studies. At dull evening parties, she can sit under the lamp, (little knowing how beautiful she looks) quietly amusing herself with prints, and not wanting notice: and she can speak out what she thinks and feels to a circle of admirers, as simply and earnestly as she would to her own mother. I have seen people shake their heads, and fear lest she should be spoiled; but my own conviction is that this young creature is unspoilable. She has had all the praise and admiration she can have: no watchfulness of parents can keep them from her. She does not want praise and admiration. She has other interests and other desires: and my belief is, that if she were left alone to-morrow, the last of her family, she would be as safe, busy, and, in due time, happy, as she is now under their tender guardianship. She is the most complete example I ever witnessed of a being growing up in the light and warmth and perfect freedom of love; and she has left me very little toleration for authority, in education more than in anything else.
A question was asked me, oftener than once, which indicates the difference between family manners in England and America. I was asked whether it was possible that the Bennet family would act as they are represented in "Pride and Prejudice:" whether a foolish mother, with grown up daughters, would be allowed to spoil the two youngest, instead of the sensible daughters taking the case into their own hands. It is certainly true that in America the superior minds of the family would take the lead; while in England, however the domestic affairs might gradually arrange themselves, no person would be found breathing the suggestion of superseding the mother's authority. The most remarkable difference is, that in England the parents value the authority as a right, however lenient they may be in the use of it. In America, the parent disapproves of it, as a matter of reason: and, if he acts rationally, had rather not possess it. Little revelations of the state of the case were perpetually occurring, which excited my wonder at first, and my interest throughout. It appeared through the smallest circumstances; as, for instance, when a lady was describing to me the wedding-day of her eldest daughter. She mentioned that two or three of the children were not in the drawing-room at the time of the ceremony.
Why? They were so angry at their brother-in-law for taking away their sister, that they kept out of the way till he had driven from the door with his bride. What children in England would have dreamed of absenting themselves in such a way?
It is amusing to observe what the ability for self-preservation is among children in a country where nursemaids are scarce. It frightened me at first to see mere babies playing on broken wooden bridges, where the rushing water below might be seen through large holes; and little boys climbing trees which slanted over a rocky precipice; or getting into a canoe tossing on a rough river. But I find that accidents to children are rarely or never heard of. The obvious results of such training are a dexterity, fearlessness, and presence of mind, and aptitude for bodily exercises, which are of eminent use in mature life.
I was sorry to perceive in some of the cities, especially in Boston, an unconsciousness on the part of many parents of the superior value of the discipline of circumstance to that of express teaching, in the work of education. Perhaps no one would be found to deny in words that the best training is that which exercises the whole being of a child: yet there is a method of education somewhat in fashion in Boston just now, which bids fair to kill off its victims in early life; and irreparably injure,--morally as well as physically,--those whom it may spare. The good people of Boston are more fond of excitement than of consistency: or, rather, that part of society is so which professes to constitute the city. When Spurzheim was there, the brain was everything; and his wise and benevolent remonstrances about the neglect or abuse of the bodily powers were received with great candour, and with much apparent conviction. Short as the interval has been, a considerable number of his disciples have gone directly over to the opposite philosophy; and in their spiritualism out-herod Herod. They frame their theory and practice on the principle that human beings are created perfect spirits in an infant body. Some go further back than this, and actually teach little children dogmatically that spirit makes body; and that their own bodies are the result of the efforts of their spirits to manifest themselves.
Such outrageous absurdities might be left to contempt, but for the consequences in practice. There is a school in Boston, (a large one, when I left the city,) conducted on this principle. The master presupposes his little pupils possessed of all truth, in philosophy and morals; and that his business is to bring it out into expression; to help the outward life to conform to the inner light; and, especially, to learn of these enlightened babes, with all humility. Large exposures might be made of the mischief this gentleman is doing to his pupils by relaxing their bodies, pampering their imaginations, over-stimulating the consciences of some, and hardening those of others; and by his extraordinary management, offering them every inducement to falsehood and hypocrisy. His system can be beneficial to none, and must be ruinous to many. If he should retain any pupils long enough to make a full trial of his methods with them, those who survive the neglect of bodily exercises and over-excitement of brain, will be found the first to throw off moral restraints, on perceiving at length that their moral guide has been employing their early years in the pursuit of shadows and the contempt of realities. There is, however, little fear of such a full trial being made. A few weeks are enough to convince sensible parents of the destructiveness of such a system; and it will probably issue in being one of the fancies of the day at Boston; and little heard of anywhere else.
