, would give a new and unheard of impulse to American intellect, rouse it from its present dormant and discouraged condition, and tend to remedy the greatest of literary evils now subsisting among us, the inchoate condition of the public taste, the low and imperfect standard of education prevalent in our seminaries, and the circulation of those crude and miserable productions, which now almost exclusively occupy the attention of our readers. Nothing can be more evident to the scholar and philosopher, than that in our country the public taste wants to be refined, raised, and perfected; and the only practicable or conceivable method by which this great purpose can be accomplished, is to detain our youth until greater maturity of understanding under the discipline and habits of collegiate life, and convey them through a more full and complete course of instruction. There is scarcely an intelligent man throughout our country, who

does not feel and lament the superficial character of our collegiate education, and its utter incompetency to the production of accomplished scholars. After leaving our seminaries, if we desire to become thoroughly versed in any of the branches of learning, we have not only, as in other countries, to carry forward and complete the structure we had commenced, but to reconstruct an unfinished foundation, to recommence our labors from the outset, and rectify the erroneous taste we had contracted by a more thorough acquaintance with the most finished models. This is an evil to which no inconsiderable remedy would be applied by a great federal institution. A continued succession of finished scholars would from hence be annually supplied to their country, who would not only be more eminently qualified to fill with dignity all the offices of church and state, but would soon communicate a new tone to the public sentiment in matters of literature, elevate our style of writing and literary reputation, and check the progress of that flood of wretched productions which is now inundating our land. It would really appear, as if our presses, instead of promoting the circulation of solid and useful works, whether derived from home or abroad, and by this means forming the minds of readers to greatness and virtue, were occupied solely in catering to an already vitiated taste, and thus not only defeating the great ends for which publications are intended, instruction and rational amusement, but aggravating the diseases of which we complain. The lightest productions of genius, frivolous pieces in prose and poetry, flimsy disquisitions, whimsical attempts at philosophy, wretched specimens of gallimaufry, or hotch-potch collections, in which tit-bits of all the sciences are mingled in rank confusion, gaudy scraps of eloquence, and mawkish attempts to recommend the maxims of wisdom by sugaring the solid viands they furnish with the sweets of unnatural fiction and exciting tales, as Martinus Scriblerus was taught his Greek alphabet by eating gingerbread; these constitute the sole aliment, which is now too generally administered to satiate the appetite for reading, prevalent in our community. In devotion to the perusal of this trumpery, the greatest productions of the human mind, those which would form our understandings to close thinking, accurate investigation, and sound knowledge, and fill our hearts with the noblest sentiments of virtue, are allowed to rot in libraries, or sleep upon the shelves of booksellers. Works composed with unsurpassable excellence, and whose reputation has been consecrated by the sanction of learned and refined ages, are superseded by those in which the pertness of paradox takes place of an earnest quest of truth, tinsel elegance of style and diction makes amends for solid materials and just conceptions, and vastly exciting details and distorted representations, for the correct delineations of truth and nature. Americans, for the most part, although with honorable exceptions, display all the symptoms of having reached only their boyhood and juvenility in matters of literature; and of the propensity for its sugar-plums, whip-syllabub and nick-nacks, our printers know but too well how to avail themselves to the uttermost. Let us, for the sake of our honor and dignity, as well as our future fame, adopt the best measures to retrieve our past losses, rectify our errors, and gain a more enviable distinction in the elegant pursuits of science.

That a great institute placed at the seat of our federal government, and supplied with pupils emanating from all the different states in the Union, would tend to cement the bonds which bind the republics to each other, was maintained by the illustrious Madison in one of his messages to congress, and cannot be doubted for a moment by any one capable of comprehending the course of human events, or tracing the concatenation of causes and effects. No ties, save those which arise out of the relations of blood and marriage, are more powerful in their influence upon the human heart, than those by which collegians are connected to each other. The cause of this result, which all feel and acknowledge, arises partly out of the native ardor of youthful affections, and the humanizing operation of science upon the mind, and partly out of the intimate and undisguised intercourse which takes place among youth thus circumstanced, the kind offices naturally interchanged in such society, the acquaintance contracted with each other's virtues, which removes prejudices and conciliates esteem, and the generous competition for superiority in noble pursuits, which, while it awakes into action the liveliest sympathies, excites an attractive influence that unites mankind together. Would not the friends here formed in youth, from the North and South, East and West, be likely to retain the tenderest recollection of each other through their future lives? Would not the sacred sentiment of friendship save them from those alienations, conflicts, and animosities which are apt to be produced among statesmen and politi cians by the heats and collisions of party? Would not men who had previously lived in habits of intimacy, and were softened by affection for one another, whose prejudices and antipathies had been subdued by a thorough knowledge of each other's worth, be less inclined to drive political warfare to extremities, and sever the bonds of their federal union? Would not college companions be among the most reluctant of mankind to be brought into deadly hostility?

But beside the friendships contracted in a seminary of this nature, there would be another source of concord and unity to our states, arising out of the assimilating moral force exerted by the habits and pursuits of this kind of life. Being subjected to the same discipline, nurtured in the same principles, and conducted through the same gradation of study, they would carry with them to their several states similar modes of thinking, congenial feelings and concurrent views of the national policy. No circumstance could have a more happy influence than this, in preventing those collisions of opinion and convulsions of party, that so often agitate and shake the republic, and endanger its peace and safety.

But perhaps the greatest and most inestimable of all the benefits which would redound to us from such an institution, is the security which it would communicate to our union, and the stability it would contribute to furnish to our present constitution and laws. Young men educated at our national seminary, rendered familiar with the proceedings and measures of our national legislature, deriving all their advantages from national resources, and breathing, if I may speak so, a national atmosphere, could not fail to imbibe a strong and unconquerable attachment to the federal republic, and become the