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truism, that the very best place for every child between the ages of four and sixteen, and during the whole of that period, is the school-room. The real signification of the term Education should not be misapprehended. Mere book knowledge were scarcely more desirable than no literature. The period spoken of is the season for fashioning the man. Literature deserves

great praise, but its offices and merits have been magnified. Unless man is to be housed and withdrawn from nature and the world, it becomes him to rely on this aid for an education—reservedly. A child may be incessantly conversant with books, and yet have as little practical knowledge as an automaton. We have daily proofs of the perversions of literature under this form. We constantly meet with lamentable instances of men and women, who know only to read and write, who indeed can do the latter but very indifferently, and who are distressed at being placed in a predicament requiring an ordinary degree of tact. Such plead guilty to the name of fools, when required to kindle a fire; nor do they aspire to sufficient philosophy to comprehend the uses of an ordinary furnace or cooking stove. Possibly such might make or mend a pen, but to harness a horse would set their entire stock of ingenuity at defiance. Literature is but the key to knowledge, as knowledge is but the key to truth. The man is

no more educated with the faculties of the mind alone brought into action, or in whom the physical organs alone are exercised, than the whole efficient force of an army is brought to bear upon the enemy with the infantry alone, or the artillery alone, in the combat. Physical and inental training must proceed pari passu. The exercise of the body will help to digest the pabulum of the mind. Every sense must be disciplined and developed; and the Schoolhouse, Books, and Teachers, are but instruments, manuals, and aids to this. Text Books and formulas, unless they stimulate thoughts, are clogs rather than aids in strengthening the mind. The true and full bred man is only formed by a due union of study, observation, and experience. There is a dispepsia as afflictive and stupefying in the pathology of mind, as in physical pathology. Literature may surfeit the young mind with a multitude of words. In the rage for literature, ideas are quite lost sight of. From frequent repetition and incessant drilling, language loses its efficacy in monotony. The Malay manifests great fondness for literature. He will purchase books and devour them with avidity.

But it is only for the music which the words produce on his ear. His mind is untrained to thought, so that the ideas they are intended to convey he cannot comprehend. While therefore the child may and should be furnished with the best aids for making his attainments, due care should be taken that in the use of means they be not exalted above ends.

The urgent recommendation by the Secretary of a greater uniformity of School Books reminds us of a circular, which has recently been issued by the superintendent of common schools in the State of New York. He urges in it with great firmness the adoption throughout the State, in all the schools, of the New Testament as a Reading Book. The conservators of religion are indebted to the subtle refinements of the present day, backed by its well weighed scruples, for the fancy, that it is a profanation to make use of the Bible as a common school book. And this fine-spun logic is put forward in despite of all the experience of the past. The doctrines once deemed sound, that line must be given upon line, and precept upon precept, now that the moral sense, like the intellect of Minerva, is born into instinctive maturity, is rejected. The teachings of religion which, that they might have due force, were, under a theocracy, enjoined to be taught in the house and by the way, sitting down and rising up, on going out and on coming in, by being written on the posts of the doors and the tablets of the heart, are now practically enforced by a converse scheme. An outline of this is to be found in the canons of a sect, which prohibits the Bible to the common people; and a model, in the usages of our own times, which, while they advocate its freedom, in example, discourage its use, which can discover more beauty in the device of apples of gold set in pictures of silver, than in words fitly spoken, and which, lest they should manifest cant in set phrases, or a discrepancy of profession and practice, carefully keep the oracles of religion as an ornament for the centre table, and take public opinion for their rule of faith and conduct.

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But such practices will not stand the test of a close ordeal. Truth is not contaminated by contact. Familiarity with it only serves to increase for it our admiration and reverence. deed, like the rarest gems, its beauties are only dicovered by the grindings and polishings of close attrition and constant use. Human nature is now what it ever was. Mothers in ancient times taught their absurd mythologies to their children in their

infant years; and shall they, to whom is committed the ark of the covenant, transmit it to posterity, with the most significant expressions of indifference or disgust? If men have confidence in the power of their religion, they will administer it to their children with their mothers' milk, and daily engrave it, as with a pen of iron, upon their hearts. Were it the business of education to train buffoons, and to ridicule serious things, then might the friends of virtue shrink from making the Bible a manual; but when its office is to educate the whole man, how absurd were it to contravene this intention by a nice squeamishness. It is pretty generally admitted that the education of the intellect, without the moral sentiments, tends neither to the diminution of crime nor the increase of happiness. Let the Bible, then, without note or comment be the daily reading book in our common schools. Such has been the early practice of our Commonwealth, a practice which has made our community the model to many others of virtue and intelligence. Far be the day distant, when she cuts herself adrift from this anchor of her safety.*

In treating on the subject of Teachers the Secretary speaks with great power and eloquence. Nearly the whole of this topic is taken up in giving some hints to school committees, as to the tests, by which they may, if themselves of even limited acquirements, ascertain the qualifications of those who offer themselves as candidates for teaching. This chapter every school-committee man should read, ponder well, and study.