The fundamental principle is, however, working mischief in other directions. It affects, very unfortunately, the welfare of the blind; and yet more of the deaf and dumb who are taken under the benevolent protection of society. As long as there are many of the most distinguished members of the community who hold that the interior being of these sufferers is in a perfect state, only the means of manifestation being deficient; that their training is to proceed on the supposition of their being possessed of a complete set of intellectual and moral intuitions; and that they therefore only need to be furnished with types, being already full of the things typified; and even that they have the advantage over others in the exclusion of false and vulgar associations,--the pupils will have little chance of benefit beyond the protection and comfort secured to them in their appropriate institutions. In the conversation of those who verbally pitied their case, I could frequently trace an inward persuasion that the deaf and dumb were better off than those who could hear and speak: and there were few who discovered, while admiring the supposed allegorical discourse or compositions of the pupils, that the whole was little more than a set of images, absolutely empty of the abstract truth which they were supposed to involve. I had witnessed this tremendous error in the teaching of the deaf and dumb elsewhere; but I little thought ever to meet with it beyond the confines of the particular, and almost inscrutable case under notice. In the school above mentioned, however, error nourishes, blessed as the pupils are with their five senses and the instrument of speech.
Putting aside such cases of eccentricity, the children of America have the advantage of the best possible early discipline; that of activity and self-dependence. The grand defect is a subsequent one. Education is not made appropriate to the aims of its subjects. All, whatever may be their views in life, are educated nearly alike up to nineteen. This is an absurdity copied from the old world, but unworthy of the good sense of the new. It will be rectified when the lives of rich men become as steadily aimed as those of citizens who have their way to make. Young men of fortune, who may have a taste for science or literature, do not yield themselves up to these pursuits, because "there is yet no scientific or literary class for them to fall into." Where is the necessity to them of such a class to fall into? And, supposing the necessity, how is there ever to be such a class, unless somebody begins to supply the elements?--It will be done. No restraint of custom will long be powerful enough to curb the force of intellectual tendency. The passion for truth, the craving for knowledge, are ever found, in the long run, irrepressible by the incubus of conventionalism. A genius will arise, now here, now there, to startle society out of its rules and precedents: and when America has had, now a philosopher and now a poet, who, like Schiller's "true artist," shall "look upwards to his dignity and his calling, and not downwards to his happiness and his wants," society will enlarge its discipline, and become a great preparatory school for the fruition of whatever the hand of man findeth to do, or his understanding to investigate, or his imagination to reveal.
FOOTNOTE: [27] See Appendix D.
CHAPTER IV.
SUFFERERS.
"One of the universal sentiments which Christianity has deeply imbedded in the human heart is that of the _natural equality of men_...It has produced the spectacle, which I believe to be peculiar to christian times, of one class uplifting another, the happy toiling for the miserable, the free vindicating the rights of the oppressed. With all the noble examples of disinterested friendship and patriotism, which ancient history affords, I can remember no approach to that _wholesale compassion_, that general action of one order of society on another, that system of _benevolent agitation_ in behalf of powerless and forgotten suffering, which characterises the history of modern times."
_Rationale of Religious Inquiry._ The idea of travelling in America was first suggested to me by a philanthropist's saying to me, "Whatever else may be true about the Americans, it is certain that they have got at principles of justice and mercy in the treatment of the least happy classes of society which we may be glad to learn from them. I wish you would go and see what they are." I did so; and the results of my investigation have not been reserved for this short chapter, but are spread over the whole of my book. The fundamental democratic principles on which American society is organised, are those "principles of justice and mercy" by which the guilty, the ignorant, the needy, and the infirm, are saved and blessed.
The charity of a democratic society is heart-reviving to witness; for there is a security that no wholesale oppression is bearing down the million in one direction, while charity is lifting up the hundred in another. Generally speaking, the misery that is seen is all that exists: there is no paralysing sense of the hopelessness of setting up individual benevolence against social injustice. If the community has not yet arrived at the point at which all communities are destined to arrive, of perceiving guilt to be infirmity, of obviating punishment, ignorance, and want, still the Americans are more blessed than others, in the certainty that they have far less superinduced misery than societies abroad, and are using wiser methods than others for its alleviation. In a country where social equality is the great principle in which all acquiesce, and where, consequently, the golden rule is suggested by every collision between man and man, neglect of misery is almost as much out of the question as the oppression from which most misery springs.
