by any love of adventure or of wild sports, to spend months amidst the wretchedness and filth of a Pawnee encampment; and he evidently got enough of it; the perfidy, brutality, and vermin of his red friends, were more than a set-off for the exciting pleasure of a buffalo-hunt. Personal observation marvellously reduced his catalogue of the supposed virtues of the Indian, and completely dissipated all his prestiges in favor of the imaginary delights of the savage life. We regard as one of the most valuable parts of his book, that which is devoted to an account of his residence on the Pawnee hunting-grounds; the public mind needs to be disabused of a prevalent error regarding "the noble savage," and Mr. Murray's testimony will do much towards setting it right. We have no belief in the superiority of savage over civilized man, as respects magnanimity, generosity, or any one of the virtues generally assigned to the former; his superiority is only that which the brute animal has over the rational being merely physical- arising from a difference in habits,capable of enduring more, because hardened by exposure; the moral is altogether on the side of civilization; and the more we know of barbarous tribes in all lands, the more clearly we see the truth of our position. But however erroneous may have been the anticipations of Mr. Murray, as to Indian habits and life, he came to this country obviously well prepared to judge rightly of its civilized portions, through all the various stages in which civilization here presents itself. He knew that our government, in its character, differed widely from that of his own land, and must have inferred that a corresponding difference would be found in our social institutions, and therefore seems not to have been surprised when he looked upon the fresh broken, rough hewn surface of our society, to find how strongly it contrasted with the time mellowed and polished outline of European. He does not denounce as barbarous every thing which is new to him; he is neither shocked nor disgusted with the innumerable strange usages he observed; nor does he imply that we are always ill-bred and ill-mannered, when we deviate from the conventional standard to which he had been accustomed. In a word, good humor, good sense, courteousness, candor, and freedom from prejudice, are the characteristic features of his work; it is neither very profound nor original in its observations, and it is not written with any extraordinary power; and still it is a very agreeable companion, for it is always pleasant to be in the company of such an intelligent, well educated, and accomplished gentleman, as every reader of this book must observe its author to be. Mr. Murray is a candid and discriminating observer, but not a blind admirer of our manners and institutions; and his impartiality and disinterestedness ought to give great weight to his authority, in opposition to the abusive statements of many previous venal libellers. Were our pages intended for English instead of American readers, we should think it proper to cite those passages from his book which show that the impressions made upon him by his visit to this country were highly favorable to us, and more especially such as furnish a direct refutation of many specific charges which the travellers of that nation have brought against us. But we deem most of these slanders undeserving of notice; and besides, we prefer calling attention to the disproportions and defects in our social edifice, which the friendly eye of Mr. Murray has pointed out, to gratifying our national vanity, by repeating the encomiums he has pronounced upon its general grandeur and stateliness. This principle will govern us in the selections we shall make from his interesting volumes. Our traveller visits Mount Vernon, and the reflections which arise in his mind, while there, are a severe but just reproof to us for our long neglect of a most natural tribute of respect to the memory of the great Father of our country: a tribute that one would think should have been demanded by a spontaneous and universal impulse of the nation, the instant that spot became consecrated by the hallowed dust that was committed to it. But what a mortifying proof of our shameful insensibility on this subject, does the following picture present: Leaving the house, we went out towards the tomb where his ashes repose; and I shall not soon forget the overwhelming feelings with which I viewed it. We were first shown the spot where his remains had been deposited previously to their removal to their present situation,-a melancholy mound of earth, shadowed by a few cypresses, the hollow void within scarcely protected by a scanty grating from the desecrations of ignorant childhood, idle mischief, or filthy vermin! The spot to which his remains have within these last few years been removed, is a vault in the side of a bank, also shadowed by a few dwarf shrubs, and protected from the air by an iron door. The building, if it can be called one, is a miserable looking brick hovel. Over the door is an inscription from the bible-respectable and venerable on that account, but as applicable to the humblest peasant, as to the great sleeper beneath. "I hope I do not attach any improper importance nor any bigoted reverence to mere sepulchral decoration or magnificence; still I own that I could not here repress my feelings of indignation and disgust! The memory of Washington is dear to, and revered by, not only America, but mankind; and mankind had a right, according to all the rules of good taste, good feeling, and good example, to expect, either that the illustrious dust should have been allowed to remain in the simple mound where it first slept, shadowed by the melancholy boughs that first waved over it, and hallowing the soil where it had first sought repose from the cares of life; or, if it had been removed, it should have been to a sepulchre worthy of its name and glory, and not to a wretched vault, to which it is no exaggeration to affirm, that a British nobleman would have been almost ashamed to consign the remains of a faithful old dependant! "It is vain here to urge the well-known and splendid truths that have been uttered over the spots consecrated by departed greatness. To no one who ever lived is the glorious Periclean eulogy of Hara yn rúpos more applicable than to Washington; nor is the celebrated inscription in St. Paul's to its architect, "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice," less so. These sentiments merely prove that the fame and glory of the illustrious dead can neither be diminished nor tarnished by the neglect of their countrymen but does that palliate or excuse such neglect? I am aware that some reasons are adduced in justification of the conduct here censured. The public is informed, that it was Washington's wish that his remains might be deposited in a particular place, and that his family are not sufficiently opulent to raise a worthy monument to his memory. These are but shallow pretexts, or, at best, groundless arguments the commands of the living, in such cases, are binding only on their immediate relations, and during the freshness of their grief; after which, disobedience to them may be an incumbent duty. With this good and holy purpose America should, after a decent time, have exceeded the injunctions of her parent, and her filial disobedience would have been applauded by the universal consent of mankind.”