ry of later ages; so man is a monument reared beyond the approach of competition from Nature's other works. The instinct of animals is indeed marvellous, and might seem in some things to surpass the gift of reason. But compare the most skilful works of animals with those of man. Compare the village of the beaver

the most ingenious of brute contrivances with a human city. Compare its shapeless mounds of sticks and stones with one of our large towns, including its paved streets, illuminated at night by gas; its lofty dwellings, many of them enriched and embellished with a thousand ingenious luxuries; its diversified arts, its varied institutions, its libraries filled with exhaustless lore, its merchandize gathered from every quarter of the globe, its ships, which are taught to tread fearlessly the paths of the deep! Make this comparison of the city of the beaver with the city of man, and you measure the distance between animal and human nature; between the force of instinct and the power of education !

We must observe, too, that while instinct marks the animal races as limited in their capacity, it also marks them as limited in their duration; and that while education opens to man a boundless field of improvement, it shows that he is destined for an endless existence. God has assigned to every species of the animal creation a boundary beyond which they cannot pass. To them there is no onward progress. They reach, not by gradual development, but at once, and without the aid of instruction, the perfection of their being. To this point nature says they may go, but no farther. Here shall their existence be stayed. No longing hopes, no yearning anticipations for something beyond, are kindled in the breast. Death is not to them a curtain, which may be lifted, and behind which they desire to look. It is an impenetrable veil, which stops their view, and forever intercepts their progress.

But man first creeps, then walks. In infancy his intellect is feeble, and depends upon the imperfect senses for its development. But reason soon unfolds its powers, and who can stay its march? The imagination spreads its wing, and who can check its flight? Man is distinguished from every thing else as a progressive being. Day by day he accumulates knowledge; day by day his faculties advance in power and development. He feels that his march is onward, and anticipation takes wing and rises to hopes of immortality. And God has thus written in man's very nature that these hopes are

founded in truth. He has set his seal on man as coined for eternity. It is to deny the image and superscription of one mightier than Cæsar, to deny that this gradual development of man's powers, and the hopes that rise from the consciousness of such a process, point to immortality as his assured destiny. Such then is man a creature composed of three natures, physical, intellectual, and moral, all united to form one being. Such is education the great instrument by which the character of man is to be formed the instrument by which the powers of the body are to be trained, by which the mental faculties are to be developed and expanded, by which the heart, the seat of the affections, is to be moulded.

I am well aware that in reaching this result, we have only come to a point that has been long established. That man is designed to be the subject of education, is a proposition too obvious to have been ever overlooked. I have already quoted a proverb, in use three thousand years ago, which shows that this truth was well understood then. In a later, but still a remote age, Philip of Macedon, in his famous letter to Aristotle, asking him to become the preceptor of the infant Alexander, says, "I am less grateful that the gods have given me a son, than that he is born in the time of Aristotle." It is said of the emperor Theodosius that he used frequently to sit by his children Arcadius and Honorius, whilst Arsenius taught them. He commanded them to show the same respect to their master that they would to himself; and surprising them once sitting, whilst Arsenius was standing, he took from them their princely robes, and did not restore them till a long time, nor even then but with much entreaty. So high a compliment to one who administered instruction, marked the value set upon instruction itself. But, though it would be easy to multiply proofs that the power of education has been known in all ages, it is still true that the first instance of an attempt on the part of a sovreign to diffuse it over all classes of his subjects has been reserved for the present king of Prussia. He has indeed provided ample means for the intellectual culture of youth; but, with a jesuitical skill in human nature, he takes care to weave in, with the very texture of the mind and heart, a love of monarchy and loyalty to a king. And let it be remarked, too, that education in Prussia is as much a matter of conscription as levies for the army. The children are as sternly required to attend the schools and go through the lessons, as the recruit to appear on parade or submit to the drill.

While thus we perceive the despotism of the Prussian monarch, we cannot deny that he has taken an enlightened course to reach his object. He seeks to rule his people through knowledge, and not, like other sovereigns, through ignorance. His scheme is founded upon the doctrine that man is formed by education; that such is the plastic, yielding, impressible character of human nature in early life, that skilful teaching may mould it to any shape. He is willing, therefore, to enlighten his subjects by the diffusion of knowledge, taking care, however, to braid in with the strands of learning ideas of the necessity of monarchical institutions and the duty of loyal allegiance to the crown. The system involves the doctrine that early impressions may control even an enlightened intellect; that the associations of childhood may be so multiplied and netted over the mind as to lead captive the giant powers of mature manhood; and that an instructed people, thus tied to the car of despotism, while they will be more powerful, will be equally submissive with the ignorant and uninstructed slave.. It is, therefore, a scheme founded in a deep knowledge of human character, and displaying a sagacity beyond the scope of ordinary kings. It is, however, a bold experiment, and the

world will look on with interest for the result. Time will determine whether an instructed people, even though trained to the yoke of monarchy, will continue to bend the neck and toil submissively at the plough.

