dedicated to President Jefferson, and published in Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, in 1803. Dr. Priestley was also a contributor to the literary periodicals of the period, and communicated several scientific papers to the Medical Repository of New York.

In Dr. Thomas Cooper, a native of London, we have another of those remarkable men whose influence on American thought has not been without its influence. He joined his friend Priestley, at Northumberland, soon after that gentleman's arrival in America, and immediately began a series of Political Essays, which were published in the local Gazette, and afterwards reproduced in book form. He occupied various responsible offices, both judicial and educational, having been appointed, in 1806, President Judge of one of the Common Pleas Districts of Pennsylvania, afterwards Professor of Chemistry in Dickinson College, of Mineralogy in the University of Pennsylvania, and, finally, President of the South Carolina College, at Columbia. He wrote much and well. From 1812 to 1814, in connection with Dr. Coxe, he prepared a valuable work, entitled The Emporium of the Arts and Sciences, three of the five volumes being his own labour. In 1819 he published a valuable work on Medical Jurisprudence; and in 1826, at Columbia, South Carolina, his Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy, a work which advocates in forcible and manly argument free-trade at home and abroad. Dr. Cooper wrote upon Religion and Man; and was a strong opponent of the doctrine of the unity of the human race. He died at Columbia, in 1840.

Adventure, or a desire to improve their worldly prospects, led not a few ardent literary spirits to the new Republic. Among the most noted of these was Alexander Wilson, a native of Paisley. His fame rests mainly upon his excellent American Ornithology; but he was not unmindful of the lighter pursuits of authorship, and his strong poetical temperament frequently led him into the realms of rhyme. His American productions of this class are far from despicable, and their composition, no doubt, tended greatly to increase his command of language and improve his prose. The Foresters, The Schoolmaster, and the Pilgrim, are the results of his observations either as a woodsman, an instructor, or a wandering naturalist, and contain not only poetical similes and sentiments, but accurate descriptions of parts of the country but little known at the time they were written, and rarely noticed in works of travel.

Wilson turned his attention seriously to the study of the habits of American birds, as early as 1803; and the first of nine volumes on American Ornithology was published in 1808. It was illustrated by excellent plates by Lawson, a Scotchman long resident in America, and but 200 copies were printed. He did not live to complete the work. The eighth volume appeared in November, 1813, soon after his death, and the ninth and last volume was published under the editorship of his friend, George Ord, in 1814. . In 1825, a new edition of the last three volumes was prepared and issued; and in 1828, Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte published four supplementary volumes, thus making the work almost complete, and establishing it as a monument of Ornithology second only to the great work of Audubon, who never failed to award the praise to which Wilson was justly entitled.

Matthew Carey is a name honourably associated with American letters, and as

the father of Henry C. Carey, the political economist, and as an author of note himself, his works merit reference here. He emigrated from Ireland in 1784, and settled in Philadelphia, where he successfully established several newspapers and magazines, to all of which he contributed largely. He was early involved in a controversy with Cobbett; took an active part in politics, and in 1814, when party spirit was bitter and high, published a successful pamphlet, entitled the Olive Branch, whose object was the abatement of party violence, and which soon ran through ten editions. He was ever strongly attached to his native land, and published his Vindicia Hibernica, in 1818, in order to correct what he considered the mis-statements of English writers. This is the production upon which his literary reputation mainly rests, and although somewhat dry in style, no less than four editions of it were early demanded by the public.

Peter Duponceau, LL.D., Member of the Academy of Inscriptions of the French Institute, and of other Philosophical Societies, and whose various philological works are favourably known in Europe, emigrated from France to the United States with Baron Steuben, in 1777. He prepared a report, in 1819, on the Structure of the Indian Languages, which was published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society; and in May, 1835, gained the Linguistique Prize founded by Volney, from the French Institute, for his valuable memoir on the Indian Languages of North America, which essay was soon after published in Paris. His most profound work—A Dissertation on the Chinese Language—was published in 1838, and now holds the position of a high and sound authority on the subject of which it treats. All of Mr. Duponceau's works were written in America.

This branch of Science received much attention from the celebrated Albert Gallatin, a Swiss by birth, whose Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States, and work on the Languages and History of the Nations of Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America, fully confirm the theories of Pickering, Duponceau, and others. Gallatin was a voluminous political as well as scientific writer, and was United States' minister at different times at both Paris and London. His style is forcible and classical. As an author he did much for both literature and science in America, and was rewarded for his services by the country of his adoption.

