They will not afford to let their young men study till two or three and twenty, and it is therefore declared, ex cathedra Americana, to be unnecessary.  At sixteen, often much earlier, education ends, and money-making begins; the idea that more learning is necessary than can be acquired by that time, is generally ridiculed as obsolete monkish bigotry; added to which, if the seniors willed a more prolonged discipline, the juniors would refuse submission.  When the money-getting begins, leisure ceases, and all of lore which can be acquired afterwards, is picked up from novels, magazines, and newspapers.

At what time can the taste be formed?  How can a correct and polished style, even of speaking, be acquired? or when can the fruit of the two thousand years of past thinking be added to the native growth of American intellect?  These are the tools, if I may so express myself, which our elaborate system of school discipline puts into the hands of our scholars; possessed of these, they may use them in whatever direction they please afterwards, they can never be an incumbrance.

No people appear more anxious to excite admiration and receive applause than the Americans, yet none take so little trouble, or make so few sacrifices to obtain it.  This may answer among themselves, but it will not with the rest of the world; individual sacrifices must be made, and national economy enlarged, before America can compete with the old world in taste, learning, and liberality.

The reception of General Lafayette is the one single instance in which the national pride has overcome the national thrift; and this was clearly referrible to the one single feeling of enthusiasm of which they appear capable, namely, the triumph of their successful struggle for national independence.  But though this feeling will be universally acknowledged as a worthy and lawful source of triumph and of pride, it will not serve to trade upon for ever, as a fund of glory and high station among the nations.  Their fathers were colonists; they fought stoutly, and became an independent people.  Success and admiration, even the admiration of those whose yoke they had broken, cheered them while living, still sheds a glory round their remote and untitled sepulchres, and will illumine the page of their history for ever.

Their children inherit the independence; they inherit too the honour of being the sons of brave fathers; but this will not give them the reputation at which they aim, of being scholars and gentlemen, nor will it enable them to sit down for evermore to talk of their glory, while they drink mint julap and chew tobacco, swearing by the beard of Jupiter (or some other oath) that they are very graceful, and agreeable, and, moreover abusing every body who does not cry out Amen!

To doubt that talent and mental power of every kind exist in America would be absurd; why should it not?  But in taste and learning they are woefully deficient; and it is this which renders them incapable of graduating a scale by which to measure themselves.  Hence arises that over weening complacency and self-esteem, both national and individual, which at once renders them so extremely obnoxious to ridicule, and so peculiarly restive under it.