176 POPULAR INSTRUCTION. [CHAP. XII. 



on a soil naturally fertile, but will perish if there has been no 

 previous culture of the ground. At the end of seventy years 

 men of good natural abilities, who have been attentive to their 

 religious observances, have given up ten entire years of their life, 

 a period thrice as long as is required for an academical course 

 of study, and at the close of such a career may, as we know, be 

 ignorant, sensual, and superstitious, and have little love or taste 

 for things intellectual or spiritual. 



But granting that time and leisure may be found, it will still 

 be asked whether, if men of the humblest condition be taught to 

 enjoy the poems of Milton and Gray, the romances of Scott, or 

 lectures on literature, astronomy, and botany, or if they read a 

 daily newspaper and often indulge in the stirring excitement of 

 party politics, they will be contented with their situation in life, 

 and submit to hard labor. All apprehension of such consequences 

 is rapidly disappearing in the more advanced states of the Ameri 

 can Union. It is acknowledged by the rich that, where the free 

 schools have been most improved, the people are least addicted 

 to intemperance, are more provident, have more respect for prop 

 erty and the laws, are more conservative, and less led away by 

 socialist or other revolutionary doctrines. So far from indolence 

 being the characteristic of the laboring classes, where they are 

 best informed, the New Englanders are rather too much given to 

 overwork both body and brain. They make better pioneers, 

 when roughing it in a log-house in the backwoods, than the un 

 educated Highlander or Irishman ; and the factory girls of 

 Lowell, who publish their &quot; Offering,&quot; containing their own 

 original poems and essays, work twelve hours a day, and have 

 not yet petitioned for a ten-hour bill. 



In speculating on the probability of the other states in the 

 north, south, and west, some of them differing greatly in the de 

 gree of their social advancement, and many of them retarded by 

 negro slavery, adopting readily the example set them by the 

 New Englanders. and establishing free and normal schools, I 

 find that American enthusiasts build their hopes chiefly on that 

 powerful stimulus which they say is offered by their institutions 

 for popular education a stimulus such as was never experienced 



