bestowed much strong language upon him. Mr. Russell, of the London Times, has given him passing notice. Some orations have been pronounced upon him, and numberless anecdotes told of him. He has, also, as usual, had something to say upon the subject himself; for the Yankee, I regret to say, is somewhat given to boasting of the qualities and exploits of his race. The various accounts do not harmonize. If Dr. Bellows regards the Yankee as the consummate man, Jefferson Davis considers him a companion less desirable than the hyena. It is with the Yankee as with other noted personages, the more that is printed about them, the more difficult it becomes to get any knowledge of them. In these circumstances, it may be edifying to some readers to have a recent specimen of this curious and renowned people caught and examined; his growth and formation briefly narrated; his peculiarities and capabilities noted. General Butler is a Yankee. He has traits which are peculiar to himself and to his family; but? the great outlines, both of his career and of his character, he shows himself a Yankee of that type, of which his namesake, Benjamin Franklin, is the perfect and immortal example. Behold, then, in the paragraphs following, the process by which a Yankee becomes the creature we find him in these very days now passing over us. General Butler was born at Deerfield, an agricultural town of New Hampshire, on Guy Faux day, the fifth of November, 1818.

The fatherless boy was small, sickly, tractable, averse to quarrels, and happy in having a stout elder brother to take his part. Reading and writing seem to come by nature in New England, for few of that country can recollect a time when they had not those accomplishments. The district school helped him to spelling, figures, a little geography, and the rudiments of grammar. He soon caught that passion for reading which seizes some New England boys, and sends them roaming and ravaging in their neighborhood for printed paper. His experience was like that of his father's friend, Isaac Hill, who limped the country round for books, reading almanacs, newspapers, tracts, "Law's Serious Call," the Bible, fragments of histories, and all printed things that fell in his way. The boy hunted for books as some boys hunt for birds'-nests and early apples; and, in the great scarcity of the article, read the few he had so often as to learn large portions of them by heart; devouring with special eagerness the story of the revolution, and all

tales of battle and adventure. The Bible was his mother's sufficient library, and the boy pleased her by committing to memory long passages; once, the whole book of Matthew. His memory then, as always, was something wonderful. He can, at this hour, repeat more poetry, perhaps, than any other person in the country who has not made the repeating of poetry a profession. His mother, observing this gift, and considering the apparent weakness of his constitution, early conceived the desire of giving him a liberal education, cherishing also the fond hope, as New England mothers would in those days, that her boy would be drawn to enter the ministry.

One chilly morning in November, 1821, when he was in his fourth year, half a dozen sharp-eyed Boston gentlemen, Nathan Appleton being one of them, might have been seen (but were not) tramping about in the snow near the Falls of the Merrimac. There Was a hamlet near by of five or six houses, and a store, but these gentlemen wandered along the banks of the river among the rocks and trees, unobserved, conversing with animation. The result of that morning's walk and talk was the city of Lowell, now a place of forty thousand inhabitants, with thirteen millions invested in cotton and woolen mills,. and two hundred thousand dollars a month paid in wages to operatives. In 1828, when our young friend was ten years old, and Lowell was a thriving town of two thousand inhabitants, his mother removed thither with her boys.

It was a fortunate move for them all. The good mother was enabled to increase her income by taking a few boarders, and her book-loving son had better schools to attend, and abundant books at command. He improved these opportunities, graduating from a common school to the high school, and, at a later day, preparing for college at the academy of Exeter in his native state.

As the time approached for his entering college, the question was anxiously discussed in the family, What college? Probably one half the boys in the United States, even in those piping times of peace, had a lurking desire to enter the military academy at West Point. At present, every boy has such a desire, except those who prefer the naval school at Newport. Perhaps the boys are right. In those institutions the fundamental conditions of manly education are complied with in a respectable degree. There is physical train. ing; there is science; there modern languages have their prop

place; there drawing and dancing, riding and fencing are taught; there is due suppression of those rooted obstacles to all useful acquisition, Latin and Greek; there is that sweet and noble thing, so dear to ingenuous youth, DISCIPLINE; there, if anywhere, a rude cub of a boy can be transformed into that beautiful creature, the true fighting animal, but the man nowhere out of place-a Gentleman! In them, too, the education that fits a man for life proceeds simultaneously with that which prepares him for his profession— schooling and apprenticeship going hand in hand-which is the only system by which any considerable proportion of the youth of a country can ever be liberally educated. Would that venerable Harvard, venerable Yale, Amherst, Williams, Columbia, and the rest, would heed the lessons the times are teaching us, and place themselves, by a sweeping revolution, upon a footing worthy of the age, and prepare to give the education which the youth of the country are so eager to receive. If existing institutions refuse it, a hundred West Points will spring into being, and the glory of the good old colleges will depart for ever.

