we can, do good far and wide. Let us send light and joy, if we can, to the ends of the earth. The charity, which is now active for distant objects, is noble. We only wish to say, that it ranks behind the obscurer philanthropy, which, while it sympathises with the race, enters deeply into the minds, wants, interests of the individuals within its reach, and devotes itself patiently and wisely to the task of bring ing them to a higher standard of intellectual and moral worth.

We would suggest it to those who are anxious to do good on a grand and imposing scale, that they should be the last to cast into the shade the labours of the retired teacher of the young; because education is the germ of all other improvements, and because all their schemes for the progress of society must fail without it. How often have the efforts of the philanthropist been foiled, by the prejudices and brutal ignorance of the community which he has hoped to serve, by their incapacity of understanding him, of entering into and co-operating with his views! He has cast his seed on the barren sand, and of course reaped no fruit but disappointment. Philanthropists are too apt to imagine, that they can accomplish particular reformations, or work particular changes in a society, although no foundation for these improvements has been laid in its intellectual and moral culture. They expect a people to think and act wisely in special cases although generally wanting in intelligence, sound judgment, and the capacity of understanding and applying the principles of reason. But this partial improvement is a vain hope. The physician, who should spend his skill on a diseased limb, whilst all the functions were deranged, and the principle of life almost extinguished, would get no credit for skill. To do men permanent good, we must act on their whole nature, and especially must aid, foster, and guide their highest faculties, at the first period of their developement. If left in early life to sink into intellectual and moral torpor, if suffered to grow up unconscious of their powers, unused to study and wise exertion of the understanding, and strangers to the motives which ought to stir and guide human activity, they will be poor subjects for the efforts of the philanthropist. Benevolence is short-sighted indeed, and must blame itself for failure, if it do not see in education the chief interest of the human race.

One great cause of the low estimation in which the teacher is now held, may be found in narrow views of education. The multitude think, that to educate a child, is to crowd into its mind a given amount of knowledge, to teach the mechanism of reading and writing, to load the memory with words, to prepare a boy for the routine of a trade. No wonder, then, that they think almost every body fit to teach. The true end of education, as we have again and again suggested, is to unfold and direct aright our whole nature. Its office is to call forth Power of every kind, power of thought, affection, will, and outward action; power to observe, to reason, to judge, to contrive; power to adopt good ends firmly, and to pursue them efficiently; power to govern ourselves, and to influence others; power to gain and to spread happiness. Reading is but an instrument; education is to teach its best use. The intellect was created, not to receive passively a few words, dates, facts, but to be active for the acquisition of Truth.

Accordingly, education should labour to inspire a profound love of truth, and to teach the processes of investigation. A sound logic, by which we mean the science or art, which instructs us in the laws of reasoning and evidence, in the true methods of inquiry, and in the sources of false judgments, is an essential part of a good education. And yet how little is done to teach the right use of the intellect, in the common modes of training either rich or poor! As a general rule, the young are to be made, as far as possible, their own teachers, the discoverers of truth, the interpreters of nature, the framers of science. They are to be helped to help themselves. They should be taught to observe and study the world in which they live, to trace the connexions of events, to rise from particular facts to general principles, and then to apply these in explaining new phenomena. Such is a rapid outline of the intellectual education, which, as far as possible, should be given to all human beings; and with this, moral education should go hand in hand. In proportion as the child gains knowledge, he should be taught how to use it well, how to turn it to the good of mankind. He should study the world as God's world, and as the sphere in which he is to form interesting connexions with his fellow-creatures. A spirit of humanity should be breathed into him from all his studies. In teaching geography, the physical and moral condition, the wants, advantages, and striking peculiarities of different nations, and the relations of climate, seas, rivers, mountains, to their characters and pursuits, should be pointed out, so as to awaken an interest in man, wherever he dwells. History should be constantly used to exercise the moral judgment of the young, to call forth sympathy with the fortunes of the human race, and to expose to indignation and abhorrence, that selfish ambition, that passion for dominion, which has so long deluged the earth with blood and woe. And not only should the excitement of just moral feeling be proposed in every study. The science of morals should form an important part of every child's instruction. One branch of ethics should be particularly insisted on by the government. Every school, established by law, should be specially bound to teach the duties of the citizen to the state, to unfold the principles of free institutions, and to train the young to an enlightened patriotism. From these brief and imperfect views of the nature and ends of a wise education, we learn the dignity of the profession to which it is entrusted, and the importance of securing to it the best minds of the community. On reviewing these hints on the extent of education, we see that one important topic has been omitted. We have said, that it is the office of the teacher to call into vigorous action the mind of the child. He must do more. He must strive to create a thirst, an insatiable craving for knowledge, to give animation to study and make it a pleasure, and thus to communicate an impulse which will endure, when the instructions of the school are closed. The mark of a good teacher is, not only that he produces great effort in his pupils, but that he dismisses them from his care, conscious of having only laid the foundation of knowledge, and anxious and resolved to improve themselves. One of the sure signs of the low state of instruction among us is, that the young, on leaving school, feel as if the work of

