and a beautiful literature is our birthright-a proud and noble birthright, not to be sold for a childish freak of pride—a mess of pottage! A birthright such as no country ever before possessed; so nicely adapted to its infant tongue; so admirably suited to all its customs, social and political; never before had a parent country such an offspring-never a new country such a parent land. We will not discredit our Saxon mother; she shall nurse us till the strength of manhood visits her offspring! It is a strange pride that yearns after a full form of letters, while our own social form, which is to give the image, is so unsettled; which would trample on the past for the gratification of a present boast. As well might we forget the labors of an Hippocrates, a Galen, or an Harvey, and heal our sick after the unfledged opinions of a modern Esculapius, as to trust our hopes of literary eminence on any thing other than the literature of our fathers. A national medical art would be as reasonable a demand on the medical gentlemen, as a national scheme of elegant letters upon the votaries of American learning. The Dignity of Learning is not here to be maintained by newness, or by strange conceits, but by a correct and chastened guidance; by more reverence and deeper study of what has gone before, rather than hasty attempts to emulate. The body of our letters, for a long time to come, cannot differ materially from those of Britain. The similarity of our manners and language forbid. Characters and scenes can never make a difference while principles and actions are the same. Raleigh might have figured as Achilles; the Indian maid as the beautiful Grecian captive; the Alleghanies might have swept along between the vallies where Mount Ida slept; the stars and the stripes floated on the battlements of Troy, and yet the Iliad been unimitated and inimitable to this day. The nice distinctions in our political and social organizations, must remain long unchronicled in characteristic verse. In truth, the only real nationality of American literature, is, I believe, to con

sist only in its superiority to every other; superiority not so much in the conventionalities of form, and the polish of numbers, as in its grasp and subordination to morality. Be it so! We leave the trust to those who are to come after us; deeming it noble enough work for us to throw together, if it may be so, but the ruda indigestaque moles, which is to aid in the foundation of so glorious a structure; and here rest the claims on American learning. It must sustain its dignity only in laying aright the basis of a literature of power and purity. I say in laying the basis; for we are not ready for the superstructure of elegant letters. It cannot become at once elegant, unless like the Augustan it be imitative; it cannot be powerful if it be imitative. The pride and the strength of America-her people, can by no means yet in the mass appreciate the elegancies of letters. Men of learning scarce satiate their tastes from the treasures of the past, when some change in our fluctuating society throws the affluent into dependence, and the refinement that a finished education bestows, seeks a new patron in the growing child of wealth. The learned have not the affluence; the affluent have not the ability to pursue to its proper depth and richness the study of polite letters. Until then the mass of society shall have chastened their tastes; or extensive acquirements shall have become uniformly associated with affluence-where can we look for the support of a hative elegant literature? And it has been the failure of what constitutes the floating literary capital of our day, that it has been established on no learning whatever, and is of superficial and precocious growth. Classic learning must modify, and should chastise American letters. It is a wise and a holy principle of our nature, that cheerful sufferance of the wisdom of the past which garners the treasures of its thought. Did we live in Homer's day, we might attune our unlearned faculties to the habit of a sounding song; but like Virgil we must know somewhat before we tell the story of a Trojan wanderer, or rival his

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agricultural verse. And he who without learning, writes with mercenary views to supply the diseased appetites of myriads, beggars our growing literature. And we who have for years been professedly arraying ourselves in an Attic garb, let us not forsake the Blue-eyed Queen of letters, to lay our offerings at the feet of the Ephesian Diana.

