powers of the world. Moreover we have this encouragement in any such undertaking, namely, that our heathen neighbors are ambitious of improvement, and always welcome the changes and the regulations, which tend to make them "Americans."
3. Finally let us aim, by every possible means, to make indigenous, in this infant country, the spirit and genius of the English language, in immediate connection with its idiom.
You all doubtless remember the solemn utterance of St. James that "the body without the spirit is dead."[1] So likewise a language without its characteristic features, stamp, and spirit, is a lifeless and unmeaning thing, and must, ere long, degenerate into a crude, mongrel, discordant jargon. If the English had educated their West India blacks they would never have committed so great a blunder, as they did before emancipation, as the publication of the Bible for them, in broken English:—a miserable caricature of their noble tongue. All low, inferior, and barbarous tongues are, doubtless, but the lees and dregs of noble languages, which have gradually, as the soul of a nation has died out, sunk down to degradation and ruin. We must not suffer this decay on these shores, in this nation. We have been made, providentially, the deposit of a noble trust; and we should be proud to show our appreciation of it. Having come to the heritage of this language we must cherish its spirit, as well as retain its letter. We must cultivate it among ourselves; we must strive to infuse its spirit among our reclaimed and aspiring natives. And
