380 [Sexate 



conptant necessity of order, industry, foresight, discrimination, regu" 

 larity, and accuracy, exercise the moral faculties, in a mode best adapt" 

 ed to their harmonious and proper development. 



The practicability, then, of uniting elementary instruction in our 

 common schools, with agricultural science, and of so combining 

 them as to produce results eminently favorable to physical, intellec- 

 tual and moral culture, has been amply demonstrated in the educa- 

 tional institutions of Continental Europe. Is there any thing in our 

 institutions, our civilization, our societies, which should induce us to 

 doubt the full success of the experiment here 1 Are we not emi- 

 nently an agricultural people ? Are we not provided with every 

 facility in our school district organization, for the practical adop- 

 tion of a scheme which commends itself unhesitatingly to our most 

 mature judgment, and which alone can give to our rising millions 

 that sound and useful knowledge, requisite to enable them adequate- 

 ly to fulfil the great mission with which they are entrusted — the 

 advancement of civilization — the diffusion of science — and the final 

 and complete triumph of republican freedom 1 Ample means are at 

 our command ; and it only remains that an enlightened public sen- 

 timent, indicate the cause to which reason, interest and duty alike 

 point. This may be done, and to a very great extent, has already 

 been done, through the agency of the Agricultural press — through the 

 operations of the State Society, and its county branches — and espe- 

 cially by the various officers in any way connected with our extensive 

 and admirably organized common school system, interspersed through- 

 out every portion of the State, and possessing unequalled facilities for 

 the guidance and direction of the public mind. 



" To me," says Governor Seward, in his message of 1841, " the 

 most interesting of all our republican institutions, is the common 

 school." In this sentiment, every enlightened philanthropist, every 

 right judging citizen will readily concur, looking forward to the 

 time when instead of " the miserable and dilapidated edifices" which 

 in too large a proportion of our school districts, offend the eye and 

 the taste, spacious and commodious erections, combining architec- 

 tural grace and beauty with comfort, health and convenience, shall 

 be found — when instead of the tedious and monotonous routine of 

 miscalled instruction, which, by its disagreeable associations has 

 rendered knowledge tasteless and insipid to so many of our youth, 

 education, in the hands of thoroughly qualified teachers, shall assume 

 a practical cast, and become the means of a systematic, full and har- 

 monious development of all the physical, mental and moral faculties 

 of our nature — when the lessons of the school room shall be agreea- 

 bly diversified with intellectual and moral teaching, with music and 

 drawing and painting — and the hours of necessary relaxation, be 

 divided between the exuberant and healthtul sports of childhood, 

 and the no less healthful, no less pleasing culture of flowers and 

 shrubs and trees, in an ample portion of the play-ground, set apart 

 for this purpose. When the long winter evenings shall be enlivened 

 and animated by the perusal of the choicest productions of literature 

 and science, in all their various departments, ^' without money and 



