Memoirs of Anne C.L. Botta,: written by her friends. With selections from her correspondence and from her writings in prose and poetry.

;elections from 1her Writino
tion of the rights of others, and a courteous consideration of
them, is the groundwork of all good manners; and since these
principles lie also at the foundation of our government, there
seems every reason why we should look for a higher type of
manners here than has existed elsewhere.
From the beginning, the founders of our government regarded
education, moral and intellectual, as the first essential for a free
people; and as the log-cabins rose in the wilderness, side by
side rose the church and school-house, and from that time they
have kept abreast with the advancing tide of population. With
no interference from the government, with absolute religious
toleration, the churches supported by the voluntary contributions
of their members to-day number more than 3oo00,000ooo; the free
public schools are estimated to be 18o,ooo, maintained at an
annual expense of $93,ooo000,000ooo, while 20,000 free schools are
educating more than a million of the freed slaves; 25,000
school libraries contain 45,ooo,ooo books, more than all the
public libraries of Europe combined; and $9o,ooo,ooo are annually spent in the purchase of books, against $8o,ooo,ooo spent
in England. The new Encyclopedia Britannica in its original
edition and in the several American reproductions found io8,ooo
subscribers in the United States.
We are charged with having no literature and no native art.
In the struggle for existence that followed the settlement of the
new country, the conditions for the development of either were
wholly wanting, and it may be admitted that as yet we take a
subordinate place in these respects among those nations that
have had a thousand years to mature; but, as the increasing
wealth of the country affords the means of gratifying taste and
the leisure to enjoy it, we may safely say that works of genius
will be produced and appreciated.
Our civilization is still in the formative period; it is a growth
which in time will have its full development. While other nations have reached their culminating point in the ages that have
passed, America is bound to obtain quite as satisfactory results
in the days that are to come.
Literature is the expression of national life, and a new national
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