It was said at Cincinnati that at a ball at San Francisco there were fifty gentlemen for one lady. It is also said that in the gold district, where there are great numbers of men and no women, that they hung up in some kind of museum a lady's dress, which was contemplated as a sort of fabulous thing. But I suspect that this belongs to the mythological legends of the Great West.

In the same category may be placed that of the Garden of Eden near Cincinnati, which I am invited to visit. It is said to be a large vineyard; but the beauty of the views from the heights of the Ohio may justify the name.

LETTER XXX.

TO THE REV. P. J. BÖKLIN.

Cincinnati, November 27th.

I HAVE now spent more than a year in the New World without having fulfilled my promise of writing to you, my friend and teacher; without having told you what I think of it, and what I hope from it. And yet, at the same time, I knew that you wished to know it.

My good friend, I have not hitherto been able to write to you. I wished not to give you my crude thoughts and descriptions, and it was long before I could give other than such. The effect produced upon me, and the daily occurrences of my life in this country, were in the first instance overpowering, as well for soul as for body; and, to a certain degree, I was really borne down by them. The violent torrent of new, and, for the most part, rapturous impressions, the incessant labor with new objects, new people, together with the effects of a hot climate, and food to which I was unaccustomed, reduced me to that state of feverish, nervous excitement, that for months I was unable to read, or even to think on any subject which required the slightest exertion of mind.

The mercy of God, however, the care of good people, the healing powers of nature and of art, enabled me; by degrees, to rise above this state of weakness. I was able once more to live and learn.

But, during that daily labor, to make myself master of those subjects which pressed upon me on all sides during my wanderings, and the endeavor to arrange my thoughts, it became more and more clear to me that, in order to arrive at any just conclusion with regard to the moral, intellectual, and religious culture, as it existed in the states of North America, I must see more of its various forms and developments; I must become acquainted with life, as well in the Northeastern as in the Southern and the Western States of the Union; I must see the life of America, both where it had established and perfected itself, and where it was yet endeavoring to break the clod of the earth's surface, to build new homes, to conquer new life and new lands.

"When I shall have seen the Great West, the valley of the Mississippi, Cincinnati, the Queen of the West, I will write to Böklin. Then I shall better understand, shall be better able to speak of the New World, and of that future for humanity which it bears in its bosom!" Thus said I to myself.

Now I am at Cincinnati. I have seen and I see before me the Great West, the central region of North America. I have traveled through the valley of the Mississippi, the future home of more than two hundred and seventy-five millions of people; on the great river, the banks of which already swarm with multitudes of European people; from Minnesota, still the wild abode of the Indian tribes; from the Falls of St. Anthony, where commences the career of the river in the North, to its midmost region by the Missouri and the Ohio; and am now about to follow its course to its outlet into the Mexican Gulf, the realm of the sugarcane and perpetual summer.

And while I am resting here on the banks of the beautiful River Ohio, like the wearied dove on the olive-branch, in one of those beautiful, peaceful homes which every where on my journeyings through America have opened themselves to me, and afforded me the repose of a mother's home-répose, peace, love, cheerfulness, and renewed strength-I will converse with you-you, my spirit's and my mind's best friend, found late but for eternity. Ah! but even now I can merely speak a few words to you, give you a few fragments of that which I have experienced and learned, and which I still experience and learn in this New World. But you will understand what I can merely imperfectly indicate; you will follow still further through the labyrinth the thread which I lay in your hand.

You know that I did not come to America to seek for a new object, but to establish a new hope. While one portion of the people of Europe, after a struggle for light and freedom, which in part mistook its own purpose, and not clearly knowing that which it desired, seemed (perhaps merely seemed) to sink back again under a despotism which knew better what it aimed at, obtaining for a time the power of might; in that gloomy season my soul raised itself in deep faith and love toward that distant land, where the people erected the banner of human freedom, declared the human right and ability to govern themselves, and on this right founded a monarchy of statesthe commencement of the world's greatest governmental culture.

That which I sought for there was the new human being and his world; the new humanity and the sight of its future on the soil of the New World.

I will tell you what I have so far seen and found.

I spent the last autumn and winter in the northeastern states of the Union, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut-the mother states from which the swarm of people have gone forth, and still go forth to populate the American VOL. II.-F

continent, and to give it laws and manners.

That which is most admirable in these mother states is the number of great institutions for the education of youth and in aid of the unfortunate, schools and asylums. These are the offspring of a large heart, and they have a broad basis. It is a joy to see and hear the children taught in these public schools, which are all free schools, in large and airy halls. One can see that they are all awake and full of life; one can hear that they understand that which they read and learn. The great reformation which has taken place in the conduct of schools, and the impulse which has been given toward a universal popular education in America, are the result, in great measure, of the enthusiasm, perseverance, and determined resolution of a single individual, Horace Mann; and this fact is, without question, one of the most beautiful and the most significant phenomena of this national cultivation, especially as it embraces woman as well as man, and places her side by side with him as the teachers of the rising generation.*

I have traced this from the East to the West, from those magnificent academies where five hundred students, boys or girls, study and take degrees preparatory to public life, as teachers and teacheresses, to the log-huts of the Western wilderness, where school-books lie open before the ragged children, which convey the mind over the whole world, and where the noblest pearls of American and English literature are to be found. I have talked with Horace Mann-the man of immeasurable hope, and I have thence derived great hope for the intellectual and moral perfecting of the human race, and for its future in this portion of the world; for that which is in the Northeastern States, in the oldest homes of the Pilgrims, the same will be soon

* Young girls learn, in the high schools, Latin, Greek, mathematics, algebra, the physical sciences, and, it is said, have the greatest facility in acquiring a knowledge of these subjects, which are considered with us so difficult, if not incomprehensible, to the female intellect.

er or later in the South and the West. A great and living intelligence in the popular mind mixes itself up more and more in the great question of popular education, and goes onward conquering like a subtle power of nature, a stream of spiritual life forcing a way for itself through all impediment. Would you hear how it speaks through its most powerful representative in the New World? Thus writes Horace Mann in his invitation to the National Convention of the friends of Education, in August, 1850:

"A few considerations will serve to show that there never has been a period in the history of man when universal education was so imperative a duty as at the present moment. I mean education in its most comprehensive and philosophic sense, as including the education of the body, the education of the mind, and the education of the heart.

"In regard to the first topic, it is well known that physical qualities are hereditary. Disease and weakness descend from parent to offspring by a law of nature, as names descend by a law of custom. God still ordains that the bodily iniquities of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. When we look backward and see how the numbers of our ancestors is doubled at each remove in the ascending scale, it af frights us to reflect how many confluent streams from vicious fountains may have been poured into the physical system of a single individual. Where, for many generations, this horrid entailment of maladies has not been broken by a single obedient and virtuous life, who can conceive of the animal debasements and depravities that may centre in a single person? At every descent, the worst may become worse; and the possible series of deterioration is infinite. Before the human race, or any part of it, becomes more diseased, or physically more vile, is it not time to arrest and restore? This can be done through education or through miracles, and it would require more