These means are arranged in a naturally ascending series, corresponding to the gradually unfolding powers of the mind; beginning with those which arrest the eager curiosity of the youngest child, and ending with those which reveal themselves only to the patient analysis of the profound philosopher. To the teacher belongs the duty of applying these in their proper portions their suitable times and their simple forces. If the body has not so much of the natural food as it can well digest, it languishes and is not such a body as God designed. If the mind has not so much of its natural aliment as it can well digest, it languishes, is stinted, and is not such a character as God designed.

The question, then, is, What has God provided for the best nourishment of the young mind? and how should these means of development be applied so that we may realize God's idea of a man?

The answer to these two questions will show two facts: 1st- that our elementary schools do not apply all the provided means and 2dly that they never will unless they be furnished with purposely-prepared teachers. Hence the need of teacher's seminaries.

New England does not believe that such seminaries are necessary. It is not apathy but ignorance which is the occasion of this unbelief. Not one voter in ten knows what education is; its difficulties or expense, its principles or its needs. It is ignorant parents and ignorant citizens, therefore, who hang as dead weights upon our wheels. As soon as we can make the community feel the truth of its situation, it will immediately see the indispensable importance of teacher's semi

naries.

I honor the schoolmaster and the schoolmistress. No higher office on earth than theirs; and I would labor at the top of my strength for years to have them prepared as they wish to be and paid as they ought to be. No class in the community is so sparingly paid. It is quite time that the fertilizing dew of some surplus revenue should fall on these parched fields. Town-schools are the people's colleges and their teachers should be able professors; and, as such, should be generously supported while they are faithful, and in old age protected against want. In the Duchy of Baden John George Sulger kept a town-school through fifty years. In January 7th, 1836, the city celebrated the jubilee. The Grand Duke sent this literary Spartan a gold medal, and wrote a compli

mentary letter. The Prefect made an address. Thus virtue and elementary instruction were honored, as they should be, together.

How can we persuade our citizens that teacher's seminaries and tempting salaries are absolutely necessary but by showing that the full and proper application of all the means of physical, intellectual and moral culture requires knowledge, skill and principle such as have not been found in town-school teachers and such as cannot be expected under the present system? Yes, we must show parents that their children's souls are half starved every day, and then, and not till then, will they set about providing for them a full meal.

May not the whole subject be embraced in these questions:

1st. What should an instructer of a town-school be required to teach?

2nd. What traits of character are necessary in a competent instructer ?

3d. Do our instructers teach all that should be taught; and are they in qualifications all they should be?

4th. Are teacher's seminaries desirable?

1. What should a town-schoolmaster be required to teach? Whatever will most fully and rapidly develop the physical, intellectual and moral powers of youth-the capacity of seizing thought being the required extent of culture.

Suppose the divine Saviour, who knew what was in man, could personally educate a child now on the earth. Every part of that child's complex nature would be so nourished by its appropriate exercises and studies as to make him, to the utmost, healthy, intelligent and good; and, of course, useful and happy. These exercises and studies, each in its proper order and due extent, are those which I wish to see introduced into all the schools of the United States.

But this answer to the above question seems too general; and as we have not divine knowledge and wisdom we need spend no time in guessing what these would be, but must proceed according to our dim vision and brief experience to reason from facts beneath our eye and from analogies universally acknowledged.

I place a common high school before me and say that there should be taught in that school;

1. RELIGION; those eternal truths of natural and revealed religion which all sects believe and reverence; barring,

as by statute, all sectarian dogmatics. Religion thus considered should be made the basis of all education.

2. READING. It should be confined to what can be understood and felt ; then reading will be, what it should be, soul-reaching conversation. The pupil will read a paragraph from a book as he would speak it without a book. Opinions should be asked on the facts and sentiments of the lesson and their truth familiarly discussed.

3. SPELLING. This exercise should always be accompanied with definitions and with conversations on the etymology of words. Sentences should be invented by the teacher, at the moment, illustrating the different forces of the same word.

4. WRITING. In this I may include drawing and sketching from nature. Almost every German, Hollandise and Prussian child can sketch a landscape, a machine or a face. His fingers can give out what his eye takes in. Our children, if so instructed, could do the same, and therein save half the time now occupied in torturing the graces of nature.

