reading in this country is chiefly confined to the English novelists and the periodicals of the day, from which we derive a contempt for the lofty and venerable learning of antiquity, and a belief that instead of too little, we bestow too much attention upon classical literature in America! That the novelists and trash manufacturers of the reviews should foster this opinion is not at all surprising, for they find their account in it. And yet it stirs the bile within us when we see a paltry novelist who cannot frame his tale without borrowing his plot, or conduct his dialogue without theft, affect to despise the study of those authors whom he robs without any other restraint than the fear of detection; or when we hear them offer to substitute their lucubrations for the writings of the great masters of antiquity--men who put forth opinions upon the most difficult questions in moral or physical science, and support them only by a dogmatism which would look down all opposition and frown upon any inquiry into the grounds of their doctrines, who, like Falstaff, will give no reasons for their moral or political opinions, and yet insinuate by their {222} air of pretension that they are "plenty as blackberries"--sciolist novelists who doubt what is believed by all the most intelligent of their race, and believe what no other persons but themselves can be brought to believe--men who insinuate their superiority over the great models of the human race by affecting to despise whatever they have offered to the public view and modestly intimating their reliance upon their own superior resources. Problems in morals and politics which have filled with doubts and difficulties the minds of Bacon or Locke, of Montesquieu or Grotius, are now settled at a stroke of the pen by our novelist philosophers. Nothing is more common than to see the solution of some one of them by the dandy hero of some fashionable novel, who, sauntering from the dance to the coterie of philosophers in blue, solves the difficulty _en passant_, and fearing that this trifling occupation of so mighty a genius may attract attention, then hastens to divert public observation from his sage aphorism and impromptu philosophy by flirting with his friend's wife or playing with his poodle. The conception of a costume is the only occupation worthy of his fancy, and the composition of a dish the only subject which he would have the world to think capable of tasking his powers of attention and reflection; and yet all the learning of all the schools is shamed by the display of this literary _faineant_ who acquired his knowledge without study, whilst inspiration only can account for the wisdom with which he is instinct. A nation has groaned through long centuries of almost hopeless bondage--the clank of a people in chains is heard from the Emerald isle--a cry of distress fills the air--a mighty orator, an O'Connell, arises before them, filling the public