—Vol. 1. p. 105–107. It Gratitude for public services has not been one of our prominent virtues-we pay honor only to office; when the fasces are once laid down, we assign no consular rank to the ex-magistrate-we raise no monuments to commemorate the great deeds of our heroes, and no mausoleums to preserve their ashes. is not easy to find a reason for the almost entire absence of this sentiment in our country; one may be sought, perhaps, in the federative character of our government, and the jealousy of the individual states of natural encroachments: but to whatever owing, it discovers in the nation's heart a want of one of its noblest affections. Akin to it is the want of reverence for our own antiquities; we cherish no local attachments, we keep up no historical associations with places, we care not even to preserve the monuments, which point out the spot where the 63 NO. X. VOL. V. seeds of this mighty empire were first planted, and we probably never think of our neglect, unless when reminded of it by some traveller like Mr. Murray, who looks on these things with different emotions, and makes his pages a record of his regret for our indifference. "I landed at James Town, the now desolate spot where the fathers of America first established themselves on her shores: it is impossible to view it without interest and emotion, or to forget that from this acorn sprung the huge-spreading oak on which the American eagle has built her nest! 'Time was when, settling on thy leaf, a fly Could shake thee to the roots-and time has been Nothing now remains of that parent settlement excepting the ruins of the church, which mark the place whence the tidings of christianity were preached in the Western world. Here I regret to add, that the condition both of the ruins and the church-yard attest the indifference of the American people to sepulchral relics or monuments of antiquity. Instead of showing any reverence for this classic and holy ground, (such, at least, it should be to them,) the church has been allowed to fall to pieces-the grave-stones have been rudely torn from their places-the marble slabs broken and scattered in every direction-the inscriptions and carved ornaments defaced-the church-yard wall torn down-nor is there the slightest remaining barrier to protect this, their earliest religious and ancestral monument, from the intrusion of pigs and cattle, or the more disgraceful profanation of human mischief and curiosity! "Some may think this a light and trivial matter-I cannot agree with them it appears to me an amiable, if not an instinctive feeling in our nature, to have a regard to all the concerns, the habits, the deeds, as well as the houses and more material relics of our forefathers; how much more so to venerate the spot of which the dust is kindred to our own animated clay, where sleep the men to whom we owe the land and the liberty we enjoy. I will defy any one who pretends to understand or appreciate a stanza of Gray's matchless Elegy, to look upon this desecrated church-yard without mingled feelings of indignation and pain. If I were an American statesman, I would watch, and endeavor to correct this national defect, and to instil into my countrymen a sentiment which the concurring testimony of civilized nations has approved. Burke, who was no superficial observer of human nature, has said, 'They who never look back to their ancestors, will rarely look forward to posterity.""Vol. 1. p. 126, 127. : Another subject upon which it would be important for us to attend to the suggestion of Mr. Murray, is that of education. * Cowper's "Yardley Oak." It is a daily conviction of every inquiring parent, that there is not one of the seventy or eighty colleges and universities in this country, in which a son can be or is rather thoroughly educated. A youth who has received his first degrees at any one of them, even the best, may go abroad to Oxford or Cambridge, and find himself unable without other preparation to enter creditably the lowest class in either; and he may go to the continent and find the same difficulty in endeavoring to enter the prima of a German gymnasium. It is not that he has not read as many books, and studied as many branches, as make up the course in the foreign institutions; in fact the amount of his nominal attainments far exceeds what would there be required of him, but he has done nothing well, nothing thoroughly, and chiefly for this reason, that he has pretended to do too much. This is the fatal error in the whole system of education in this country, in the schools of every description, as well for girls as boys, and in the colleges and universities, and for the correctness of our opinion, we appeal to our author; who says, "The process of mental cultivation in America is somewhat analogous to their agricultural system; in both cases they look too extensively to the quantity of produce immediately to be obtained, and pay too little attention to the culture and improvement of the soil. It has been often remarked, that an American course of collegiate education, extends over a field that would occupy a man of good abilities forty years to master; but a student is supposed to have travelled over it in three or four years: and he may have travelled over it; but it is with the same advantage as some of our fashionable London loungers travel over Switzerland and Italy, as fast as well-paid postilions and a light britchka can take them-they have seen Mont Blanc, and been over the Simplon; they have visited St. Peter's and the Coliseum; have sat in a gondola and seen the Bridge of Sighs; have eaten ice and macaroni in view of the Bay of Naples; and have yawned admiration before the Apollo, the Venus, and the Cartoons! Then they return-travellers! "With equal advantage is a youth educated on the encyclopædia system, so pernicious to industry or to sterling knowledge and ac quirement. The young men who acquire a taste for reading is singularly small in America. They will tell a stranger who makes this observation, that they are too busy, that they are engaged in mercantile and other affairs. This, in fact, (though a plausible one,) is only an excuse; they have time enough to give to the theatre, the dance, the race-course, the trotting-match, the billiard-table, the tavern-bar, etc., but to find a young man, having left college five years, who could read Pindar and Euripides, or even Horace and |