EDUCATION. 



and imperfect knowledge is to make it more 

 thorough and complete. Give us, we would say, 

 if we were to speak as employers ; give us intelli- 

 gent persons to deal with. Deliver us from testy, 

 suspicious, narrow-minded ignorance. Real know- 

 ledge, moreover, is itself a great resource for the 

 mind. It gives more content to the humblest 

 state, than any degree of observance could. It also 

 draws to it a real respect, which is more valuable, 

 and which is felt to be more valuable, than any 

 homage that is ever paid to mere splendour of for- 

 tune. 



The disposition to disturb the tenure of pro- 

 perty, which is so constantly apprehended to pre- 

 vail in the poorer classes of the community both at 

 home and abroad, is, if it really exist, emphatically 

 the offspring of ignorance. It cannot be the per- 

 manent interest of any one to do this wrong ; and 

 the desire to do it, therefore, can only spring from 

 the rashest and blindest of impulses. To destroy 

 the frame of society, only to roam lawless through 

 it, for a day, can be the wish but of a fool. Pro- 

 perty is valuable only as it is secure. It follows, 

 that he who rationally, who intelligently desires it, 

 must desire its security. Let any one select from 

 the common walks of life, from the undistinguished 

 mass of the community, ten of the best educated, 

 most intelligent and reflecting men he knows, and 

 compare them with ten men, if he canfind them, who 

 cannot read ; and then let him decide, upon whom 

 he would most rely to resist any popular infatu- 

 ation, any torrent of numbers that was sweeping 

 all before it; upon whose sobriety, consideration 

 and calmness, he would most rely in any great and 

 perilous national crisis. 



The next requisite in a sound and wholesome 

 popular education, which we have mentioned, is 

 that it be practical. 



By practical education we do not mean, merely 

 or chiefly, that which is to be employed upon ma- 

 chinery, or upon the improvement of soils, or upon 

 any other physical improvements, highly valuable 

 and important as all these applications of knowledge 

 undoubtedly are. It is that education which bears 

 upon the machinery of the human mind, which is 

 most truly practical, that which breaks up " the 

 fallow ground" of the human heart, that which 

 brings forth the fruits of intelligence and virtue. 



Now we must be permitted to doubt whether 

 this great, and ultimate, and truly practical end of 

 all education is distinctly and sufficiently kept in 

 view. Is it common, we are tempted to ask, we 

 know that there are instances, but is it common 

 for the teacher of our youth, when entering upon 

 the discharge of his duties, to say with himself, 

 " now, my business is to do what is in my power 

 to rear up for society intelligent and virtuous men 

 and women : it is not merely to make good 

 arithmeticians or grammarians, good readers or 

 writers, good scholars who shall do themselves and 

 me credit at an examination, this, indeed I have 

 to do ; but it is still farther, to make good mem- 

 bers of society, good parents and children, good 

 friends and associates ; to make the community 

 around me wiser and happier for my living in it: 

 my labour, in fine, must be, to engraft upon 

 these youthful minds that love of knowledge and 

 virtue, without which they cannot be happy, nor 

 useful, nor fitted for the greatest duties, and with- 

 out which, indeed, all their acquisitions will soon 

 drop like untimely blossoms from the tree of 

 life ?" 



The blossoms, indeed, to carry out the figure, 

 must fall ; but that they may not be untimely, 

 that they may produce fruit, there must be formed 

 within them a germ. That germ in the human 

 mind is the love of knowledge, is the intellectual 

 habit that will lead to further acquisitions. With- 

 out this, education, and that which is often called 

 the most finished education, is to little purpose. 

 The actual knowledge acquired in our schools must 

 necessarily, the most of it, pass away from the 

 memory. The largest proportion of those who 

 have studied in our colleges, after the lapse of ten 

 or twenty years, know very little of Greek or 

 Latin, of the mathematics or the natural sciences ; 

 and if they have gained from their studies no habits 

 of thought, of discrimination, of research, the time 

 and expense of their education were literally thrown 

 away. 



But to return to our common schools: there is 

 still too much, we apprehend, that is scholastic in 

 them. School-boy knowledge is still too much a 

 mystery; a thing necessary to be acquired, but 

 without any distinct and assignable reason, on the 

 part of the pupil or the parent, or any reason as- 

 signed and kept in view on the part of the teacher. 

 Geography, as generally taught, is still a science 

 too technical and dry ; arithmetic is attended with 

 too little demonstration ; and grammar is as dark, 

 to multitudes of pupils, as cabalistic lore. The 

 direct connection of all this with some useful ob- 

 ject, either in life or in mental culture, should be 

 continually pointed out. " The child is father ot 

 the man ;" and the child can no more study, zeal- 

 ously and effectively, without some useful end in 

 view, than the man. 



May not the government and instruction of a 

 school, also, be such as will constantly appeal to 

 the good sense, the manliness, and self-respect of 

 the pupils, and indeed, to all those qualities which 

 will be demanded in after life ? 



Finally, a safe and sound popular education must 

 be moral; must be religious; must take hold of 

 this nobler part of human nature, and enlist it in 

 the cause of the common welfare. We say this 

 nobler part; for it is but one and the same part, 

 whether called morality or religion ; the same prin- 

 ciple, with different objects; in the one case, hav- 

 ing regard to society, in the other to the Supreme 

 Being; but still the same principle of rectitude. 

 The identity in essential principle of these differ- 

 ent regards, may be very obvious to many, but it 

 is scarcely yet recognised in popular discussion ; 

 and it much needs to be insisted on. For although 

 it may be too much to say, strictly and theoreti- 

 cally speaking, that there can be no morality with- 

 out religion, yet the practical truth does not fall 

 much short of that; and it is of the last conse- 

 quence that men should feel that they are bound 

 to the circle of their worldly duties, by their alle- 

 giance to Him who made the world. 



That bond, always necessary to all well ordered 

 society, becomes, if possible, still more important, 

 as other bonds, those of despotic power and coer- 

 cion, are loosened. There cannot, therefore, be a 

 more fatal mistake, in educating the youth of a 

 free country, than to leave religion out of the plan ; 

 to leave the moral culture of the mind to the influ- 

 ence of chance, or the inevitable results of neglect. 

 It is to rear them up not only without reference 

 to the essential wants of their being, and the gene- 

 ral condition of life, but without reference to the 

 special situation in which they are to act. A bai- 



