common preacher, where preachers are wanted, may do more good and be more prosperous than an able lawyer where lawyers abound, in the same manner, and for the same reason, that he, who is an excellent physician and only a tolerable surgeon, will sometimes find himself more usefully employed in exercising his scanty knowledge of surgery than his consummate skill in medicine.

Is not this a consideration which ought to have great weight upon the minds of those about to engage in the learned professions? Is not the bar full to overflowing? Are two thirds of our lawyers really wanted? To be sure, men of perseverance, talents and integrity will make their way, and do good; but could they not be of more service in another profession which is not full? I would by no means be supposed to intimate that all well-educated young men of principle will be more serviceable in the desk than at the bar. I entertain no such belief. Some may have minds of so peculiar a structure, that they are fit only for law. Others may have peculiarities of temper, manners, perhaps even of voice or countenance, which would render them worse than useless in the clerical office, while in other walks of life they might succeed. Better be without preachers, than have only those whose minds are so weak, or whose manners are such as to bring discredit upon their office. But when there is no peculiarity and no incorrigible prejudices in the way, is not the dearth of clergymen a very important circumstance, which should not be lightly passed over? There are many other considerations of minor importance which I fear have too much influence upon young men.

One is the comparative respectability of the several professions. Every one wishes to attach himself to a respectable class. He feels that his influence, and, by consequence, his usefulness, is diminished, if he is associated with a degraded caste. So far as relates to the choice of a profession this deserves not a feather's weight. They are all respectable, all despised, according to the character of those by whom they are filled. Even within the narrow bounds of New-England, nothing has struck me more forcibly than the different estimation in which the same profession is held in different places. One place is persecuted by a hard, grinding attorney. There lawyers generally are dreaded, and the profession thought oppressive. In another place several young lawyers of small talents and less industry have lately opened shops for the sale of golden opinions, and there the profession is looked upon as light and worthless. A third town has been favored with a profound, honorable, honest, and humane practitioner, and there the respect in which he is held is extended to his profession. So with all pursuits. If some have been thought to command too little attention, is it not on account of the inferior character of those by whom they are represented? and will not the tables be turned and the professions duly respected as soon as they are filled by men who command esteem and confidence? Talents and integrity will every where be honored, while imbecility and fraud, ignorance and charlatanry, can find no station sufficiently high and no dress sufficiently rich to screen them from derision and detestation.

Many are deterred from studying divinity, by the impression that it will require them to be too staid and formal,-by the idea that they would thereby obligate themselves to live a different sort of life from

what would otherwise be required of them. They are deterred from studying divinity by the same consideration, which deters many from joining temperance societies. They never drink ardent spirits; never wish for them. But yet they are unwilling to promise to abstain. Et qui nolunt occidere quenquam, posse volunt. They want the power, they want the liberty, although certain that they will never have occasion to make use of it. He, who can deliberately harbor in his mind this sentiment, does well to keep from the pulpit. He has not yet acquired that command over his feelings, which becomes a reasonable, a religious being. But whatever course he is to pursue, he will do well to divest himself of the weakness. Otherwise he will find it hard, very hard, to perform, with uprightness and integrity, the duties which the common walks of life will demand of him.

Besides, the objection proceeds on a misgrounded assumption. Why are clergymen called upon to be more holy than other men? What moral or religious duty is binding upon them, which is not equally binding upon the lowest drudge of society? Happily, the days of clerical ostentation are going by,-the days when a sanctimonious scowl and a holy drawl were the only passports to the pastoral office. It is happily discovered, that the clergy are men, subject to like passions with other men, equally liable to err, and having equal claims upon the sympathy and forgiving spirit of their brethren. Perfection is not expected of them. While they are on the earth, it is supposed that they will enter into the feelings and be affected by the vicissitudes of earth; that they will participate in its light and its serious concerns; that they will rejoice in its prosperity and smart under its afflictions. Like astronomers, their business is with another world; their principal thoughts are to be fixed upon heaven and heavenly things. Still, they are in a terrestrial atmosphere, exposed to its accidents, and affected by its changes. From the innocent amusements of life they are not shut out; and what other amusements can a rational, moral being wish to enjoy ?

