PREFACE. 



13 



though I see no reason why I might not without impropriety 

 express the pleasure which they afforded to me. I wish to 

 produce them as affording a very striking characteristic of the 

 American people. \It was usual on each evening to deliver 

 from two to four of the essays which compose the contents 

 of the present volumes, and the duration of the entertainment 

 was from two to three hours. On every occasion the most 

 > profound interest was evinced on the part of the audience, and 

 the most unremitting and silent attention was given. These 

 assemblies consisted of persons of both sexes of every age, 

 from the elder class of pupils in the schools to their grand- 

 fathers and grandmothers. Frequently, as at the Tremont 

 theatre, at the Chesnut-street theatre in 1842, and at Pal- 

 mo's (New York) in 1844, the audiences amounted to twelve 

 hundred, and sometimes, as at the Philadelphia museum in 

 1843, they exceeded two thousand. Nor was the manifesta- 

 v tion of this interest confined, as might be imagined, to the 

 ' northern Atlantic cities, where education is known to be at- 

 ! tended to, and where, as in New England, the diffusion of 

 { useful knowledge is regarded as a paramount duty of the 

 ! state. The same crowded assemblages were collected for a 

 long succession of nights in the largest theatres of each of the 

 southern and western cities- in the Charleston theatre ; the 

 Mobile theatre ; the St. Charles theatre, New Orleans ; the 

 Vicksburg and Jackson theatres, Mississippi ; the St. Louis 

 theatre, Missouri ; and in the theatres of Cincinnati, Pitts- 

 burg, and other western and central cities. 



It cannot be denied, that such facts are symptomatic of a 



very remarkable condition of the public mind, more especially 



j among a people who are admitted to be, more than any other 



j nation, engrossed by money-getting and by the more material 



< pursuits of life. The less pretension to eloquence and the 



