boundaries of knowledge, and multiplying greatly the topics of thought, and the materials for analogical reasoning and illustration, has also a high value, as a special variation of the best mode of mental discipline: furnishing, in connection. with all the other elements of educational improvement for the young, a wide and diversified range of appeals, and stimulations, and rewards, to the spirit of study. But, adopted as the sole path of intellectual development, as if having any sufficiency in itself to compass all the ends to be gained, it realizes but a very partial benefit to the student: giving him large information and pleasure, but robbing him of all those higher growths of strength and beauty of mind, which can be acquired only by the wide, philosophical, and artistic study of language. Here is the great defect of the French university system, which not only rests on the mathematics and natural sciences, as its base, but confines almost its whole amplitude within them. The German system, which lays its foundations in linguistic culture, is right in its great fundamental idea, but inadequate in the structure which it rears upon them. Their whole education, as such, is linguistic education. In France science, and in Germany language, is pursued as an end, and not as a means, except for the mere purposes of a livelihood. The end sought is the pleasures of intellectual conquest, or the rewards of honor; while in every case, the only objects to be aimed at in an education are, on the one hand, to develop in full perfection the secret germinal forces and elements of the mind, as such, and, on the other, to prepare each individual to pursue through life the most high and manly course possible of purposed toil for God and his fellow-men. Neither the French nor German system have the impress of humanity and Christianity upon them. Utility is not the law of their being. In the English, and particularly the American system, when enlarged and perfected in all its details, especially in the department of language, is the truest model yet conceived of what the people, that are to be, will ere long erect as their standard of general education, in all countries and ages.

Mental science, or the science of the human mind, bears, in its very designation, its title to the first rank of human studies.

With logic, the science of reasoning, it forms one of the best of all modes of strengthening the intellectual faculties, when in their higher stages of power and progress. In metaphysical studies, indeed, the loftiest minds, in all ages, have delighted to dwell, like eagles in their mountain homes. The greatest forces, that have moved the world in any age, have been metaphysical. To a mind at all addicted to coasting around the shore of things invisible, and hovering about its secret wonders, to one that knows the mystic spell of abstract thought, there is a pleasure, a rapture rather, in philosophic speculation, which is to be found, outside of the realm of holy work and worship, nowhere else.

Moral science, or ethics, must have also its proper place, in the course of the higher education. This is the science of human duty. It determines the sphere of right and wrong, for both individuals and communities, in all the relations of life. Its facts and principles are much more plain than those of metaphysics; and the profit of the study is rather, distinctively, moral than intellectual.

Legal science pertains to the whole scope and sphere of human laws, whether founded in natural equity, common custom, or positive statute. Here is the realm of nice distinctions and close definitions, and of strong argumentation, welded, and clamped, and riveted together. Both as a matter of mental discipline, and of personal information, the study of the general principles of law, that is, of its great elementary facts and features as a science, is, if not as a matter of absolute necessity, yet as one of very great value, worthy to be embraced in the specific course, which we call that of the higher education.

From the rapid survey now taken of the sphere of knowledge, to be possessed by the true scholar, how obvious is it that the prevailing ideas on the subject of academic, collegiate, and professional education alike, are altogether too narrow. The time is coming, because it is needful that it should, when the lad of ordinary endowments and attainments, at twelve, shall be led, for six short, not long, successive years, through a preparatory course of earnest, vigorous, ever-triumphant study: in the classics, through all the vast variety of rich, delightful

fields of investigation that they open in ground forms, syntax, prosody, etymology, grammatical and lexical, both special and comparative, antiquities, geography, biography, and history: in the mathematics, up to the broad and glowing plane of its higher elements and formulas: in geography and history, ancient and modern, over all their wide, enchanting fields of interest; and in the ancient and modern languages, especially the French and German, to the point of a full and facile possession, not only of the languages themselves, but also of much of their best literature. With such an outfit secured, and made permanent by the most accurate and energetic drill throughout, with the superadded advantage of a complete comprehension and appreciation of the facts of physiology, so as to know and to keep the rules of health, the young academician, of a future day, will be ready to enter upon the more advanced stage of university education, which will then be opened before him. Into that higher form, our present, low, collegiate style of education must ere long be raised. Through six, instead of four years, the eager student, well accoutred for his work, fond of intellectual labor, and panting to conquer new difficulties, should be led in this part of his course also: beginning for his first year with those studies which are now assigned to the second or third year of the college course, and mounting up along a path of much more complete daily toil than is now assigned for him, year after year, into one region after another of the highest and broadest, most analytic and philosophic study, in the departments of language, science, criticism, and art, throughout the whole range of the ancient classics, and of the modern, especially the English and German. With three years more of strict professional study, studying both the science and the history of it, deeply and gladly involved in the precious toil of original composition, and in inspiring converse, all the time, with the elect minds of all ages, bending in holy silence from the thrones of their written thoughts to greet him: what a preparation for entering on the work of making thought for others, and guiding their actions to great issues, would such an one have! What young giants, at twenty-seven, would then be found among us, instead

