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has given; to build upon that which may sus- of conscience; to carry forward its civilization, tain, and in the order in which the removal of promote its welfare and prosperity, and contrino one stone may endanger the entire structure.bute to the happiness and well-being of its citiThat base is intellectual education.

"When I speak of moral education, I imply religion; and when I speak of religion, I speak of christianity. It is morality-it is conscience par excellence. Even in the most worldly sense, it could easily be shown that no other morality so truly binds, no other education so effectually secures even the coarse and material interests of society. The economist himself would find his gain in such a system. It works his most sanguine speculations of good into far surer and more rapid conclusions, than any system he could attempt to set up in its place. No system of philosophy has better consulted the mechanism of society, or jointed it together with a closer adaptation of all its parts, than christianity. No legislator who is truly wise-no christian-will for a moment think-for the interests of society and religion, which indeed are one-of separating christianity from moral education. It would be quite as absurd as to separate moral education from intellectual. But this is very different from sectarianism."

on

EDUCATION.

WE take the following extracts from a work "Mental and Moral Culture and Popular Education," by S. S. RANDALL, recently published by C. S. Francis & Co. New-York, and J. H. Francis, Boston.

zens. His intellectual and moral faculties must
be so cultivated and developed as to enable him,
in the right exercise of his judgment and dis-
crimination, to arrive at just conclusions upon
the various questions of individual, social, or
public concernment, in relation to which he may
In his researches into the his-
be called to act.
tory of the past, as well as in his investigations
of the varying phenomena and results of science
and the arts; in his study of the universe, as
well of matter as of mind, he should be ena-
bled to proceed upon enlarged and comprehen-
sive principles, to separate the essential and the
permanent from the transitory and the accidental,
and to deduce those conclusions which alone can
strengthen and invigorate the intellectual powers,
and carry forward the whole mind in its pursuit
of truth.

HARMONIOUS CULTURE.

Let the teacher, then, ponder well the deep responsibilities which his office involves. Let him reflect that to him is committed the direction, in a great degree, of the future destines of immortal beings, fresh from the hands of their Creator, and entering upon a career of existence which is to know no termination. Above all, let him be deeply and seriously impressed with the reflection that, during the rapidly fleeting is going on with an impulse which cannot be reyears of childhood, the great work of education strained; that, while the body is progressing to maturity, the intellectual and moral faculties are constantly participating in all the influences daily and hourly presented by the external world; that "The great end and aim of all education the wonderful elements of mind are incessantly should be to confer upon the pupil an enligh engaged in the solution of the great problem of tened knowledge of the fundamental laws and existence; and that, with or without the instruc constitution of his nature, and a clear perception which it is his duty to communicate, results tion of his duties and obligations as an intelli- of infinite moment to the future welfare and gent, moral, and social being. He should be prosperity of the beings confided to his care wil made to comprehend, so far as it is possible for be attained. him to do so, his wonderful and mysterious exis tence; the great purposes for which he was created; the high duties and responsibilities devolved upon him; the various physical and mental faculties which he possesses; their adaptation to each other, and to the external world of matter as well as mind; their limitations and restrictions; their capacities for action and enjoyment; the consequences resulting from their proper and harmonious action, in the elevation, expansion, and happiness of his nature; and the inevitable retributions and sufferings flowing from the discordant play of the passions and the violation of the laws of his being. He should early be taught to recognize the supremacy of the moral sentiments, the dictates of duty, the voice of God within his soul; and that he may rightly understand and intelligently interpret the will of his Creator, his intellect must stored with the rich treasures of knowledge; his perceptions of truth rendered clear and undisturbed; his faculties of analysis, discrimination, comparason, and reason, kept in constant, regular, and healthy exercise; and every admixture of error carefully removed. He must be taught to regard himself as a portion of the community in which he resides, bound to consult its paramount interests, to obey cheerfully all its laws, and conform to its institutions, in so far as they do not clearly subvert the obligations of duty and

