dyes of the rainbow; and the popular Hymen, a sort of young gentleman who keeps a day-book and ledger. Judging from appearances, I should say no Gretna Green can be required within the territories of the States, since any one matrimonial smith can work on cold iron as well as another.

CHAPTER IV.

Baneful Influence of the "Moral Philosophy" of "Poor Richard." Literary Taste and Literature in the United States.

POSSIBLY the alleged mercenary character of the people of America may, so far as it has any foundation in reality, be traced back to a source, the very naming of which will probably surprise some of my readers whose mental exercises in tracing effects up to their causes have not been habitually pursued. Yet I am not alone in the opinion, that the economical maxims of " Poor Richard" have exercised a very baneful influence upon generations, whose amount of knowledge in other respects was not sufficiently liberal to enable them to see across the very narrow ditch of selfishness which the "philosopher" was drawing around them.

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Poverty inventing pithy sayings to justify niggardliness and moneyscraping, may assume the cloak of philosophy, but will eventually prove herself a most purblind and narrow-souled impostor in the end. Only imbue thoroughly the bosom of a child with the maxim, that a penny saved is a penny earned," and you may rest satisfied that the most generous and noble impulses of the heart are effectually poisoned at the very roots. If tenderness, benevolence, charity-the purest and most angelic of the poetical passions-survive a youthful training upon the basis of such a principle, then are tenderness, benevolence, and charity indestructible and unassailable in the moral fortress of the human breast. Such a training might, and in all probability would, create a worthless and despicable miser-a wretch whose humanity extended not beyond the pale of self-a paltry worm, incapable of sym

pathy, and unworthy to receive it. But that such a training should leave room for the growth of one generous sentiment-one high and morally-dignified aspiration in favour of our common humanity, is as impossible as that the pages of an account-book should fill the soul with the inspiration of the heavens.

With what shall I contrast this petty grovelling philosophy, to show it in all its full-blown meanness? Where shall I find a pure and perfect colour to place in forcible antagonism with this mixed and dirty tint? Ah, here I have it! 'tis at my fingers' ends! One authority inculcates, that "A penny saved is a penny earned;" another, a greater, and a heaven-descended one, in a magnificent spirit of benevolence and faith, enjoins thus-" Cast thy bread upon the waters, and it shall return to thee after many days." Did that mischievous old man, "Poor Richard," ever soar to the comprehension of this beautiful lesson, clothed in a metaphor equally brilliant and beautiful? Never! His feet were clogged with the dust of the world, and his eyes covered with that thick film of selfishness which shut out all enlarged and comprehensive views. To see the moral and social duties through Poor Richard's medium, is precisely the same thing as attempting to view objects through spectacles of horn. Society, at best, retains just sufficient of the character of a congregation of distinct and isolated individuals—multitudinous units in a state of mutual antagonism-without the formal inculcation of the most deplorable selfishness as a leading principle of life, and the paltriest instructions in meanness, disguised under the specious name of domestic economy. Selfishness is, indeed, not only the most odious, but the most short-sighted of human feelings or propensities. None so entirely as this defeats its own object ultimately. Man is dependent upon man, do as he will; and the more he generalises infuses, as it were, his individuality into the mass, the better for himself. One mighty sympathy should bind all together,— not an uneasy principle of repulsion drive the constituent atoms apart from each other; a truth not clearly seen just now, but which future generations in wisdom and benevolence shall realise. From a republican nation particularly ought the whole tribe of " Poor Richards," with their debasing and trashy proverbs, to be utterly banished. They can have no honest and legitimate business there. They are a disgrace, in

truth, to the whole world of humanity. But if they are to have some corner in which to breathe out the pestilent breath of their lives, let it be where some dark and selfish despotism—the ideal of their own doctrines-reigns triumphant and supreme.

The philosopher who drew fire from the cloud, also raised Mammon from hell-that Mammon who, according to Milton, first used in the abyss of fire the same line of argument:

There is one other subject upon which I cannot refrain from making a few passing remarks. It is that of the sound and healthy taste so plainly and generally evident amongst the Americans in that most important particular, their literature: not theirs in a literal sense, but theirs by adoption and transfer from older and more mentally-productive nations. On this point, indeed, the Republic may justly congratulate herself. Sound and valuable works are read and esteemed; and a true foundation is, in this respect, being laid for the raising of a truly intellectual and exalted people. But whether, in the absence of international copyright laws, the universal ransacking of the literary stores of the Old World—the wholesale adoption and instantaneous republication in America of the newly-born works of the passing time, without compensation to either the foreign author or the publisher, is not also a wholesale, though indirect, piece of injustice and dishonesty, admits scarcely of a question. No sooner has the power of wind, water, and steam conveyed the sheets of our new works and monthly periodicals to the American shores, than the Park Benjamins and the Hastings Welds of the Republic, armed with tremendous scissors and oceans of ready paste, set to work, with the alacrity of men labouring for their lives, to transfer their contents to mammoth sheets-" New Worlds" and "Brother Jonathans"-which they retail by their tens of thousands at a price little above that of the issues from the press of the celebrated Catnach of Seven Dials; but which amply compensate Benjamin and Hastings, because they pay not one farthing for author

ship, and incur no heavier expenses in the production than those of composition, paper, ink, paste, and wafers. While, therefore, probably, the English contributor to our native periodicals lives leanly in some poetical garret in a cheap suburb of London, Benjamin gets overloaded with fat and cellular substance upon the productions of his talent în New York; and in the merely still-life capacity of foreign retail agent, blows his own name through the trumpet far louder than the names of the principals whom he insists on representing. Publishers of another description are equally busy in their line, producing accurate reprints, alike to the very type and colour of the wrappers, of the English periodicals, and differing in no particular from the originals, except in that of being "imprinted" at New York, instead of London, Edinburgh, or Dublin.

This

If the English at one time, in buccaneering and piracy, levied heavy contributions upon the personals of the habitants of America, ample reprisals are made upon them now in another sort, by the Morgans and Lafittes of the printing-office. The only difference in the respective robberies is, that one was of matter, and the other is of mind. system, however advantageous to the people of the States as a body, in furnishing them with the results of the highest intellects and most able learning abroad, has a most pernicious effect upon the growth of a native literature, and the fortunes of American talent. Where so much of the best is got for nothing, what chance remains that the young and inferior productions of the soil itself should be paid for and encouraged? Or who, not born to a fortune, can avoid the fate of the admirable Bryant, and do otherwise than waste his poetical sweetness on the desert acres of a newspaper for the sake of bread? Where, now, would have been Washington Irving and Fennimore Cooper, had they lived on American patronage alone, and reaped not in England their harvests of popularity? One might have ploughed his paternal acres, and the other his familiar deeps, and nothing more. The Republic is a drynurse to the babyhood of her literary children. Precisely when most

they require nourishment, she has no breasts for them.

It is in the natural course of things, that while the majority of a people possess no accumulated fortunes for their sons-and from out that majority principally arise the geniuses and great mental lights of