Washington is no place for persons of domestic tastes. Persons who love dissipation, persons who love to watch the game of politics, and those who make a study of strong minds under strong excitements, like a season at Washington; but it is dreary to those whose pursuits and affections are domestic. I spent five weeks there, and was heartily glad when they were over. I felt the satisfaction, all the time, of doing something that was highly useful,—of getting knowledge that was necessary to me, and could not be otherwise obtained; but the quiet delights of my Philadelphia home (though there half our time was spent in visiting) had spoiled me for such a life as every one leads at the metropolis. I have always looked back upon the five weeks at Washington as one of the most profitable, but by far the least agreeable, of my residences in the United States.

Yet we were remarkably fortunate in our domestic arrangements there. We joined a party of highly esteemed and kind friends,—a member of the House of Representatives from Massachusetts, his wife, and sister-in-law, and a Senator from Maine. We (the above party) had a drawing-room to ourselves, and a separate table, at Mrs. Peyton's boarding-house: so that we formed a quiet family group enough, if only we had had any quiet in which to enjoy the privilege.

Every state of society has, happily, its Originals; men and women who, in more or fewer respects, think, speak, and act, naturally and unconsciously in a different way from the generality of men. There are several causes from which this originality may arise; particularly in a young community, less gregarious than those of the civilized countries of the Old World.

The commonest of these causes in a society like that of the United States is, perhaps, the absence of influences to which almost all other persons are subject. The common pressure being absent in some one direction, the being grows out in that direction, and the mind and character exhibit more or less deformity to the eyes of all but the individual most concerned. The back States afford a full harvest of originals of this class; while in England, where it is scarcely possible to live out of society, such are rarely to be found.

Social and professional eccentricity comes next. When local and professional influences are inadequately balanced by general ones, a singularity of character is produced, which is not so agreeable as it is striking and amusing. Of this class of characters, few examples are to be seen at home; but instead of them, something much worse, which is equally rare in America.

The Pilgrim Fathers early testified to the value of education. “When New England was poor, and they were but few in number, there was a spirit to encourage learning.” One of their primary requisitions, first by custom and then by law, was, “That none of the brethren shall suffer so much barbarism in their families, as not to teach their children and apprentices so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue.” They next ordered,—“To the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers, every township, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall appoint one to teach all children to write and read; and where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families, they shall set up a grammar-school; the masters thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the University.”

This university was Harvard. In 1636, the General Court had voted a sum, equal to a year's rate of the whole colony, towards the erection of a college. Two years afterwards, John Harvard, who arrived at the settlements only to die, left to the infant institution one-half of his estate and all his library.

Some weeping philosophers of the present day are fond of complaining of the mercenary spirit of the age, and insist that men are valued (and treated accordingly) not as men, but as producers of wealth; that the age is so mechanical, that individuals who cannot act as parts of a machine for creating material comforts and luxuries, are cast aside to be out of the way of the rest. What do such complainers make of the lot of the helpless in these days? How do they contrive to overlook or evade the fact that misery is recognized as a claim to protection and solace, not only in individual cases, which strike upon the sympathies of a single mind, but by wholesale,—unfortunates as a class being cared for on the ground of their misfortunes? Are deformed and deficient children now cast out into the wastes to perish? Is any one found in this age who is of Aristotle's opinion, that the deaf and dumb must remain wholly brutish? Does any one approve the clause of the code of Justinian by which deaf-mutes are deprived of their civil rights? Will any one now agree with Condillac that the deaf and dumb have no memory, and consequently are without reasoning power?