It is a curious process to trace the associations of pleasure, and discover the means that make us happy. Our best enjoyments are generally the effect of simple causes-a kind word, a soft smile, a friendly letter, trifling things in themselves, and it would seem easily accorded us, for they cost nothing; and yet how like magic these can operate on the heart and senses, making the pulse throb with delight, and the whole earth look like a land of sunshine and flowers!

There are few moments of more intense enjoyment than those occupied in breaking up a packet which we feel assured by the seal or hand writing, comes from one we love. These written demonstrations of remembrance and affection, seem to speak tangibly to the soul. Language from the lips may be hasty, inconsiderate or flattering, but written expressions of attachment have a certain evidence of reflection, and consequently sincerity. At least, I believe, with few exceptions, that sentiments expressed in private letters, from friend to friend, have a power more persuasive than spoken language of awakening recollections, and thus influencing the present opinion through the medium of past experience.

How effectually a few lines from an early friend, adverting to scenes of our childhood, in which he shared, will bring the whole train of youthful reminiscences before us! Time and distance are annihilated. We are there. The old elm tree, beneath whose shade was our castle, again spreads over us; the rock that was our temple; the stream which poured its ocean of waves for our amusement, we see them all, enjoy them all, with the same hearty, unsophisticated relish that we used to sip from the "moss covered bucket that hung in the well,' the delicious draught of cold water on a hot summer's day. These are the feelings that humanize the heart, and make us social beings, imparting the love of country to the patriot, and the desire to make all men good and happy to the Christian.

There is no nation on the face of the earth, to whom the influence of such associations are so important as to ours. These united republics have no bond as strong as that which links the minds of the people in the same recollections of their early history, and of the war of the revolution; and to perpetuate these common traditions, to intertwine the local peculiarities and sentiments of each section of our country, by adverting to those topics of general interest, in which all must share, should be the ruling spirit of our literature, and one of the exciting motives that shall send our tourists and scientific explorers from Maine to Florida, and from the Connecticut to the Columbia. The personal intercourse, which commerce and science, profit and pleasure, will induce, may give us a general knowledge of our whole country, and the political relations by which all the States are interested in the general government, must make Americans consider themselves as countrymen-but we need a more familiar communion, a closer bond of affinity, we need to be friends; and this consummation is only to be realized by cherishing and extending our local affections and social sympathies. We have a noble opportunity for the exercise of that philanthropy which

"Takes every creature in of every kind;"

for in our wide land, and among its multifarious inhabitants, may be found representatives of almost every people, and kindred, and tongue, in the known world. To assimilate (fraternize, as a Parisian would say), these millions, private and individual exertion will be more efficacious than public laws. The advantages of a literary intercourse are here to be unfolded, training the moral powers of all our citizens, who are anxious

for the preservation of civil and religious freedom, to move on in concert, though their physical condition, the effect of climate, employment, &c. may differ ever so essentially.

The moral power of the press is often the theme of triumph and congratulation to those who would elevate mind to the supreme guidance of man's destiny. The power of the press is truly immense, a broad and irresistible river that rolls onward with increasing impetus, fertilizing wherever its waters may reach; we bless its fulness, and freshness, and its exhaustless fountains, but of private and written correspondences, those quiet rills of affection from domestic springs, gliding so calmly on in the deepest shades of retired life, making the wilderness blossom, and cherishing a few flowers in every secluded spot and even barren place, we take little note. Yet these quiet rills are to the Nile of public literature, and consequently sentiment, like the gentle droppings from the spring clouds, which prepare the earth to receive benefit from the abundant rains. The small showers will always do good, though without a larger supply but a scanty harvest must be expected; yet were the rain to pour only in torrents, the harvest would be deluged, or uprooted, or perish in its own luxuriancy.

