The experiment of free government is not one which can be tried once for all. Every generation must try it for itself. Our fathers tried it, and were gloriously successful. We are now engaged in the trial; and, thank God, we have not yet failed! But neither our success, nor that of our fathers, can afford anything but example and encouragement to those who are to try it next. As each new generation starts up to the responsibilities of manhood, there is, as it were, a new launch of Liberty, and its voyage begins afresh. The winds and the waves must be propitiated before the shore is left; but this propitiation consists, not in some cruel proceeding, like that prescribed by the heathen oracle to the Grecian fleet, in binding son or daughter upon the pile of sacrifice, but in a process not more certain to call down the blessing of Heaven upon the enterprise, than it is to promote the true happiness and welfare of those upon whom it is performed.

Sons and daughters devoted to education are the only sacrifice which God has prescribed to render the progress of free government safe and certain.

ROBERT CHARLES WINTHROP.

CONTENTMENT.

NOT that which men do covet most is best,

Nor that thing worst which men do most refuse;

But fittest is that all, contented, rest

With that they hold: each hath his fortune in his breast,
It is the mind that maketh good or ill;

That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor;
For some that hath abundance at his will,
Hath not enough, but wants in greatest store;
And other, that hath little, asks no more;
But in that little is both rich and wise.

EDMUND SPENSER (In "Fairy Queen ")

2. THE SCHOOL-TEACHER.

THE conqueror moves in a march.

He stalks onward

with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of war, banners flying, shouts rending the air, guns thundering, and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded and the lamentations for the slain.

Not so the school-teacher. He meditates and purposes in secret the plans which are to bless mankind. He slowly gathers round him those who are to further their execution. He quietly, though firmly, advances in his humble path, laboring steadily, but calmly, till he has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the roots all the weeds of vice.

His is a progress not to be compared to anything like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels far more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the world, ever won. Such men, deserving the glorious title of Teachers of Mankind, I have found laboring conscientiously, though perhaps obscurely, in their blessed vocation, wherever I have gone. Heaven be thanked, their numbers everywhere abound, and are every day increasing!

Their calling is high and lofty. Their fame is the prosperity of nations. Their renown will fill the earth in after ages, in proportion as it sounds not far off in their own times. Each one of these great teachers of the world, possessing his soul in peace, performs his appointed course, awaits in patience the fulfilment of the promises; and, resting from his labors, bequeathes his memory to the generation whom his works have blessed, and sleeps under the humble but not inglorious epitaph commemorating "one in whom mankind lost a friend, and no man got rid of an enemy."

HENRY (LORD) BROUGHAM.

3. DESIRABLE OBJECTS OF ATTAINMENT.

AIM at the attainment of clear and accurate habits of thought. A man may think a great deal, and not think clearly; and it is quite possible to mistake muddiness for depth. There are men who appear very thoughtful; but there seems to be neither beginning, nor middle, nor end to what they say. All is a confused jumble. Writing carefully is a good plan for acquiring habits of clear and concerted thought, since a man is more likely to detect the disorder of his thoughts in writing than in talking.

Aim at independence of thought. There are some men who go in leading-strings all their days. They always follow in the path of others, with no good reason for their own opinions. Independence of mind is not presumptuous self-confidence, which is the associate of ignorance; but it is a modest yet firm exercise of judgment upon subjects which the mind understands, the opposite of that slavish habit which makes one man the mere shadow of another.

Acquire habits of observation. We live in a world of wonders. A thousand objects appeal to a proper use of our eyes and our ears. Books teach much; but that practical knowledge, so useful in the progress of life, that tact in business, so desirable, can only be gained by observation. As a mode of study, it is the cheapest and most convenient of all. Its handmaid is curiosity; and we should never let false pride, lest we should display ignorance, prevent us from asking a question, when it can be answered. The learned John Locke, on being asked how he had contrived to accumulate a mine of knowledge so rich, deep, and extensive, answered that he attributed what little he knew to the not being ashamed to ask for information, and to the rule he laid down of conversing

with all descriptions of men on those topics chiefly that formed their own professions and pursuits."

Cultivate humility. It is the attribute of great and noble minds. Sir Isaac Newton spoke of himself, at the close of life, as "a child who had spent his time in gathering pebbles on the shore, while the ocean remained untraversed;" and Mozart, the great musician, just before he died, said, "Now I begin to see what might be done in music." These ascended to a high elevation on the mountain of knowledge; but this gave them a better idea of the loftiness of the summit. The more we know, the more we shall be convinced of our own ignorance. This is trite enough; but if the great apostles of science and philosophy confessed they knew so little, what ground of boasting can there be for the tyro in their schools? Humility so beautiful and becoming, so allied to true intellectual greatness is of itself favorable to mental improvement. It opens the mind to receive instruction with docility, and makes one willing to be taught and corrected. Cultivate humility!

JOHN STOUGHTON.

4. SELF-SACRIFICING AMBITION.

To

WE need a loftier ideal to nerve us to heroic lives. know and feel our nothingness, without regretting it; to deem fame, riches, personal happiness, to be but shadows, of which human good is the substance; to welcome pain, privation, ignominy, so that the sphere of human knowl edge, the empire of knowledge, be thereby extended, such is the soul's temper which the heroes of the coming age should possess.

When the stateliest monuments of mighty conquerors shall have become shapeless and forgotten ruins, the

humble graves of earth's Howards and Frys shall still be freshened by the tears of fondly admiring millions; and the proudest epitaph shall be the simple entreaty,

Write me as one who loved his fellowmen."

Say not that I thus condemn and would annihilate ambition. The love of approbation, of esteem, of true glory, is a noble incentive, and should be cherished to the end. But the ambition which points the way to fame over torn limbs and bleeding hearts, which rejoices in the Tartarean smoke of the battle-field and the desolating tramp of the war-horse, that ambition is worthy only of archangel ruined." To make one conqueror's reputation, at least one hundred thousand bounding, joyous, sentient beings must be transformed into writhing and hideous fragments; must perish untimely, by deaths of agony and horror, leaving half a million widows and orphans to bewail their loss in destitution and anguish. This is too mighty, too awful a price to be paid for the fame of any hero, from Nimrod to Wellington.

True fame demands no such sacrifice of others. It requires us to be reckless of the outward well-being of but one. It exacts no hecatomb of victims for each triumphant pile; for the more who covet and seek it, the easier and more abundant is the success of all. With souls of celestial temper, each human life might be a triumph which angels would lean from the skies, delighted to witness and admire.

HORACE GREELEY.

SOUL CULTURE.

DELIGHTFUL task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot;

To

pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind, To breathe the enlivening spirit, and to fix The generous purpose in the glowing breast!

JAMES THOMSON.