5. MUSIC. Milton in his treatise on education recommends this very earnestly to children. He says, "let them compose their travelled spirits with the solemn harmonies of music, heard or learned; for, if prophets and wise men are not extremely out, music hath a great power over the manners and dispositions to smooth and make them gentle from rustic harshness and distempered passions." Every German and Prussian child can sing; some better, some worse. Singing teaches modulations and tones, increases the compass of the voice and prevents consumption. National airs and moral songs sink deep into the soul. They fill the young heart with uncounted wealth; for there they are in the inmost spirit, lifelong, setting its tone and being within to an eternal voice of action and repose, solace and virtue. The familiar strains of former days not only bring up the lessons of childhood, but wake into life the very accents of our another.

6. MATHEMATICS; including arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, stereometry, surveying and algebra. This for aiding intellectual strength stands first among studies. It is inductive as in geometry; analytic as in algebra. It is a system of close thinking; the only unerring syllogism. We call that a great intellect which has accuracy and speed, the proper media, rapid combinations and apposite exam

ples; and whose words geometrically cover his ideas. These qualities belong to mathematics. In this day of rail-roads and land-surveying every American boy should be deeply versed in this science.

7. GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY. These should go together, particularly as regards the United States - the most important branch. The sketching of maps and making out of historical tables should accompany this study. Lectures, illustrated by paintings, and also by globes three feet in diameter (and such should be furnished by government) are the best means of instruction. I fear that the common modes by recitation are little more than tripping over a catalogue of unfructifying names.

8. NATURAL HISTORY; an invaluable study both for the heart and head. Anatomy, zoology, geology and botany are God's demonstrative lessons of wisdom and love; the incarnation of his ideas. His goings forth are in these; they are therefore his preached word. They can be seen, felt, handled, and are on this account vastly easier than grammar for children to understand. They teach mathematics, poetry and religion.

Similar remarks may be

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made on this ennobling study, as it embraces chemistry, astronomy, mechanics and optics. 'If," says an eloquent writer, "you would study astronomy, study geometry; if you would study anatomy, study mechanics; if you would study the effect of any or all education upon human conduct, study history. From that vantage ground you will see, as the optician discovers, that all colors are necessary to make up the pure white light of day; that all principles of knowledge are but parts of one great and glorious whole." As natural history should be illustrated by dissections and models, so natural philosophy should be by accurate drawings and plain experiments. More real knowledge may be communicated and more positive mental activity brought out by one visible explanation than by a month's delving over mere book descriptions. The great teacher of us all is NATURE, which is blooming, attractive and simple; and the great Moral Teacher caught nature's happy mode and taught by analogies and parables.

10. TECHNOLOGY. Bigelow's volume on this subject should be simplified for schools. The common things of common life are profound philosophy, and they should have

their rationale explained. There is not a chapter in that book which has not something valuable for boys twelve years old.

11. POLITICS, as a branch of moral science, are of primary value in a republic. Every citizen of a free state should know well all that is contained in "Sullivan's Political Class Book."

12. POLITICAL ECONOMY. This science, as connecting itself with all the duties, social wants and judgments of common life, is becoming every day more useful to the American citizen, demonstrating to him how the good of each is knit to the good of all.

13. FOREIGN MODERN LANGUAGES. In every Prussian high school Latin is taught as required by law, and also some foreign modern language. What leads so directly to the accurate use of words and to certain habits of analysis, as the tracing of parallels in different tongues? Of the 16,000 primitive words in the English language, 6,732 are derived from the Latin; 4,812 from the French; 1,665 from the Saxon; 1,148 from the Greek; 691 from the Dutch, and the other thousand from 24 different languages. Can a teacher, ignorant of all these, be called competent ?

14. LOGICAL EXERCISES. In other words, conversation. In Germany, Holland, Prussia, and, I may now add, France and England, these exercises have risen to the first rank among the true means of elementary culture. Questions for debate (prepared by distinguished scholars) are given out by the teacher to the whole school, and every one says what he thinks and feels. The school law requires that two hours of every day shall be occupied in this trial of mind. Of all means, which I have seen used, it is the most directly efficient in tempting forth thought and in shaping character — the great desiderata in education. This exercise keeps awake the curiosity, the attention, the judgment and the conscience all at once. In fact it keeps the whole mind of the pupil in a state of positive activity, as opposed to that passive state wherein no pupil learns. In these free and always amicable conflicts, the children get to express themselves with accuracy and ease, and thus in the best way learn grammar in its philosophical form as an analysis of human thought. This I deem a great point gained; for to express ideas clearly and concisely is the "flower of the art of expression," and, like the flower, is apt to attract us to the plant on which it grows.