"PROPORTION-symmetry-are the first great rules of all education. No single chord of our complicated being should be left untouched or unstrung. They are placed in us in order to be sounded; sounded separately, they produce monotony-sounded without a knowledge of their combinations, discord. The very wants which we experience are permitted by a wise Providence to rouse and stimulate us to act. There would be no gradation-no activity-no constant tending to perfection, without them. They are calculated with the nicest wisdom not only to rouse but to expand. This feeling of unity of keeping in the intellectual and moral man, as well as in the physical, was the beau ideal of ancient education. Plato, Cicero, Quinctilian, under one form or another, exhibit this modelinimitable perhaps, but not unapproachable-as the visible and tangible of their philosophy. But already in their day the "division of labor' system had crept into education. There was a master for virtue, and a master for knowledge, a teacher of arguments and a teacher of persua sion. In like manner, we not only have different drillers for different portions of the same man, but what is a great deal worse, we often omit,

in our drilling, many of these portions altogether. We make up minds as we make up goods, not according to their really intrinsic qualities, but according to what they are likely at the moment to bring in the market-the "style of thing" actually in demand. But fashion, no more in this, than in any other of its caprices, is to be relied on; the fashion passes, even while preparing for it; and the "single power" man, like the "single speech" man, cannot work in the new machinery, and is necessarily thrown by when most needed, as altogether worthless-of no practical use."-Wyse, p. 74.

A CONTRAST.

FLETCHER, of Saltoun, gives a dreadful picture of the state of Scotland, at the close of the

seventeenth century:

to prevent its too frequent, and oftentimes im proper use. But we also most sincerely believe that there are instances in which the highest good of a school, as well as the good of an offender,.demands a severe application of the rod. Its use, however, should never be resorted to, hastily or passionately. There are teachers, and there are parents, who for every slight offence of a child, fly to the rod, and with passionate violence use it. This we regard as extremely unwise and wrong. We would not advocate the use of the rod on every occasion-for every offence, but would endeavor to have the infrequency of its use contribute in no small degree, to its efficacy. When resorted to, it should be with calmness and seriousness, and the whole case with all its circumstances, should be so represented and explained that the whole school and the offender himself, shall see and feel that the teacher is about to perform an unpleasant and painful duty-a duty from the discharge of which he shall never shrink when called upon by circum

stances to act.

After suitably commenting upon the circumstances and the nature of the case, let the rod be applied with such a degree of severity as shall him that "the way of the transgressor is" and subdue the guilty one and strongly impress upon always will be "hard." This, followed by a kindness on the part of the teacher, which shall show that nought has been done in malice," will, almost invariably, produce the desired

result.

"There are, at this day" he says, (1698) "in Scotland, besides a great many poor families, very meanly provided for by the church-boxes, (with others who by living upon bad food fall into various diseases,) two hundred thousand people begging from door to door. And though the number of these be, perhaps, double to what it was formerly, by reason of this present great distress, yet in all times there have been about one hundred thousand of these vagabonds, who have lived without any regard or subjection, either to the laws of the land or even those of God and Nature. No magistrate could ever discover or be informed, which way one in a hundred of Good order and submission to wholesome reguthese wretches died, nor that ever they were baptized. Many murders have been discovered lations must be insisted upon in every good among them, and they are not only a most un-school and family. These should be obtained by speakable oppression to poor tenants, (if they in any case be sacrificed to a frequently conceiv mild and kind means if possible, but should not give not bread or some kind of provision to per haps forty such villians on one day, are sure to ed, though we think erroneous idea, that the use be insulted by them,) but they rob many poor of the rod savors too much of cruelty and bru people who live in houses distant from any neigh. tality. If boys so far depart from a proper borhood. In years of plenty many thousand of course, as to allow brutal passions to gain the (C set at them meet together in the mountains, where ascendency, under whose control they they feast and riot for many days; and at coun- nought" all good requirements and salutary retry weddings, markets, burials, and other the gulations of parents or teachers, they should be like public occasions, they are to be seen, both promptly met and conquered by arguments well men and women perpetually drunk, cursing, adapted to the ground they have presumed to blaspheming and fighting together."

