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analyse, and to combine to think and understand. It requires capacity and fidelity on the part of the teacher, and this fact alone, if it were not so admirably adapted as it is, to the yet budding faculties of childhood, would be an imperative reason for its general adoption. Neither preceptor nor pupil, can make any progress without understanding their subject, and if the system were to obtain, what an enormous quantity of abuse would be put down that now exists in the shape of country and city school-masters, clogging up the avenues of knowledge, and disgusting the young mind with the exercises of the school. The mode of government, also, which prevails in schools on the Lancastrian plan is admirably adapted to the encouragement of study. It succeeds by an honourable appeal to generous ambition, and harshness is rendered unnecessary, by the pleasure the pupil finds in that facility of acquisition which results from the general system of instruction. It is not labour, which disgusts the pupil, but it is labour to no end; and if, because he cannot comprehend his lesson, and his ignorant, or unfaithful master cannot, or will not explain it to him, is it strange that he should turn with weariness from bis irksome employment, and if he should, does he deserve the rod ? an instrument, which, however wholesome it might have been when applied to a stiff-necked and rebellious young Israelite, should be banished from the schools of civilized men; or if retained, it should be for the back of the master, who, in the present state of our schools, might probably be benefitted by its application. The character of the governed will always partake in some degree of the nature of the government. Rods may have been made for the backs of fools, and they most unequivocally tend to increase the number, but they could not have been designed as the principal instrument for the management of rational creatures, and they are most lamentably destructive of that "nerve of the mind," which forms so conspicuous and fair a feature of the proper republican character. Indeed this whole Lancastrian system is admirably adapted to the nature of our political institutions,and if universally employed in the common schools of our country, would prove a foundation of rock to our social edifice. The system has been put to experiment on a very extensive scale in England; the only plausible ground of opposition there has

been, that it is not compatible with the nature of a political and religious aristocracy,-an objection which strongly recommends it to republican favour, and we perfectly accord with the remark of one of our correspondents, contained in the first number of the second volume of this magazine, in a communication on the subject of the African Free School of New-York, that "our legislatures could do nothing wiser than to enact laws that the whole establishment of common schools, in the several states, should be new modelled upon the Lancastrian plan, and ordain that the public school-funds should be appropriated accordingly."

Let the sister-hood of States once adopt a school establishment like this, that should comprehend the children of the great mass of the community, backed by Sunday schools, judiciously conducted for the especial benefit of the offspring of poverty, in connexion with a general system of public charity, yielding support through the medium of labour, and shutting its hand to every thing but sickness and decripitude, and the aspect of society would soon brighten, the gloomy brow and squalid visage of poverty would shine with the oil of gladness, and a hardy and happy yeomanry, the bone and muscle of the State, would people the smiling land.

There is but one passage in the address, the sentiment of which, we cannot think just. The complaint so perpetually reiterated, but so notoriously groundless, is renewed in this discourse, the complaint that the church is persecuted by the world; that the more zealous and sincere is the christian, the more obnoxious is the man-that the service of the Lord is flouted, and that the professors of religion are oppressed. Now nothing appears more like a noon-day fact than, that public opinion pays all deference to religion, to religious teachers and professors. Who are more honoured than they who minis ter at the altar? none. Where is the individual, actually exhibiting the graces of the christian character, actually sustaining 66 an evangelical profession of the gospel" by "a steady production of all the fruits by which the Lord Jesus Christ requires it to be manifested before the world," who is not exalted in the estimation of society, and "honoured above his fellows?" No where. And so it ought to be.

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ART. 8. ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

Letters of a Traveller to his friends in England. DEAR

AFTER a stay at Yarmouth of about nine days, we took advantage of a favourable breeze to proceed on our voyage. On the 24th of August we entered the Atlantic, and at about twilight the Lizard Point and the rocks of Scillyf were faintly discernible in the north-eastern extremity of the horizon. This, at least to me, was a moment of melancholy, My determination to quit England had not been hastily formed, or made upon grounds that, at the moment I am writing this, do not appear to me as just and correct as at the time they first forced themselves upon my consideration. No puerile enthusiasm, no extravagant expectation of witnessing in the country to which I was proceeding, the realiza.

