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 alluring 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

ation of American teachers specially responsible, is a want of ability and efficiency on the part of our government to control several existing evils.

One of these evils is a prevalent radicalism. This is a grand leveler of every thing that exalteth itself above its own position. It wages war with old and venerated institutions. It loves no distinctions. It is a resolute agitator and disorganizer; feeds and fattens on discord and confusion; engorges itself deliciously upon the elements of society which itself has dissolved and scattered abroad. It acknowledges no law, it would put down all rule. This spirit appears in church and in state, in all ranks and in all the relations of life; its hot breath is equally desolating every where.

Deeming the wholesome laws despotism, it raises a mob and tramples them in the dust; professing to believe the injunctions of the Bible; usurpation, and the usages of society founded upon them superstitions, it sets them at defiance. It calls on the world to correct the mistakes of Paul; to attempt some reforms, which holy apostles were too feeble-hearted to undertake; to effect others by means which the Savior of the world was too short sighted to discover. This spirit at the present time presents a most threatening aspect. Many believe it may yet appear in forms powerful enough to sweep away all that we most love.

Another of these evils is a strong and constant tendency to dereliction of principle and corruption of morals. By opening to all, her sources of competence and wealth, this country has become a theatre of activities and enterprises, which have no parallel. Man, in no age and in no spot of the earth's surface, in so short a period, has projected and done so much and spread himself so widely abroad. But this unparalleled activity and enterprise after a period of brilliant successes, as the wise foresaw, is beginning to produce an opposite state of things; luxury, distaste for sober industry, dissatisfaction with moderate gains, extravagant expenditures and speculations. Whole villages and cities, in some paroxysms, have worn, to a transient on-looker, the aspect of grand gambling establishments, where the honest modes of living seemed about to be abandoned, and the people to be given up to overreaching and dishonesty; where justice and judgment seemed to be fleeing away, and general indulgence and dissipation to be taking their places. There is now felt to some degree in every part of the

country and in every department of society, a demoralizing influence of this description, corrupting deeply the principles and the morals of men.

The same unhappy effects are produced by the alluring opportunities to office and power which are here freely opened to all. At every election there is witnessed in most parts of the country a general rush and scramble for the places of emolument and honor. Righteousness and truth to a fearful extent are set aside, and any thing adopted in their place which can minister to the ruling passion for personal aggrandizement. The associations of men, the institutions of society, and the government itself, are perverted to the accomplishment of private ends. Every thing seems crowded into the service of the god of power and the mammon of unrighteousness.

As the result of this state of things, a great waste of principle and of morals occurs throughout the country; integrity and patriotism, benevolence and truth, are deeply outraged and left bleeding every where.

ours.

The same corrupting influences exist under other governments, but they are peculiarly strong and dangerous under The arm of government is less vigorous here; hitherto it has proved altogether too feeble to resist these evils which so seriously threaten us. The people, as has already been stated, bear rule, and, in consequence of the strength in human nature of the love of unrestrained independence, the people, in the capacity of a government, is exceedingly cautious in imposing checks upon its own desires and movements in the character of subjects; hence liberty enough is reserved, to be always running into every form of licentiousness. Most men will gather their thoughts and hopes upon the power of religious faith, as the great preserver amid these evils so alarmingly rife in the land. No doubt our holy religion, teaching every man, and, by the strongest motives that can be made to bear upon a human being, urging every man to feel right and behave well, is the sovereign remedy, the last hope of nations, as well as of individuals. But it should not be forgotten that intelligence is a handmaid and essential auxiliary to this grand conservator. The education of the people gives the christian faith nearly all its power over them. It has, moreover, as has been already stated, good influences of its own. A well instructed community is less susceptible to the radicalism of the country, and to the corrupt sway of the cunning and