In the treatment of the guilty, America is beyond the rest of the world, exactly in proportion to the superiority of her political principles. I was favoured with the confidence of a great number of the prisoners in the Philadelphia penitentiary where absolute seclusion is the principle of punishment. Every one of these prisoners, (none of them being aware of the existence of any other,) told me that he was under obligations to those who had the charge of him for treating him "with respect." The expression struck me much as being universally used by them. Some explained the contrast between this method of punishment and imprisonment in the old prisons, copied from those of Europe; where criminals are herded together, and treated like anything but men and citizens. Others said that though they had done a wrong thing, and were rightly sequestered on that ground, they ought not to have any farther punishment inflicted upon them; and that it was the worst of punishments not to be treated with the respect due to men. In a community where criminals feel and speak thus, human rights cannot but be, at length, as much regarded in the infliction of punishment as in its other arrangements.
Much yet remains to be done, to this end. An enormous amount of wrong must remain in a society where the elaboration of a vast apparatus for the infliction of human misery, like that required by the system of solitary imprisonment, is yet a work of mercy. Milder and juster methods of treating moral infirmity will succeed when men shall have learned to obviate the largest possible amount of it. In the meantime, I am persuaded that this is the best method of punishment which has yet been tried. Much as the prisoners suffer from the dreary solitude, cheered only by their labour and the occasional visits of official superintendents, they testified, without exception and without concert, to their preference of this over all other methods of punishment. The grounds of preference were, that they could preserve their self-respect, in the first place; and, in the next, their chance in society on their release. They leave the prison with the recompense of their extra labour in their pockets, and without the fear of being waylaid by vicious old companions, or hunted from employment to employment by those whose interest it is to deprive them of a chance of establishing a character.
There is no evidence, at present, that solitary imprisonment, _with labour_, is more injurious to health than any other condition which is attended with anxiety of mind. The Philadelphia prisoners certainly appeared to me to be more healthy-looking than those at Auburn, or at any other prison I visited.
There is at present a deficiency in the religious ministrations of the prison. This is a fact which, I believe, has only to be made known to cease to be true. Among the clergy of all denominations in Philadelphia, there must be many who would contrive to afford their services in turn, if they were fully aware how much they are needed. I know of no direction that can be taken by charity with such certainty of success as visiting the solitary prisoner. I think it far from desirable that prisoners should be visited for the express purpose of giving them religious, and no other, instruction and sympathy. The great object is to occupy the prisoner's mind with things which interest him most; to keep up his sympathies, and nourish his human affections; and especially to promote the activity and cheerfulness of his mind. His situation is such,--he is so driven back upon the realities of life in his own mind, that the danger is of his accepting religion as a temporary solace, of his separating it in idea from active life, and craving for the most exciting kind of it; so as that when he returns to the world, he will discard it as something suiting his prison-life, but no longer needed, no longer appropriate. If, keeping this in view, a very few good men and women of Philadelphia would go sometimes to spend an hour with a prisoner, honourably observing the rules, telling no news, but cheerfully conversing on the prisoner's affairs,--his work, his family, his prospects on coming out, the books he reads, &c.--if they would carry him good and entertaining books, and if religious ones, only those of a moderate and cheerful character, (such being indeed not easy to be found,)--these friendly visitors could scarcely fail of restoring, more or less completely, the moral health of the objects of their benevolence. None who have not tried can imagine the ease with which sufferers so placed are influenced; in the absence of all that is pernicious, and in absolute dependence, as they are, on the sympathy of those who will be kind to them. If watchful observance were united with common prudence and kindness, I believe that a prisoner of five years would rarely re-enter society unqualified for the discharge of his duties there. It must be remembered that the criminals of the United States are rarely the depraved, brutish creatures that fill the prisons of the old world. Even in the old world, I have no doubt that every prison visitor has been conscious, on first conversing privately with a criminal, of a feeling of surprise at finding him so human: but in America, convicts are even more like other men. The reason of my visiting them, as I told them, was to satisfy myself about the causes of crime in a country where there is almost an absence of that want which occasions the greater proportion of social offences in England. Sooner or later, all told me their stories in full: and I found that in every case some domestic misery had been the poison of their lives. A harsh step-mother, an unfaithful wife, a jilting mistress, an intemperate son or father,--these were the miseries at home which sent them out to drink: drinking brought on murder, or caused vicious wants, which must be supplied by theft. The stories, infinitely varied in their circumstances, were all alike in their moral.
