A LETTER FROM MISS BREMER. Ixh 



racy ; and the dread of the ignorant exclusive who has 

 no faith in the refinement of a republic, will stand abashed 

 in the next century, before a whole people whose system of 

 voluntary education embraces (combined with perfect indi- 

 vidual freedom) not only common schools and rudimentary 

 knowledge, but common enjoyments for all classes in the 

 higher realms of art, letters, science, social recreations and 

 enjoyments. Were our legislators wise enough ^o under- 

 stand to-day the destinies of the New World, the gentility 

 of Sir Philip Sidney made universal, would be not half so 

 much a miracle fifty years hence in America, as the idea 

 of a whole nation of laboring men reading and writing was, 

 in his day, in England." 



In one of my latest conversations with my friend, as 

 he followed me down to the sea-shore, he spoke with great 

 satisfaction of Miss Cooper's work, " Kural Hours/' just 

 published, and expressed again a hope I had heard him 

 express more than once, that the taste for rural science 

 and occupations would more and more be cultivated by 

 the women of America. It was indeed a thing for which 

 I felt most grateful, and that marked my friend as a true 

 American man, namely, the interest he took in the eleva- 

 tion of woman's culture and social influence. 



His was a mind alive to every thing good and beautiful 

 and true, in every department of life, and he would fain 

 have made them all, and every species of excellence, adorn 

 his native country. 



Blessed be his words and works, on the soil of the New 

 World. As he was to his stranger friend, so may he be to 

 millions yet to come in his land, a giver of Hesperian fruits, 

 a sure guide through the wilderness ! 