A system of parochial education was shortly afterwards established in Scotland, and the result was, that Scotland, then one of the most barbarous countries in Christendom, became and has for a century and a half remained the most orderly. Is not here a lesson for statesmen and political economists, no less than for philanthropists and social reformers ?

occupy.

A GREAT ERROR.-READ.

A.

HEAR Some remarks from an address of Horace Greely, Esq. of New-York, on the "Formation of Character." The prevailing evil spoken of needs to be seen and done away.

"There remains one other monstrous error of [For the District School Journal.] our fireside education which I cannot refrain CORPORAL PUNISHMENT. from exposing, though I am aware that it is less elemental than those I have already repreWITHIN a few years, probably, no subject has hended, and in fact is but an off-shoot from them been discussed more frequently, or with more in--a branch of that great Upas of false formaterest, by the friends of popular education, than tion of character, whereof I have endeavored to the practice of inflicting corporal punishment in expose the gnarled and writhing roots to general our schools. These discussions have, unques-scrutiny and abhorrence. I allude to the fatal tionably, done good, and will do still more, if conducted with a proper spirit; but while en deavoring to turn the public attention to the correction of any evil or abused privilege, there is great danger of tending to opposite extremes. We believe the rod has been used too freely in our schools, and think something should be done

practice of paying for virtue, or rewarding with adventitious indulgence acts of integrity and of duty. As in its nature and origin this is a compound of most of the errors I have enumerated, so is it in its consequences more pernicious than any one of them. The child which for performing a task nimbly and faithfully, for acquiring a

lesson rapidly and thoroughly, is rewarded with some dainty confectionary or glittering toy, you have doubly corrupted; first, in making that a task, which, being a duty, should also be a pleasure in itself; secondly, in pampering an appetite or a craving, which, being fictitious, cannot fail to be evil. If that task were not properly his-if that lesson were not of itself worth acquiring-you should not have imposed it. If it were, you have blinded him to its true worth and meaning; you have taught him to look astray for the reward of well doing; you have made that which was a simple and true action, no longer such, but a finesse-a dexterous feat a sinister calculation. The child thus paid to do right will soon have learned not to do right without payment. It will not accept the harvest as the proper recompense of its toil and culture, but will clamor to be paid beside for sowing and

nurturing it. Worse even than this is the delusion implanted, that daintier food and gaudier toys are of more value than elevating knowledge and habits of healthful industry-in fact, that they are of any value at all. But time would fail me to trace out all the evil consequences of that one woful folly, by which you have polluted all the springs of action, clouded the moral vision, and corrupted the very soul of the victim of your fatally mistaken policy. Let us banish forever the idea of reward for well-doing extraneous from and unrelated to itself. There is nothing like it in nature-in the vast universe. God never promised a reward thus detached from an alien to the obedience it would recompense; the Devil promises, but never pays. It is ignorance to desire, madness to expect any. thing like it."

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[These engravings are taken from "The Youth's Plutarch," (by the author of Popular Lessons, &c.,) a selection from Plutarch's Lives, of a few of those individuals who were the friends of peace, of law, and civil order in the better days of Greece and Rome. The writer has adapted these histories especially to the youth of our country, giving them a modern form of language, in strict conformity to the facts of the original. The moral value of the writings of the nean sage," has been acknowledged for eighteen centuries, and they are as instructive in the present day as they were in the first century, when they were presented to the world.]

66 Chero

Here, as long as the Romans were a free people, all the affairs of the state were debated in a most public manner, and from the rostra, elevat

ed in the midst of the square, and with their eyes fixed on the capitol, which immediately minds with patriotism, whilst the Tarpeian rock faced them, and which was suited to fill their reminded them of the fate reserved for treason or corruption,-the noblest of orators "wielded of gathered thousands with one object, one wish, at will the fierce democracy," or filled the souls one passion-the freedom and glory of the Roman race-e freedom which would have been more enduring had the glory been less.

