truth, honor, manliness in all things, as essential to this character Every kind of meanness he despised. Love of country was the constant theme of his eulogy. Religion was the soul of his system. God was the centre of gravity, and man should make the moral law as inflexible as the law of nature. Seeking to elevate all to this sphere, he still made its orbit full of light, the light of love, and honor, and patriotism, and literature, and ambition,all verging towards that fulness of glory which earth only reflects and heaven only can unfold. THE RURAL DISTRICTS OUR COUNTRY'S STRENGTH. The importance of the progress and improvement of the country towns is plain, when we consider that here, and not in the great cities, New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia, are the hope, strength, and glory of our nation. Here, in the smaller towns and villages, are indeed the majority of the people, and here there is a weight of sober thought, just judgment, and virtuous feeling, that will serve as rudder and ballast to our country, whatever weather may betide. As I have so recently travelled through some of the finest and most renowned portions of the European continent, I find myself constantly comparing the towns and villages which I see here with those foreign lands. One thing is clear, that there are in continental Europe no such country towns and villages as those of New England and some other portions of this country. Not only the exterior but the interior is totally different. The villages there resemble the squalid suburbs of a city; the people are like their houses, poor and subservient,-narrow in intellect, feeling, and habits of thought. I know twenty towns in France, having from two to ten thousand inhabitants, where, if you except the prefects, mayors, notaries, and a few other persons in each place, there is scarcely a family that rises to the least independence of thought, or even a moderate elevation of character. All the power, all the thought, all the genius, all the expanse of intellect, are centred at Paris. The blood of the country is drawn to this seat and centre, leaving the limbs and members cold and pulseless as those of a corpse. How different is it in this country! The life, vigor, power of these United States are diffused through a thousand veins and arteries over the whole people, every limb nourished, every member invigorated! New York, Philadelphia, and Boston do not give law to this country; that comes from the people—the farmers, mechanics, manufacturers, merchants-independent in their circumstances, and sober, religious, virtuous in their habits of thought and conduct. I make allowance for the sinister influence of vice which abounds in some places; for the debasing effects of demagogism in our politicians; for the corruption of selfish and degrading interests, cast into the general current of public feeling and opinion. I admit that these sometimes make the nation swerve, for a time, from the path of wisdom; but the wandering is neither wide nor long. The preponderating national mind is just and sound, and, if danger comes, it will manifest its power and avert it. BOSTON IN 1824. In 1824, Boston was notoriously the literary metropolis of the Union, the admitted Athens of America. Edward Everett had given permanency to the "North American Review;" and though he had just left the editorial chair, his spirit dwelt in it, and his fame lingered around it. Richard H. Dana, Edward T. Channing, Jared Sparks, George Bancroft, and others, were among the rising lights of the literary horizon. The newspaper press presented the witty and caustic "Galaxy," edited by Buckingham; the dignified and scholarly "Daily Advertiser," conducted by Nathan Hale; and the frank, sensible, manly "Centinel," under the editorial patriarch, Benjamin Russell. Channing was in the pulpit and Webster at the forum. Society was strongly impressed with literary tastes; genius was respected and cherished; a man, in those days, who had achieved a literary fame, was at least equal to a president of a bank, or a treasurer of a manufacturing company. The pulpit shone bright and far, with the light of scholarship radiated from the names of Beecher, Greenwood, Pierpont, Lowell, Palfrey, Doane, Stone, Frothingham, Gannett: the bar also reflected the glory of letters through H. G. Otis, Charles Jackson, William Prescott, Benjamin Gorham, Willard Phillips, James T. Austin, among the older members, and Charles G. Loring, Charles P. Curtis, Richard Fletcher, Theophilus Parsons, Franklin Dexter, J. Quincy, Jr., Edward G. Loring, Benjamin R. Curtis, among the younger. The day had not yet come when it was glory enough for a college professor to marry a hundred thousand dollars of stocks, or when it was the chief end of a lawyer to become the attorney of an insurance company, or a bank, or a manufacturing corporation. Corporations, without souls, had not yet become the masters and moulders of the soul of society. Books with a Boston imprint had a prestige equal to a certificate of good paper, good print, good binding, and good matter. And while such was the state of things at Boston, how was it at New York? Why, all this time the Harpers, who till recently had been mere printers in Dover Street, had scarcely entered upon their career as publishers, and the Appletons, Put nam, Derby, the Masons, and other shining lights in the trade of New York at the present time, were either unborn, or in the nursery, or at school. What a revolution do these simple items suggest,―wrought in the space of thirty years! The sceptre has departed from Judah : New York is now the acknowledged metropolis of American literature, as well as of art and commerce. Nevertheless, if we look at Boston literature at the present time, as reflected in the publishing lists of Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., Ticknor & Fields, Phillips, Sampson & Co., Crocker & Brewster, Gould & Lincoln, we shall see that the light of other days has not degenerated. Is it not augmented, indeed?