SCHOOL-HOUSE GROUNDS. 
235 
the character of external objects is conveyed to the senses, 
being, chiefly, those that appeal to the “seeing eye,” as form, 
color, motion. This is universally recognized; and a thousand 
times oftener it is said, with expectant joy, we shall see this, or 
that, than that we shall smell, touch, taste, or even possess. 
Again, of those three distinguishing qualities, form has been 
truly called “the grand characteristic of matter.” But all 
this—objects of infinite diversity of form, color, and motion— 
are in the landscape, with which “a dood deal of nature and a 
little art,” may surround the places where children are to 
spend so many of the waking hours of the most formative pe¬ 
riod of life. 
What we want, is to keep the youthful mind in that state of 
pleased acceptance of the present which is its health attitude 
towards the body. To explain how it is that nature operates 
more successfully in this direction than all the artifices with 
which man has attempted to imitate, or supercede her, would 
be to be wiser than all philosophy, more diligent than all 
observation. Yet who has not felt that 
“All natural objects have 
An echo in the heart; and still maintain, 
With the mysterious mind and breathing mould, 
A co-existence and community.” 
The same arguments that show anything favorable to phys¬ 
ical, will apply with equal force to intellectual development. 
Indeed a consideration of the one has already involved the 
other. Yet, because it is easier, it is much more common to 
trace the influence of the material upon the mental, than of 
the mental upon the material. So the first care is for the 
body, even w r hen beginning in earnest the culture of the mind. 
None but an insane person would undertake to fix the attention 
of children, and task their mental powers, when the bodily 
condition was that of suffering, or even uncomfortableness in 
the ordinary sense. It is only in the strength of years, and 
under the pressure of necessity, or the allurements of ambi¬ 
tion, that we see examples of that ascendency of the soul over 
