ommon objects of life are entered
upon earlier, and every preparatory process is gone through in a more
superficial manner. Seats of learning are numerous and fully attended,
both in Germany and America, and they testify in each to a pervading
desire of knowledge. Here the agreement ends. The German student may,
without being singular, remain within the walls of his college till time
silvers his hairs; or he has even been known to pass eighteen years
among his books, without once crossing the threshold of his study. The
young American, meanwhile, satisfied at the end of three years that he
knows as much as his neighbours, settles in a home, engages in farming
or commerce, and plunges into what alone he considers the business of
life. Each of these pursues his appropriate objects: each is right in
his own way: but the difference of pursuit indicates a wider difference
of sentiment between the two countries than the abundance of the means
of learning in each indicates a resemblance. The observer must therefore
mark, not only what and how many are the seats of learning, but who
frequent them; whether there are many, past the season of youth, who
make study the business of their lives; or whether all are of that class
who regard study merely as a part of the preparation which they are
ordained to make for the accomplishment of the commonest aims of life.
He can scarcely take his evening walk in the precincts of a university
without observing a difference so wide as this.

The great importance of the fact lies in this,--that increase of
knowledge is necessary to the secure enlargement of freedom. Germany may
not, it is true, require learning in her youth for political purposes,
but because learning has become the taste, the characteristic honour of
the nation; but this knowledge will infallibly work out, sooner or
later, her political regeneration. America requires knowledge in her
sons because her political existence itself depends upon their mental
competency. The two countries will probably approximate gradually
towards a sympathy which is at present out of the question. As America
becomes more fully peopled, a literature will grow up within her, and
study will assume its place among the chief objects of life. The great
ideas which are the employment of the best minds of Germany must work
their way out into action; and new and immediately practical kinds of
knowledge will mingle themselves, more and more largely, with thos