"Yes; in yon field below,

A thousand years of silenced factions sleep-
And still the eloquen' air breathes, burns with Cicero'
The Formn, where the immortal accents glow,
"The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood:
Here a proud people's passions were exhaled,
From the first hour of empire in the bud,
To that when further worlds to conquer fail'd;
But long before had Freedom's face been veil'd,
And Anarchy assumed her attributes;
Till every lawless soldier who assail'd'
Trud on the trembling senate's slavish mutes,
Or raised the vena! voice of baser prostitutes **

Here the orators of the people brought their accusations against public men, or pronounced the eulogies of such as had died for their country, and here also were exhibited the bleeding heads or lifeless bodies of traitors, (or as it but too often happened,) of men unjustly deemed so by an overbearing faction.

The Forum was the court of justice, and in the homely days of the early Republic, civil and criminal causes were tried and decided by simple laws, in the open air, or in very plain sheds built in this square. The humble schools for the republican children (for these old Romans had places of public instruction for even the poor people) stood round the Forum, and seem to have been intermixed with shops, shambles. stalls, lowly temples, and altars. It was as she used to cross the Forum, day by day, in her way, to and from school, that the innocent young Vir ginia, a maiden of plebeian rank but extraordinary beauty, unhappily attracted the notice of the lustful and tyrannical Decemvir, Appius Claudius, who sat there on the tribunal, surrounded by lictors to administer the laws which he himself outraged. It was here, as she was on her way to school, that Appius had her seiz ed. Livy says, "As Virginia came into the Forum, (for the schools of learning were held there in sheds,) a dependent and minister of the Decemvir's lust laid his hands on her, and affirming that she was a slave, and born of a woman who was his slave,' ordered her to follow him, threatening, in case of refusal, to drag her away by force."

This fearful tragedy, with a sort of dramatic unity, was ended where it began. When the honest centurion Virginius, informed of the disgrace hanging over the head of his daughter, quitted the army with which he was fighting for his country, and came to Rome, he appeared in the Forum to plead for his child; and when he and Icilius, a young man to whom Virginia was betrothed, had both pleaded in vain, it was here

he slew her.

To narrate all the great events of which this spacious area was the scene would be in a manner to write the history of Rome. Virgil, in speaking of this site in the days of Evander, who is supposed to have flourished some centuries before Romulus, says that then the flocks of sheep used to wander and cows low on the Roman

Forum.

During the Republic, in the absence of those vast and splendid theatres and amphitheatres where the emperors afterwards amused that people whom they enslaved, the players and gladiators exhibited in the Forum. In the later years of the Commonwealth a great number of temples, military columns, and rostra dotted the space; but these, for the most part, gave way to more splendid edifices and objects which were erected during the empire, when the soul of liberty that had animated the place and the virtues which could cast a charm on lowly walls had for ever taken their departure. We do not eulogize the factious spirit, the love of war and conquest, which were the immediate causes of their ruin, but we need scarcely remind any of our readers that the old Roman republicans had many pri vate and public virtues,-that they were sober, honest, chaste and hospitable,-and that they loved their country with an unbounded passion. All these disappeared under an execrable des.

potism; and the Romans experienced, what all
nations will feel, that in forging chains for others
they make rivets for their own necks,-that
those who enslave to-day are on the road to be
enslaved to-morrow,-that the spoils of unjust
aggression, and the gains wrung from a vanquish-
ed but once free people, are like clothes stolen
from the back of a man that has died of the
plague, which carry a curse and death to the fool
who puts them on. The wooden sheds where
Virginia repaired to school, and where her father
seized the butcher's knife, were succeeded by
marble porticoes and colonnades; and it is even
said that, by night, the Forum was illuminated
all round with lanips. On one occasion, Julius
Cæsar nearly covered it all over with tents or
awnings, for the purpose of commodiously cele-
brating certain games; and Octavia, the sister
of the Emperor Augustus, furnished it with an
immense quantity of velaria, or canvass awn-
ings, to shade the portions of it where causes
were tried. In the immediate neighborhood
of the Forum-on the Palatine Hill, which stands
at one end of it-Augustus himself built a libra-
ry, wherein he placed a large collection of law
books, as well as the works of all the famous
Roman authors. Pliny gives an almost incredi-
ble notion of the number of statues and busts of
gods, heroes and emperors, which a few years
later were arranged in the midst or around the
Forum Romanum. Here the adjective sounds
like an absurdity or a reproach.

