or copy of any kind of a work of art of the slightest merit.” “I am not speaking,” he adds, “of what are commonly called ‘poor whites;’ a large majority of all these houses were the residences of shareholders, a considerable proportion cotton-planters.”[1] Some of the compositions which are the fruits of the “intellectual leisure” purchased by the hopeless degradation of the labouring class are before us. They are among the most barbarous ever produced by civilized man. They seem moreover to turn mainly on one subject. The presence of a great social wrong absorbs such intellect as the community has in the work of its justification. It does not leave the real leisure and the serenity of mind which philosophy, science, and poetry demand.
New England has taken the course sanctioned by Christendom and condemned by the Slaver. Like Scotland, or even more than Scotland, she has made a system of popular education the basis of her Commonwealth, and established throughout her territory the free schools which, above all other free institutions, the South, as we have seen, repudiates and abhors. The result of this is that intelligence is generally diffused among the people, and that the great writers of England have a second and an ample Empire in the North. The highest fruits of intellect are everywhere long in ripening; and this must especially be the case in a nation of which a large part consists of immigrants, intent on obtaining the means of subsistence, and the energies of which are to a great extent absorbed in providing the material basis of civilization and reclaiming a vast ex-
- ↑ Journeys and Explorations, vol. ii., p. 285.
