THE NEW-YORK PARK. 153 



stand abashed in the next century, before a whole people whose sys- 

 tem of voluntary education embraces (combined with perfect indi- 

 vidual freedom), not only common schools of rudimentary know- 

 ledge, but common enjoyments for all classes in the higher realms 

 of art, letters, science, social recreations, and enjoyments. Were 

 our legislators but wise enough to understand, to-day, the destinies 

 of the New World, the gentility of Sir Philip Sidney, made univer- 

 sal, would be not half so much a miracle fifty years hence in Amer- 

 ica, as the idea of a whole nation of laboring-men reading and 

 writing, was, in his day, in England. 