The literary and moral qualifications of the teacher, together with his aptness to impart instruction, are all discussed with that glowing fervor, which genuine talents, combined with true

*To the practice recommended in these remarks we wholly object, if by reading the Bible in school be meant reading the whole Bible in course, without discrimination or selection the ancient method. To the reading of the whole of the four gospels and the book of Acts in course, with selections judiciously made from the Epistles and the books of the Old Testament, there can lie, we think, no objection, provided still, that the manner of the reading be carefully looked after. But if this exercise is to be left for the closing one of the school, to be hurried over with the indecent haste usually attendant on the last recitation, without remark or illustration on the part of the teacher, as a mere exercise in the art of reading, and not distinctly as a religious one, - rather than this, we say without hesitation, it were far safer for the child's moral and religious impressions, that the use of the book in school were entirely interdicted. - ED.

zeal, sincere love for, and a thorough understanding of the whole subject, inspire. The standard of excellence which he adopts is indeed elevated. Such it should be, since collateral branches of the business of education, such as attention to the convenience of the scholar, more than keep pace with the supply of good teachers; as it is obvious that a schoolhouse can be built sooner than a good teacher can be qualified for it. This is inevitable. The demand for teachers must precede the supply. Teachers will not qualify themselves for places, which are never to require them; nor indeed is a peculiar power of taste or intellect developed till it is in demand. The people must take the lead; and the leaders must be content to make considerable outlays of time, money, and patience, before they obtain precisely what is wanted. If a few schoolhouses be built of the very first class, where high salaries will be paid, and they at once become prizes for enterprise and talent, numbers will forthwith engage in the preparation of themselves for the places, and among them all some will be found worthy.

On the subject of employing emulation, as a means of literary excellence, Mr. Mann entertains enlightened views, and speaks, though briefly, with much cogency. This view of the subject, namely, the inexpediency of employing emulation, may be set down as one of the just results of modern philosophical inquiry. It is applicable to practice and compassionate in its operation. Scarcely ten years ago to introduce it into colleges among students of comparatively mature years was deemed chimerical. An institution in Vermont had the temerity to adopt its forms of government repudiating this principle of action, and the eyes of the world have been attracted to it. About the same time a young man, a student at Cambridge, had the moral courage uniformly to decline the honor, to which his scholarship entitled him; and in a prize essay, which was unsuccessful, but which he subsequently published, defended himself with arguments between which, and those advanced by Mr. Mann against employing emulation, there is a striking coincidence.

These views are fast obtaining currency, and there is reason to believe, that a principle so opposed to the spirit of humanity, will not be brought to act with its unholy influence on young and susceptible hearts. "The Christian virtues," says the Re

VOL. XXXIII. -3D S. VOL. XV. NO. I.

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port," are found to have an efficiency vastly superior as motives to exertion." It is to be regretted that Mr. Mann has not taken ground more decided on the subject of corporal punishment. He admits that " any person who, in establishing his authority, begins back where the brute begins, and where the savage begins, can have no approvable capacity for the government of a school ;" and yet, by a sort of faltering equivocation, neutralizes the whole force of his statement in saying, "I would by no means be understood to express the opinion, that, in the present state of society, punishment, and even corporal punishment, can be dispensed with by all teachers in all schools, and with regard to all scholars." What would have been the force of Mr. Mann's argument in favor of a high degree of qualification for the arduous duty of teaching, if at the close of it he had said, that all the requisitions in the present state of society were not to be expected? Such facts and admissions people are sufficiently ready to take for granted. We hold that the community should resist, with indignation and retribution, every attempt of the teacher to establish his authority or enforce his rules by brute force. Confinement, supension, and expulsion are the only justifiable penal measures which any teacher may adopt. To entrust them with any greater liberties with the person of the child is abhorrent to nature. The infliction on the child of every species of corporal punishment is a prerogative exclusively parental; as the infliction of a similar punishment on the adult belongs exclusively to civil authority. To delegate any power over the person to any one not influenced by the restraints, which nature in the provision of parental tenderness has instituted, is as unauthorized by the designs of Providence, as it is dangerous to humanity. To be efficacious, corporal punishment must be accompanied with love, that love which in inflicting pain is first wounded at outraged virtue, and then agonized at suffering humanity. Corporal punishment otherwise administered may indeed temporarily check through fear, but instead of subduing the propensity to evil it excites indignation and revenge, which, though for the time suppressed, rankle in the bosom, and eventually break forth in lawless and fearful impetuosity.

But let the teacher adopt the expedients of expulsion and confinement, and he will find no ally so powerful. To exile a child from his fellows touches his pride and chastens his sympathies, and thus cultivates those affections which, in this case,

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