*The southernmost extremity of England, in the county of Cornwall, and the last spot of main-land seen by vessels bound to the United States.

These rocky islets (according to some authors 150 in number) are clustered together at a distance of nearly 30 miles westward from the Lands-end, (Cornwall) whence on clear days they are visible. The majority of these, consisting merely of rock, with no superstratum of vegetable mould, are barren, bleak, and uninhabitable; but about 5 or 6, the principal of which is St. Mary's, and Sampson Island the smallest, contain a considerable number of people, and are culti vated with diligence and success, though the chief support of the inhabitants arises from fishing, the burning of kelp, and piloting. Wild and tame fowl are abundant. St. Mary's, where there is a good port, is nearly 10 miles in circuit, contains more inhabitants and wealth than the whole of her neighbours, and is strongly defended by a castle, erected by Queen Elizabeth, and several powerful batteries, upon one of which 64 pieces of ordinance, some of them 18 poundcrs, are mounted. A company of soldiers, (with a master-gunner and six others,) for whom good barracks have been provided, are continually stationed at

St. Mary's. There is also a guard-house, and store

house. Sampson Island is inhabited by one family only, and to attend divine service it is necessary for its members to cross over to some other spot sufficiently important to have induced the erection of a church. Many relics of Druidical antiquities are scattered over, and embellish St. Mary's and the larger islands: and in these secluded and romantic asylums of the fisher and the fowler, the curious observer is frequently struck by the hoary and moss-grown vesti ges of rude temples and ruder sepulchres, memorials of a race whose origin is enveloped in the densest clouds of obscurity, but whose affinity with the East has been strongly insisted upon by those whose Knowledge of oriental antiquities entitles them to respectful attention on subjects of this description. The especial and proud distinction of St. Mary's, however, is the superb and lofty light-house that towers on its south-eastern coast. Upwards of 50 feet in height, and standing on very high land, this noble column appears at some distance, and at night, like a pillar built in the deep, and capitaled with flame. In stormy weather, the effect is peculiarly grand. The fierce and broad spreading of the fire, contrasted with the blackness of the sea and the sky is terrifically beautiful; and the swarthy wreathing of the flame, reflected from the rock and the waves exhibit the shaft of the column in the boldest and most majestic relief.

tion of a golden age, had mingled themselves with the repeated and serious meditations that had so long occupied my thoughts upon a measure so important as that of emigrating from my native land. No deluding visions of unlaborious prosperity, no cheating phantoms of political perfectability, no sanguine anticipations of beholding on the western shores of the Atlantic unadulterated virtue, and happiness without alloy, tinged my American prospects with their bright but transient hues; and hence it was not probable that when I actually beheld myself on the world of waters, and could barely discern the English coast, skirting the extreme edge of the ocean, and rendered visible only by the lights of Scilly and the Lizard-Point, I should experience any regret originating in a justlyfounded repentance. But, gazing upon that coast, I could not but recall all those impressions of lofty prowess, heroic achievment, and intellectual splendour, which my earliest youth had received from the perusal of my country's records. I was hastening from a land where more had been effected for the benefit and glory of humankind than by all the great and polished states that had preceded her in the race of empire and renown. That land had given birth to the wild patriotism of Caractacus, and to her belonged the constellation of royal virtues that beamed forth in the perfect character of Alfred; the chivalric courage of her Edwards and Henries had shed over her military annals a lustre that time will neither darken nor diminish; and compared with her stupendous triumphs on the element upon which I was then tossing, how insignificant appear the proudest victories of Greece and Carthage! But these were glories that constituted, in my estimation, the least part of the greatness of England, and imagination turned away from the fields of Cressy and Azincour, from the banks of the Nile and the trophies of Trafalgar, to contemplate the more illustrious laurels that had been won for her by the intellectual heroism and labours of her noblest sons; and the long line of British philosophers, poets, dramatists, historians, moralists, &c. rose on my fancy with a splendour that seemed to brighten and condense itself, if I may so express myself, into a mass of palpable and immortal radiance, as I re