Of the more recent foreign writers in America, Dr. Francis Lieber merits our special attention. In 1828, he conceived and began the publication, at Philadelphia, of the Encyclopædia Americana, which he completed in 1832. And since that period he has both written much and done much for political and philosophical science in the United States. He has written well on all subjects, and one or more of his lighter works have been republished in London under disguised titles. Among the most valuable of his American productions are Political Ethics, 2 volumes, Boston, 1838-39; Civil Liberty, and Self-Government, Philadelphia, 1853; Essays on Labour and Property, being one of the most valuable contributions to the Science of Political Economy; and his several powerful Essays on Penal Laws, and the Penitentiary system. Dr. Lieber is a native of Berlin, but has long been an American citizen.

At a still later period Dr. Hermann E. Ludewig, a native of Dresden, followed up the investigation of Duponceau and Gallatin. Although he did

not emigrate to the United States until 1844, in 1846 he published his Literature of American Local History, a work of great value, and marked originality. At a later time he prepared his work on the Literature of American Aboriginal Languages, recently reëdited and published in London; and this must ever be regarded as among the most valuable books of its class. Dry as such a subject is, Dr. Ludewig has invested it with the novelty of attraction, and given it a place in letters. His career was brief in America, as he died there in December, 1856; but not before he had placed his name imperishably among those of distinguished foreigners who have contributed to the young nation's literature.

Since 1820, a number of foreigners have gained distinction by their contributions to the literature of Fiction. Of these William Henry Herbert, a native of London, is probably the most prominent. He seems to have taken up his permanent abode in the United States, and his many works have an American freshness about them not possessed by the writings of G. P. R. James, and other English romance writers who have written in America. Mr. Herbert is a voluminous, as well as a forcible and finished, author. His principal novels are The Brothers; a Tale of the Fronde, 1834; Cromwell, 1837; Marmaduke Wyvil, 1843; and The Roman Traitor, 1848. He has a healthy love of field and forest sports, to which we owe three excellent works, entitled, respectively, My Shooting Box, The Warwick Woodlands, and Field Sports of the United States. These sprightly books are evidently written by a conscientious man, and in this respect possess a value for truthful delineation, which the critical reader will look for in vain in the many romances of American forest life, which fill the pages of certain British periodicals under the pretence of being actual narratives. Mr. Herbert is the author of The Captains of the Old World, their Campaigns, Character, and Conduct, as compared with the Great Modern Strategists: a work of considerable acumen and analytical power.

In Scientific investigation, no European of the present century has done more in America than Louis Agassiz. Born in Switzerland, educated from boyhood to science, and by nature fond of its teachings, after having distinguished himself in his own country, he sought an extended field of exploration in the United States, where his labours have been duly appreciated. His contributions to our stock of Natural History in its various branches are among the most perfect of their kind, and his labours have identified him indissolubly with American Science. The principal American production upon which his fame will probably rest, is his Contributions to the Natural History of the United States, which is in course of publication.

Several foreigners have contributed largely and creditably to American Medical literature. Dr. Draper's Human Physiology, Statistical and Dynamical, first published in November, 1856, in New York, according to the London Medical Times and Gazette, "stands first of our physiological treatises." This truly great work has already passed through several editions, and is regarded in Europe, as well as in the United States, as standard authority. It is clearly written, is wide in its scope, original in its views, and is the most successful attempt at popularizing physiology ever made. Dr. Draper is a native of England. Another British writer in America on the same and kindred subjects,

is Dr. Robley Dunglison. His Dictionary of Medical Science has long been popular in the United States; and his Practice of Medicine, Human Physiology, and Human Health,established him as one of the clearest headed medical authors of the time. Both he and Dr. Draper have been for many years in the United States, and their works are decided acquisitions to the medical literature of the world.

Quite a number of foreign divines have, within the last forty years, contributed to American literature, but, without partiality, we must confine ourselves to a brief account of the writings of but one of these-Dr. Philip Schaff of Franklin and Marshall College at Lancaster, Pa. His most valued work is an elaborate History of the Apostolic Church, first published in German at Mercersburg, Pa., in 1851. This is a clearly written history, imbued with the spirit of Christianity, and remarkable for the comprehensiveness of its character. An edition in German was printed at Leipsic, in 1854, and in the same year an English reprint from an American edition in English appeared at Edinburgh. Dr. Schaff is a Swiss by birth, and is the author of eight other theological works, several of them being of American origin.