Above all things, my friend, take care to select such a profession that you will delight to be employed in its concerns. Remember that your happiness and success depend upon common things; that they are a thousand times more influenced by ordinary events, by your daily duties and occupations, than by any great epochs, to which you may look forward. Swift has but expressed what every student has felt, when he says, that the scholar's happiness consists not in having knowledge, but in acquiring it. The professional man's happiness consists not in being at any particular point of eminence or usefulness, but in getting there. Life is spent in performing the journey. The repose, which follows, is short, uncertain, and too often fitful, interrupted, and distressing. You can place no reliance upon it. When surrounded with cares, overwhelmed with vexations, and looking anxiously around for the rest which your wearied system requires, it may be consoling to glance at the time, when, rich in wisdom and laden with honors, you may enjoy a dignified retirement in the bosom of your family and friends. But remember that it is only a fancy sketch; that it can be enjoyed only in anticipation. Our business must be our delight, or we are wretched. Happiness or misery is engrafted upon every shrub and flower which we see in the journey of

life, and from them if from any thing it must be gathered. Nature has not been so parsimonious as to confine her gifts to the inns and stopping-places, which we may meet. Every moment is fertile, either in joy or sorrow, cheerfulness or sadness, success or disappointment, cheerfulness or wearisomeness. Time is not a desert, unless we make it so. It is not a desert with here and there a gushing spring, a green shade, a fruitful field, to which we are to direct our steps. Far from it. It is an expanse every where richly diversified with

"Sweet interchange

Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains;"

and every where, if our minds are rightly cultivated and our course judiciously selected, we cannot fail to drink in happiness as the air we breathe. But if our minds are not properly regulated, and we have taken a false step, traveling a way repugnant to our feelings, habits and powers, it is of no avail that Nature has been thus bountiful in her gifts, that she has opened her stores of endless variety, and spread out her visions of surpassing beauty and loveliness. They are lost upon us. We have no relish for them. We are out of our spherelike inhabitants of the ocean journeying on shore, if they could have enough of the breath of life insured to them to enable them with writhings and agony to perform the tour. Our duties are irksome. We shudder to enter upon them, and are impatient for the moment when they shall be accomplished. As the ox is dragged to the slaughter, as the prisoner is driven to his task, so go we to our business-to the business of our lives! The sun shines; but we heed it not. The showers descend; but we regard them not. And all this because we have mistaken our purpose-because, for the sake of some remote and visionary good, we have engaged in pursuits, for which we have no taste, and in which we can take no pleasure. We have purposely deferred our happiness till some remote period which is subject to innumerable contingencies; or rather, we have sacrificed the certain happiness which we might reap from employments congenial to our natures-a certain happiness which we might be enjoying all our lives long-this we have blindly sacrificed through the hope of enjoying some fanciful good, which, under the most favorable circumstances, cannot come till our hearts are seared, our affections withered, our susceptibility blunted, and our health wasted, and which, at best, is but a "puff of empty air," an uncertain, unsubstantial, momentary blessing.

Do not lose sight of this. Consider that your happiness is insepara bly interwoven with the duties of your profession. If they are painful or irksome, life will pass but roughly. If they are agreeable, you may count upon as much happiness as falleth to the lot of mortals. "Choose the right way," says an old divine," and habit will make it agreeable." But what is the right way? It is not a spiritual, abstract right, of which you are in search. From many things which in themselves are good, you are to select that which is good for you, and to do this, you must submit to a severe self-examination; you must carefully compare your inclinations, feelings and powers, with the various duties before you. The purposes of your life are serious, dignified, and important. Ponder well. Throw aside adventitious considerations. Reflect upon the wants of the community and the fitness of things. Rend

not asunder what Heaven has joined together, neither bring together what Heaven has meant should be distinct and separate. Remember that your fellow-men have claims upon you; but that you have claims upon yourself more imperious and more sacred than all the ties by which man is bound to man.

H.

DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS.*

EVERY nation has its own customs, as every man has his own ways. Happy the man who conforms to a good model, and wretched the people whose customs offend Mrs. Trollope. There is much, thought Mr. Shandy, in a name: if words are things, names are more than shades; the name of Mrs. Trollope, therefore, may be, at least, the shadow of a thing.