ceeded from the land that had beheld and worshiped their rising :-and of that glorious land I was a native-in that land dwelt and dwells almost every being with whom my heart claims kindred; a father, whose talents have illustrated the literary and philosophical annals of his country-a mother whom sincerity and filial duty must alike pronounce an ornament of her sex; a brother who may reasonably aspire to the loftiest honours of a noble profession; a sister whose superior accomplishments fascinate all whom her retiring disposition permits to observe them; then memory bore me back to that dear and sacred home, to me the shrine of every pure delight; and the faces with which my infancy and boyhood and youth had been familiar were present to my waking visions, and looks of affection, mingled with sorrow, were cast upon me from eyes that seemed to reproach my departure ;-and every field in which I had walked, and every tree beneath whose shading foliage I had sat, and every brook by whose calmly flowing waters I had wandered with those tender friends and companions of my happiest days;-yes, I beheld them all, and even now, while faintly recording the remembrances and emotions of an evening I shall ever recollect with strong and peculiar interest, I seem, as then I seemed, to be transported back to those cherished scenes of my youth, and communing with those for whom my heart felt the first glow of affection; and if, on leaving the deck, I found my eyes moistened with involuntary tears, I shall not find it difficult to excuse my weakness with those whom the world and its contaminations have not rendered proof against the softer sympathies of nature.

Of the people among whom I was going to reside I had formed notions which, if not very comprehensive or exact, were, I flatter myself, more liberal and just than those entertained by the generality of my countrymen. With that excess of refinement which borders upon effeminacy, I neither expected nor wished to come in contact. In a country where every muscle and nerve should and must be strained to sustain that character of individual independence by which the citizens of the United States are so honourably distin guished, those elegant trifles and amusing frivolities which occupy the leisure of a vain and luxurious aristocracy, can never find a sufficient number of wealthy idlers to render them fashionable, or to diffuse through the busy ranks of a society engaged in more serious and manly

pursuits, a taste for occupation, whose ultimate tendency it is to unhinge the mind from every worthier object. The graces that flatter in the precincts of the Thuilleries, or sparkle in the environs of St. James's, would droop and wither in the uncongenial atmosphere of Washington; and the gay flippancy, and luxurious ostentation of an European court would but ill accord with the severer morality and economical expenditure of a republican people and government.

I am no advocate for democracy, in that sense which the erring enthusiasm of its votaries has occasioned it to be so generally taken, but I cannot avoid perceiving that in Europe the comforts and happiness of the immense majority of the people are deeply taxed to support a few individuals in wasteful and profligate splen dour; and when I reflect upon the enor mous devastations committed by the pride and ambition of her rulers on her suffer ing and degraded population, I think with the less indignation of the excesses into which the miseries and exasperated sensibility of a whole nation occasionally hurries it. These can be considered only as the inevitable results of that lamenta ble system of misgovernment for which the sovereigns of Europe seem to cherish so perverse and persevering a partiality; and whose certain effects are, in the first place, the disorganization of the natural mechanism of society, by throwing upon the springs of industry a weight destruc tive of their elasticity:-and, in the se cond, its own overthrow from the des pair engendered in the popular mind by the rapacious and unrelenting tyranny which, discontented with the generous contributions of the nation-contributions maintaining the government and its dependents in a style of magnificence al ways and vastly superior to their servi ces-proceeds in its exactions, and continues its encroachments on the liberties of the subject, till the last slender tie be tween the governors and the governed is burst asunder, and the whole fabric of despotism is shivered into a thousand fragments, and scattered in as many directions, by the explosion of the popular indignation.

