takes on a like hue and complexion and neglects it. We have printers and publishers able, willing, and competent to publish, but, such is the apathy on the part of Southern people, that it involves hazard to Southern publishers to put them out. Indeed, until recently, almost all the publications, even of Southern books, issued (and that was their only hope of success) from Northern houses. The last chance now of getting a Southern book sold, is to manage to secure the favourable notice of the Northern press, and then the South buys it. Our magazines and periodicals languish for support."
Mr. Howison, "The Virginia Historian," observes:
"The question might be asked, Where is the literature of Virginia?
and it would not be easily answered. It is a melancholy fact, that her
people have never been a reading people. In the mass they have shown
an indifference to polite literature and education in general, depressing to
the mind that wishes to see them respectable and happy."
"It is with pain," says the same authority, "that we are compelled
to speak of the horrible cloud of ignorance that rests on
Virginia," and he computes that (1848) there are in the State
166,000 youth, between seven and sixteen years of age, and of
these 126,000 attend no school at all, and receive no education
except what can be imparted by poor and ignorant parents.
Besides these, he reckons 449,087 slaves and 48,852 free
negroes, with few exceptions, wholly uneducated.
"The policy which discourages further extension of knowledge among
them is necessary: but the fact remains unchanged, that they exist
among us, a huge mass of mind, almost entirely unenlightened. We
fear that the most favourable estimates will leave, in our State, 683,000
rational beings who are destitute of the merest rudiments of knowledge."
