A CHAPTER ON SCHOOL-HOUSES. 269 



that, besides all this little arrangement for the growth of a love of 

 order and beauty in the youthful heart and mind, there is an ample 

 play-ground provided for the expenditure of youthful activity ; where 

 wild sports and gymnastics may be indulged to the utmost delight 

 of their senses, and the utmost benefit of their constitutions. Is this 

 Utopian ? Does any wise reader think it is not worthier of the con- 

 sideration of the State, than fifty of the projects which will this year 

 come before it ? 



For ourselves, we have perfect faith in the future. We believe 

 in the millennium of schoolboys. And we believe that our country- 

 men, as soon as they comprehend fully the value and importance 

 of external objects on the mind on the heart on the manners 

 on the life of all human beings will not be slow to concentrate all 

 beautiful, good, and ennobling influences around that primary nursery 

 of the intellect and sensations the district school. 



There is a strong illustration of our general acknowledgment of 

 this influence of the beautiful, to be found, at the present moment, 

 in this country more than in any other. We allude to our Rural 

 Cemeteries, and our Insane Asylums. It is somewhat curious, but 

 not less true, that no country-seats, no parks or pleasure-grounds, in 

 America, are laid out with more care, adorned with more taste, filled 

 with more lovely flowers, shrubs and trees, than some of our princi- 

 pal cemeteries and asylums. Is it not surprising that only when 

 touched with sorrow, we, as a people, most seek the gentle and re- 

 fining influence of nature ? Ah ! many a man, whose life was hard 

 and stony, reposes, after death, in those cemeteries, beneath a turf 

 covered with violet and roses ; but for him, it is too late ! Many a 

 fine intellect, overtasked and wrecked in the too ardent pursuit of 

 power or wealth, is fondly courted back to reason, and more quiet 

 joys, by the dusky, cool walks of the asylum, where peace and rural 

 beauty do not refuse to dwell. But, alas, too often their mission i? 

 fruitless ! 



How much better, to distil these " gentle dews of heaven " into 

 the young heart, to implant, even in the schoolboy days, a love of 

 trees ; of flowers ; of gardens ; of the country ; of home ; of all 

 those pure and simple pleasures, which are, in the after life even 