Did space permit, or occasion require, we might extend this list of foreign writers in the United States; but we believe this brief reference to a few of the more prominent, as marking the leaders of certain classes, will be sufficient here. We have purposely observed a distinction between native and foreign authors, in order that the really valuable in the native literature of the United States should stand upon its own merits, as well as to show that European ideas have not had such a controlling power over American mind as some prejudiced writers on this side pretend to believe. In fact, we have been forcibly impressed in the course of our long and arduous investigations with the truth, that the originality of American authorship has really risen above a powerful European influence, and, instead of suffering itself to be ingulfed by the waves from the currents of the Old World, has rather imparted its native freshness to them, and escaped their impurities.

CHAPTER VIII.

EDUCATION.

SCHOOLS for the education of the youthful colonists were established at an early period in the settlement of both Virginia and New England; but the first institution of learning in the United States deserving the name was founded by the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. On the 8th of October, 1636, or eight years after the first Pilgrims landed in New England, the General Court at Boston voted £400 towards a school or college, and the following year established it at Newtown, to which place they subsequently gave the name of Cambridge. In 1638, the scheme was fully matured, the Rev. John Harvard having bequeathed for the endowment of the projected academy a sum equal to double the original appropriation, together with a choice library, and in

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course of years the school became the time-honoured Harvard College. It is now one of the best-conducted institutions of learning in the world, and contains on its rolls of living graduates the names of Everett, Emerson, Prescott, and Bancroft.

For a considerable period Harvard College was the only institution of its kind in the Colonies, but others were founded as civilization extended, and the increased wealth and wants of the population demanded. At present there are 127 Colleges, 47 Theological Schools, 15 Law Schools, and 40 Medical Schools in the United States; to which might be added the various Public High Schools of the Northern States, all of which are colleges in every essential particular, and are mainly designed for instruction in the higher branches of human knowledge.

The great power, however, of national education is centred in the Public Schools, and we consider these worthy a brief notice here, because of their direct agency in creating a desire for reading among the masses, as well as for the indirect influence they exercise in developing and fostering the literature of the country. The settlers of the colony of Massachusetts Bay were well aware of the advantages of public instruction, and to them belongs the honour of having made the first provision for Public Schools in what is now the United States. On the 30th May, 1639, Dorchester, in that province, voted £20 a year, to be paid by the proprietors of Thomson's Island, towards the maintenance of a school in that town for instruction in "English, Latin, and other tongues, also writing;" and in 1645, or only 25 years after the first landing, the constituted rulers passed an act extending the blessing of public instruction to the whole colony so far as practicable. In 1692, they strengthened their enactments, and, for the first time in the world's history, announced the great principle, now a maxim of free government, that all the people of a state should be educated by the state, and this doctrine has been extended into nearly all the members of the American Confederation. In Minnesota, the maxim that "the property of the people should educate the children of the people," is acknowledged and acted upon, and so popular are the Public Schools that large appropriations, both in land and in money, are annually devoted in a majority, if not all the States, to their support, increase, and extension, as the following comprehensive statement will show.

According to the census of 1850 there were nearly 81,000 Public Schools then in the United States. Of these there were 4042 in Maine; 2381 in New Hampshire; 3679 in Massachusetts; 2731 in Vermont; 416 in Rhode Island; 1656 in Connecticut; 11,580 in New York; 1473 in New Jersey ; 9061 in Pennsylvania; 194 in Delaware; 898 in Maryland; 22 in the District of Columbia; 2930 in Virginia; 2657 in North Carolina; 724 in South Carolina; 1251 in Georgia; 69 in Florida; 1152 in Alabama; 782 in Mississippi; 664 in Louisiana; 349 in Texas; 353 in Arkansas; 1570 in Missouri; 2680 in Tennessee; 2234 in Kentucky; 11,661 in Ohio; 4822 in Indiana; 4052 in Illinois; 740 in Iowa; 2714 in Michigan; and 1423 in Wisconsin; the remainder being in the various Territories and California, exclusive of New Mexico and Minnesota."

When the Census was taken in 1850, the number of public scholars was 3,354,011, and the total cost of instruction and accommodation yearly, was