their own narrow allotment, that the schemes originated which have actually imparted to a proportion of them an invaluable share of the benefits of knowledge. There has thus been formed a small improved order of people amidst the multitude; and it is the contrast between these and the general state of that multitude that most directly exposes the popular debasement. It certainly were ridiculous enough to fix on a laboring man and his family, and affect to deplore that he is doomed not to behold the depths and heights of science, not to expatiate over the wide field of history, not to luxuriate among the delights, refinements, and infinite diversities of literature; and that his family are not growing up in a training to every high accomplishment, after the pattern of some family in the neighborhood, favored by fortune, and high ability and cultivation in those at their head. But it is a quite different thing to take this man and his family, hardly able, perhaps, even to read, and therefore sunk in all the grossness of ignorance,--and compare them with another man and family in the same sphere of life, but who have received the utmost improvement within the reach of that situation, and are sensible of its value; who often employ the leisure hour in reading, (sometimes socially and with intermingled converse,) some easy work of instruction or innocent entertainment; are detached, in the greatest degree that depends on their choice, from society with the absolute vulgar; have learnt much decorum of manners; can take an intelligent interest in the great events of the world; and are prevented, by what they read and hear, from forgetting that there is another world. It is, we repeat, after thus seeing what may, and in particular instances does exist, in a humble condition, that we are compelled to regard as really a dreadful spectacle the still prevailing state of our national population. We shall endeavor to exhibit, though on a small scale, and perhaps not with a very strict regularity of proportion and arrangement, a faithful representation of the most serious of the evils conspicuous in an uneducated state of the people. Much of the description and reflections must be equally applicable to other countries; for spite of all their mutual antipathies and hostilities, and numberless contrarieties of customs and fashions, they have been wonderfully content to resemble one another in the worst national feature, a deformed condition of their people. But it is here at home that this condition is the most painfully forced on our attention; and here also of all the world it is, that such a wretched exhibition is the severest reproach to the nation for having suffered its existence.