The boy was decided in favor of West Point. Nor was a cadetship unattainable, in the days of Jackson and Isaac Hill, to the sou of Captain John Butler. But the cautious mother hesitated. She feared he would forget his religion, and disappoint her dream of seeing him in the pulpit of a Baptist church. She consulted her minister upon the subject. He agreed with her, and recommended Waterville college, in Maine, recently founded by the Baptists, with a special view to the education of young men for the ministry. It promised, also, the advantage of a manual labor department, in which the youth, by working three hours a day, could earn part of his expenses. At Waterville, moreover, there could be no danger of the student's neglecting religion, since the great object of the college was the inculcation of religion, and all the influences of the place were religious. The president himself was a clergyman, several of the professors were clergymen. Attendance at church on Sundays was compulsory, and there was even a fine of ten cents for every unexcused absence from prayers. With such safeguards, what danger could there be to the religious principles instilled into the mind of the young man from his earliest childhood? Thus argued the minister. The mother gave heed to his opinions, and the youth was consigned to Waterville.

He was a slender lad of sixteen, small of stature, health infirm, of fair complexion, and hair of reddish brown; his character conspicuously shown in the remarkable form of his head. Over his eyes an immense development of the perceptive powers, and the upper forehead retreating almost like that of a flat-head Indian. A youth of keen vision, fiery, inquisitive, fearless; nothing yet developed in him but ardent curiosity to know, and perfect memory to retain. Phrenologists would find proof of their theory in comparing the portrait of the youth with the well-rounded head of the man mature, his organs developed by a quarter of a century of intense and constant use of them. His purse was most slenderly. furnished. His mother could afford him little help. A good New Hampshire uncle gave him some assistance now and then, and he worked his three hours a day in the manual labor department at chair-making, earning wages ridiculously small. He was compelled to remain in debt for a considerable part of his college expenses.

Mr. Carlyle observes that the natural history of a hawk written by a sparrow could not be flattering to the hawk. Nor could it be just. Sedate and orthodox professors are the natural prey of a lad like this, born into a minority, trained to the audacious advocacy of unpopular opinions, and accustomed to regard the powers that be in the light of objects of attack. I fear, therefore, that the college career of this student, if it should be related by his instructors, would not present him to us in a favorable light. Perhaps, there is something in the clerical character and training which, in some degree, disqualify a man for gaining an ascendency over the minds of youth. The example of Arnold may be cited against such an opinion, but Arnold was an exceptional man, in an exceptional sphere.

The professors attached to New England colleges present certain varieties of character and position:-The president, a grave and awful Doctor of Divinity, highest in place, sometimes lowest in accomplishment, owing his appointment to his ecclesiastical importance rather than to his learning; sometimes the butt of the college, often deeply loved and venerated. There is the professor renowned beyond the college walls, its advertisement and boast, not always highly valued in the class-room. There is the absorbed professor, book-worm and devotee of his subject, who knows not the name of the president of the United States, and never heard of Dickens and

Thackeray. There is the unpopular professor, a prying, meddling gentleman, keen in the scent of a furtive cigar, prompt to appear at the moment he is least expected and desired. There is the beloved professor, the students' gentle friend and father, whom to insult or annoy rouses the retributive wrath of the whole class. There is the professor of doubtful scholarship, often wrong in his dicta, the tortured victim of the knowing ones, who have explored the shallows of his mind, and know what questions he cannot answer. There is the dandy professor, deliverer of flowery orations, or of sermons trivial and showy. There is the professor who is writing a book, and gets students of the softer sort to copy for him. There is the professor who once wrote an article for the "North American Review," and gives the number containing it to his favorites. There is the foreign-born professor of immense learning, not too fond of attending morning prayers, totally unable to keep order in his class. And there is the lynx-eyed professor, whom no one attempts to cheat; and the absent-minded professor, who sits cogitating his next sermon, regardless of the written translation, or the forbidden “key."

Waterville was a young college, but it could boast most of these varieties; and to as many as there were, our young friend was occasionally an affliction. Most of them were clergymen and theologians more than they were instructors of youth; their object being to make good Baptists as well as good scholars.

But the college was of vast benefit to our young friend, as any college must have been, conducted in the interests of virtue, and attended by a hundred and seventy-five young men from the simple and industrious homes of New England; most of them eager to improve, and perfectly aware that upon themselves alone depended the success of their future career. If he was prone to undervalue some parts of the college course, he made most liberal use of the college library. He was an omnivorous reader. All the natural sciences were interesting to him, particularly chemistry; and his fondness for such studies inclined him long to choose the medical profession. No student went better prepared to the class-room of the professor of natural philosophy.

Seduced by his example, there arose a party in the college opposed to the regular course of studies, advocates of an unregulated browse among the books of the library, each student to read only