And let not the Americans he represented as a people at once honest and narrow-minded.  If they are still far from our level—­and this must necessarily be true, in an artistic and literary point of view—­we are not, however, at liberty to despise a country which counts such names as Hawthorne, Longfellow, Emerson, Cooper, Poe, Washington Irving, Channing, Prescott, Motley, and Bancroft.  Note that among these names, men of imagination hold a prominent place, which proves, we may say in passing, that the country where we oftenest hear the exclamation, “Of what use is it?” agrees in finding poetry of some use.  And I speak here neither of orators, like Mr. Seward or Mr. Douglas, nor of scholars, like Lieutenant Maury, nor of those who, like Fulton or Morse, have applied science to art:  judgment has been passed on all these points.

But the true superiority of Americans is in the universality of common instruction.  The Puritans, who came hither with their Bibles, were of necessity zealous founders of schools; the Bible and the school go together.  See, therefore, what the schools are in the United States!  The State of Massachusetts alone, which does not number a million of souls, devotes five millions yearly to its public instruction.  If other States are far from equalling it in academies and higher institutions, all are on a level with it as regards primary schools; a man or woman, therefore, is rarely found outside the class of immigrants, who does not possess a solid knowledge of the elementary sciences, the extent of which would excite our surprise.  By the side of the primary school, and to complete its instruction in the religious point of view, the Americans have everywhere opened Sunday-schools, kept gratuitously by volunteer teachers, among whom have figured many men of the highest standing, several of whom have been Presidents of the Confederation.  These Sunday-schools, not less than twenty thousand in number, and superintended by one hundred and fifty thousand teachers, count more than a million of pupils, of which ten thousand at least are adults.  Calculate the power of such an instrument!

People read enormously in America.  There is a library in the meanest cabin of roughly-hewn logs, constructed by the pioneers of the West.  These poor log-houses almost always contain a Bible, often journals, instructive books, sometimes even poetry.  We in Europe, who fancy ourselves fine amateurs of good verses, would scarcely imagine that copies of Longfellow are scattered among American husbandmen.  The political journals have many subscribers; those of the religious papers are no less numerous.  I know of a monthly journal designed for children, (the Child’s Paper,) of which three hundred thousand copies are printed.  This is the intellectual aliment of the country.  In the towns, lectures are added to books, journals, and reviews:  in all imaginable subjects, this community, which the Government does not charge itself with instructing, (at least, beyond the primary education,) educates and develops itself with indefatigable ardor.  Ideas are agitated in the smallest market-town; life is everywhere.