rish, French, and other northern countries. It
moreover has the great advantage of a continual importation of the same
varieties of stock to cross and improve the breed. The question then
is, have the American race improved or degenerated since the first
settlement? If they have degenerated, the climate cannot be healthy.

I was very particular in examining into this point, and I have no
hesitation in saying, that the American people are not equal in strength
or in form to the English. I may displease the Americans by this
assertion, and they may bring forward their backwoodsmen and their
Kentuckians, who live at the spurs of the Alleghany Mountains, as
evidence to the contrary; but although they are powerful and tall men
they are not well made, nor so well made as the Virginians, who are the
finest race in the Union. There is one peculiar defect in the American
figure common to both sexes, which is, _narrowness of the shoulders_,
and it is a very great defect; there seems to be a check to the
expansion of the chest in their climate, the physiological causes of
which I leave to others. On the whole, they certainly are a taller race
than the natives of Europe, but not with proportionate muscular
strength. Their climate, therefore, I unhesitatingly pronounce to be
bad, being injurious to them in the two important points, of healthy
vigour in the body, and healthy action of the mind; enervating the one,
and tending to demoralise the other.

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Note 1. Vermont, New Hampshire, the interior portion of the State of
New York, and all the portions of the other States which abut on the
great lakes, are healthy, owing to the dryness of the atmosphere being
softened down by the proximity of such large bodies of water.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT.

REMARKS--EDUCATION.

Mr Carey, in his statistical work, falls into the great error of most
American writers--that of lauding his own country and countrymen, and
inducing them to believe that they are superior to all nations under
heaven. This is very injudicious, and highly injurious to the national
character: it upholds that self-conceit to which the Americans are
already so prone, and checks that improvement so necessary to place them
on a level with the English nation. The Americans have gained more by
their faults having been pointed out by travellers than they will choose
to allow; and,