lk of authors who wrote in a tongue no
longer intelligible.

This was the most literary conversation I was ever present at in
Cincinnati.*

*(The pleasant, easy, unpretending talk on all subjects,
(which I enjoyed in Mr. Flint's family, was an exception
(to every thing else I met at Cincinnati.

In truth, there are many reasons which render a very general
diffusion of literature impossible in America. I can scarcely
class the universal reading of newspapers as an exception to this
remark; if I could, my statement would be exactly the reverse,
and I should say that America beat the world in letters. The
fact is, that throughout all ranks of society, from the
successful merchant, which is the highest, to the domestic
serving man, which is the lowest, they are all too actively
employed to read, except at such broken moments as may suffice
for a peep at a newspaper. It is for this reason, I presume,
that every _American newspaper_ is more or less a magazine,
wherein the merchant may scan while he holds out his hand for an
invoice, "Stanzas by Mrs. Hemans," or a garbled extract from
Moore's Life of Byron; the lawyer may study his brief faithfully,
and yet contrive to pick up the valuable dictum of some American
critic, that "Bulwer's novels are decidedly superior to Sir
Walter Scott's;" nay, even the auctioneer may find time, as he
bustles to his tub, or his tribune, to support his pretensions to
polite learning, by glancing his quick eye over the columns, and
reading that "Miss Mitford's descriptions are indescribable." If
you buy a yard of ribbon, the shopkeeper lays down his newspaper,
perhaps two or three, to measure it. I have seen a brewer's
drayman perched on the shaft of his dray and reading one
newspaper, while another was tucked under his arm; and I once
went into the cottage of a country shoemaker, of the name of
Harris, where I saw a newspaper half full of "original" poetry,
directed to Madison F. Harris. To be sure of the fact, I asked
the man if his name were Madison. "Yes, Madam, Madison Franklin
Harris is my name." The last and the lyre divided his time, I
fear too equally, for he looked pale and poor.

This, I presume, is what is meant by the general diffusion of
knowledge, so boasted of in the United States; such as it is, the
diffusion of it is general enough, certainly; but I greatly doubt
its being advantageous to the population.

The only reading men I met with were those