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tuous Moore wrote the "Sacred Melodies," which would do honor to the purest heart. The profligate Sterne, besides the story of Lefevre, wrote the sermons entitled "Pursuit of Happiness," "a Good Conscience," "the Prodigal Son," and the "Good Samaritan," which would never lead to the suspicion that the author's heart was deficient in moral and religious feeling of the purest character. Do not these specimens of just sentiments and fine moral feeling from the authors of productions of so opposite a character, show the ascendency which intellectual refinement at some favored hours have gained over their corrupt sensualities?

The affections of the heart are fed and moulded by the objects presented to them through the ministry of the understanding. It is the business of education to lodge in the mind valuable truths and to train its powers to discover valuable truths. These will become objects for the heart, and, being themselves excellent, from their nature must exert ennobling influences on the moral feelings.

The pursuit of knowledge has a tendency to detain persons from profligate society; to furnish that excitement thirsted for by all, which, otherwise, would be sought for in scenes of dissipation; to make the heart revolt at the grossness of vice, and respond to the delicacy and beauty of virtue. It is true also that every intellectual inquiry leads up to the great standard of moral excellence for the universe. He, who studies at all, finds himself therefore, in the presence of God, with a specimen of his handiwork, a proof of his goodness, or a revelation of his design, directly under his eye. The moral effect of such contemplations must be of the safest and happiest character.

The whole natural influence of that education, which employs, expands and enriches the intellectual powers, must ever be to improve the heart.

There are sources of greater power on moral character; but when we contemplate the children and youth of the country gathered into schools and placed under the influence of a judicious and efficient cultivation of their mental faculties; when we think of them under these advantages at the susceptible and forming period of their existence, and before the world has had full opportunity to corrupt them, a bright vision of good opens before us. Who does not perceive that the effect on their moral character will be great and permanent, and immeasurably val

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uable? The business of teaching has a commensurate importance and responsibility.

3. Besides these considerations establishing the responsibility of teachers generally, there are several peculiarities in the condition of the inhabitants of this country which impose upon American Teachers a special responsibility.

One peculiarity with us, increasing the obligations of our teachers, is the fact that here more of the whole number of children are placed under their tuition, and these for a longer time than is usual in other communities. Wherever rank and wealth make wide distinctions between the different classes of society, many, through straitened circumstances, are compelled to withdraw their children at an early age, from the schoolhouse to the workshop and the farm. In the manufacturing and raising districts of England, in consequence of the slender means of subsistence, many children are not taught at all, and those who are sent to school, seldom enjoy the opportunities of education after the seventh or eighth year. In America, through the great equality in the distribution of property, and the facilities afforded to all to obtain a pecuniary competency, the advantages of education might easily be offered to nearly all the children of the country until the age of fourteen or sixteen years. In many sections of this country the children, with very few exceptions, are actually placed under elementary instruction up to this period. In our manufactories, it is true, the greater value of children's labor always operates as a temptation to contract their time at school. As, however, these establishments are yet comparatively few in this country, and as, in consequence of liberal wages, there is no want of pecuniary ability among manufacturers, the instances of limited opportunity for education among this class of the community are not numerous enough to require any deduction from the general statement just made. Taking the whole population into the account, it is true, as was asserted, that in this country more of the whole number of children are committed to the training of teachers, and for a longer time, than is done in any other part of the world. American teachers should feel themselves called upon to meet this favorable peculiarity in our condition with extraordinary exertions. If, to whom much is given, of them much may justly be required; if the fabric returned must bear a proportion to the furnished raw material, and the time occupied in making and perfecting it, then are they responsible

to give back to the bosom of society a generation of more knowledge and higher intellectual discipline than is to be found elsewhere in the world. They have no apology for distributing from their schools an ignorant mass of beings to the business, the possessions, the privileges, and shortly, to the offices and honors of the community.

A second peculiarity in our condition, shewing that a peculiar responsibility rests upon American teachers, is the fact that the children of the United States possess an unusual susceptibility to instruction.

The aristocratic and wealthy conditions of society are not favorable to the developement and culture of the intellectual powers. They contain too much luxury and ease to permit sufficient vigor and vivacity, or give room for adequate motives to endure the irksome toil of study. They contain too much pride of rank to allow of sufficient confidence and submissiveness for successful education. Equally unfavorable is the opposite condition of dependence and servility. The little being to be educated, in his depression, in his acquired notions and habits of servile submission to superiors, is unconscious of his capacities, feels in need of only a slight education to attain equality with others of his own condition, and discovering no pathway, feels little aspiring to a rank above that which his father held before him. In this absence of arousing and allur ing motives his powers are sluggish, to the tasks assigned him he is indifferent, in the whole business of his education, he is negligent and incurably dull.

