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single cause, which has brought the national development to its present point.

Public

The self-relying spirit of the nation is fed by the schools. public schools, as a stream by its fountain. 1. As a system of administration, the schools, being left to local management, favor the exercise of local authority. The only schools under control of the general government are those in the District of Columbia, the Military Academy at West Point, (1802,) and the Naval Academy at Annapolis, (1845.) A Bureau of Education, recently connected with the department of the interior, has no other function than to collect and distribute educational information. All that the government has to do with the schools throughout the country is to make over that share of the public land in each township which Congress has reserved for the support of public education. The state governments, as a rule, control only the normal and charitable schools of their foundation, and by no means all of these. The great mass of schools is under municipal administration. 2. As a system of instruction, the public schools tend to develop the national traits in their scholars. They give the same privileges to every child, training the native and the foreigner, the Teuton, the Celt, and the African, on equal terms. After the emancipation of 1863, and more particularly after the extension of the Freedmen's Bureau in 1866, provision for that great class before unprovided for was made first by the national, afterwards by local authority, and children of color were taken into the schools. The instruction of all classes at the south was much encouraged by the munificence of George Peabody, who placed three and a half millions in the hands of trustees in order to promote southern education, (1866-9.) There still remain great gaps, not in any one section, but almost every where; yet the general working of the school syster

is beneficial to a degree that can hardly be overestimated. It gives a stamp to the mind and life of its children which it is difficult to see how they would otherwise receive. It fits them if native born, and doubly fits them if foreign born, for the citizenship that awaits them, for the selfgovernment to which, one by one, and all together, they are called.

Higher Institutes, colleges, and universities - the latter education. including professional and scientific schools · are chiefly of private foundation. Here, too, in more or less connection with the common schools, the self-governing principle is maintained. The higher institutions of learning were very few and very feeble at the beginning of the period. They have become more numerous and more vigorous; but they are still in a state of transition to better things.

Public

Till within the last quarter of a century, libraries libraries. were private, or belonged to private corporations, except those of Congress and the state governments. The Astor Library, founded by its first librarian, Joseph G. Cogswell, rather than by the merchant who endowed it, led the long line of public libraries which have arisen in many of our smallest towns as well as our largest cities. Though not always wisely collected or wisely used, they have supplied what was always needed to accompany or to follow the studies of the schools.

seums.

Art mu- Just as the period closes, a new movement begins with the foundation of art museums in New York and Boston. These, also, will supply a great want in education.

Letters.

The literature that produced but little in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries continued to produce but little in the early part of the nineteenth; then it became more fruitful. Washington Irving was the first of

our men of letters, properly so called. He wrote history, biography, travels, and legendary and sentimental tales, all in a sunshiny style, which gave our literature a new charm. Cooper wrote his stories of Indians and backwoodsmen, seamen and soldiers, with a fervor which made one forget the unnaturalness of his characters. Maria Brooks wrote the impassioned verse of Zophiel; Lydia Sigourney was less poetic, but perhaps more winning in her simpler strains. Percival and Halleck were happy in their lyric efforts. William Croswell wrote poems as flowers dropped along the path of priestly offices; yet, had they been his work, instead of his pastime, he would not have lived in vain. Almost the same thing may be said of Andrews Norton, whose little cluster of hymns will move many a heart beyond the reach of the theological and critical labors in which he spent his days. Webster's speeches were the great landmark in our political literature. None of our public men compared with him in breadth of thought or force of language. Everett's orations were the graceful work of a rhetorician rather than a statesman. Kent and Story were the great expounders of our laws. Jared Sparks gave his honest toil to the history and biography of the nation. His editions of Washington's and Franklin's Writings revived the interest in them and their times. Prescott turned to the brilliant episodes of Spain, and the Spanish possessions in America, and gave them so picturesque a treatment, as to win readers every where, at home and abroad. Ticknor was the historian of Spanish literature, and on so comprehensive a plan, as to set a new example to American scholars. Nathaniel Hawthorne sought out a mythical background for his creations, and then filled in their wavering outline with deep color and solemn shade. Fiction became more and more attractive to our writers, and they wrote with in

creasing mastery. Poetry put on a new aspect as it was interpreted by Bryant and Longfellow, Whittier, Emerson, and Lowell, to whom the nation owes a very large proportion of what is best in its intellectual life. History continued to find followers, and Bancroft, Motley, Palfrey, and Parkman were among the most successful.

Scientific culture was very greatly on the increase. Science. Its two foremost names are of foreign origin. John James Audubon, born in Louisiana long before its acquisition by the United States, was the author of a work on the Birds of America, far surpassing any similar publication before attempted in this country. Audubon belongs to the former half of the period under review, Agassiz to the latter. This eminent naturalist, not so much a Swiss as an American, has published important volumes on the natural history of the United States; but his most important work is the foundation of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge. Nathaniel Bowditch deserves to be remembered as the translator and commentator of the Mécanique Céleste of La Place. The United States Coast Survey and Observatory have been of great benefit to science. Universities and scientific schools, or those upon their staffs who have been active in research, have stimulated scientific studies in almost every direction. Gilbert Stuart was the great portrait painter, not

Art.

only of his own day, but of the whole period. His faces live and speak like those of the greatest masters. Washington Allston was at once the portrait and the historical painter, the landscape and the ideal artist, in whom all that is most sublime and all that is most delicate found full expression. He stands in our artistic, like Irving in our literary history, the first to give American art its charm. Crawford came later, the most imaginative of our sculptors, but with less power to execute his concep

Inven

tions than they deserved. Greenough and Powers, Story and Ball, have all won high places in sculpture. Cole, Kensett, Hunt, and many more, form a group of painters to whom the country is more indebted than it knows. Music has taken strong hold upon some of our communities. It has come with the musically educated immigrants, and grown among the American born, particularly since it was introduced into the public schools. But it has as yet inspired no great composers of our own. The best American ideas are often said to be tions. those of our inventors. Eli Whitney's cotton gin, Hoe's printing press, McCormick's and other reapers, Howe's and other sewing machines, the numerous improvements in all sorts of machinery and manufactures, these are levers by which the national development has been very greatly promoted. Fulton's steamboat, the Clermont, appeared on the Hudson in 1807. First of our railways was the Quincy, in Massachusetts, a single track between three and four miles long, for transporting granite from a quarry to the water's edge, (1827.) First of our locomotives was one upon the Hudson and Mohawk Railroad in New York, (1832.) First of our and all other electric telegraphs was that constructed by Morse between Washington and Baltimore, and its first message was, "What hath God wrought!" (1844.) The first Atlantic cable was laid in 1858, but failed after a momentary success; the second parted in mid-ocean, (1865,) and the third succeeded, (1866.) No one man deserves the credit of this great enterprise so much as Cyrus W. Field.

Expeditions.

The expeditions of survey and discovery, mostly undertaken by the government, form a striking feature of the period. That of Lewis and Clarke, to which we referred in connection with Oregon, was a very remarkable achievement for the time. It occupied more

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