I do not like the principle of the Auburn prison: and I am confident that very little effectual reformation can take place under it. The disadvantages of the prisoners being waylaid and dogged on their discharge are very great; but there are some within the prison quite as serious. The spy system is abominable, in whatever light it is viewed.
It is the deepest of insults; and if there be a case rather than another in which insult is to be avoided, it is where a reformation is desired.
The great point to be gained with the criminal is to regenerate self-respect. A virtuous man may preserve his self-respect under the eyes of a spy; (though even he is in some danger); but a morally infirm man can never thus acquire it. Arrangements should be made for his secure custody and harmless outward conduct, and then he should be left to himself. And what is the purpose of the spying,--of the loop-holes to peep through, and the moccasins which are to make the tread of the spies as stealthy as that of a cat? To detect talking; talking subjecting a man to the lash. Talking is an innocent act; and, in the case of men secluded from the world and their families, and all that has hitherto interested them, an unavoidable act. They ought to talk; and they do, in spite of spies, governor, and the whip. They learn to murmur intelligibly behind their teeth, without moving the lips, and to take advantage of the briefest instants when the superintendent turns his back. It is surprising to me that any effectual reformation can be looked for from men who, convicted of grave crimes, have the prohibition to speak set up before their minds as the chief circumstance and interest of their lives for five, seven, or ten years. Their interest in it makes it the chief circumstance. How the disordered being is to be rectified, how the prostrated conscience is to be reinstated, while an innocent and necessary act is thus erected into an offence, I leave those who are most versed in moral proportions to decide. I do not believe in the possibility of effectual reformation in any but a few cases, under such a discipline.
The will of the majority has not yet wrought out the right practice from good principles, in two cases which regard the treatment of the guilty: and great evil arises in the interval. It is extremely difficult, in some parts of the States, and with regard to some particular offences, to get the laws enforced against offenders. In those parts of the States where personal conflicts are countenanced by opinion, offences against the person go too often unpunished; elsewhere, riot is passed over without notice; and in some few places, the most heinous crimes of all are nearly certain to be got over without the conviction of the offender. The impunity of riot arises from the reliance society has on the moral sense of the whole: a reliance very honourable in itself, but found of late to be inadequate under the pressure of such a crisis as that of the anti-slavery question. Nothing can be more honourable to the people, than the fact that they have been safe and virtuous under the superintendence of principle, while the laws have slept so long, that it is now found difficult to put them in force: but now that the time has come for a conflict of classes and opinions, the time has also come for the law to be vigilant and inexorable. The frequent impunity of the most serious crimes arises from the growing enmity of opinion to the punishment of death. There can be little doubt that in a short time capital punishments will be abolished throughout the northern States: and if this is to be done, the sooner it is done the better: for the present impunity is a tremendous evil.
In passing the City Hall of one of the northern cities with a friend, I asked what was the meaning of a great crowd that was about the doors, and even clustered on the windows of the building. My friend told me, that a young man was being examined on the charge of being the murderer in a most aggravated case, which had been related to me the day before.
I observed, that no one seemed to have any doubt of his guilt. She replied, that there never was a clearer case; but that he would be acquitted: the examination and trial were a mere form, of which every one knew the conclusion beforehand. The people did not choose to see any more hanging; and till the law was so altered as to allow an alternative of punishment, no conviction for a capital offence would be obtainable.
I asked, on what pretence the young man would be got off, if the evidence against him was as clear as was represented. She said, some one would be found to swear an alibi: the young man would be wholly disgraced, and would probably set out westwards the morning after his acquittal. I watched the progress of the case. The trial was a long one.
There was no doubt of the suppression of large portions of the evidence against him. A tradesman swore an alibi: the young man was thereupon acquitted; and next morning he was on his way to the west.
On the principle that punishment should be reformatory, the practice of pardoning criminals has gone to far too great an extent, from the belief of reformation in each particular case. The consequence is very injurious. A sentence of life-imprisonment is generally understood to mean imprisonment for a shorter term than if ten or seven years had been named. Every one of the prisoners I conversed with was in anxious expectation of a pardon. In the cases of those who were in for five years, and who I knew would not be pardoned, I reasoned the matter; and found that the fact of all their fellow-prisoners having the same expectation with themselves, made a strong impression. They were, amidst their dreadful disappointment, easily convinced: but I could not but mourn that they did not learn the philosophy of the case in society, rather than in prison.
