as will be awakened, and fresh
minds brought into communication with his own. If he can secure the good
fortune of conversing with the leaders on both sides of great
questions,--with the men who have made it a pursuit to collect all the
facts of the case, and to follow out its principles,--there is no
estimating his advantage. There is, perhaps, scarcely one great subject
of national controversy which, thus opened to him, would not afford him
glimpses into all the other general affairs of the day; and each time
that his mind grasps a definite opposition of popular opinion, he has
accomplished a stage in his pilgrimage of inquiry into the tendencies of
a national mind. He will therefore be anxious to engage all he meets in
full and free conversation on prevailing topics, leaving it to them to
open their minds in their own way, and only taking care of his
own,--that he preserves his impartiality, and does no injustice to
question or persons by bias of his own.

In arranging his plans for conversing with all kinds of people, the
observer will not omit to cultivate especially the acquaintance of
persons who themselves see the most of society. The value of their
testimony on particular points must depend much on that of their minds
and characters; but, from the very fact of their having transactions
with a large portion of society, they cannot avoid affording many lights
to a stranger which he could obtain by no other means. The conversation
of lawyers in a free country, of physicians, of merchants and
manufacturers in central trading situations, of innkeepers and of
barbers everywhere, must yield him much which he could not have
collected for himself. The minds of a great variety of people are daily
acting upon the thoughts of such, and the facts of a great variety of
lives upon their experience; and whether they be more or less wise in
the use of their opportunities, they must be unlike what they would have
been in a state of seclusion. If the stranger listens to what they are
most willing to tell, he may learn much of popular modes of thinking and
feeling, of modes of living, acting, and transacting, which will confirm
and illustrate impressions and ideas which he had previously gained from
other sources.

The result of the whole of what he hears will probably be to the
traveller of the same kind with that which the journey of life yields to
the wisest of its pilgrims. As he proceeds, he will learn to condemn
less, and