idea of what is taking place in the new States
of the West and South-west. At the end of the last century a few bold
adventurers began to penetrate into the valleys of the Mississippi, and
the mass of the population very soon began to move in that direction:
communities unheard of till then were seen to emerge from the wilds:
States whose names were not in existence a few years before claimed
their place in the American Union; and in the Western settlements we may
behold democracy arrived at its utmost extreme. In these States,
founded off-hand, and, as it were, by chance, the inhabitants are but
of yesterday. Scarcely known to one another, the nearest neighbors
are ignorant of each other's history. In this part of the American
continent, therefore, the population has not experienced the influence
of great names and great wealth, nor even that of the natural
aristocracy of knowledge and virtue. None are there to wield that
respectable power which men willingly grant to the remembrance of a life
spent in doing good before their eyes. The new States of the West are
already inhabited, but society has no existence among them. *e

[Footnote e: This may have been true in 1832, but is not so in 1874,
when great cities like Chicago and San Francisco have sprung up in
the Western States. But as yet the Western States exert no powerful
influence on American society.---Translator's Note.]

It is not only the fortunes of men which are equal in America; even
their requirements partake in some degree of the same uniformity. I do
not believe that there is a country in the world where, in proportion
to the population, there are so few uninstructed and at the same time
so few learned individuals. Primary instruction is within the reach of
everybody; superior instruction is scarcely to be obtained by any. This
is not surprising; it is in fact the necessary consequence of what we
have advanced above. Almost all the Americans are in easy circumstances,
and can therefore obtain the first elements of human knowledge.

In America there are comparatively few who are rich enough to live
without a profession. Every profession requires an apprenticeship, which
limits the time of instruction to the early years of life. At fifteen
they enter upon their calling, and thus their education ends at the age
when ours begins. Whatever is done afterwards is with a view to some
special and lucrative object; a science is taken up as a matter of
business, a