intellectual culture were done, and give up steady, vigorous effort for higher truth and wider knowledge. Our daughters at sixteen and our sons at eighteen or twenty have finished their education. The true use of a school is, to enable and dispose the pupil to learn through life; and if so, who does not see that the office of teacher requires men of enlarged and liberal minds, and of winning manners, in other words, that it requires as cultivated men as can be found in society. If to drive and to drill were the chief duties of an instructor, if to force into the mind an amount of lifeless knowledge, to make the child a machine, to create a repugnance to books, to mental labour, to the acquisition of knowledge, were the great objects of the school-room, then the teacher might be chosen on the principles which now govern the schoolcommittees in no small part of our country. Then the man who can read, write, cipher, and whip, and will exercise his gifts at the lowest price, deserves the precedence which he now too often enjoys. But if the human being be something more than a block or a brute, if he have powers which proclaim him a child of God, and which were given for noble action and perpetual progress, then a better order of things should begin among us, and truly enlightened men should be summoned to the work of education.

Leaving the subject of instruction, we observe that there is another duty of teachers, which requires that they should be taken from the class of improved, wise, virtuous men. They are to govern as well as teach. They must preserve order, and for this end must inflict punishment in some of its forms. We know that some philanthropists wish to banish all punishment from the school. We would not discourage their efforts and hopes; but we fear, that the time for this reform is not yet come, and that as long as the want of a wise discipline at home supplies the teacher with so many lawless subjects, he will be compelled to use other restraints than kindness and reason. Punishment, we fear, cannot be dispensed with; but that it ought to be administered most deliberately, righteously, judiciously, and with a wise adaptation to the character of the child, we all feel; and can it then be safely entrusted, as is too much the case, to teachers undisciplined in mind and heart? Corporal punishment at present has a place in almost all our schools for boys, and perhaps in some for girls. It may be necessary. But ought not every parent to have some security, that his child shall not receive a blow, unless inflicted in wisdom, justice, and kindness? And what security can he have for this, but in the improved character of the instructor? We have known mournful effects of injudicious corporal punishment. We have known a blow to alienate a child from his father, to stir up bitter hatred towards his teacher, and to indispose him to study and the pursuit of knowledge. We cannot be too unwilling to place our children under the care of passionate teachers, who, having no rule over their own spirits, cannot of course rule others, or of weak and unskilful teachers, who are obliged to supply by severity the want of a wise firmness. It is wonderful how thoughtlessly parents expose their children to corporal punishment. Our laws have expunged whipping from the penal code, and the felon is exempted from this indignity. But how many boys are subjected to

a whipper in the shape of a school-master, whose whole mystery of discipline lies in the ferule. The discipline of a school is of vast importance in its moral influence. A boy compelled for six hours each day to see the countenance and hear the voice of an unfeeling, petulant, passionate, unjust teacher, is placed in a school of vice. He is all the time learning lessons of inhumanity, hard-heartedness, and injustice. The English are considered by the rest of Europe as inclined to cruelty. Their common people are said to be wanting in mercy to the inferior animals and to be ferocious in their quarrels, and their planters enjoy the bad pre-eminence of being the worst masters in the West Indies, with the exception of the Dutch. It is worth consideration, whether these vices, if they really exist, may not be ascribed in part to the unrestrained, barbarous use of whipping in their schools. Of one thing we are sure, that the discipline of a school has an important influence on the character of a child, and that a just, mild, benevolent teacher, who procures order by methods which the moral sense of his pupils approves, is perpetually spreading around him his own virtues. Should not our teachers then be sought from the class of the most enlightened and excellent men?