But, though the Prussian sovereign has undertaken to see that education is diffused over the whole community throughout his dominions, he is not the first despot that has been a patron of learning. In the darkest periods of history, kings have sought to fortify their thrones by collecting men of learning around them, and by establishing colleges and universities, founded on such principles, however, as to render them little more than engines of state. And while a pretended love of learning has been thus displayed; while the light of knowledge has been kindled in a college, and has shed its influence on a select number, the people at large have been sedulously kept in the darkness and the gloom of ignorance.

But the crowned despots of the Eastern Hemisphere have not furnished the only barriers to the progress of general education. Priestcraft, in almost every age, has sought to sway mankind, by keeping them in ignorance, or, what is worse, by subjecting them to the influence of superstitious fiction. There

have been politicians, too, who, in their eagerness for power, have maintained the doctrine that the mass of mankind were happier if left in a state of ignorance. But it will be perceived that in all these cases, the power of education, in the formation of human character, is fully admitted and understood. The despot fears instruction, for it would teach the people their rights, and give them strength to overturn his dominion. The crafty priest, who seeks to exercise a harsher tyranny than that of kings, a tyranny over the mind, resists education, for it would show his superstitions to be the mere phantoms of a base juggler. And the politician, who "deems ignorance to be bliss," is obviously seduced into the notion that the mass of mankind are made to be slaves, merely by his wish to use them as such; thus admitting that ignorance tends to rivet the chains of bondage, and knowledge to cut them asunder.

Nor have I yet enumeratad all the difficulties with which Education has to contend. Even here in New England, where its importance has been admitted since the first landing of the Pilgrins, the lingering clouds of a dark age hang over the community. We see that even in Massachusetts, nine-tenths of the people fail of success in life, fail of attaining the true end of existence, through defective education. How is this? Go into society and you will find the cause. You will find that while the press is teeming with books, papers, and pamphlets upon this great subject; while the pulpit presses it upon the attention of the people; while the lecturer before the lyceum and the orator in our legislative halls are pouring forth eloquent appeals in behalf of education, that the people at large are still insensible to its real value, are still ignorant of its real compass and meaning?

Take a single point as an illustration. Look at our common schools. These seminaries are one of the most essential engines of instruction, and they obviously depend upon their teachers for success. Yet there is a current notion that any body can be a schoolmaster. The cultivator of the soil, indeed, must be trained to his task but the cultivation of the immortal mind may depend on instinct. The watch with its delicate wheels, its thread-like cogs, its hair-strung balance, may not be entrusted to a blacksmith, but a finer and nobler mechanism may be entrusted to an inexperienced bungler. I have heard of a man, who insisted that learning in a teacher was a positive hindrance to success. He was accustomed to

"When the

illustrate his opinions in the following manner: prophet desired to blow down the walls of Jericho, he did not take a brass trumpet or a polished French horn; but he took a ram's horn, a plain natural ram's horn, just at it grew. And so if you desire to overturn the Jericho of ignorance, you must not take a college learnt gentleman, but a plain, natural, ram'shorn sort of a man, like me.'

This may seem a little too absurd for practical illustration, but do we not meet with views in society which bear some analogy to it? How then can we be surprised if it often happens that the minds of children, subjected to the charge of unskilful teachers, are either injured or neglected, so as to render their operations capricious and uncertain as the ill-regulated watch.

Miss Hamilton, in her admirable work on Education, says that when a child, she read the passage of Scripture, "on this hang all the law and the prophets," as an injunction, a command, and accordingly she fancied the law and the prophets hanging up in a row on pegs! And she remarks, that so strong hold did this ludicrous error take of her mind, that it often occurred to her, after she arrived at mature years. I once knew a boy, in the olden days of Webster's Grammar, who found this definition in his book: "A noun is the name of a thing, as horse, hair, justice." But he chanced to misconceive it, and read it thus: A noun is the name of a thing, as horse-hair justice. He was of a reflecting turn, and long he pondered over the wonderful mysteries of a noun. But in vain; he could not make it out. His father was a justice of the peace, and one day, when the boy went home, the old gentleman was holding a justice's court. There he sat in state, among a crowd of people, on an old-fashioned horse-hair settee. A new light now broke in upon our young hero's mind. My father, said he, mentally, is a horse-hair justice, and therefore a noun ! Such are the grotesque vagaries of the youthful intellect, left to itself. How strong then is its claim to the assistance of an experienced and careful guide! And yet, it is a current notion in society, that specific instruction and technical preparation are not necessary to the schoolmaster!

We have come then to the conclusion, that it is the law of man's nature that his physical, moral, and intellectual faculties must be unfolded by education; that man without education is a savage, but little elevated above the brutes that perish;