Whenever the abolition of the punishment of death takes place, it will be essential to the safety of virtue and society, that it should be understood that the practice of pardoning is, except on rare and specified occasions, to cease; and that punishment is to be certain in proportion to its justice.
The pauperism of the United States is, to the observation of a stranger, nothing at all. To residents, it is an occasion for the exercise of their ever-ready charity. It is confined to the ports, emigrants making their way back into the country, the families of intemperate or disabled men, and unconnected women, who depend on their own exertions. The amount altogether is far from commensurate with the charity of the community; and it is to be hoped that the curse of a legal charity, at least to the able-bodied, will be avoided in a country where it certainly cannot become necessary within any assignable time. I was grieved to see the magnificent pauper asylum near Philadelphia, made to accommodate luxuriously 1200 persons; and to have its arrangements pointed out to me, as yielding far more comfort to the inmates than the labourer can secure at home by any degree of industry and prudence.
There are so many persons in the city, however, who see the badness of the principle, and regret the erection, that I trust a watch will be maintained over the establishment, and its corridors kept as empty as possible. In Boston, the principles of true charity have been better acted upon. There, many of the clergymen,--among the rest, Father Taylor, the seaman's friend,--are in possession of wisdom, derived from the mournful experience of England; and seem likely to save the city from the misery of a debasing pauperism among any class of its inhabitants. I know no large city where there is so much mutual helpfulness, so little neglect and ignorance of the concerns of other classes, as in Boston: and I cannot but anticipate that from thence the world may derive the brightest lesson that has yet been offered it, in the duties of the rich towards the poor. If the agents of the benevolence of the wealthy will but be scrupulously careful to avoid all that mental encroachment and moral interference, which have but too generally ruined the efficacy of charity, and go on to exhibit the devotion of the philanthropist, without the inquisitiveness and authoritativeness of the priest, they may deserve the thanks of the whole of society, as well as the attachment of those whom they befriend.
In Boston, an excellent plan has been adopted for the prevention of fraud on the part of paupers, and the mutual enlightenment and guidance of the agents of charity. A weekly meeting is held of delegates, from all societies engaged in the relief of the poor. The delegates compare lists of the persons relieved, so as to ascertain that none are fraudulently receiving from more than one society: they discuss and investigate doubtful cases; extend indulgence to those of peculiar hardship; and, in short, secure all the advantages of co-operation.
Perhaps there are no cities in England but London too large for a somewhat similar organisation: and its adoption would be an act of great wisdom.
In the south, I was rather amused at a boast which was made to me of the small amount of pauperism. As the plague distances all lesser diseases, so does slavery obviate pauperism. In a society of two classes, where the one class are all capitalists, and the other property, there can be no pauperism but through the vice or accidental disability of members of the first. But I was beset by many an anxious thought about the fate of disabled slaves. Masters are, of course, bound to take care of their slaves for life. There are doubtless many masters who guard the comfort of their helpless negroes all the more carefully from the sense of the entire dependence of the poor creatures upon their mercy: but, there are few human beings fit to be trusted with absolute power: and while there are many who abuse the authority they have over slaves who are not helpless, it is fearful to think what may be the fate of those who are purely burdensome. I observed, here and there, an idiot slave. Those whom I saw were kindly treated, humoured, and indulged. These were the only cases of natural infirmity that I witnessed among the negroes; and the absence of others struck me. At Columbia, South Carolina, I was taken by a benevolent physician to see the State Lunatic Asylum, which might be considered his work; so diligent had he been in obtaining appropriations for the object from the legislature, and afterwards in organising its plans, with great wisdom and humanity. When we were looking out from the top of this building, watching the patients in their airing grounds, I observed that no people of colour were visible in any part of the establishment. I inquired whether negroes were as subject to insanity as whites. Probably; but no means were known to have been taken to ascertain the fact. From the violence of their passions, there could be no doubt that insanity must exist among them. Were such insane negroes ever seen?--No one present had ever seen any.--Where were they then?--It was some time before I could get a clear answer to this: but my friend the physician said, at length, that he had no doubt they were kept in out-houses, chained to logs, to prevent their doing harm.