SPARTAN FESTIVAL.

It was a beautiful idea of the ancients to acknowledge children as citizens. Both among the Greeks and Romans, at an appointed time in every year, the boys of about seven years of age were brought into a public assembly, and their names were enrolled as belonging to the state, and thenceforward they were allowed to take part in the public festivals. At a later age they assumed the apparel of maturity and took the oath of citizenship.

In the Spartan festivals one exhibited all the citizens classed according to their respective ages. On that occasion they formed a procession consisting of the old men, the middle aged, and the children. The old men, as they marched along sung one portion of a popular song, the younger men continued, and the boys concluded it. The from Plutarch's Greek, has been paraphrased as follows by Mr. Bryant.

song

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"ALL the triumphs of truth and genius over pre- | SOUTH AFRICANS AND THE LETTER. judice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens.

Wherever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them; inspiring, encouraging, consoling;-by the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo; on the scaffold of Sidney.

Mr. MOFFATT, the African missionary, speaking at a public meeting of the schools which had been establ shed in South Africa, said. "he had been compelled to leave his family, and live a semi-savage life one hundred miles from the rais sionary station. He could not hear from them, for there were no mail-coaches in that country. On one occasion, however, he received a letter from Mrs. Moffatt; and a chief, sitting beside "But who shall estimate her influence on pri- him, wished to know what it was. He transvate happiness? Who shall say how many thou-lated to him a part of the contents. The indisands have been made wiser, happier, and bet-vidual who brought it looked at him with utter ter, by those pursuits in which she has taught amazement, and at last exclaimed, 'Verily that mankind to engage; to how many the studies letter speaks: if I had known it, I would not which took their rise from her have been wealth have brought it. It has told every word that is in poverty,-liberty in bondage,-health in sick- true, and yet it has no mouth. Some time after ness, society in solitude. Her power is indeed he wished to get an individual to convey a letter manifested at the bar; in the senate; in the field to Mrs. Moffat, but could not procure one, though of battle; in the schools of philosophy. But he offered the most liberal remuneration. A these are not her glory. Wherever literature simpleton was at last obtained, who promised consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,-wherever it to take it; but when he received it, he thought brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakeful it was not worth carrying; he expected to reness and tears, and ache for the dark house and ceive something in a bag, and that they were the long sleep,-there is exhibited, in its noblest p'aying a trick with him. He was told that it form, the immortal influence of Athens." would convey all the news to Mrs. Moffatt; "Such," continues Mr. Macaulay, "is the gift up on which he threw it down, and nothing could of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power prevail on him to take it. He said, it would have for more than twenty centuries been anni-speak to him on the road, and make him go out hilated; her people have degenerated into timid of his wits. slaves; her language into a barbarous jargon; On another occasion, when he wished to forher temples have been given up to the successive ward a letter, he asked a native to carry it; but depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotch- the man hesitated, though he did not like to remen; but her intellectual empire is imperisha- fuse, for he did not wish to disoblige him (Mr. ble. And when those who have rivalled her Moffatt.) At last he inquired whether he could greatness, shall have shared her fate; when civi- not put his spear through it; to which he relization and knowledge shall have fixel their plied he might if he thought that the most conabode in distant continents; when the sceptre venient way of carrying it. The man answershall have passed away from England;-her in-ed, No; but if he ran his spear through it it fluence and her glory will still survive ;-fresh in would not say a syllable to him all the way be Now, however, schools were estab eternal youth, exempt from mutability and de- went.' cay, immortal as the intellectual principle from lished, churches were gathered, books were which they derived their origin, and over which read from one end of the land to the other, and they exercise their control."" the cry was, 'Give us more, more education."

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