Our limits allow us to add but one more remark on the qualifications of teachers. It is important, that they should be able to cooperate with parents in awakening the religious principle in the young. We would not of course admit into schools the peculiarities of the denominations which divide the Christian world. But religion in its broadest sense should be taught. It should indirectly mix with all teaching. The young mind should be guided through nature and human history to the Creator and Disposer of the Universe; and still more, the practical principles and spirit of Christianity should be matters of direct inculcation. We know no office requiring greater wisdom, and none but the wise and good should be invited to discharge it.

We know that it will be objected to the views now given, that few, very few will be able to pay for such teachers as we recommend. We believe, however, that there is a large class, who if they had the will, and would deny themselves as they ought, might procure excellent instructors for their children; and as for the rest, let them do their best, let them but throw their hearts into this cause, and improvements will be effected, which have not been anticipated, perhaps not conceived. We acknowledge, however, that our remarks have been intended chiefly for the opulent. Let an interest in education be awakened in this class, and let more generous means for its promotion be employed, and we are satisfied that the teaching of all classes will be advanced. The talent of the country will be more and more directed to the office of instruction, and the benefit will spread through the whole community.

stitution is violated by any action endangering the slave-holding portion of our country. A higher law than the Constitution forbids this unholy interference. Were our national union dissolved, we ought to reprobate, as sternly as we now do, the slightest manifestation of a disposition to stir up a servile war. Still more, were the Free and the Slave-holding States not only separated, but engaged in the fiercest hostilities, the former would deserve the abhorrence of the world and the indignation of Heaven, were they to resort to insurrection and massacre as means of victory. Better were it for us to bare our own breasts to the knife of the slave, than to arm him with it against his

master.

It is not by personal, direct action on the mind of the slave that we can do him good. Our concern is with the free. With the free we are to plead his cause. And this is peculiarly our duty, because we have bound ourselves to resist his own efforts for his emancipation. We suffer him to do nothing for himself. The more, then, should be done for him. Our physical power is pledged against him in case of revolt. Then our moral power should be exerted for his relief. His weakness, which we increase, gives him a claim to the only aid we can afford, to our moral sympathy, to the free and faithful exposition of his wrongs. As men, as Christians, as citizens, we have duties to the slave, as well as to every other member of the community. On this point we have no liberty. The eternal law binds us to take the side of the injured; and this law is peculiarly obligatory when we forbid him to lift an arm in his own defence.

Let it not be said we can do nothing for the slave. We can do much. We have a power mightier than armies, the power of truth, of principle, of virtue, of right, of religion, of love. We have a power, which is growing with every advance of civilisation, before which the slave-trade has fallen, which is mitigating the sternest despotisms, which is spreading education through all ranks of society, which is bearing Christianity to the ends of the earth, which carries in itself the pledge of destruction to every institution which debases humanity. Who can measure the power of Christian philanthropy, of enlightened goodness, pouring itself forth in prayers and persuasions, from the press and pulpit, from the lips and hearts of devoted men, and more and more binding together the wise and good in the cause of their race? All other powers may fail. This must triumph. It is leagued with God's omnipotence. It is God himself acting in the hearts of his children. It has an ally in every conscience, in every human breast, in the wrong-doer himself. This spirit has but begun its work on earth. It is breathing itself more and more through literature, education, institutions, and opinion. Slavery cannot stand before it. Great moral principles, pure and generous sentiments, cannot be confined to this or that spot. They cannot be shut out by territorial lines, or local legislation. They are divine inspirations, and partake of the omnipresence of their Author. The deliberate, solemn conviction of good men through the world, that slavery is a grevious wrong to human nature, will make itself felt. To increase this moral power is every man's duty. To ombody and express this great truth is in every man's power,