274 Nations lately become Literary. [Ch. XXVI. 



are rather less studied in the eastern than in the 

 middle and southern states. It is true, many 

 more individuals attend to this branch of learn- 

 ing in the former than in the latter ; but they 

 read fewer books, and devote a less portion of 

 time to the object*. For this fact, many reasons 

 might be assigned ; but it is not necessary to 

 mention more than two. The one i?, that, owing 

 to the superior wealth enjoyed by a number of 

 individuals in the middle and southern states, it 

 was more common, during a great part of the 

 eighteenth century, to send young men to Eu- 

 rope for their education from those states, than 

 •from New England. The youth, thus educated, 

 might be expected of course to bring back with 

 them, to their native country a larger portion of 

 classic literature than can be easily acquired in 

 American seminaries. Another reason is, that, 

 while almost all the instructors of youth in New 

 England, and especially the higher classes of them, 

 during the last hundred years, have been natives ; 

 a large portion of the superintendents of acade- 

 mics, and of the presidents and professors of col- 

 leges, in the middle and southern parts of the 

 country, during the same period, were Europeans, 

 and many of them eminently accomplished in 

 classic literature. If, therefore, the knowledge 

 in this branch of learning, acquired m the best 



* The author is aware, that, in tracing the literary history of 

 New England, the names of some classical scholars of great emi- 

 nence are found. He means, however, only to speak of the de- 

 gree of attention generally paid to classic literature by those 

 who go through a collegiate course in the eastern stateSjt, and espe- 

 cially within the last twenty or thirty yeai'*. 



