yes of
men on what is local and temporary, on the external advantages
of their condition. The superficial diffusion of knowledge,
unless attended by a correspondent deepening of its sources,
is likely to vulgarize rather than to raise the thought of a
nation, depriving them of another sort of education through
sentiments of reverence, and leading the multitude to believe
themselves capable of judging what they but dimly discern.
They see a wide surface, and forget the difference between
seeing and knowing. In this hasty way of thinking and living
they traverse so much ground that they forget that not the
sleeping railroad passenger, but the botanist, the geologist,
the poet, really see the country, and that, to the former,
"a miss is as good as a mile." In a word, the tendency
of circumstances has been to make our people superficial,
irreverent, and more anxious to get a living than to live
mentally and morally. This tendency is no way balanced by the
slight literary culture common here, which is mostly English,
and consists in a careless reading of publications of the day,
having the same utilitarian tendency with our own proceedings.
The infrequency of acquaintance with any of the great fathers
of English lore marks this state of things.

'New England is now old enough,--some there have leisure
enough,--to look at all this; and the consequence is a violent
reaction, in a small minority, against a mode of culture that
rears such fruits. They see that political freedom does not
necessarily produce liberality of mind, nor freedom in church
institutions--vital religion; and, seeing that these changes
cannot be wrought from without inwards, they are trying to
quicken the soul, that they may work from within outwards.
Disgusted with the vulgarity of a commercial aristocracy, they
become radicals; disgusted with the materialistic working of
"rational" religion, they become mystics. They quarrel with
all that is, because it is not spiritual enough. They would,
perhaps, be patient if they thought this the mere sensuality
of childhood in our nation, which it might outgrow; but they
think that they see the evil widening, deepening,--not only
debasing the life, but corrupting the thought, of our people,
and they feel that if they know not well what should be done,
yet that