-for since the period I speak of, Prescott, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whipple, Holmes, Lowell, Hillard, have joined the Boston constellation of letters ?1 ' Philadelphia will not silently see herself thus ignored as a book-publishing city. Her earlier publishers, Mathew Carey, John Grigg, and others, did an amount of business second at that time to no other houses in the country. In 1804, Mr. Carey set up the Bible in quarto form, and kept the type standing,-the first enterprise of that kind, it is thought, in the world; and of this, over two hundred thousand impressions were published. And it may here be remarked that Philadelphia continues to manufacture more Bibles (outside of the American Bible Society) than all other cities in the Union combined. In the first quarter of the present century there were published in Philadelphia such works as these:-Dobson's Encyclopedia, 21 vols.; Rees' Cyclopedia, 46 vols.; Edinburgh Encyclopedia, 18 vols. ; while the Encyclopedia Americana, 13 vols. 8vo, published more than twenty years ago by Carey & Lea, cost for authorship alone about twenty-five thousand dollars. Nearly forty years ago, John Grigg first exhibited that ability and energy which soon placed the house of Grigg, Elliott & Co. at the head of the distributing houses of the country; and their successors, J. B. Lippincott & Co., are probably the largest book-selling and book-distributing house IN THE WORLD. It has recently been made a matter of boast that Chambers & Co., of Edinburgh, had sent out ten tons in a fortnight; whereas Lippincott & Co. have sent out for three weeks together TEN TONS EVERY DAY! As to Medical Books, it is said that more than three-fourths of the whole number issued in the United States are printed and published in Philadelphia. The three firms most extensively engaged in this branch are Blanchard & Lea, J. B. Lippincott & Co., and Lindsay & Blakiston. The first of these firms continues to publish the "American Journal of Medical Science," whose reputation is second to none other in the world. Professor Wood's "Practice of Medicine" is used not only in the best medical colleges in this country, but is a text-book in some of the highest rank in Great Britain; and Professor Dunglison's "Medical Dictionary," published by Blanchard & Lea, is said to be the most comprehensive book of the kind in our language. In the department of Voyages and Travels, to mention no other, we wou'd name the United States Exploring Expedition, by Charles Wilkes, in five royal octavo volumes, with a volume of maps, published by Blanchard & Lea; for it may well be doubted if any other work of travels has equalled-certainly none has excelled-this in artistic and mechanical execution. In the matter of School Books, the publications of J. B. Lippincott & Co., Cowperthwait & Co., E. C. & J. Biddle, and E. H. Butler & Co., doubtless exceed those of any other four houses in the country. The last house issues annually nearly four hundred thousand volumes of Mitchell's series of Geographies alone. If we now turn our attention to books elegantly illustrated, and printed and CARLOS WILCOX, 1794-1827. CARLOS WILCOX was born at Newport, New Hampshire, October 22, 1794. He graduated at Middlebury College in 1813, and then entered the theological school at Andover, Massachusetts. He began to preach in 1819; but his health failed, and he accepted an invitation from a friend in Salisbury, Connecticut, to reside at his house, where he spent two years and composed his Age of Benevolence. In 1824, he was ordained as pastor of the North Congregational Church, Hartford, and soon won a high reputation for eloquence; but his health began to decline rapidly, and after various journeys for its restoration, to no purpose, he breathed his last on the 27th of May, 1827. His Remains, with a Memoir of his Life, were published in 1828. The volume contains two poems, the Age of Benevolence; The Religion of Taste, delivered in 1824 before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale College; and fourteen Sermons. Both of the poems are incomplete; but of such merit are they as fragments, that they make us the more sorrowful for what we have lost.1 SEPTEMBER. The sultry summer past, September comes, Checker'd by one night's frost with various hues, bound in the richest manner, no house in the country surpasses, if any equals, that of E. H. Butler & Co. Their last published work of this kind,-A Gallery of Famous Poets, selected and arranged by Professor Henry Coppée,-as bound by Pawson & Nicholson, is certainly one of the most magnificent books ever issue l in this country, but has lately (1861) been surpassed in letter-press and in beauty and richness of illustration by the "Folk-Songs," edited by Dr. J. W. Palmer, and published by Appleton & Co., New York. "He was a true poet, and deeply interesting in his character, both as a man and a Christian. He resembled Cowper in many respects, in the gentleness and tenderness of his sensibilities,-in the modest and retiring disposition of his mind, in its fine culture and its original poetic cast,--and not a little in the character of his poetry."-GEORGE B. CHEEVER. I believe New York and Boston booksellers acknowledge Pawson & Nicholson the be binders in this country, and not surpassed even by Hayday of London. The junior partn James B. Nicholson, has published a work of great practical value upon the subject, entitled "A Manual of the Art of Bookbinding; containing Full Instructions in the Different Branches of Forwarding, Gilding, and Finishing; also, the Art of Marbling Book-Edges and Paper. The whole designed for the Practical Workman, the Amateur, and the Book Collector." While yet no wind has swept a leaf away, To hear, within the woodland's sunny side, The sound of nutshells by the squirrel dropp'd From some tall beech, fast falling through the leaves. FREEDOM. All are born free, and all with equal rights. Who pour'd his plagues on Egypt till she let |