In America I was prepared to meet with society in a state approximating much nearer to that elevated sphere to which I trust her citizens will exhibit to mankind at large, the possibility of their successfully aspiring. The general characteristics of the great mass of the people, I expected to find to consist in a considerable boldness of external demea

nour, not more remote from the debasing servility of an European populace, than from the vulgar insolence of an uneducated and clownish commonality-and a spirit of inquisitiveness natural to a people so distant from the other civilized regions of the earth-and the active and lively intelligence that will always prevail wherever the elements of education are pretty generally diffused-and the decent and rational piety that education cherishes, and which leads in its train the gentler and unobtrusive virtues of domestic life-and the chaster morals of a race as yet unfamiliar with the gross pollutions which contaminate the overgrown capitals of more ancient empires-and in an industry commanding a higher remuneration than in older countries, and subjected to but few and slight extraneous calls, the master-quality upon which all the others depend for their very existence. Among the superior classes for superior classes will be formed even in republics -in addition to these general features of the national, I looked for the cultivated intellect and polished manners which distinguish the gentlemanly character in every country, and to them I ascribed the enlarged and liberal views, and freedom from national prejudices, which constitute such essential distinctions between the upper and inferior ranks of a community. In a country where the spread of useful knowledge is more rapid and extensive, perhaps, than in any other, and where the lights of literature illumine the most remote and apparently desolate spot, and penetrate the darkest depths of the wilderness, it would indeed, be something partaking of the marvellous, if that class of society from which are selected the conductors of the public weal, and the administrators of religion and the laws; by whom the liberal professions are exercised and adorned, whose education has rendered them familiar with the wisdom, the genius, and the eloquence of antiquity-and whose daily habits and associations tend to the preservation of that unenvied superiority which is productive of such important advantages to the state; it would, I repeat, be something singularly envious, if the gentry of the United States did not possess some acquisitions of an order distinct from those enjoyed in common with the mass of their countrymen; and if, cherishing with the same ardent zeal the spirit of national and personal independence, and animated with an equal love and veneration for the sacred ordinances of religion and partaking with the great

body of their fellow-citizens in the observance of every moral duty-and urged onward in the path of their more elevated avocations by an industry that assuredly keeps pace with, if it do not surpass, that of the farmer and mechanic--they were not, at the same time, entitled to the veneration of these, and the respect of foreigners, for qualifications honourable to themselves, beneficial to their country, wholly disconnected from aristocratical distinction and privilege, and constituting the graceful appendages of that simple but majestic structure of society of which the United States present the only exist ing example. That these should prepare the way for the introduction of hereditary distinctions of rank-that the station gratuitously assigned to that portion of the community by whose superior talents and acquirements the whole is strengthened and embellished, and under whose enlightened protection the ameni ties of life effuse their softening influence, should generate the political abominations of caste-is too extravagant a supposition to find support from unprejudiced thinkers and can never become an object of reasonable dread to the most sensitive republican, so long as the laws regulating the succession of property are respected and enforced, and while nature preserves her usual impartiality in the distribution of her gifts, and bestows her loftiest and most precious attributes without regard to the wishes of parental ambition-for I am not unwilling to admit, that the extremely improbable descent of genius in the eldest branches of numerous families for several successive generations, together with the operation of the law of promogeniture, might possibly go far towards the establishment of an aristocracy that would not be the less invidiously regarded, because its claims to superior rank and reverence were fortified by superior talents, and disproportionate affluence. But as no one, I imagine, is disposed to regard these premises as probable, and as I most devoutly trust that the people are too intelligent, too thoroughly convinced of the inestimable value of their republican institutions, ever to be seduced into their abrogation, they may witness, not merely without alarm, but with approbation, the merited eminence of a class reflecting an honourable lustre on the country, and behold with exultation the massy and lofty pillar of public freedom and glory crowned with the luxuriant foliage of a Corinthian capital.

