266 KUBAL ABGHITECTUBE. 



eign lan(Js delight to contribute, must be cberisheid by every Ameri- 

 can as the key-stone of his liberty ; it. must j>e rendered still firmer 

 and broader, to meet thegrowing strength and the growing dangers 

 of the country ; it must be adapted to the character of our people,— 

 different and distinct as we believe that character to befrom tfegt 

 of all other nations ; and, above all, without teaching creeds or doc- 

 trines, it must be pervaded by profoui^'d and genuine moral feeling, 

 more central, and more vital, than that of any narrow sectarianism. 



Well, will any of our readers believe that this train of thought 

 has grown out of our having just seen a most ..shabby and forbid- 

 ding-looking school-house ! Truly, yes 1 and, as in an old picture 

 of Rembrandt's, the stronger the lights,-tlje darker also the shadows, ' 

 we are obliged to confess that, with so much to be proud of in pur 

 system of ^common schools, tjtiere is nothing so . beggarly and dis- 

 gracefal as the externals of our country school-houses themselves* - , 



A traveller through the Union,, is at once -struck with the gen- 

 eral appearance of comfort in die houses of our rural population. 

 But, by the way-^ide, here and there,, he, observes a small, one story 

 edifice, built of wood or stone in the nijost. meagre mode, — dingy in 

 aspect, and dilapidated in condition. It is placed in the barest 

 and most forbidding si^. in the whole coujitry round. If you fail 

 to recognize it by these imarks, you can easily make it out by th^ 

 broken fences, and tumble-down stone walls that surround it ^- by 

 the. absence of all trees, and by the general expression of melan- 

 choly, as if eveiy lover of good- order and beauty ip the neighbor- 

 hood had abandoned it to the genius of desolation. ^ 



This condition of things is almost universal. It nlust, therefore, 

 be founded in some deep-ropted prejudices, or some mistaken idea 

 of the importance of the subject. 



That the wretched condition of the country school-houses is ow- 

 ing to a general license of what the phrenologists would call the 

 organs of dcstructiveness in boys, we are well aw^re. But it is in 

 giving this license that the great error of teachers and superintend- 

 ents of schools lies. There is also, God be thanked, a principle of 

 order and a love of beauty implanted in every human mind,; and 

 the degree to which it may be cultivated in children is quite un- 

 known to those who start leaving such a principle wholly out of 



