to produced very few writers of distinction; it
possesses no great historians, and not a single eminent poet. The
inhabitants of that country look upon what are properly styled literary
pursuits with a kind of disapprobation; and there are towns of very
second-rate importance in Europe in which more literary works are
annually published than in the twenty-four States of the Union put
together. The spirit of the Americans is averse to general ideas; and it
does not seek theoretical discoveries. Neither politics nor manufactures
direct them to these occupations; and although new laws are perpetually
enacted in the United States, no great writers have hitherto inquired
into the general principles of their legislation. The Americans have
lawyers and commentators, but no jurists; *h and they furnish examples
rather than lessons to the world. The same observation applies to the
mechanical arts. In America, the inventions of Europe are adopted with
sagacity; they are perfected, and adapted with admirable skill to the
wants of the country. Manufactures exist, but the science of manufacture
is not cultivated; and they have good workmen, but very few inventors.
Fulton was obliged to proffer his services to foreign nations for a long
time before he was able to devote them to his own country.

[Footnote h: [This cannot be said with truth of the country of Kent,
Story, and Wheaton.]]

The observer who is desirous of forming an opinion on the state of
instruction amongst the Anglo-Americans must consider the same object
from two different points of view. If he only singles out the learned,
he will be astonished to find how rare they are; but if he counts the
ignorant, the American people will appear to be the most enlightened
community in the world. The whole population, as I observed in another
place, is situated between these two extremes. In New England, every
citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is
moreover taught the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the
history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution.
In the States of Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is extremely rare to
find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person
wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.

When I compare the Greek and Roman republics with these American States;
the manuscript libraries of the former, and their rude population, with
the innumerable journals and the en