Those who have felt, in their own hearts, the effect of this intercourse by letters with dear and distant friends, or witnessed its influence on others, will not need be told how strong a bond of sympathy it creates between different sections of our country. Let a single member of a New England family settle at the South or West, and how soon will the State to which the wanderer has gone become familiar to his friends at home! How eagerly they con every scrap of intelligence his letters impart, and how solicitous they feel for the prosperity of the place where he, still their own, has fixed his abode! Nor does the adventurer forget the dwelling of his fathers. True, he has another home, but that of his childhood still lives in his heart, and a name, an allusion, a letter, instantly calls up a host of recollections that link the present with the past, his early hopes and joys with his maturer plans and prospects, and he feels that his happiness is not centered in the spot of his locality, but that his heart is drawn out in aspirations for the prosperity of all that wide country over which his affections range in their journey to his early home.

I recollect once performing the part of amanuensis for a good lady whose son resided in Kentucky. Before her son left her

she knew nothing of geography, except, perhaps, its name. The horizon that bounded her view had bounded her curiosity. But the letters of her son combined with his absence to awaken an intense desire which could only feel its affectionate longings satisfied by knowing exactly where, and how, and with whom, her child lived. She accordingly studied the geography and history of Kentucky, tracing its roads and rivers on the map as minutely as would an engineer exploring the route for a canal; and she eagerly treasured up all the information her son communicated, not forgetting to inquire, of every person she met, what they knew of Kentucky, till the State and its inhabitants seemed to her as familiar as her own town and neighbors. I shall never forget the enthusiasm she expressed for the patriotic and hospitable character of the Kentuckians, nor the emotions she manifested when assuring me that though her son was rich, respected and happy at the West, he had not forgotten his dear New England. She showed me one letter in which he named a particular apple tree,-his tree,-in the orchard, and inquired if the apples were fair and good as they used to be—and sbe shed tears of pride and tenderness as she brought me one of the apples to taste, that I might assure her son it was excellent. These domestic associations are not of trifling importance; they expand the heart and elevate the feelings, by connecting the pleasures of sense with those of affection, and thus most effectually and virtuously calling into exercise the powers of the mind, for generous purposes rather than selfish enjoyments. It is the union of hearts and memories that must preserve and perpetuate the union of these free States, and were the expressions of kindly interest cherished by all as sincerely as by that good lady and her son, there would be no fears for its permanency. The narrow spirit, which sees a rival and enemy in every different section, will yield to the ties of relationship, binding individuals to cherish and extend the familiarity of intercourse which may now be maintained with every part of our country. We have no excuse for being strangers. The public relations of the government are, as they ought to be, exclusively under the guidance and care of men, but ladies may do much to promote the general harmony and happiness by cultivating, through private friendships and correspondences, that interest in the welfare of families and persons which will make every state in the Union hallowed as the birthplace or home of those we love.

The end of education is to prepare the individual to perform well his part in life, and the American who labors only for the prosperity of his own particular State, cannot be well educated, because his prejudices will interfere with that devotion to the public good, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," which next to his love of God should be earliest taught him. It is a great mistake to call education the work of schools; learning may, more properly, be assigned as their province; but education is that training which gives its bias to the mind and heart-its prevailing tone to the manners and habits of thought, its spring to the movements of the soul, guiding our estimate of the objects and actions which are ever presenting themselves to the senses or the reason. This education, and consequently the moral character of every individual, is chiefly effected by the domestic relations of private life. It is at home, beside the household hearth, that the lens is formed, through whose medium the light of the world is transmitted to our eyes, and we see its images reflected in light and beauty, or refracted in confused and distorted proportions, accordingly as we have been trained to adjust the glass and regulate our own position and feelings with respect to outward things.

There are four principal methods of influencing the bias of the mind, namely, by appeals to the affections, the passions, the interest, and the understanding, and accordingly as either of these influences are allowed to predominate in early educacation the character of the individual is modified. If the affections govern, the disposition will be kind, and the heart ingenuous, but the judgment may be wanting in strength, and the mind in resolution. There have been many individual examples of this character, but, with the exception of the interesting inhabitants of Pictairn's island, as they were when first discovered by captain Wilson, I recollect no community of men who may be said to have lived under the governance of the affections only, though many charming fictions of happiness have been founded on such Eden theory. But out of Eden the world has been a sad bleak and blighting place for the affections.

The passions are, it would seem, more indigenous to the soil of earth than the affections, or they have been more assiduously cultivated, for they have thriven in all climates with unvaried success. The early history of every people in the known world, with the exception of our own nation, exhibits the pre