rich and the poor. When a simple commoner, hy his prodigious wealth, or colossal, intellectual power, distinguishes himself J he is taken over the wall, and transformed into a lord, lest he should furnish an inconvenient exception to the general rule. Knowledge and ignorance, refinement and vulgarity, under such a form of government, are placed and retained in the most striking contradistinction to each other. Societies for the diffusion of use- fhl knowledge, are’gradually demolishing the barrier. Until very lately, however, a convention of all the American children, of seven years old, would have rejected,. by au overwhelming vote, as beneath their capacity, a very large proportion of all the little volumes, prepared for the mechanics and peasantry of England. It is not easy to perceive, even in works designed for children alone, the utility of broken English ; nor of a mean and meagre phraseology in those, intended for the majority of the people. There are many sensible remarks, having a bearing on this subject, in Pope’s ironical examination of the comparative merits of the pastorals of Phillips and his own. To be sure, it would not Iw expedient to make a farmer talk like a met-
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