of the pigmies at fifty, not a few of them covered with titles to conceal their nakedness, which are now quite too abundant over all the land.

Another of the higher kinds of intelligence to be gained is, 3d. Acquaintance with nature.

Nature is the home of beauty; for it is God's pavilion among the sons of men. Here, as Adam heard the voice of the Lord God walking among the trees of the garden, the man of true thought and feeling meets everywhere, and almost in open vision, the great, good "Father of lights," who seems to be, as he is, everywhere "waiting to be gracious" unto him. Here is perpetual refreshment for the eye and the heart. Many have indeed managed the sublime work of education in a way that divorced the victims of their perverted ideas from nature, and art, and man, and God, and left them in an intensely isolated state, at the best, of mere elegant good-for-nothingness; but a true education ends in the marriage of the soul to everything great, and good, and true, in the universe. As poets delight to gather garlands of flowers from the fields, and hang them around the necks of the muses; as kings lavishly adorn their walls within, for their own eyes, with pictures of the beauty that is without, on which every one can gaze, nor ask permission; as divine revelation comes clothed to us in a garb of many colors, taken from heaven and earth; so, of all places in the world, the silent, meditative walks of the student should be carefully festooned with beauty, and his cloistered chamber should be fragrant with the scent of Eden. As Truth is his attending Genius, in the world of thought, so should Beauty be, in that of sight. What vivid illustrations can one who loves nature himself, draw to his work as a teacher; and with what perpetual relish and profit by his pupils, as did the divine Saviour, who so loved the mountains and the sea, in his instructions to his disciples! Their imagination craves such food; it belongs to them; and he who negligently or unconsciously withholds it from them, robs them of something far more precious than food or raiment.

A youth should be taught, both at home and in school; and for this reason, life in the country is so much better than in the

city; to observe the ever-changing forms and scenes of nature, around and above him. Fine landscapes, sunrises and sunsets, the ever-varying clouds, majestic storms with their thunder trumpets, the moon and stars by night, mountain hights, dells, and gorges, and deep caves, the solemn hush of the forest, and its more solemn moan, the calm hour of twilight, the noise of waterfalls, the laughing stream, the placid lake, the surging sea, the universal chorus of birds, as the gates of day open at dawn and shut at eve upon us, and all nature, full, in high keys and low, of the voices of happy creatures, summering away their lives in gladness-what endless food do these all furnish for the inspiration of thought and feeling!

Beauty of form or outline is to be seen and studied in nature, as also beauty of color, or of light and shade; and not alone these mere external aspects, but also the inward order of mechanism, and the designs of love that they reveal, and of which the glittering or elegant exterior is but the fitting enclosure.

It is surely one of the most surprising proofs of man's inward blindness, that Nature, the very book whose letters are largest, and which God holds most closely before the eyes of men, and the only one containing the lessons of his wisdom and love, which is ever opened to the mass of mankind, is the very one in which the great majority of the race read not a lesson, and see not even a single letter.

Let no student feel, wherever he is, that he is denied a high and true intercourse with nature. There are walks for meditation, and hights for prospect, even in the crowded city, where swarms cover every open space, and where all original variations of surface are carefully evened; and the scenery of the sky is there, and of the sea, or of some mighty stream, bastening towards it, whose bosom is ever heaving with the burdens of commerce, and within whose arms its sails, like doves whispering to each other, gather themselves together. And, in the want of all material stimulations to poetic sensibility, there are yet books full of thought-pictures, of the selectest beauty, which, indeed, have been nearly always drawn with the most effect by those who, amid the cares of city life,