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I have said that combined love of approbation and acquisitiveness is the leading characteristic of the age; it is certainly and especially so of our own country. Many a man devotes his hours, his days, and his years, to the accumulation of dross, which he would despise if he did not consider it a mean to an end, a stepping-stone to honor and distinction. We may deny it, we may hide it from ourselves, but we do bow down to and honor wealth; we do give it the precedence of talent. I speak not of this city, nor of a particular class, but of the country generally; and I say, that except where genius blazes like a comet, dazzling the people and forcing admiration, wealth commands more personal regard than intellectual and moral superiority: the wise man, or the good man, is stared at; the rich one is bowed down to: the one excites wonder, the other envy.

But I leave this theme most willingly, and proceed to point out other violations of the phrenological principles, that the brain and all other organs should be developed and stimulated to action at the proper age, and only then.

The precocity of our youth has been remarked by all intelligent foreigners who have ever visited the country, and it is not uncommon for Americans to boast of it. Our fathers thought, and wisely thought, that twenty-one years passed in training the body and mind, under the eye and control of affectionate authority, were not too much; but the present generation has no idea of this; the young Phaeton has leaped into the chariot of the sun -- he is driving furiously on, and risks not only breaking his own neck, but setting the world on fire, as he sinks in the west.

It seems to me that this error is too common in most of the pursuits of life, and that it is becoming still more so with us. Our boys at school must be treated like young gentlemen; their self-esteem must be continually appealed to; and at fourteen or fifteen, they will stand upon their reserved rights, and resolutely rebel, rather than submit to a discipline or a punishment, which the son of an English nobleman would not consider as disgraceful. These unbearded Solomons, these cocksparrow Hotspurs, will tell you they understand the rights of man as well as their masters, and they will rather die in the breech, than yield it up.

I am not disposed to point out or reason from extreme cases; if I were, I need not go out of this city; nay; in this very building you may find, at ten o'clock to-morrow, a grave and solemn assembly of philosophers, whose first suit of jacket and trowsers is not yet worn out -- of four year old matrons, who are brought in four-wheeled baskets; you will hear them addressed as men and women whose reasons are perfected, and questions put to them which would severely tax the causality, comparison, and ideality, of mature minds. Nay! you will hear these mewling-pewling philosophers questioned upon the most abtruse and mystical points of religious belief, and their answers carefully recorded, to be published for the benefit of our stupid old generation which is called on to receive instruction from these babes and sucklings! You will pardon my allusion to this subject, it is too absurd for serious notice; but I could hardly avoid it, for, as the old philosophers have it, the propinquity of time and place forced it upon me.

To return to common education. It is seldom thorough in this generation of ours, either in the mechanical arts, or in the learned professions. The boys of the English, Scotch, and German high schools, are better scholars than the titled graduates of our colleges; the members of all the learned professions in Europe, though they have less of the savoir faire than ours, are better scholars, and more learned men. Our youth, while yet in all their greenness, are dubbed doctors, lawyers, and divines; and they begin to get knowledge by practising upon the people; for, like the barber's apprentice, they must perforce learn to shave on the public chin, having no beards on their own.

The same impatient spirit brings the whole rising generation into action too early; the boys, who should be developing and strengthening their physical system, and storing their minds with useful knowledge, but without anxiety and without excitement, now rush into action, and, under the name of young men, essay to govern society, which they only keep in a turmoil.

I am well aware of what youth is capable; I know well that its impetiosity will carry it fearlessly over obstacles, and through dangers, at which maturity pauses and shudders; but I know, too, that precocious cerebral excitement must be followed by reaction, and that no system is so wise as that of nature.

The stripling conscripts of Napoleon carried his eagles forward to victory, but when the reverse came, they of the vieille moustache alone stood firm: our conscripts, however, would fain always be in the van, and when political dangers threaten, we are told to becalm, and stand aside, for the "Young Men's Committee of Safety" will see that no harm shall come to the common weal.