their hands; and that to be able to read, was the very marked distinction
of here and there an individual. It requires little effort but that of
going low enough, to complete the general estimate in conformity to these
and similar facts.

And here we cannot help remarking what a deception we suffer to pass on us
from history. It celebrates some period in a nation's career, as
pre-eminently illustrious, for magnanimity, lofty enterprise, literature,
and original genius. There was, perhaps, a learned and vigorous monarch,
and there were Cecils and Walsinghams, and Shakspeares and Spensers, and
Sidneys and Raleighs, with many other powerful thinkers and actors, to
render it the proudest age of our national glory. And we thoughtlessly
admit on our imagination this splendid exhibition as in some manner
involving or implying the collective state of the people in that age! The
ethereal summits of a tract of the moral world are conspicuous and fair in
the lustre of heaven, and we take no thought of the immensely greater
proportion of it which is sunk in gloom and covered with fogs. The general
mass of the population, whose physical vigor, indeed, and courage, and
fidelity to the interests of the country, were of such admirable avail to
the purposes, and under the direction, of the mighty spirits that wielded
their rough agency,--this great assemblage was sunk in such mental
barbarism, as to be placed at about the same distance from their
illustrious intellectual chiefs, as the hordes of Scythia from the finest
spirits of Athens. It was nothing to this debased, countless multitude
spread over the country, existing in the coarsest habits, destitute, in
the proportion of thousands to one, of cultivation, and still in a great
degree enslaved by the popish superstition,--it was nothing to them, in
the way of direct influence to draw forth their minds into free exercise
and acquirement, that there were, within the circuit of the island, a
profound scholarship, a most disciplined and vigorous reason, a masculine