It must be a basis of vigor and sound morality. Vigor, because the character of the people requires it. Letters with us will need a high-toned vigor properly to guard truth against the growing pride and sufficiency of individual character; and such as is adapted to the wants of society, is the only literature that can ultimately prosper. Hence a professional literature will naturally be the first of any note among us; both from its general adaptation to the wants of the community, and the consequent emolument it offers to the learned. Thus we have a Kent in jurisprudence, a Webster in lexicography, and an Edwards in theology. And may we not hope that a belles-lettres scion, grafted upon such a stock, shall possess somewhat of its energy and power? And is it not a task worthy the Dignity of Learning, to overlook and direct, in founding so noble a structure, as we trust this nation's written thought may become, when wealth is commuted to some other purpose than means of travel; when the American quarry, rich as that of Pentelicus, shall give down its chiselled images, and yonder hoary king of the plain become the Acropolis of this favored city of Minerva?

I add, that in its connection with literature, it is essential to the Dignity of American Learning, that its efforts be subordinated to true morality. It scarce needs proof to show, that morality elevates her constant attendant-letters. The time has now come when human learning, in its scientific or lettered revelations, is content to bow humbly at the shrine of the altar of all Truth. And on Voltaire, who prostituted

the energies of a strong soul to the vacuities of untruth, is fast settling the fame of a prostitute. And the sympathy which followed the young English bard under the Venetian wave, and his compeer to a Grecian tomb, is fast giving way to a suspicious, doubting, anxious, sifting of their writings, for that morality which is not there! Indeed, morality is becoming so generally honored, that it were dangerous, even in view of public esteem, for learning to risk its dignity in controverting its principles. But upon higher ground, learning fails of its end when it becomes the antagonist of such an agent of individual and national worth as morality has ever been. When intellect becomes a pander to sensual appetite, the order of our system is subverted, and man brutalizes every faculty of a nobler nature. Learning, so far from the maintenance of its true elevation, debases itself, and ignorance may triumph in the possession of nobler motives, and higher hopes. In anticipating the progress of correct principle, and the subordination of our letters, as a ground of their excellence, to morality, a question arises of speculative curiosity, no less than real interest-whether an elegant literature can be so inwoven with morality, as to make it no less charming to a refined intellect than to a pure heart? Whether the cultivated faculties of the mind are ever to make morality the basis of powerfully affecting, intellectually, the minds of others? Whether a refined imagination is at length to see in morality, now cold morality, such a picture of beauty, such an intellectual harvest, as that it shall gather there as rich sheaves as have hitherto been reaped upon the fields of romance? Whether, in short, Scriptural morality does or does not, within its own sphere, call for the full and refined exercise of the human mind in its every faculty, and can present fields for their proper and perfect development? I leave the thought with a single suggestion. If the Providence that ordained the world, has indeed given a scheme of moral economy for the proper regulation of our lives, can it be that

he has also given the harmony of our intellectual structure— imagination of commanding reach-fancy without controljudgment, and taste, and reason-and yet all these with but little in unison with that morality which makes man scarce lower than the angels? Can it be, that these faculties of the mind should find their fullest exercise, if not in revolt, by no means in unison with pure morality? Can it be, that these were given but as sweet seductions, and that there is not a harmony-a soul-stirring harmony, as yet but faintly realizedbetween the two? And if this union between all that is pure in morals, and all that is elegant in letters, is ever to take place, where is the land, and where the people, who are to aid in the consummation before our own? The walls of the West have not challenged the chafing waves of the Pacific so long, nor the pathway of these Eastern waters become so accessible without a purpose. And what purpose in the world more noble, than that learning should seek a higher dignity by a more intimate alliance with morality, and the blessed union of both exalt our country, and consummate the worth of American character? Let us then dignify our learning by a high and helping connection with that vast moral enginery, which, under God, is treading the mountains down, and beating the ocean white!

But has American learning already attained to that dignity I propose? Has it its appropriate exercise in a proper and firm restraint of national extravagance ? Has it a commanding independence in the political management of our nation ? Does it anxiously and with scrutiny watch over the germ of our letters? Do men respect it for itself, and pay homage to learning? Let the froward sciolism of the age answer-let our halls of legislation answer-our courts of justice-aye, the pulpits of the living God answer! And is learning then vain ? and shall wealth and fashion be the attracting centers of dignity and power? and shall sci