Politeness is relative and conventional. What is polite in England, is rude in Persia; and what is fashion in London, is, sometimes, not tolerated at Paris. The English, like all people, make their own laws for social regulation, and by these they judge, not only themselves, but others. The Americans have been charged, by almost all English travelers, with outraging these social ordinances; and for our future guidance, an abstract is here made of the principal specifications contained in the lady's complaint. In the times of chivalry, there was a Court of Love, in which all the tender sentiments and principles were decided by married ladies; and, also, a Court of Honor, in which knights decided the questions more within their own knowledge and instinct. But there is now no tribunal of either kind, and all delicate points of love or honor must be submitted to a public appeal, in which there is much dispute but no decision. We are not called upon to deny the fact, that, generally speaking, our countrymen of the operative class have more sturdiness than polish; yet we believe, that they have, at least, infinitely more knowledge and good manners than the same classes in Great-Britain. But we have many deficiencies, and there is no better way to amend us than to read the satires of foreigners. There is generally some foundation even for caricature, and, if we will not look at the picture which enemies make of us, we may never be acquainted with our own peculiarities. Mrs. Trollope, indeed, describes individuals as a class: she traveled to find fault, and, of course, from no country could she have returned with a blank journal.

One of the first recorded offences was, that, at New-Orleans, she was introduced in form to a milliner," an evil omen of republican equality; yet, we should suppose, not distasteful to a lady then going to Cincinnati, to sell millinery and other wares. The author, however, for a while, forgot petty offences, in visiting Miss Wright, one of her closest friends, and a traveling philanthropist and lecturer, who has secured that kind of fame which is generally the least esteemed. The steam-boat was not swift enough for the impatience of these congenial

*Domestic Manners of the Americans. By Mrs. Trollope.

souls. "O for a horse with wings." The steam-boat, of course, though without accountability, had to bear a portion of the lady's condemnation; for she averred, and probably with perfect sincerity, "that she would infinitely prefer sharing the apartment of a party of wellconditioned pigs, to being confined to its cabin." Having been a few days in the country, and partly confined to the steam-boat, she made the general and astounding charge of the "incessant and remorseless spitting of the Americans;" although it occurs to her that "possibly this phrase, Americans, may be too general." Perhaps it was; but we give up the practice to all reprobation, and the offenders to condign punishment. Were the goodly English tax imposed upon tobacco, it would be better for our health, manners and carpets. The following is Mrs. Trollope's theory on a supposed peculiarity of the American physiognomy: "Their lips are almost uniformly thin and compressed. At first, I accounted for this upon Lavater's theory, and attributed it to the arid temperament of the people; but it is too universal to be so explained; whereas the habit above-mentioned, which pervades all classes (except the literary) well accounts for it, as the act of expressing the juices of this loathsome herb enforces exactly that position of the lips which gives this remarkable peculiarity to the American countenance." The lady was favored on the Mississippi with the society of generals, colonels, and majors, in the cabin; but the "captains were all on deck." Some of these sons of thunder were, probably, of Kentucky; for, while yet hundreds of miles from Kentucky, she describes its inhabitants with perfect confidence, but with a random justice. "The Kentuckians," says she, "are a very noble-looking race of men; their average height considerably exceeds that of Europeans, and their countenances, except when disfigured by red hair, which is not unfrequent, extremely handsome." The lady's nerves seem to have suffered from "the frightful manner of feeding with their knives, till the whole blade seemed to enter into the mouth," which was practised by her fellow-passengers on board. "The voracious rapidity with which the viands were seized and devoured," we give up to castigation; we are of opinion, that ten minutes is not sufficient time to allow for the proper disposition of a dinner. We believe, with Justice Inglewood, that "man requires digestion as well as food."

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The first charge against the Cincinnatians was, that they lived without amusements; cards and billiards were forbidden by law; there were no balls but at Christmas, and no concerts or dinner parties, at any time. The churches, pouring out their well-dressed hundreds, seemed to be the theatres and cafés of the place." The only amusements were private tea-drinkings. It follows, therefore, in the lady's estimation, that the want of amusements in a new town, where every one must necessarily be employed for subsistence, is an evidence of the coldness and want of enthusiasm of the Americans. Some of the employments were also distasteful to the eye of refinement, though Mrs. Trollope admits, that, "it is hardly fair to quarrel with a place because its staple commodity is not pretty." She admits, however, that she should have liked Cincinnati much better "if the people had not dealt so largely in hogs." It annoyed her to see in the newspapers,