Were I not fearful of having already tasked your patience to an unpardonable

extent, I might be tempted to enter more fully into the details of a subject so interesting to the political philosopher, which has, I believe, given birth to many groundless alarms relative to the integrity of the constitution of these States; and whose principal features have been distorted and vilified by that unfortunate partyspirit which now appears to live only in remembrance, but which, at one period, convulsed the Republic from her centre to her extremities. At some future time, I may, perhaps, solicit your attention to the discussion of a topic, which has excited so vivid an anxiety in a country where every individual is taught to feel his value as a free and reasonable being, and where the lofty consciousness of political equality repulses, with indignant contempt, the insolent pretensions of a factitious superiority, and views with horror the slightest advance towards those feudal excrescences which form such unseemly blurs on the surface of European society. But to my voyage. The wind, which had so long detained us in the channel, seemed determined to continue its persecution on the ocean. Our passage was a continued succession of storms and calms. Occasionally-but rarely longer than for half a day-we moved on our course with considerable rapidity; but more generally we had to beat up against head-winds, that either drove the ship completely from her track, or subsided into a dead tranquillity. Frequently the vessel lay upon the still, shining surface of the waters in total inaction-and though on the first occurrence of these retarding and unwelcome calms, the admiration excited in our minds by the simple magnificence of the tranquil, shoreless ocean, and the radiant, unclouded vault of heaven, reconciled us in some measure to the delay, yet their frequency abated considerably the pleasure with which they were first beheld, and bore heavily on the patience of most of the passengers. In the midst of their regrets, however, the wind would rise with an almost inconceivable swiftness and fury; and if it came from the right quarter, the dashing of the waves over and into the ship, and the heavy rolling of the vessel, which in the commencement of our voyage caused such severe and distressful sickness, was encountered with cheerfulness, as the unavoidable accompaniment of an auspicious breeze. Of the storms, the most remarkable occurred in the night of the 23d of September, on which day the sun crossed the Equator, it was a true equinoctial gale: VOL. 11.-No. iv.

the weather on the day preceding had been beautiful-the temperature of the atmosphere delightful-and the sun retired from the gaze of our crowded decks, behind clouds of the most fanciful forms and glorious hues-to borrow the glowing language of Moore, it seemed

"As if to grace the gorgeous west,
The spirit of departing light,
That eve had left is sunny vest,

Behind him, ere he wing'd his flight."

The following morning, however, brought with it a sky enveloped in a thickening haze scarcely penetrable by the beams of a mid-day sun-the wind was almost momentarily shifting its quarter-a considerable quantity of rain came downand at night, about half past 9 o'clock, the approaching storm was ushered in by seve ral peals of the loudest thunder I ever heard, and which seemed to explode at once from every quarter of the heavens. In an instant the tempest rushed down upon the deep-the rain descended in torrents that rendered the deck scarcely tenable even by the sailors-the wind (from the east) howled through the shrouds, and in the rigging, with redoubled rage—and momentarily, the whole scene of desolation was lit up by the broad, livid streams of lightning that seemed to gush from the bosom of the storm. Oh! never will that awful night be obliterated from my memory ;-I do not think I am more accessible to fear than my fellow-mortals, and during the repeated and not seldom perilous circumstances in which we had been placed previous to this memorable evening, the tranquillity of my mind had always permitted me either to amuse my attention with the rude warring of the elements, or in the seclusion of my birth forget the rocking of the ship over the pages of some interesting volume. But on this really alarming night, the firmest spirit might have been excused if, in the first moments of the storm, its usu al fortitude experienced some diminution : the danger was too evident to be concealed-and so rapid and violent was the growing fury of the tempest, that before the sails could be taken in by the united efforts of the crew and such of the passengers as were capable of going aloft, the mainsail was carried away, and the tore-topsail torn into threads. We scudded under bare poles. I was upon deck, supporting myself as well as I could by the bulwarks, when the shrieks of a female voice from below pierced through the raving of the storm and the curses of the sailors. It was the voice of a mother,

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