The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 5, November 1837Various
History
The Knickerbocker, Vol. 10, No. 5, November 1837
Various
Periodicals
Vermont is the most republican of any state in the Union. There,
people are more upon an equality than elsewhere; the rate of
intelligence, education, property, are more upon a par. It has no
clownish aristocracy, like New-Hampshire; no mushroom importance,
like New-York; no _golden privileges_, like Massachusetts; but
simple and contented, intelligent and industrious, hospitable and
honest, without pretensions and disdaining show, running into no
wild chimeras of improvement, and only a little mad upon masonry, it
stands firm as its own Green Mountains, full of the purest American
character.
Here was the inhabitant of the coast, the polished New-Englander from
sea-board, with his literature and his sectional pride, his love of
the arts, his belief that Cambridge College is the first institution
in the country, and the Unitarian doctrine the most splendid of
religious speculation. He is small in stature, for the most part,
and has an intellectual face, and a head full of bumps. His dress is
simple and neat; his feet and hands are small, but his fingers are
short and clumpish, showing that he is not anxious to talk of his
grand-father. His manners are retiring and unobtrusive, not as if he
lacked self-respect, but as if he feared others would not estimate
him properly. It is his pride of character that keeps him silent,
and causes him to stand aloof among strangers; for he would not be
thought guilty of the vulgar habit of presumption, for his right
hand. Show him that you respect him, and he is transformed in an
instant; he is all openness and sociability, ready to be obliged,
or to bestow favors. He sympathizes with you, till you almost love
him like a brother--so aptly does he glide into the bent of your
feelings. You will find him more literary than scientific; he writes
better than he talks; judges better than he acts; for he is much
given to impulse and enthusiasm of the subdued kind, which works like
fire around his heart, while the exterior man--the surface of his
demeanor--is calm and passionless; he thinks more than he says, and
reads more than you have any idea of. His taste is refined, and his
sensibility acute.
Science belongs to Yale College, with her grand professor Silliman;
but fine writing, criticism, and moral philosophy, belong to
Cambridge. Cambridge sends forth eloquent divines, poets, sculptors,
and painters; Yale breeds sound lawyers, scientific doctors, and
superstitious theologians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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