A condition between aristocracy and dependent servitude, where happily a great proportion of the children of this country are placed, furnishes far higher susceptibility to instruction than either. Among children here there is an early formed and strong impression that they are born neither to be lulled upon the lap of wealth and the arms of patronage and power, nor to be mere hewers of wood and drawers of water for fellow-men, bone of the same bone, and flesh of the same flesh. They are conscious of holding within, the materials and susceptibilities of individuality, independent individuality, and therefore feel an individual accountableness. Each one regards himself like the tree that shades his gambols, as formed to stand upon his own stock, draw nutrition through his own absorbents, develope his own peculiarities, and drop his own fruit. He believes there is a part for himself to act, and a re

sponsibility for himself to bear, in which others have no participation. I do not intend to intimate that this is a matter of protracted reflection and deliberate conclusion with mere children; I intend to allege that in this country the free air which they first breathe, the personal exertions which they are first called to make, the forms of society which first surround them, all have a powerful tendency to mould them into this self-dependent, energetic, and accountable character. How much more

susceptible a creature in the hands of a teacher is a child thus developing his powers with a feeling of himself, a consciousness of self-dependence and of responsibility, than the tame and crushed thing that grows up under the frowning shadow of wealth and power, or the inert, inefficient creatures reposing upon inherited luxury and estate?

This susceptibility of American children is increased by the agricultural and rural habits of our population. The numerous excellent harbors upon our coast; the great extent of internal navigation, affording at thousands of points, in the very heart of the country, places for trade with the rest of the globe; the richness of our soil, and vast breadth of our habitable lands; the attractiveness of our interior climate and scenery; all prevent the aggregation of our population into overgrown cities or great manufacturing establishments. A large majority of our children are early thrown out upon the lap of nature, when their thoughts are of streams and hills, and the glorious heavens; where their sports and companionship are with trees and flowers, the herds of the field and the birds of the air. One half of the people of England live in towns in distinction from the country; here probably less than a fourth are thus shut out from the influences of nature. Great Britain employs three millions in mines and manufactories; the United States not half a million. Happily, we are yet emphatically an agricultural people. These rural habits give birth, by a natural influence, to all the elements of a quick susceptibility to intellectual culture. They produce a healthier physical and moral constitution, invigorate the mental powers, induce a higher appreciation of time and educational facilities, detain from absorbing trifles, create taste and desire for solid qualities, accustom to industry and habits of thought. O! were I the teacher of a school, I should love for my pupil the child of the woods, and fields, and valleys. A fresh and bounding creature, his powers of life and growth are peculiarly elas

tic and brisk, and his susceptibilities to intellectual improvement unparalleled. If angels are ever formed from beings of earthly mould, it must be done under the waking and warming influences of this external world.

The peculiar susceptibility of American children, derived both from their conscious accountableness and rural position, should be fully answered to on the part of teachers. If we have a plant, an animal, or an enterprise, which feels with unusual quickness our nurturing, we instantly feel an obligation to bestow unusual attention and labor. So should our instructers, on account of the highly susceptible character of American children, feel bound to make extraordinary exertions in their behalf, and conduct them to a higher standard of education than is attained to in any other country.

A third national peculiarity which imposes upon American teachers a higher responsibility than rests upon those of any other country, lies in the genius and character of our institutions. These add responsibility to the business of teaching by rendering popular education more necessary and more effective. The mass of the people here are closely and actively identified with all the machinery and operations of society. Each man is part and parcel of the nation, independently and efficiently; in his own person a pillar of the state, not the prop of a pillar merely; a portion of the strength and essential life of the community as a self-controlling individual. Each citizen here holds a higher place still. He is a part of the government. He is a depository of power; controls others and influences public affairs. He makes himself heard and felt, in the school district, in town and city movements, in the affairs of the congregation and pulpit, in the court of justice, in the councils of his state, in the supreme legislature of the nation. Thus he is a constituent portion of the supreme power; an associate sovereign. The little school," side yon straggling fence," is a seminary of sovereigns. Popular education, it will be seen, is more active and valuable here than under any other government in the world; produces its effects as no where else, in every place of influence from the top to the bottom of society, and effects thus the entire interests of the people. Assuredly, teaching in this country rises to a business of the greatest possible responsibility.

One other peculiarity in our condition, making popular education specially needful and important, and therefore the situ

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