No member of society is charged with the duty of investigating cases of disease and suffering among slaves who cannot make their own state known. They are wholly at the mercy of their owners. The physician told me that it was his intention, now he had accomplished his object of establishing a lunatic asylum for the whites, to persevere no less strenuously till he obtained one for the blacks. He will probably not find this a very difficult object to effect; for the interest of masters, as well as their humanity, is concerned in having an asylum provided by the State for their useless or mischievous negroes.
The Lunatic Asylums of the United States are an honour to the country, to judge by those which I saw. The insane in Pennsylvania hospital, Philadelphia, should be removed to some more light and cheerful abode, and be much more fully supplied with employment, and with stimulus to engage in it. I was less pleased with their condition than with that of any other insane patients whom I saw. The institution at Worcester, Massachusetts, is admirably managed under Dr. Woodward. So was that at Charlestown, near Boston, by Dr. Lee; a young physician who has since died, mourned by his grateful patients, and by all who had their welfare at heart. The establishment at Bloomingdale, near New York, is of similar excellence. The only great deficiency that I am aware of is one which belongs to most lunatic asylums, and which it does not rest with the superintendent to supply;--a want of sufficient employment. Every exertion is made to provide a variety of amusements, and to encourage all little undertakings that may be suggested: but regular, important business is what is wanted. It is to be hoped that in the establishment of all such institutions, the provision of an ample quantity of land will be one of the prime considerations. Watchful and ingenious kindness may do much to alleviate the miseries of the insane; but if cure is sought, I believe it is agreed by those who know best, that regular employment, with a reasonable object, is indispensable.
The Asylum for the Blind at Philadelphia was a young institution at the time I saw it; but it pleased me more than any I ever visited: more than the larger one at Boston; whose institution and conduct are, however, honourable to all concerned in it. The reason of my preference of the Philadelphia one is that the pupils there were more active and cheerful than those of Boston. The spirits of the inmates are the one infallible test of the management of an institution for the blind. The fault of such in general is that mirth is not sufficiently cultivated, and religion too exclusively so. It should ever be remembered that religion comes out of the mind, and not in at the eye or ear; and that the truest way of cultivating religion is to exercise the faculties, and enlarge the stock of ideas to the utmost. The method of printing for the blind, introduced with such admirable ingenuity and success into the American institutions, I should like to see employed to bring within the reach of the blind the most amusing works that can be found. I should like to see it made an object with benevolent persons to go and give the pupils a hearty laugh occasionally, by reading droll books, and telling amusing stories. The one thing which the born blind want most is to have their cheerlessness removed, to be drawn out of their abstractions, and exercised in play on the greatest possible variety of familiar objects and events. They should hear no condolence: their friends should keep their sympathetic sorrow to themselves; and explain, cheerfully and fully, the allusions to visual objects which must occur in all reading and conversation. It grieves me to hear the hymns and other compositions put into the mouths of blind pupils, all full of lamentation and resignation about not seeing the stars and the face of nature. Such sorrow is for those who see to feel on their behalf; or for those who have lost sight: not for those who never saw. Put into their mouths, it becomes cant. When a roving sea-captain tells his children of the glories of oriental scenery which they are destined never to behold, does he teach them to sigh, and struggle to submit patiently to their destiny of staying at home? Does he not rather make them take pleasure in mirthfully and eagerly learning what he can teach? The face of nature is a foreign land to the born blind. Let them be taught all that can possibly be conveyed to them, and in the most spirited manner that they can bear. There is a nearer approach to the realisation of this principle of teaching the blind in the Philadelphia house than I ever saw elsewhere. It would be enough to cheer a misanthrope to see a little German boy there, picked up out of the streets, dull, neglected, and depressed; but within a few months, standing in the centre of the group of musicians, fiddling and stamping time with all his might, and quite ready to obey every instigation to laugh. Mr. Friedlander, the tutor, is much to be congratulated on what he has already done.
It may be worth suggesting here that while some of the thinkers of America, like many of the same classes in England, are mourning over the low state of the Philosophy of Mind in their country, society is neglecting a most important means of obtaining the knowledge requisite for the acquisition of such philosophy. Scholars are embracing alternately the systems of Kant, of Fichte, of Spurzheim, of the Scotch school; or abusing or eulogising Locke asking who Hartley was, or weaving a rainbow arch of transcendentalism, which is to comprehend the whole that lies within human vision, but sadly liable to be puffed away in dark vapour with the first breeze of reality; scholars are thus labouring at a system of mental philosophy on any but the experimental