expulsion," that one Locke has, upon several occasions, behaved himself very factiously against the government." Dryden was compelled to sacrifice his genius, to the spur of immediate want. Otway was choked with a morsel of bread, too ravenously swallowed, after a long fast. Johnson was taken to prison, for a debt of five shillings; and Burke petitioned for a professorship at Glasgow, and was denied. When we consider these facts, and the innumerable others of which these are a specimen, we may probably be led to the conclusion, that the appearance of eminent geniuses, under the forms of government subsisting in Europe, furnishes no decisive proof that they are the most friendly to intellectual progress.

II. The next circumstance, worthy of mention, as peculiarly calculated to promote the progress of improvement, and to furnish motives to intellectual exertion, in this Country, is the extension of one government, one language, and, substantially, one character, over so vast a space as the United States of America. Hitherto, in the main, the world has seen but two forms of political government, free governments in small states, and arbitrary governments in large ones. Though various shades of both have appeared, at different times, in the world, yet, on the whole, the political ingenuity of man has never before devised the method of extending purely popular institutions, beyond small districts, or of governing large states, by any other means than military power. The consequence has been, that the favorable effect of free institutions, on intellectual progress, has never been developed, on the largest scale. But, though favorable to the improvement of the mind, under any circumstances, it is evident, that, in order to their full effect, in bringing forth the highest attainable excellence, they must be permanently established, in an extensive region and over a numerous people. Such is the state of things existing in this Country, and for the first time in the world, and for which we are indebted to the fearless application of the representative principle.

The effect upon literature must eventually be, to give elevation, dignity, and generous expansion, to every species of mental effort. A great nationality is the parent of great thoughts. Literature is the voice of the age and of the state. The extent, the resources, the destiny, of the Country are imaged forth in the conception of its leading minds. They are but the organs of the race from which they are descended, the land in which they live, and the patriotic associations under which they have been educated. These furnish their language and elevate their thoughts. Under an impulse like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they feel and utter the sentiments, which are inspired by the system of which they are the members. As the mind goes forth, to enter into communion or conflict with millions of kindred spirits, over a mighty realm, it dilates, with a noble consciousness of its vocation. It disdains mean thoughts, and looks down on narrow interests; and strives to speak a noble word, which will touch the heart of a great people.

This necessary connexion between the extent of a country, and its intellectual progress, was, it is true, of more importance in antiquity, than it is at the present day, because, at that period of the world, owing to political causes, on which we have not time to dwell, there was, upon the whole, but one civilized and cultivated people, at a time, upon the stage; and the mind of one nation found no sympathy, and derived no aid, from the mind of another. Art and refinement followed in the train of political ascendancy, from the East to Greece, and from Greece to Rome. In the modern world, a combination of political, intellectual, and even mechanical, causes, (for the art of printing is among the most powerful of them,) has produced an extension of the highest civilization, over a large family of states, existing contemporaneously, in Europe and America. This circumstance might seem to mould the civilized portion of mankind into one republic of letters; and make it, comparatively, a matter of indifference to any

individual mind, whether its lot was cast in a small or a large, a weak or a powerful, state. It must be freely admitted, that this is, to some extent, the case; and it is one of the great advantages of the modern over the ancient civilization. And yet, a singular fatality immediately presents itself, to neutralize, in a great degree, the beneficial effects of this enlarged and diffused civilization on the progress of letters in any single state. It is true, that, instead of one sole country, as in antiquity, where the arts and refinements find a home, there are, in modern Europe, seven or eight, equally entitled to the general name of cultivated nations, and in each of which, some minds of the first order have appeared, And yet, by the multiplication of languages, an obstacle, all but insuperable, has been thrown in the way of the free progress of genius, in its triumphant course, from region to region. The muses of Shakspeare and Milton, of Camoens, of Lope de Vega and Calderon, of Corneille and Racine, of Dante and Tasso, of Goethe and Schiller, are comparative strangers to each other. Certainly it is not intended, that these illustrious minds are unknown beyond the limits of the lands, in which they were trained, and to which they spoke. But who is ignorant, that not one of them finds a full and hearty response, from any other people but his own; nay, who does not know, that the writings of some of them are a sealed book, except to those who read them in the mother tongue?

This evil was so keenly felt, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that the Latin language was widely adopted as a dialect common to scholars. We see men like Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, Bacon, and Grotius, who could scarce have written a line, without exciting the admiration of their contemporaries, driven to the use of a tongue, which none but the learned could understand. For the sake of addressing the scholars of other countries, these great men, and others like them, in many of their writings, were willing to cut themselves off, from all sympathy with

the mass of those, whom, as patriots, they must have wished most to instruct. In works of pure science and learned criticism, this is of the less consequence ; for, being independent of sentiment, it matters less, how remote from real life, the symbols by which their ideas are conveyed. But, when we see a writer, like Milton, who, as much as any other, whom England has ever produced, was a master of the music of his native tongue; who, besides all the beauty of thought and imagery, knew better than most other men, how to breathe forth his thoughts and images,

"In notes, with many a winding bout,
Of linked sweetness, long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony ;"

when we see a master of English eloquence, thus gifted, choosing a dead language,—the dialect of the closet, a tongue without an echo from the hearts of the people,— as the vehicle of his defence of that people's rights; asserting the cause of Englishmen in the language, as it may be truly called, of Cicero; we can only measure the incongruity, by reflecting what Cicero would himself have thought and felt, if called to defend the cause of Roman freedom, not in the language of the Roman citizen, but in that of the Chaldeans or Assyrians, or some people still further remote in the history of the world. And yet, Milton could not choose but employ this language; for he felt that in this, and this alone, he could speak the word, "with which all Europe rang from side to side."

There is little doubt, that the prevalence of the Latin language, among modern scholars, was a great cause, not only of the slow progress of letters, among the lower ranks, but of the stiffness and constraint of the vernacular style of most scholars themselves, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That the reformation in religion advanced with such rapidity is, in no small de

to be attributed to the translations of the Scriptures and the use of liturgies, in the modern tongues. The preservation, in legal acts, in England, of a strange language,-I will not offend the majesty of Rome, by calling it Latin,-down to so late a period as 1730, may be one reason, why the practical forms of administering justice have not been made to keep pace with the progress of reform, in some other departments. With the establishment of popular institutions, under Cromwell, among various other legal improvements,* very many of which were speedily adopted by our plain-dealing forefathers, the records of the law were ordered to be kept in English; "A novelty," says the learned commentator on the English laws, "which, at the Restoration, was no longer continued, practisers having found it very difficult to express themselves so concisely or significantly in any other language but Latin."+

Nor are the other remedies more efficacious, which have been attempted for the evil of a multiplicity of tongues. Something is done by translations, and something by the study of foreign languages. But that no effectual transfusion of the higher literature of a country can take place, in the way of translation, is matter of notoriety; and it is a remark of one of the few, who could have courage to make such a remark, Madame de Stael, that it is impossible, fully to comprehend the literature of a foreign tongue. The general preference, till lately, given to Young's Night Thoughts and Ossian, over all the other English poets, in many parts of the continent of Europe, seems to confirm the justice of the observation.

There is, indeed, an influence of exalted genius, coextensive with the earth. Something of its power will be felt, in spite of the obstacles of different languages, remote regions, and other times. But its true empire,

* See a number of them, in Lord Somers's Tracts, Vol. I.
+ Blackstone's Commentaries, Vol. III. p. 422.