as well as of the tiller of the soil. All the industrial classes are to be fitted for 

 an intelligent career in the several pursuits of life. Anything less broad would 

 not have been equal justice to all. It requires, too, military instruction — that 

 the citizen may be qualified for duties the discharge of which is now demanded 

 of so many — and it does not exclude " other scientific and classical studies." 



The American youth have a broad career before them. Neither the form, nor 

 the workshop, nor a subdivided labor in either is to be the bound of their emu- 

 lation or labor. The son of the farmer must be permitted to obey the promptings 

 within him, and, like Mr. Webster, to hang the scythe on the tree, or, like Mr. 

 Clay, to ride to the highest political stations, as well as on the horse's back to 

 mill. Like "Washington, he should be fitted for the chain and the compass, or 

 the camp, or political rule, or the management of a landed estate. 



It may be answered in the senseless aphorism that a "Jack of all trades is 

 master of none." The career of Henry W^ard Beecher furnishes a reply. He 

 lately told us, when in England, that he was bell-ringer, too, in his fii'St church. 

 When at Indianapolis he published an agricultural paper; and, during the past 

 summer, the Journal of that city, alluding to the admiration of strangers for the 

 beauty of its gardens and yards, ornamented with flowers, and evergreens, and 

 shrubs, gave all the credit to Mr. Beecher*s teachings when there. He left in 

 the west "the Beecher rhubarb" — a seedling variety, originated by him, not 

 inferior to any other — and he reformed the butter market of that city. And 

 he did these things whilst he was the first of its preachers. His recent poli- 

 tical speeches in England exhibit his power in another field. 



Another case, showing the superiority of a general education of the faculties 

 of the mind over the disciplining of a few only, is seen in an eminent American 

 manufacturer and inventor. In exhibiting in England one of his inventions 

 he had the work mostly done there, but made slow progress in completing it. 

 Writing home, he said that in English shops the workmen are trained to such 

 subdivisions of labor that one of them can do the work of only one part of an 

 engine; that one part must be done before another workman can do his part; 

 that few of them can superintend the entire work of an engine ; whilst in his 

 own manufactory here most of his workmen were competent to do this." And 

 to this subdivision he attributes the want of inventive talent in England. 



Apart, then, from pre-eminent ability, we see that both in education and labor, 

 a development of mental power is promoted by a general discipline of all the 

 faculties of the mind, and that instruction dwarfed to a particular pursuit, results 

 in a dwarfed mind itself; that the powers of the mind, like those of the body, 

 achieve most when their fully developed strength is centred, for the time, on the 

 accomplishment of a certain object. If our greatest minds have found this devel- 

 oped strength in liberal studies, lesser minds must be governed by the same law 

 of progress. Confine their faculties to a narrow routine of study, and whilst a 

 few faculties may be pai-tially strengthened, others remain undeveloped. 



In the agriculture of England and of the continent, we see the influence of 

 limited instruction. A ploughman continues to be but a ploughman, and a 



