New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1844-04-19
Ero,n Tie Dial' for Ap.l
THE YOUNG AMERICAN.
" RALPH wtLpo gMr.soY.
Iact,ro read before the Mercantile Library Association
Boston, Feb Ttll 49,.

BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Gentlemen: 1t is remarkable, that our people
have their intellectual culture from one country,
and their duties from another. Our books aic
Euronean. We were born within the fame and
aDhere of Shakespeare and Milton, OF Bacon,
DRYDEN and Pope; our College textbooks are the
writings of Butler, Locke, Paey, Blackstone. and
Stewart; and our domestic reading has been Gar
endon and Hume, Addison and johnson, Young,
Cowper, Edgeworth end Scott, Southey, Coleridge
and Wordsworth, and the Edinburgh and Quar-
tsrly Reviews. Woare sent to ieudai school 10
learn democracy. A gulf yawns Tor the young
American between his education and hls work.
We are liks the all. accomplished bankers daugh-
ter, who, when her education was finished, and
ber father had become o bankrupt, and she was
ssked what she could do for him in his sickness
and misfortunes, could she make d shirt, mix
bread, scald milk pans No, but she could waltz,
and cut rice paper, and paint velvet, and transfer
drawings, and make satin stitch, and play on the
clavichord and sing German songs, and act char.
AIDES. and arrange tablcaux, and great many
other equally useful and Indispensable perform
ances. 1t has seemed verify so with the educa
ton Of our young the system of thought
was the growth Of monarchical institutions,
whilst those that were flourish'ng around tiIcn
were not consecrated to Their Inauguration nor
interpreted to their understanding.
This false state of things is newly in way 10 no
corrected. America is beginning TO assert itself
IN the senses and the Imagination OF her child
ran. and Europe is receding IN the same degree.
This their reaction on education gives new
importance to the internal Improvements and 10
the politics of the country
There is no American citizen who has not been
stimulated to reflection by the facilities now IN
progress OF construction for travel and the trans
portatson of goods in the United States. The ui-
isred effect to augment dlsproporuonatey the
,ize of cities, Is in rapid course Of Iulhlment IN
this metropolis of New England.
The growth of Boston, never slow, has been
70 accelerated since the railroads have been OPEN
ed which Join j, to Providence, to Albany, and to
Portland, that the extreme depression OF general
trade has not concealed it from the most careless
ava. The narrow peninsula, which few years
ago easily held its thirty or forty thousand people,
with many pastures and waists lands, not tomen-
ton the large private gardens in the midst of The
town. has been found tso strait when forty are
swelled TO a hundred thousand The waste lands
have been fenced in and builted over, the private
gardens one after the other have become streets.
Boston proper consisted of seven hundred and
twenty acres Of land. Acre alter acre has been
since won from the sea, and III u short time The
antquary will find it difficult TO trace the penia-
sular topography. Within the last year, the
newspapers tell Us, from twelve to fifteen hundred
buildings of all sorts have been erected, mary Of
them Of rich and durable character. And be-
cause each OF the new avenues of iron road rainl-
Ses like the bough OF q tree the growth OF the
city proceeds at geomctrcal rate Already
new road 10 shooting northwest towards the Con-
necticut and Montreal and every great line OF
road that is completed makes cross sections from
road to road more practicable, so that the land
viii presently be mapped In network OF IRON
This rage for road building Is benehcent Tor
America, where vast distance Is 90 man con-
sideration in our domestic politics and trade, IN
asmuch as the great political promise OF the IN
yention is to hold the Union s,auncb, whose days
seemed already numbered by the mere lnconven-
renee of transporting representatives, Judges, and
Offices. across such tedious distances Of land and
water. Not only is distance annihilated, but
when, al now, the locomotive and the steamboat,
like enormous shu.tles, shoot every day across
tho thousand various threads of national descen.
and employment aud bind them fast IN one web,
an hourly assimilation goes forward, and there is
No danger that local pecuiiarites and hostllities
should be preserved.
The new power is hardly less noticeable in its
relation to the immigrant population, chiefly To
the people of Ireland, as having given employ.
ment 10 hundreds of thousands OF the natives OF
that country, who arc continually arriving in
every vessel from Great Britain,
In an uneven country the railroad is fine oh.
cot in the making. 1t has introduced a multi
tude Of picturesque traits into our pastoral scene
nv. The tunnelng of mountains, the bridging Of
streams, the bold mole carried out INTO broad
s;lert meadow, silent and unvistcd by any bur
its own neighbors since the planting OF the re-
80, !. Tho cncountcr nj short distances along the