70 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



Pennock will bear no comparison with the cleverly condensed 

 elementary outlines of all possible human science which tempt 

 us for an English sixpence on every bookstall, and which, albeit 

 they have been provided professedly for American schoolboys, 

 are found even by children of larger growth particularly refresh- 

 ing to the memory when used as books of reference for an escaped 

 fact. A rreiich writer of some eminence who has lately spent 

 three years in the States, is compelled to make the admission that 

 " America is the country which has furnished the best epitome 

 of all branches of instruction and of all the sciences." England 

 possesses at this moment no better school history of her country 

 than the miserable catalogue of battles and political changes com- 

 piled by Goldsmith, a century ago; an abridgment which fur- 

 nishes the young mind with not the faintest hint of the causes 

 upon which depend the prosperity or the decline of nations. The 

 French writer to whom I have just alluded, cannot avoid adding, 

 " that these books are for the most part summaries of books 

 printed in Germany, France, and England." Even admitting 

 this, the art of saying in a few words what a laborious and dif- 

 fuse writer has obscured and overwhelmed in many, is a most 

 valuable facility; and the Frenchman is quite right in saying 

 that in this respect, (and perhaps in some others,) " the Ameri- 

 cans have no scruple in taking what's good, wherever they lind 

 it." As to the crowning glory of America, her Public Schools, it 

 may be satisfactory to state that nearly four millions of young- 

 persons, of both sexes, were receiving instruction in 1850, or at 

 the rate of one in five free persons. The teachers number more 

 than 115,000, the colleges and schools nearly a hundred thousand. 

 " Educate your children^'' said Daniel Webster, " and then the 

 country is safe.'''' Send out broadcast o\'er this land the benign 

 blessings of your educational system, and then, even from the 

 grasp of demagogues will emerge a population that will not seek 

 in more extended territory, in warlike aggression, nor in military 

 power, to maintain the supremacy and permanency of your insti- 

 tutions, only by the same agencies as now support the tottering 

 thrones of the old world. 



